Wounds Read Online Free PDF

guy’s skin. That would take a long time to do.”
    â€œThat’s where you’re wrong, Detective. It could be done in moments.”
    Carmen narrowed her eyes. “How can you know that?”
    â€œBecause I love pizza.”
    Carmen’s mind seized. “What?”
    â€œSurely you’ve seen someone make a pizza. It’s quite the art. I worked my way through college slinging dough and dipping out pizza sauce.”
    â€œThat’s a part of your history I would never guess. I thought you came from the privileged class.”
    â€œI do, but my father believed his darling son should learn what it means to work for a buck. I had to pay for the first two years at the university. If I did well, he’d pay the last two years, as well as foot the bill for med school.”
    â€œDoesn’t seem to have hurt you.”
    â€œI loved the old man for it. Built character. Well, I didn’t love him the first two years of university, but I see the wisdom now. Anyway, part of the preparation for a great pizza is docking the dough.”
    â€œI don’t follow.”
    â€œA dough docker is a tool that puts small holes in the bread. The dough is rolled out and spun to the right size; then the cook takes a tool that is nothing more than a nylon roller with small spikes and runs it over the dough. Then come the toppings.”
    â€œSomeone ran a pizza-making tool over this guy? Why?”
    â€œAh, that I don’t know. I just read bodies. It’s your job to find bad guys and make sense of the clues.” He pointed at a string of holes. “Notice that there’s a small gap between this set of holes and the adjoining set. The roller you’re looking for is about twelve-and-a-half centimeters wide.”
    â€œTwelve-and-a-half centimeters—”
    â€œFive inches.”
    â€œGot it.” Carmen studied the body. “Tell me something, Doc. Would the victim have to be still for the rows to be this even? I mean, three-eights of an inch isn’t deep, but it had to hurt.”
    â€œâ€˜Hurt’ doesn’t cover it. It’d be excruciating.”
    â€œAnd you think you know how he died?”
    â€œLook here.” Shuffler moved to the dead man’s head. “See his eyes?”
    â€œPetechial hemorrhage.” She shifted her gaze to the man’s neck. “I don’t see any bruises or marks to indicate strangulation.”
    â€œPetechial hemorrhage doesn’t always indicate strangulation. When it appears in the eyes, it only indicates vascular congestion in the head that results in ruptured capillaries.” He straightened. “Now here’s where you rise up and call me a genius.” He removed a magnifier with a light from a drawer and held it close to the victim’s mouth. “Take a look.”
    Carmen took the device and again bent over the corpse. “Red bumps. Like a rash.”
    â€œNow here.” He drew a finger along the jaw line.
    â€œMore of the same.”
    â€œRight. There are spots on his arms as well.”
    Carmen handed the magnifier back to Shuffler. “And just what am I to make of all of this? He had a rash when he died?”
    â€œI know this rash.” Shuffler returned the tool to the drawer. “I get it all the time.”
    â€œDo I want to hear this?”
    â€œIf you want to solve the case you do. I’m waiting on the blood work for verification, but I’d bet your next paycheck that our departed friend here has an allergy to latex.”
    â€œLatex? Like the gloves we wear?” Carmen knew of several officers who developed an annoying rash each time they donned latex gloves. She also knew of one crime-scene tech who had to quit because of the allergy. He was even allergic to the newer, non-latex material.
    â€œFive- to ten-percent of health care workers have some degree of latex allergy. I’m one of them. I wear one-hundred-percent nitrile, powder-free