"What's that?" Hoss interrupted.
Jeffrey explained, "He was using the area between his toes to shoot up to try to hide the fact that he was using." To Sara, he said, "That would explain the ATP."
"Depending on what he was using, it might." She asked Deacon, "Have you taken blood and urine?"
The man nodded. "It'll take a week or two to get it back, though."
Sara held her tongue, but Jeffrey said, "Can we get a rush on that?"
Hoss said, "It'll cost."
Jeffrey shrugged, and Hoss gave a slight nod to Deacon, indicating it was okay.
Sara examined the surface of the body, finding nothing remarkable other than a star-shaped scar below the right ankle.
She asked Deacon, "Can you help me open his hand?"
He put on a pair of gloves, and as they all watched, Deacon tried to pry open the fingers. The hand would not give, and he adjusted his footing, giving himself a wide stance as he tried to press his thumb into the small opening between Swan's thumb and index finger. When he put his shoulder into it, the finger broke open. The next was easier, and one by one he broke back the fingers and thumb. The snaps sounded like twigs breaking.
"Nothing," Deacon said. He was leaning over the hand, and he moved out of the way so that Sara could see. Fingernail grooves cut into the meaty flesh of Swan's palm, but it appeared empty.
Deacon asked, "Death spasm?"
"Those are very rare," Sara answered, looking back at the chest where the fist had been. "He was lying on his fist. The weight of his body could have closed the fingers and the rigor fixed it in place." She looked around, finding a rolling lamp in the corner. "Do you mind getting that so I can take a closer look?"
He did as he was asked, unwrapping the cord and getting Paul to plug it into the wall socket. The bulb flickered a few times but easily illuminated the empty palm.
Using the sharp edge of the tweezers, she scraped under his fingernails, removing dry skin as well as some larger, unidentifiable flakes. She put them in a specimen bottle, along with some nail clippings, and watched Paul seal them with a strip of bright green tape.
While Reggie took photographs, Sara held a ruler next to the scars and other identifying marks she had found. They progressed to the head, and she used her fingers to pick out pieces of skull and gray matter before pushing the hair back off Swan's face and exposing the entrance wound on the left side of his head.
Jeffrey had been quiet through all of this, and when he said, "Powder tattooing," his voice was so low Sara was not sure if he had spoken the words or she had heard them in her own head.
He was right. There was a scatter-shot of reddish brown lesions surrounding the entrance wound where hot powder grains from the gun had burned the skin. Sara held the ruler as Reggie took photographs. She lightly combed her fingers through the hair and checked the surrounding skin for telltale markings. Finally, she said, "There's no soot that I can see."
"Did he bleed it off?" Jeffrey asked, standing beside her.
"Not from this side," she told him, feeling slightly relieved. The head was a mess, but she could see it clearly under the light now. Powder tattooing with the absence of soot most likely indicated an intermediate-range wound, meaning Robert was standing at least eighteen to twenty-four inches from the man when Swan was shot.
Jeffrey asked, "What'd he have in the Glock again?"
Paul was thumbing back through his notes. "Federal, one-fifteen grain."
"Ball powder," Jeffrey said, with palpable relief. He told Hoss, "Ball powder travels faster. That puts Robert anywhere from two to four feet away."
"Goes with what he said this morning," Hoss told them. "Had a hangfire when he pulled the trigger."
"Hangfire?" Sara repeated, though not because she did not understand the word. A hangfire meant there was a delay between Robert pulling the trigger and the bullet being fired from the gun.
Jeffrey asked, "Did he say how long it took?"
"He wasn't sure," Hoss answered. "Maybe half a second or so."
Jeffrey looked at Sara, and she wondered if her own expression of disbelief mirrored his. There was no scientific way to prove or disprove how the gun had fired or when. Bullets did not come with a time stamp, and whether or not the gun had in fact had a hangfire was impossible to prove with any scientific accuracy.
Sara turned her focus back to the head, combing through the hair for debris and setting it aside on the tray for collection. She tried to keep her mind on the task, but all she could think was how quickly excuses were being made for every question the evidence raised. If the situation had been reversed and Robert was lying on the table in front of her, she knew that all the men here would track down Luke Swan like a rabid dog.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Jeffrey asked Hoss, "Where's Robert now?"
"He's with Jessie at her mama's," Hoss provided. "Why?"
"I thought I'd check in on him. See how he's doing."
"He's fine," Hoss said, looking at his watch. "This is running a little later than I thought it would. I need to step out for a meeting."
Jeffrey asked, "Do you want Paul to take our statements?"
Hoss seemed to have forgotten about this, but he answered, "No, I'll do that. Let's meet back at the station around three."
Jeffrey told him, "We were planning on leaving before then."
"That's fine," Hoss told them, giving Jeffrey a hard pat on the back. "Y'all drop by the station on your way out of town. I'm sure it won't take long."
Paul waited for his boss to leave before saying, "I need to get back to some paperwork myself." He gave Sara a polite nod, then left the room. Deacon White was next, making an excuse about a lunch appointment. Sara wondered if he noticed the clock in the room read ten.
Reggie put down his camera and leaned against the sink, his expression plainly stating he had nowhere to go and even if he did, he did not trust Jeffrey alone in the room with the corpse.
Jeffrey made it worse by asking Reggie, "What did Robert's statement say?"
Reggie shrugged. "Why are you so curious?"
Jeffrey returned the shrug.
Sara did not know how Reggie would handle this, but still, she told Jeffrey, "I don't want to dig around for the bullet. We need X rays first or I'll destroy any evidence."
Reggie said, "There wasn't another bullet in the room. I checked. It was just the two twenty-two LRs in the walls and casings on the floor like I drew."
Jeffrey seemed cautious, like he was feeling Reggie out. "What did Robert carry for backup?"
Reggie stared without answering.
Sara added, "A twenty-two would have less velocity than a nine-mil. It would be more likely to stay in the skull."
Reggie's chin dropped slightly. His eyes went from Jeffrey to Sara. "I think we should find that bullet."
Jeffrey nodded his agreement, saying, "Yeah."
Sara changed into a fresh pair of gloves, thinking she hardly had the authority to do this, but also knowing that this was the only way to find the truth. Carefully, she probed around the exit wound in the skull with her fingers, not wanting to use the forceps because they could scratch or change the markings on the metal.
"Nothing," she finally said. "It could be deeper in."
Reggie told her, "Hoss won't let us take him back for X rays."
"Luke," Jeffrey said. "His name's Luke Swan. You ever have him in your cruiser?"
"Hell," Reggie snorted. "About a million times."
"For what?"
"Mostly breaking and entering, but he always made sure the houses were empty. Usually, he picked when he thought folks were at church."
"Last night was Sunday."
"Church is over by eight. Even if he was stoned, he would've seen the cars in the driveway and known."
"You ever find a weapon on him?"
"Not once."
"He ever do anything violent?"