“If he were awake, it would have been terrifying and painful to die like that. I think we can all agree on that,” Val said. A mother doing this to her son? She couldn’t get the thought out of her mind.

“The terror leading up to the event would have been worse than the event itself.” Dr. Maddox stripped off his gloves. “He probably became unconscious about five seconds after the cut was made. With about 100ml of blood traveling through the heart and a heart rate of a 120 to 150 beats per minute under a terrifying ordeal like this, that’s about how long it would have taken for enough blood to leave his body and his blood pressure to drop, making him unconscious, and for his heart to stop as death occurred. Once he was unconscious, it was over.”

“Still, five seconds is a long time to suffer.” Val knew the cue with Dr. Maddox taking off his gloves. The autopsy on Adam Morgan was finished.

“Yes, it is,” Dr. Maddox said. “Abuse is going to have a big impact on this case because it would have been a lot easier for his mother to hurt him now if she’s done so in the past. I see no obvious signs of abuse with this child, but that doesn’t mean much. You’ll want to follow up with his physician and hospital emergency rooms, though. See if Mother was a frequent visitor. Check with his school for behavioral problems.”

“We certainly plan on doing that,” Gavin said.

“I plan on keeping both bodies for a few days, in case there’s any more tests we want to run, or want to follow up with any new leads,” Dr. Maddox said. “I was pretty thorough with tissue collection. So, if her parents protest that I’m holding on to their daughter and grandson too long, and I’m forced to give them up prematurely, I’ve covered our bases. I can’t imagine what more we may need.”

“Thanks, Richard,” Mitchell Gavin said.

Dr. Richard Maddox extended his hand. “I’m going to say goodnight then, Mitch. I’m exhausted.”

Val knew it was time to go too and as Dr. Maddox walked out of the room, she said to Gavin, “Mitch, I have some more questions.”

“What are they?” he asked.

“If her son never walked home from school, if he always waited for his mother, why did he break that rule? Where was he going and who picked him up?”

“Maybe his mother picked him up at a different location,” he said.

“But why? Why not just follow the normal routine? Here’s my last two questions, why send Adam to school on a day that she had decided that both of them were going to disappear and die. And why drop him off twenty minutes late?”

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