Cooper’s eyebrows lifted, like I was an idiot child who had somehow managed to say something interesting. “You are correct, Detective Kennedy: that is indeed a possibility. It would require considerable willpower, of course, but yes: certainly a possibility. The shallow slash injury could have been a hesitation wound—a tentative preliminary attempt, followed by the deeper successful ones. The pattern is quite common in suicides by cutting the wrists; I see no reason why it should not be found in other methods as well. Assuming the victim was right-handed—which should be ascertained before we venture even to theorize—the positioning of the wounds on the left side of the body would be consistent with self-infliction.”

Little by little, Fiona and Richie’s creepy intruder was falling out of the race, vanishing away over the horizon behind us. He wasn’t gone, not yet, but Patrick Spain was front and center and coming up the straight fast. This was what I’d been expecting all along, but out of nowhere I caught a tiny flash of disappointment. Murder Ds are hunters; you want to bring home a white lion that you tracked down in dark hissing jungle, not a domestic kitty cat gone rabid. And under all that, there was a weak streak in me that had been feeling something like sorry for Pat Spain. Like Richie said, the guy had tried.

I asked, “Can you give us a time of death?”

Cooper shrugged. “As always, this is at best an estimate, and the delay before I was able to examine the bodies does not improve its accuracy. However, the fact that the thermostat is set to maintain a constant temperature is helpful. I feel confident that all three victims died no earlier than three o’clock this morning and no later than five o’clock, with the balance of probability tilting towards the earlier time.”

“Any indication of who died first?”

Cooper said, spacing it out like he was talking to a moron, “They died between three and five A.M. Had the evidence provided further details, I would have said as much.”

On every single case, just for kicks, Cooper finds excuses to diss me in front of people I need to work with. Sooner or later I’m going to work out what kind of complaint to file to make him back off, but so far—and he knows this—I’ve let it slide because, at the moments he picks, I have bigger things on my mind. “I’m sure you would,” I said. “What about the weapon? Can you tell us anything about that?”

“A single-edged blade. As I said.” Cooper was bent over his case again, sliding the sheet of paper away; he didn’t even bother to give me the withering look.

“And this,” Larry said, “is where we come in, if you don’t mind, obviously, Dr. Cooper.” Cooper waved a hand graciously—he and Larry get on, somehow. “Come here, you, Scorcher. Look what my little friend Maureen found, just for you. Or didn’t find, more like.”