Disclaimer: I've no ties to the CSI TV shows or any of the characters. Thank you.
Peyton had just finished washing down the body of the woman found in the stifling-hot apartment unit when Mac walked through the door of the autopsy room. Peyton looked up, smiling that secretive, knowing smile they often exchanged when they were at work, and the time for words wasn't right.
"Hi," Mac said, smiling at the dark haired woman with the delightful accent.
"Hello, Mac," she answered, and gestured to the nude body on the steel autopsy table.
"I don't have to look too far to see what the COD was," she said, and Mac frowned, stepping closer.
The body was washed clean of the blood that had covered it's upper torso, the woman's ash-blonde hair wet from the bath. Her eyes, cloudy with death, could've been either blue, or green. Mac couldn't tell. Decomp had done it's work on her face, and the features had begun to melt down into an un-defined blob of tissue, fat and bone. Deep, brutal knife wounds started at just under the angle of the jaw and continued down across the chest, over her left breast and ending below the soft cartilaginous Zyphoid Process. Mac studied the wounds, his mind racing with the brutality of the crime. Peyton cleared her throat.
"Cause of death was exsangunation resulting from transection of the Carrotid Artery. Mac met her eyes and she shook her head.
"Another pierced her heart, but she died within minutes from loss of blood."
Peyton stood close to Mac; so close he could smell the light floaral fragrance of her perfume. Night Blooming Jasmine, or something like that, he thought, as he studied the body closely, trying to keep his mind on work, instead of the coroner beside him.
"How many stab wounds did you count?" he asked, glancing sideways at her as he counted again.
Mac didn't have to be told, but he wanted confirmation. He just couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. It was not just a random number of hits, and Peyton confirmed his thoughts when she answered.
"Eleven,"
she said, picking up her scalpel.
Mac watched her make the
first incision of the Y cut, but he wasn't seeing the body. Instead,
he was seeing a pattern.
A pattern that added up to eleven..
