Page 27 of Forever Dark
“Can you patch me through to Wellings in forensics, please?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.”
Selena cupped the phone and whispered to Connor.“Wellings is a linguist.He can make sure any online translation isn’t botched.”
“You have in-house linguists at the Washington field office?”Connor asked, his tone condescending.
“We need textual analysis in some of our cases,” Selena said.
“Wellings,” a voice spoke suddenly on the phone.He sounded rushed, like he always did.
“Hey, Wellings,” Selena said.“It’s Selena Raven.I know you’re busy, but I’ve got some Latin that needs translated from a murder scene.”
He sighed.Wellings always acted like everything was a burden.“I suppose so.”
“Scortum ducereis the phrase.”
“Interesting…” he said, pausing for a moment.“It means to ‘take a whore.’Sounds like you have a sexually motivated self-righteous perp on your hands.Have fun with that.”
“Thanks, Wellings.”The call ended.
Her mouth thinned.“It means ‘to take a whore.’”
Connor swore under his breath.
Selena slipped the phone away and studied the wall again.“Do you have any preliminaries from the coroner?Any sign of sexual assault?”
“As far as I know, no evidence of it.”
“Then this probably refers to the killing,” she said.“The taking of the victim’s life rather than abuse.”
Connor looked from the phrase to the chalk outline.“That’s supposed to be better?”
“No.”She looked at him.“We can’t afford to be emotional about this.”
The answer came flat.
Nothing about the scene suggested frenzy.Everything in it pointed to intention.Selection of language.Placement of the body.Candles.The church itself.The killer had not simply murdered Brenda Colter.He had used her as a statement of some kind.
Selena crouched near the chalk marks and pictured the chair there, the body set into it.“Do you have photos on your phone from the scene?”
Connor took out his cell and unlocked it.“Unfortunately, yeah.”
He handed it over.
Selena flipped through the images.Brenda in the chair.Head bowed.The cut to the throat clean and deep.Blood down the dress.Candles around her like a ritual borrowed from somewhere older and uglier than faith.“This feels like a religious sacrifice,”she pondered out loud.
Connor nodded once.“That’s how it looked to me.He must have tied her up, slit her throat, then posed her like she was praying.”
“Why do you say tied up?”Selena asked.
Connor pointed to the phone and zoomed in on the victim’s hands.“Well, I’m no FBI expert, but that looks like rope marks on her wrists.”
Selena looked at the photo.He was right.That galled her.Not so much for missing it, as the coroner would fill her in on that after a full report, but that it was Connor who spotted it first.
She tried to stay professional.
