Casper leaned down, squinting at the screen. “Mayyyyybe?” he said, eyeing the slightly darker sheen just below Mint’s eye. When Dover photos are taken, the photographers are supposed to clean things up, so the focus can be just on the wound. “I honestly forget. Swipe back to the beginning,” Casper said. “Sometimes, when you pull someone out of the body bag, blood smudges across their face.”
With a hard swipe, Zig scrolled back to the very first pics, but even there, Mint’s right cheek looked a bit darker.
“Ziggy, you searching for something in particular?”
“Just a hunch.”
Casper made a face, rolling his tongue inside his cheek to pick out the Tootsie Roll from his back teeth. “How about the truth this time? Tell me what you’re really doing here.”
“Casp, I told you—”
“No. Don’t say this is just some random hunch. I know that look, Ziggy. I see the way you keep eyeing the window. Like someone’s hot on your tail even though you’re in a secure military facility. You came here for a reason. Tell me what’s got you so anxious.”
Zig again glanced out the front window, that photo of Mint’s belongings still fresh in his head—gas cards, a gym membership, a few receipts—the crap we leave behind. Your dearest wish will come true.
Onscreen, Zig swiped to the end of the file—to the autopsy—where there was a blue sheet with a round hole in it that offered a close-up of Mint’s face. The sheet was there to block out everything in the background—so that in each photograph, you could focus just on the fallen soldier, not the nearby rolling carts with the scalpels, rib cutter, or bone chisel.
In the photo, one of Mint’s eyes was open, staring straight up, his pupil cloudy and dark purple, like a scab.
“Here. It’s here,” Zig said, flipping back to the full-body shot of Mint’s naked body flat on the table. Zig shifted the photo onscreen, pulling in tight on Mint’s right hand, where there were three red marks—the same ones Zig noticed during the funeral when he readjusted Mint’s hands.
“Scratch marks?” Casper asked. “What about ’em?”
“Whoever shot Mint, they did it from the driver’s side of the car. Mint was in the back seat; in front of him was the valet, who was behind the wheel. Both of them took bullets on the left side of their heads, through the driver’s-side glass. So who made these marks on Mint’s right hand?”
Casper shook his head. “Maybe those scratches were from a different night.”
“Look at the photos. That’s not old blood.”
Casper leaned in closer, flipping forward a few photos. As photographer, he took close-ups of every wound. Sure enough, he had a close-up of the scratches. He squinted at the screen. The wounds were fresh. “What if the valet scratched him—y’know, when Mint grabbed him from behind?”
“Another good theory. Except I called the local MEs who did the valet’s autopsy. There was no skin tissue under his fingernails.”
“Okay, Ziggy, I get it—you’re doing the full Quincy. But for all you know, Mint scratched himself,” Casper explained. “Remember that pilot who popped out his own eye when his Chinook got shot and crashed? You’ve seen what happens on impact.”
“Casp, that was a helicopter crash from one thousand feet. This is a man sitting in his own back seat. Supposedly by himself.”
Casper’s eyes narrowed. “Back up. Time out. You think Mint was with someone else in the back seat?”
“That’s a hell of a theory,” Zig said, a thin grin spreading across his face. “One I bet we can check.”
They both sat there a moment, classical piano still playing from above.