Cause of death wasn’t an issue—anyone could see someone had cut Marty’s throat with ruthless efficiency, slicing cleanly through the carotid arteries and jugular veins, even severing the windpipe from the Adam’s apple. This would have been the final injury, the coup de grâce.

And Marty would have needed a coup de grâce: he had been tortured systematically, long, shallow cuts made into his chest, carefully and methodically inflicted. Since the wounds were roughly parallel, Jenner could tell Marty hadn’t moved much during or between each injury; he had to have been restrained, either with bindings or by force.

Jenner made incisions to explore the wrists and forearms; there was no evidence of a ligature, but a soft or broad ligature could leave no marks.

Flanagan appeared in the doorway.

“Doc, Detective Rudge from Major Crimes.”

Jenner had heard about David Rudge; everyone in the Port Fontaine ME office thought the guy walked on water. Sharp, driven, stellar arrest record, the sort of cop who could nail down the truth in seven questions. Jenner took police legend with a grain of salt, but Marty had said if he ever had trouble, Jenner should find Rudge. And Marty had been a good judge of people.

Jenner was expecting some kind of All-American Brylcreem-and-Vitalis jock, but as Rudge stepped into the autopsy room, he looked more like a man on the cusp of undistinguished middle age. He was gently pear-shaped, with a shabby gray suit and a grubby white shirt. The expanse of shirt covering his belly was dotted with ketchup stains, and his tie hung loosely; apparently Rudge didn’t believe in wasting a decent knot when a tie could be easily slipped off over the head and replaced the next day with minimum fuss.

The other surprise was that Rudge was black. No one talking about Rudge had ever hinted at his race—score one for his own Yankee stereotypes, Jenner thought: this was the New South, not the TV South.

Whatever his expectations of Rudge had been, when Rudge looked at the body, Jenner knew he was the real deal. The detective stood in the doorway, nodding absently at Jenner while concentrating on Marty’s body; it reminded Jenner of one of those fifties’ sci-fi movies, where the alien robot scans an Earth object—a car, maybe, or a dog—its gaze tracking over the body in a beam of focused light, inch by inch, measuring, gauging, analyzing.

He stepped back to give Rudge a better view.

The detective came closer, shaking his head. “So, what, they tortured him, then cut his throat?”

Jenner nodded. “Yes.”

“Shit.” Rudge shook his head sadly. His lip curled. He paused, then shook his head again. “That ain’t right.”

Jenner nodded again.

Rudge glanced at the incised wrists and forearms, then turned to Jenner. “Did they tie him up?”

“I can’t see anything, but I think they probably bound him, yes.”

“And Mrs. Roburn?”

Jenner stepped back and tore off his plastic gown. “She’s in the X-ray room. I haven’t looked at her yet.”

Face grim, Rudge followed Jenner down the hall.

Bobbie Roburn lay on a gurney next to the X-ray table, clothes and duct tape bindings undisturbed. The bloating stretched her clothes tight, her body bulging through the mesh of silver tape. Her blouse was stained with purge fluid, but there was no blood, and Jenner could find no holes in the clothes, nothing to suggest a stabbing.

Her wrists were taped in front of her—her abductors had felt she’d posed little threat. They’d wrapped the duct tape in loops that completely encircled her torso, securing her arms to her sides. Her ankles were taped together, and her thighs and knees.

Jenner put on gloves and reached for the gag.

“Doc, want me to get the photographer?” Rudge said.

“We’ve already taken all-overs.”

Jenner focused on the gag. The duct tape wound between the lips and around the head, but they’d left Bobbie’s nostrils exposed.

He used scissors to cut the tape where it passed behind her ear, then peeled it up carefully from her hair, gradually rolling it around to where it entered her mouth. There, he gently opened her lips and slipped the tape out of her mouth; there was nothing stuffed inside the oral cavity.

Jenner hung the tape in the drying cupboard with clothespins; the way it had been applied seemed pretty random, without any distinctive pattern. He looked the tape over carefully, but could find no hairs or fibers; the Crime Lab might still be able to recover fingerprints or DNA.

He opened the mouth wider, tilted the head to examine her neck. There were no injuries of the mouth, no bruising or cuts on the lips. No visible hemorrhages in the bulging eyes. Her neck was clean, free of any obvious wound.

“Christ.”

Rudge took a photo of the neck, then looked at him. “What is it, doc? You got something?”

“No, the opposite: there’s no injury at all.”

Rudge wrinkled his brow.

“So how did she die? You think…”

Jenner tore off his gloves and said, “I think they just fucking threw her in the trunk and let her fucking drown.”