After a while, Dr Amin got moving. Nazari grabbed a pair of latex gloves from a dispenser. I followed the doctor to the coffee machine.

Chapter Forty-Five

Dr. Amin walked in front of me, moving with his head down. I caught up with him at the coffee machine. He looked at me with morose eyes. “Want one?”

“Thanks. Black no sugar.”

He nodded. “When I was a kid she scared me. Now she’s just really impressive. You know that she’s going to do the BRI exam.”

“She told me, yes.”

Dr Amin was looking at me intensely. “She’ll ace that. Cecile came in here for three weeks. Watched us work and only puked twice. First and second time she came. After that, all business. Never saw that before. I puked for about six months straight. Almost quit actually.” He handed me a cup of coffee.

I took it from him. “You get used to it?”

“Eventually,” he agreed. “After a week she was assisting me. That woman knows what she wants.”

I switched subjects. “Did you do examinations on the axe murders?”

He nodded. “Houdin family, and now Rigalle. Yes.”

“Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Besides the fact that two entire families were hacked to pieces and piled on the living room rug no, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Cause of death?”

“Strangulation in all cases.” He let that sit.

“A rope, or cord?”

“Hands and thumbs.”

I pictured the guy in the refrigerated truck, strangling his victims in front of their families, then hacking the bodies into pieces. I pictured the two cleaners helping and observing, aiding and abetting.

I said, “Thumbs.”

Amin nodded. “Thumbs.”

“You mean the perpetrator was looking at them while he strangled them.”

“That’s the most likely conclusion, yes. He was standing directly in front of them.”

“Let me ask you something else.”

“Go ahead.”

“What was the order of death? Was it the guy first, then the kids, then the woman, or was it the guy last, kids first, then woman?”

“I get the question, we don’t know the answer. The deaths were separated by minutes, not hours. We simply can’t know. If it were important, the remains could be sent to Paris for more specialized analysis.” Dr Amin pulled his coffee cup from the machine and took a sip. “I just hope they get the guy.” I didn’t say anything, just sipped my coffee. He shook his head gently. “And the world goes on.”

Dr. Amin was an optimist, but I guess you’d have to be, in his job.

Nazari came out of the examination room a few minutes later. She addressed the medical examiner. “All done. Thanks.”

“As if I had a choice.”