father was just the same, Ben.’
She r eached across the table, closed the newspaper, and placed her hand on the article involving The Phantom.
‘ It’s in your blood,’ she said.
Ben took a moment to dig est what his mum had just said.
‘ Keep taking your pills, mum,’ he said, then left.
14
Two uniformed officers had sealed off the crime scene, unofficially identified the bodies using the identification found on them, and taken down a brief statement from Mr Wilson, who was walking his dog along the canal when he made the unfortunate discovery of two young corpses floating in the murky water.
He had fished the bodies out and made a fruitless attempt at CPR before calling the police. It was only after he’d put on his glasses to use the phone, that he clearly saw how dead Ricky and Alexia really were.
They had been in the water at least an hour, concluded Summers, as she stood over the recently deceased. She noted the giant wound on the side of Ricky’s head.
Her medical training enabled her to give a rough assessment, fatal blow to the head and damage to the neurocranium. More specifically, his head had been hit so hard that the synarthrosis joint between the Parietal and Temporal bones on Ricky’s left side had cracked open. The Temporal bone jolted inward and probably pierced his brain.
It took a few seconds for Summers to register Alexia’s cause of death, a brief moment before she saw the back of the girl’s head was held together only by matted hair. It seemed the Occipital bone, and one or both of the Parietal bones, the bones at the back of the skull, had been smashed to pieces, exposing and damaging the brain.
Both bodies, battered, cold and soaked , didn’t make for a pretty picture.
As the corpses had already been moved, there was no need to leave them exposed to the few members of public who had now gathered. Summers called out to one of the uniformed officers to help the coroner bag up the bodies, so they could be taken to the lab.
The chances of finding any DNA evidence was extremely slim due to the circumstances, but she asked the other uniformed officer to take a swab from Mr Wilson, in order to eliminate his DNA from any alien DNA found on the bodies. She had already ruled him out as responsible for the deaths; his alibi had been confirmed by phone where he was all morning until thirty minutes ago. Besides, she could see he wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t look capable; trying to save two people, yes, to murder them, no.
Summers joined Kite who had just taken a photo of a bloody mess on the floor. She pointed out small bits of brain in the blood.
‘Thanks for that,’ he said.
Summers positioned herself between the sprays of Ricky’s blood and the canal, facing away from Kite, with her right side closest to the water.
‘ This is where the boy stood when he was struck, facing this way,’ she said, thinking out loud. She looked at the lines of claret on the ground, ‘It looks like four, maybe five squirts of blood before he fell, or was pushed, this way,’ gesturing toward the canal, ‘into the water.’
She turned around and Kite stepped to the side so as to not block her view, of what they had rightly assessed to be the girls blood and pieces of brain.
Summers moved to approximately where the girl’s feet would have lay at her time of death, looked back at Ricky’s blood and then again to Alexia’s.
‘ He killed the boy first,’ said Kite, answering the question he thought Summers was pondering.
‘ I know,’ she said, ‘which means she watched him die, and waited to die herself.’
‘ Maybe she panicked, couldn’t decide whether to fight or flee,’ said Kite.
He was right , Summers thought to herself.
She had check ed the hands of Alexia. There were no bruises on the knuckles or palms nor any skin or fibres under the fingernails. She didn’t fight. She didn’t flee. She was paralysed by fear. She paid the price as well.
Kite stated the obvious, that