“Ziggy, I still don’t— Mint got shot on the left side of his face. So how did bits of his own bone— How’d they get on the right side of his face, much less that high in his hair?”
“Because of this right here . . .” Zig scrolled in closer, the pencil points now looking like snowy mountaintops. “That’s not his bone.”
Casper nodded as it started making sense. He’d photographed it plenty of times before. With bombs and bullet wounds, fragments of one victim get lodged in the other. “Okay, so if those bones aren’t Mint’s— You’re saying they’re the valet’s?”
“Not at that angle. The valet was in the front seat. This hit Mint squarely on the side—some of it behind his ear, which means . . .”
“Ziggy, you’re giving me these dramatic pauses like I’m supposed to be reading your mind. Just say it.”
“Here . . .” Zig pointed to his own skull. “If I’m Mint, and the valet’s in the front seat, when the valet gets shot, bone shrapnel will most likely hit Mint here,” he said, pointing to his own forehead and his temple area. “But for fragments to hit me here,” he said, pointing diagonally above his ear on his right side, “at this angle—”
“—you think Mint wasn’t the only one in the back seat. That someone else was next to him?”
“You got a better explanation?”
Casper gave the twisted Tootsie Roll wrapper one last twirl as it finally tore from the tension. He was still staring at the CT scan of Mint’s grayscale skeleton. “Is that who you think scratched those marks into Mint’s hand? The shooter put a bullet in Mint, then a bullet into the valet, then they crossed around to the passenger side and— Scratch.” Casper paused. “Ziggy, if you’re right—”
“I’m right.”
“I’m not arguing. I’m just saying—” He pointed his torn Tootsie Roll wrapper toward the screen. “For those bone fragments to be jumping out like that, well . . . How’d our own Dover medical examiners miss it?”
“Who said they missed it?” Zig challenged.
Casper sat up. The classical music was still playing, though both of them barely heard it. “Time out. You think someone here—”
“All I’m saying is, three days ago, Mint’s body should’ve gone to Pennsylvania’s local medical examiner—he’s a civilian. Instead, for reasons we still can’t explain, it came here. To make that happen, they said Mint used to work at Dover, but we now know that’s a lie. Then they brought me in as the mortician, telling me they needed my rebuilding skills, which was their second lie, since near as I can tell, they brought me in because of my link to Nola. The point is, whatever really happened with Mint’s death, far too many people are putting in far too much work to make sure no one finds out what the hell is really going on.”
Casper nodded, standing from his seat and tossing the Tootsie Roll wrapper in the trash. On a short filing cabinet in the corner were neat stacks of dozens of Bibles, each stack a different denomination, for families of the fallen. “Maybe you should . . . I don’t know, go to the top. Talk to Colonel Whatley,” he said, referring to his boss, the head of Dover.
“Whatley’s the one who put me on the case!”
“Whatley was? You’re sure about that?”
“Casper, whoever did this helped alter Mint’s medical examiner report, and his death certificate. On top of that, the way they sped him through Dover—you know how cases move, it can take up to two weeks—but Mint was in the ground within three days, which also keeps law enforcement and everyone else from getting a good look at the body. You really think they could pull all that off if they didn’t have permission from every higher-up in here?”