When someone wrecks a woman’s face, specially a woman who’s young and pretty, it’s almost always personal. I caught that smile and those pink roses out of the corner of my eye again, turned my shoulder to them.

“She was also struck on the back of the head, just to the left of the midline, with a heavy object whose striking surface was approximately the shape and size of a golf ball. There are fresh bruises to both wrists and forearms; the shapes and positions are consistent with manual restraint during a struggle. There is no sign of any sexual assault, and she has not had recent intercourse.”

Someone had gone to town on Jenny Spain. I said, “How strong would the attacker or attackers have needed to be?”

“Judging by the edges of the wounds, the bladed weapon appears to have been extremely sharp, which means that no particular strength would have been required to inflict the stab and slash wounds. The blunt trauma injury to the head would depend on the nature of the weapon: if it was inflicted with an actual golf ball held in the attacker’s hand, for example, it would have required a considerable amount of strength, whereas if it was inflicted by, let us say, a golf ball placed in the toe of a long sock, momentum would substitute for force, meaning that a child could have done it. The bruises to the wrists imply that a child did not, in fact, do it: the attacker’s fingers slipped during the struggle, making it impossible for me to gauge the size of the hands that restrained Mrs. Spain, but I can say that they did not belong to a small child.”

“Is there any way the injuries could have been self-inflicted?” Double-check everything, even the stuff that seems obvious, or some defense lawyer will do it for you.

“It would require a supremely talented would-be suicide,” Cooper said, using his Moron Whisperer voice again, “to stab herself below the shoulder blade, hit herself on the back of the head and then, in the fraction of an instant before unconsciousness supervened, hide both weapons so thoroughly that they escaped discovery for at least a few hours. In the absence of proof that Mrs. Spain is a trained contortionist and magician, I think we can probably exclude self-infliction.”

“Probably? Or definitely?”

“If you doubt me, Detective Kennedy,” Cooper said sweetly, “do feel free to attempt the feat yourself,” and he hung up.

Richie was rubbing behind his ear like a dog scratching, thinking hard. He said, “And that’s Jenny out of the picture.”

I slid the phone back into my jacket pocket. “But not Fiona. And if she was going after Jenny, for whatever reason, she might well have gone for the face. Being the plain one could’ve worn very thin after a lifetime. Bye-bye big sister, no open casket, no more being the family babe.”

He considered the wedding shot. “Jenny’s not actually prettier. Better groomed, just.”