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Cerulean Sins :: Гамильтон Лорел
Страница: 107 из 352The legs were apart, not pierced together. They hadn't tried to imitate the Crucifixion. If you went to this much trouble, it was almost odd to not echo that long-ago drama. The very fact that they hadn't tried seemed strange to me.
The man's head slumped forward. His neck showed pale and whole. There was a dark patch of blood on his nearly white hair just behind one ear. If the nails were as big as I thought they were, if that blood had been caused by a nail, the tip should have protruded from the face, but it didn't. I stood on tiptoe. I wanted to see the face.
The white hair and the face, slack with death, said he was older than the rest of him looked. The body was well cared for—exercise, probably weights, running—only the face and white hair said he was probably over fifty. All that work to maintain health and well-being, and some nutcase comes along and nails you to a wall. It seemed so unfair.
I leaned forward too far and had to put my fingertips out to catch myself. My fingers touched dried blood on the wall. Only then did I realize I'd forgotten my surgical gloves. Fuck.
Zerbrowski was there with a hand on my elbow to steady me, whether I needed it, or not.
"How could you let me come in here without gloves on?"
"I didn't expect you to touch the evidence," he said. He fished a bottle of hand sanitizer out of one of his pockets. "Katie makes me carry it."
I let him pour some into my hands, and I scrubbed them. It wasn't that I was really worried about catching anything from that one small touch, I did it more out of habit. You didn't take pieces of the crime scene home if you didn't have to.
The gel evaporated against my skin making my hands feel wet, though I knew they weren't. I looked around at the crime scene, taking in what else was there.
Colored chalk had been used on the off-white walls. There were pentagrams of varying sizes on either side of the body. Pink, blue, red, green; almost decorative. Any fool that's trying to fake a ritual murder knows enough to use a few pentagrams. But there were also Nordic runes drawn among the candy-colored pentagrams. Not every nutcase knows that Nordic runes can be used in ritual magic.
I'd had one semester of comparative religion with a professor who had really liked the Norse. It had left me with a better knowledge of runes than most Christians had. It had been years, but I still recognized enough to be confused.
"This makes no sense," I said.
"What?" Zerbrowski asked.
I pointed at the wall, while I spoke.
The man's head slumped forward. His neck showed pale and whole. There was a dark patch of blood on his nearly white hair just behind one ear. If the nails were as big as I thought they were, if that blood had been caused by a nail, the tip should have protruded from the face, but it didn't. I stood on tiptoe. I wanted to see the face.
The white hair and the face, slack with death, said he was older than the rest of him looked. The body was well cared for—exercise, probably weights, running—only the face and white hair said he was probably over fifty. All that work to maintain health and well-being, and some nutcase comes along and nails you to a wall. It seemed so unfair.
I leaned forward too far and had to put my fingertips out to catch myself. My fingers touched dried blood on the wall. Only then did I realize I'd forgotten my surgical gloves. Fuck.
Zerbrowski was there with a hand on my elbow to steady me, whether I needed it, or not.
"How could you let me come in here without gloves on?"
"I didn't expect you to touch the evidence," he said. He fished a bottle of hand sanitizer out of one of his pockets. "Katie makes me carry it."
I let him pour some into my hands, and I scrubbed them. It wasn't that I was really worried about catching anything from that one small touch, I did it more out of habit. You didn't take pieces of the crime scene home if you didn't have to.
The gel evaporated against my skin making my hands feel wet, though I knew they weren't. I looked around at the crime scene, taking in what else was there.
Colored chalk had been used on the off-white walls. There were pentagrams of varying sizes on either side of the body. Pink, blue, red, green; almost decorative. Any fool that's trying to fake a ritual murder knows enough to use a few pentagrams. But there were also Nordic runes drawn among the candy-colored pentagrams. Not every nutcase knows that Nordic runes can be used in ritual magic.
I'd had one semester of comparative religion with a professor who had really liked the Norse. It had left me with a better knowledge of runes than most Christians had. It had been years, but I still recognized enough to be confused.
"This makes no sense," I said.
"What?" Zerbrowski asked.
I pointed at the wall, while I spoke.