Page 54 of Manner of Death

“I’ll keep you updated.” He let go and stepped back. She didn’t try to hang on, thankfully. Sawyer left her standing by their desks—by Kurt’s desk, too, with a mug full of mostly empty pens and a picture of him and Molly from twenty years ago at Niagara Falls—and went to the parking lot. He got into his car, turned the radio off, and drove in silence to Bellfield Park.

There was the M.E.’s van. There was a patrol car. Sawyer parked as close to the entrance as he could manage, then headed for the loop trail. It felt like he was walking in quicksand, every step dragging and slowing him down. He couldn’t force himself to go any faster, though. He was exhausted and out of breath, like his lungs were on the verge of revolt. In the end, he felt lucky he made it all the way to the scene without having to sit down on the way.

The officer on the scene was a vaguely familiar face. I’m glad it’s not Doran. He’d had enough crazy calls lately. Sawyer showed his badge and was pointed in the direction of a thick-trunked oak tree. He recognized the bent-over figure there and thought about calling out, but the words stuck in his throat.

Luckily, Bashir turned around and saved him the trouble of trying to get through a greeting. He straightened up and came over to meet him about ten feet from the—

Corpse. Body. Dead person. Get used to it.

“Here.” Bashir handed over a pair of shoe covers, and Sawyer put them on without a word. “He was found hanging from the lowest branch of this tree,” Bashir continued in his soothing voice. “My rough estimate is that he was here for between ten and twelve hours.”

“So he died around midnight.” Wow, his voice sounded as scratchy as ancient vinyl.

Bashir just nodded. “Are you ready to see him?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t looking forward to it, but he knew he had to do it. Sawyer followed Bashir over to where the body lay on the ground, covered in a standard white sheet. There was nothing standard about the feelings that surged through Sawyer the second he was able to confirm that it really was Kurt, that this hadn’t all been some horrible mistake. No, this was Kurt, and he was dead. That was his off-the-rack suit. That was his green-wrapped cast on his broken thumb. That was…

That was Kurt.

Victim: Kurt McKay, fifty-seven-year-old white male with a history of substance abuse and mental illness.

Sawyer got down onto one knee to get a closer look. Not because he was unsteady on his feet, no matter what Bashir must have thought when he went to support him on the way down. He eyed the dark ligature marks high on Kurt’s neck and smelled the stale, sticky-sweet scent of alcohol on his shirt. Kurt’s eyes were closed, like he was sleeping, but the way his lips seemed to bulge, Sawyer was pretty sure his tongue had been protruding from his mouth before Bashir decided to tidy him up a bit.

He didn’t have to do that. It wasn’t like Sawyer hadn’t seen a hanging before. Speaking of…he looked over at the tree where the deed had been done and frowned. “You found him hanging on the lowest branch?”

“Yes.”

Huerta was over there now, taking samples with a guilty expression. Sawyer ignored him and focused on the fact that—

“It’s only, what, five feet off the ground?”

“About that,” Bashir agreed. “It’s, um… It’s not unusual. People use doorknobs, all kinds of low-hanging…” He trailed off.

“So…he could have taken the weight off his neck at any time?” Had Kurt really been out of it, been drunk and depressed enough, to tie himself to a five-foot branch and then just…slouch until he suffocated?

“Getting second thoughts in the middle of a suicide attempt isn’t unusual,” Bashir said cautiously. Sawyer kind of wanted to yell at him to stop treating him like glass, but he knew if the situation were reversed he’d be doing the same thing. “That said…it’s possible he was too drunk to get back to his feet, even if panic did set in. I’ll test his blood alcohol level at the morgue.”

The morgue. Oh my God. My partner is going to the fucking morgue. He hated that place. Sawyer almost laughed at the absurdity of it.

A thought struck him. “What was he hanged with?”

“Nylon tie-downs.”

Sawyer frowned. “Kurt doesn’t drive a truck.” Not that that was conclusive in any way, but Sawyer knew for a fact that he didn’t carry them in his car either.

Bashir looked like he was thinking something over for a moment. He finally said, “There’s no petechiae of the eyelids. It’s not a hard and fast rule when evaluating a murder versus a suicide, but seeing petechiae would suggest that he was alive when he began to suffocate.”

Even as slow as his mind felt like it was moving right now, Sawyer was able to understand the significance of that. “So he might have been strung up after he was dead,” he muttered.

“It’s a possibility.”

If there was a chance that Kurt had died as a result of…of that fucking serial killer instead of his own free will, no matter how twisted that will was… Sawyer closed his eyes and turned away, sitting down hard a few feet from Kurt’s body. He folded his arms, put his head on his knees, and just breathed.

A few seconds later, he felt the warmth of another person at his side. Bashir didn’t touch him, but he did say, “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard this is.”

Sawyer wanted to tell him it was okay, to thank him for his compassion and his diligence, but all that came out was, “I’ve got to tell Molly. What am I going to say to her?”

“I don’t know.” Bashir sighed. “But I do know that she’d rather hear about this from you than anyone else.”