Free Bloodborn by Kathryn Fox

reached for a pair of tweezers. “There’s something on the back of the left tonsil.”
    He reached in and retrieved two small fibers—pink.
    “From the pink top?” Anya offered.
    “Something was used to gag her and may have even caused some degree of asphyxiation. Taking an educated guess, it could well have been the shirt from the scene.”
    “Hang on,” Liz Gould interrupted. “What do you mean, asphyxiation? She was stabbed—multiple times.”
    “Yes, but it’s not uncommon for attackers to use gags to silence victims, even if they don’t intend for them to die. The nose can become congested and, after a short while, impossible to breathe through. If the gag makes its way toward the back of the throat, it can obstruct the posterior larynx, causing asphyxiation. I grew up thinking gags were harmless, can’t think how many times they were used on The A-Team without anyone getting hurt.” He smiled to himself. “Reality is far different.”
    Liz scratched her head. “Did she suffocate on the gag or not?”
    “Once the lab compares the fiber with that of the shirt we’ll know if it was the one used inside the mouth. Without any markings on the skin around the neck, I’d suggest that something internal caused the swelling in the throat, but not enough to cause death. Given the degree of blood loss from the other wounds, she was still alive when she was stabbed.”
    Anya thought back to the scene. Someone gagged Rachel and maybe removed it while she was still alive, or as she lay dying. She had seen crimes in which a gag had been removed, but only to heighten the thrill of the attack. If that were the case, Rachel’s killer either wanted to hear her scream or beg for mercy. If screaming wasn’t the reason for the gag, its intent must have been to torture the victim even more.
    Anya felt a wave of cold. Sophie may have heard what was happening to her sister in the bedroom. She might have even witnessed it. In a way, the longer the young girl stayed sedated and ventilated, the more time she had to recover before reliving the nightmare.
    Jeff turned his attention to the skin on the dead girl’s chest and abdomen. The shapes of the six wounds varied but the distribution was evenly divided between the chest and abdomen.
    Liz Gould cleared her throat. “Can you tell us anything about the weapon, or are we looking for more than one knife?”
    “Different sized and shaped wounds don’t imply more than one weapon, although I can’t exclude that yet. The shape of the wound isn’t only dependent on the shape of the blade, but also on the properties of the skin and location of the wound. It’s quite possible that all of these were made with the one instrument.”
    Shaun Wheeler had begun taking notes, but paused, looking at two of the skin incisions—one narrow, the other wider. “How can there be that much variation if the blade is just one size—one length and one width?”
    “The force needed for the knife to perforate the skin depends on a number of other things, like the sharpness of the blade’s tip. The sharper that point, the easier it is to penetrate skin.”
    To demonstrate, the pathologist poked his metal probe in one of the wounds. “Once the skin has been cut, the blade slides easily into the body, readily passing through organs.” Most of the metal probe disappeared beneath the skin. “Even a blade driven its entire length can have been inserted without a great degree of force.” He withdrew the probe. “However, if the blade hits bone, the distance it tracks can be much shorter than the length of the blade.”
    “So how can you tell the size of the blade?” Wheeler seemed to have forgotten his queasiness.
    “By examining all of the wounds,” Anya replied. “the blade length can be either less than, equal to or greater than the depth of the wound.”
    “Hold on, how can it be deeper than the blade length?”
    Liz clenched her fist and faced Wheeler. “Say this is a knife. If you