One Last Breath by Sarah Sutton (speld decodable readers txt) 📗

finally reached the path to the beach, they stopped. A wave of disappointment hit them. They knew they were starting from ground zero again. Their lead had led them nowhere. They decided to continue their walk onto the beach, but after walking about a quarter mile, they stopped and turned to each other. They both knew they had reached a dead end.

 “It’s odd,” Tara admitted. “No sign of struggle, and no one heard anything.”

Warren nodded. “It’s almost as if whoever took her, she went willingly.”

Tara agreed. Could it be possible that the victim knew the killer? The thought danced in her head. She posed the theory to Warren.

“Possibly,” he admitted, but they both knew they had already interviewed her family. They had already gone to her place of work. They already ruled out her secret boyfriend. So, even though they suspected she might have known the killer, they still did not have a suspect. Or did they rule out Brian too soon?

“Could Brian have killed her with one hand?” Tara questioned. After all, Brian was clearly strong. He had an athletic build. He was tall. Could it be possible that even with one hand, he was still able to overpower the victim? Tara asked the question to Warren, who stood pondering a moment. He looked down at his watch.

“Well, let’s go see what the medical examiner has to say.”

He was right. It had now been a few hours since they brought the body in. Most likely they would have some more information at this point. Tara agreed, and they turned back toward the car, hoping they were finally walking in the direction of answers.

Chapter Ten

Tara and Warren pulled into the parking lot of the medical examiner’s office and were surprised to see a swarm of reporters waiting by the entrance. They all stared at the unmarked vehicle until it was out of view behind the building, and Tara knew they would now be fully prepared to pounce on them with questions.

After looking briefly for an unlocked back entrance and failing to find one, Tara and Warren knew it was inevitable that they would have to part the sea of hungry reporters.

As they came around the corner, the news crews were already staring in their direction, eagerly waiting. Tara accidentally locked eyes with a tall, handsome-looking local reporter with perfectly slicked-back brown hair, and within a split second he had a microphone in her face.

“Do you have any suspects?”

His question caused the others to flock around her like vultures, and she was soon unable to see beyond them.

“What do you have to say to the people of Dewey Beach?” another female reporter shouted through the chaos.

“It’s too early for comment,” Tara replied. “We’re following all leads.”

She felt Warren’s hand upon her back as he led her forward, while asking the reporters to step aside, and they were soon safe within the building.

“Thank you,” Tara said as the feeling of claustrophobia subsided. She knew this case would be big, but she somehow forgot just how overwhelming the media could be, and she was thankful to have Warren.

They made their way to the medical examiner’s room and were soon met by Fredrick Burns. He was bald except for white hair that lined the sides of his head. They had already spoken to him on the way. He confirmed that he already examined the body, and he was now waiting for them to arrive.

When they knocked, he peered through his thick spectacles at the small, square window in the door, and he hurried over. He greeted them by name.

“I’ll give you the rundown,” he said as he made his way to an autopsy table centered in the room. Upon it lay a body bag shaped in human form.

He grabbed a set of latex gloves and unzipped the bag. Reese Tanner’s body was quickly on full display. She looked the same as she had that morning. He lifted one of her hands.

“First of all, she had ligature marks on her ankles and wrists,” he said. This was not new knowledge, since they had already distinguished that at the crime scene. “But it seems to me that given the extent of bruising, she was tied up for quite a while—hours, even.”

“So you’re saying that she wasn’t killed right away?” Tara asked.

The medical examiner shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it,” he confirmed. “It’s a bit hard to know for certain, since the body has already started decomposing, but it seems to me that the ligatures had even been changed a couple times.” He pointed to another rope-like pattern on her arm. “This one’s a bit thicker. It looks like the killer used something else to tie her, but it’s a bit less bruised, which means it might be older.”

“Any sign of struggle from when she was abducted?” Warren asked.

The medical examiner pursed his lips and shook his head again. “That’s the strange part. I don’t see any sign of blunt trauma. No sign of struggle. My guess is she went willingly.”

It confirmed what Warren and Tara already assumed, that she knew her abductor.

“Cause of death was strangulation,” he continued. “Looks like the killer used something thin, like a shoestring.”

“Any chance someone with one broken arm could’ve strangled her?” Tara asked.

“I’d say that’s very unlikely,” the medical examiner confirmed. “Her hyoid bone was fractured; it’s a bone in her neck. You’d need a lot of force for that, and unless you’re the Hulk, it’d be next to impossible to do that with one arm.”

It was the same injury that Dr. Harris noted in Alyssa White’s skeleton.

“But mainly what I wanted to show you is this.” He held up her hand. It was already starting to decompose, but her nails were still intact. As Tara leaned in, she could see the jagged lines where some of her nails had been broken. “It looks as if toward the end she tried to claw her attacker, but oddly, her fingernails were completely clean. No DNA underneath.”

Tara and Warren