Desert Fire by David Hagberg Page B

illuminated by overhead lights. Next to them stood several instrument tables and equipment stands on rolling carts. At the center of the room were laboratory benches. One wall contained two dozen body boxes. The room was cold and smelled of antiseptic. White-tiled and stainless-steel sterile. Here, death was a business.
    On one of the tables lay a body covered by a white sheet.
    Lotz crossed to the table and took the edge of the sheet. “Was there something specific you were interested in, Investigator? Some fact, some bit of pathology?”
    â€œI want to know who killed her.”
    â€œA strong, right-handed male military officer.” Lotz flipped back the sheet with a flourish. “Sharazad Razmarah.”
    Roemer’s stomach did a turn, and the room got warm. He used to confide in his wife, and later in Gretchen,
about his squeamishness. He had learned to keep his mouth shut.
    â€œOnly a strong man could have broken her jaw with one blow,” Lotz said.
    The top of Sarah’s skull had been sawn off, the cap laid back in place. An incision had been made from her sternum, between her breasts, all the way down to just above her pubis, and then had been sewn back up with long, looping stitches. She looked terribly mangled.
    â€œI understand that, Lotz,” Roemer said.
    The little forensics man softened his expression. He replaced the sheet. “Sorry. I tend to get caught up in what I’m doing. They’re like big anatomical models. No basis in reality—in life, if you know what I mean.”
    â€œA strong man or a dedicated, well-trained woman?”
    â€œNot unless she was a woman with very big fists. The bruises are too large.”
    â€œRight-handed?”
    â€œThe angle of the fractures.”
    Roemer couldn’t keep his eyes from the form beneath the sheet. She looked worse here than she had at the murder scene. Twice violated, he thought. Once out of passion. The second time out of curiosity.
    â€œWhy are you involved in this case, Roemer? Why the BKA?”
    Roemer looked at the man, who, after all, was a personal friend of Manning. “I’ve got a job to do, just like you.”
    Lotz smiled wryly. He glanced down at the form on the table. “Right-handed, strong male. Now you want to know why I’m making the military connection.” He reached beneath the sheet and uncovered Sarah’s right hand and forearm. Her fingers were open, and most of the flesh in her palm was missing, exposing the muscles and tendons. “She grabbed something from her killer. A bit of jewelry. Held it tightly. So tightly, in fact, that the object was pressed into her flesh. She died like that.”
    Lotz covered her arm. “When we die, we stop sweating,
of course. Everything, at least most things, are held then in stasis. Makes it easy for us. Silver nitrite, a little black-light photography, and we have lifted an impression. The American FBI taught us that little trick.”
    Lotz stepped around the table and went to one of the lab benches, where he rummaged through a stack of file folders. He pulled out a couple of strange photographs.
    â€œThe woman’s right palm,” Lotz said, holding up one of the shots. Three sets of points showed up, side by side, some of them connected with faint, blurry lines.
    He laid the photo on the table, pulled a pen from his pocket and quickly traced lines between each of the points, making three small stars in a row.
    Roemer nodded.
    â€œA cuff link, probably,” Lotz said. “Gold. We found the flecks of it embedded in her skin, which means it was probably twenty-four-karat. Expensive.”
    â€œCould these have been octagons?”
    â€œNo. Some of the connecting ridges were there as well. Her killer was a three-star general.”
    â€œWhat else have you got for me?”
    Lotz replaced the photo in the file folder, then took off his glasses and carefully rubbed his watering eyes. “One last thing,