Gavin took his eyes off the liver and looked up at Maddox. “I’m not following.”

“Just because Gabrielle had a tumor in her liver doesn’t mean that she had liver cancer. Roughly two percent of all cancers in the liver are true liver cancers, in other words, cancer which has the liver as the primary site. Cancer that spreads to the liver is far more common than cancer that begins in the liver. If this started somewhere else, let’s say the breast, the breast would be the primary site and what we’re seeing here would be breast cancer in her liver. Once cancer develops in one organ and travels elsewhere, it’s a metastasis. It’s still the same cancer but in a different organ. It can be a death sentence when it spreads.”

“Was she terminal?” Gavin questioned.

“Again, hard to tell at this point. I’ll need to get more samples tested to be sure. All depends on if this is a metastasis or not. We’ll have to follow up with her doctor too.” Dr. Maddox shook his head, puzzled. “I’ve seen no other tumors so far in any of her organs and there’s no sign of any surgery where she might have had any removed. Honestly, I’m surprised, because it would be so damn rare for her to have true liver cancer.”

“If it spread and she was terminal, that would be an excellent motive for suicide and murder,” Warren said.

Dr. Maddox nodded, agreeing. “If she was terminal… I would guess it was still early in the progression though. She was a normal weight and she appears nourished, definitely not in the late stages of cancer. Which also tells us for the last six days, she wasn’t starved. I’ll check stomach contents, but that’ll only tell us what she ate, if anything, in the last couple of hours before her death. There are also no signs of dehydration. All points to the fact that she was eating and drinking normally at the end.”

“Jesus,” Gavin said. “The cancer… I mean this has to be a suicide that involves a ritual of some kind. A ritual that needed five days to complete, because she was dead for the sixth day… how could it not be… especially with the white dress, tree branches and seeds. It’s what my gut is saying.”