…given the way I’d reacted to Hayley’s death. “I get it.” I gave her a grim nod. “I’m going to step out on a limb here and say Brian didn’t buy that ticket to Paris.”
Bailey nodded. “And it seems a lot less likely that he killed Hayley. But he was definitely in on the kidnapping-”
“And we know he sent the ransom note, so there’s a good chance Hayley was in on the kidnap-ransom scheme.”
“Agreed. But now we know someone else has to be involved-”
“Someone who was trying to make it look as though Brian was still alive and planning to leave the country-”
“So they could frame Brian for Hayley’s murder,” Bailey said. “Now we know why that ticket to Paris was purchased under Brian’s alias.”
While Bailey and I were talking, I saw Dorian arrive. This time she started by taking soil samples from the area and collecting leaves from the shrubs. That reminded me of Fryman Canyon. I went over and greeted her.
“Hey, Dorian. Glad it’s you out here.”
“Makes one of us. What do you want?”
Dorian’s gushing could be so embarrassing. “I was just thinking that we also had a scene at Fryman Canyon. I don’t know if you remember, that’s where the-”
“-ransom was dropped. Of course I remember. I already took samples from there. Any other brilliant thoughts you’d like to share?”
“Nope, all good.”
Since Dorian didn’t seem in need of any further assistance, I looked around and noticed that George and his burly assistant had already loaded the body into the wagon and George was about to get into the driver’s seat. I walked over to him.
“Can you give me some idea as to cause of death?”
“There was an obvious puncture wound in the left side of the neck, and a deep slice across the carotid. Probably drew the knife from behind from left to right.”
So cause of death for both Hayley and Brian was knife wounds. “Can we ask Steve to compare the wound tracks to another victim’s?”
“Hayley Antonovich?”
I nodded.
“Good idea. I’ll put in the request. Steven testified in a case I had up in Seattle. Great witness.”
Steven Diamond is the coroner’s criminalist who knows and does just about everything you can think of. One of those things is to determine what kind of blade created a wound. That’s a pretty unique skill that, as far as I know, no one can do as well as Steven, because he compiled a database of wounds that were known to have been made by specific knives. As a result, he might be able to get fairly precise about what kind of knife was used to inflict our fatal wounds. In this case, with two victims killed close in time, I was hoping Steven could tell us whether the same, or at least a very similar, weapon was used on both of them. And that would help to prove both kids-I couldn’t help but think of them that way-were murdered by the same person. It would never be as precise a match as bullets or casings would’ve given us, but it was a heck of a lot better than most criminalists could do with knife wounds.
