Manner of Death

Chapter 3

Christian startled to the sound of his radio blaring through his crappy apartment. Team was calling. The hospital needed him to come in. Christian threw back the covers and heaved himself out of bed, walking to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He looked into the mirror, the foreign brunette boy stared back at him. Every morning he would stare at his reflection, dark brown hair and plain brown eyes were all he ever saw. 

Christian dressed slowly, taking his time before replying to the radio call. He only ever answered to his radio, Christian didn't own a phone. Owning a phone would mean staying with the same number, same contacts, same carrier, same payment information-- this all was well and good for the average person, but Christian was far from average. For Christian, owning a phone meant sticking with the same alias long enough to have any of those things, which he didn't. Keep running, be anyone but yourself, and never be anyone for too long. 

~

The hospital was quiet so early in the morning. Christian never enjoyed the quiet; because the quiet came before the storm. The morgue is a place that most people consider horrendous to be in. For most, you only ever come here on one of the worst days of your life. For Christian, death was a concept that was ingrained to him since he was a child. Being in a crime family, you learn to detach yourself from such emotional things. Christian never could quite manage it. If he could, perhaps, he would not have run away in the first place. 

Christian wasn't sure what he expected to walk into. He wasn't sure who he expected to find laying out on the table, but it certainly wasn't Soraya D'Angelo. For a moment, fear choked him. He was back inside of that car; drowning, screaming for his sister to wake up, hurtling towards the ocean at a hundred miles per hour. Christian felt the seatbelt bite into the skin on the side of his neck, he heard the sound of his ribs cracking beneath the weight crushing him. He felt like throwing up. Instead, Christian swallowed down the acid in his throat and did his fucking job. 

"Bite marks, needle punctures, self-defense wounds," Team lists off. Christian's head had been spinning since they began the autopsy, now it felt like it was ready to explode. 

"Needle punctures?" Christian questions, casting his coworker a narrowed-eyed glance. "Can I see that report again?" 

"Sure, but why..." Team trails off, his clipboard having been ripped straight from his hands. 

"Let me go over this and I'll get it back to you tomorrow," Christian mutters, sidestepping Team and walking for the door to his office. 

~

"Bite marks..." Christian mumbles. "Needle punctures, self-defense wounds, and bite marks."

Christian flips through the report, quickly recalling the fact that the police had claimed this was a suicide. These weren't the kind of injuries that usually appeared in a suicide case. The inspectors also wanted to have the report done early, and had every intention of closing this case. 

"Bite marks, self-defense wounds, and needle punctures," Christian whispers again, shaking his head. He repeats these findings again, and again, and again. 

~

"This wasn't a suicide," Christian says, placing the file in front of Team. "This was murder."