“I am thorough.” Ruben stiffened. “I don’t tend to miss much. Again, there’s a reason Chloe works with me and not with one of the other medical examiners.”
“He was hit in the head first. A hard swipe to the back of the skull. It made him fall down, face first. His hands probably scraped across the dirty alley, and that’s the stuff you found under his nails. He didn’t get a chance to get up because the attacker then drove the bat into his back, over and over again.” The bruises certainly appeared to have been caused by a baseball bat—or something like it. “The damage to his spine would have been severe and fast.” He put down the file. Studied the bruises on the guy’s face. “He flipped you over,” Joel said, finding himself now talking to the dead man. “You couldn’t roll yourself. You were helpless, and he hit you and hit you until you were dead.”
Silence.
Uncomfortable. Long silence. Joel swallowed. He could feel Ruben’s gaze on him.
“Chloe is the only other person I’ve seen who talks to the dead that way.”
His stare flew to Ruben.
“She teach you that?” Ruben wanted to know.
“I want to see another body.”
“Well, that’s too bad because I don’t have the other bodies here. They’ve already been buried. But I can certainly show you my files.” He pointed at Joel. “Though if we are going to be working together in the future, you should know that courtesy goes a very long way with me.”
“What in the hell does that mean?”
“Please. Thank you. I’m sorry. They are magic words.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Do I look like I’m shitting you?”
No. It didn’t. And Joel even felt like he’d been an extra asshole. Apologize. “I’m sorry.”
“Beautiful, magic words. Don’t they feel good when you say them?”
No, they felt rusty and weird. “I don’t…have good people skills.”
“Yes. I noticed. Chloe shares that fault with you. Again, you and Chloe are just seeming like the perfect pair.” Humming a little, Ruben strolled toward a large filing cabinet. “I have records over here. Give me a second.” He’d ditched his gloves.
Joel did the same. “How long have you known Chloe?”
Ruben pulled open one of the drawers. It screeched. “Since she moved to the area.”
That wasn’t a clear answer.
Ruben kept humming faintly even as he strummed his fingers over the files. When Ruben didn’t speak again, Joel pushed, “You’re not going to tell me more?”
Ruben glanced up. “Do you want to know more?”
Fuck. “Please,” he gritted. The guy obviously loved those magic words.
“That sounded painful.” Ruben scooped up two files. “Grating. I mean, sexy, in a Vin Diesel kind of rough and deep way, but maybe if you use that particular word with Chloe in the future, you could try to make it sound a bit softer.”
“Why the hell would I use that word with Chloe?”
“I could not imagine.” Ruben was back in front of him. Blinking all innocently. “Maybe when you ask her to please go to bed with you?”
He snatched the files. “That shit won’t happen.”
“Because you’re not interested in Chloe.”
“Because I’m working with her on a murder investigation, not trying to get her in bed.”
“Like you can’t multitask. You were a surgeon.”
He tuned Ruben out—tried to, anyway—and read through the file on Ray Malone. “You don’t mention any skull fractures or contusions.”
“That’s because there weren’t any.”
“Ray Malone’s blood alcohol level was sky high.”
“Guess Ray never learned a lesson about drinking to excess. Even though he killed his wife when he got behind the wheel.”
“If he was as drunk as this tox report says, then when the killer came for him, he wouldn’t have been able to put up much of a fight.”
“No, he wouldn’t have. I don’t even know that he was conscious when the blows occurred. No sign of defensive wounds on him, either.”
“But he suffered the same rough pattern of injuries on the C1 to the C4 area of his spine.”
“He did. Oh, and here is something fun. There wasn’t enough blood spatter in the car to match his wounds. Cedric noticed that. I think the killer did most of the attack outside the vehicle, then he staged the body in the car.”
Joel absorbed that info. He flipped open Gregory Guidry’s file. “Broken jaw. Heavy facial injuries.”
“Yes, he was the vic who sustained the worst injuries. No skull contusion, but—”
“He was found right inside the doorway of his house. He answered the door.” Joel tried to picture the scene. “Guidry opened the door, a bat swung