Convicted

Chapter 13

First on Connie's agenda was to deal with something she knew she could be an expert on - the body. Sam's body had to be preserved in the morgue until the killer was convicted, as final scraps of evidence may still be found later on. This meant that the funeral had to be delayed, prolonging the hurt for all of the friends and family, but it was important to know that the right person was to be held accountable for their actions.
Since Connie worked in the hospital, it wasn't too hard for her to get to the staff in the morgue, and she managed to persuade them to let her go through.

"With me being blamed, I had little time to grieve," Connie explained, smiling solemnly. "I just want to be able to see him, to pay my respects before the funeral. I felt awful for not being able to get here sooner."

"I'll have to warn you, Mrs Beauchamp, that he has sustained some terrible injuries. I have to prepare you for the fact that you may find the sight a little distressing."

"I'm sure I will," Connie admitted, gulping as if to swallow back her tears. She was really playing on this and it seemed to be working. "But the least he deserves is for me to apologise, and I need to do that face to face." The staff member nodded in understanding, guiding Connie through to the room. The bodies were stored on metal tables, each being able to be slid out once unlocked. The woman stepped up and unlocked one of the ones from towards the middle, and pulled it out. Connie gulped legitimately now, not knowing if she really had prepared herself for this moment. All that could be seen at the moment was a white sheet over something that resembled the shape of a body beneath, and she looked to the ground as the woman stepped backwards.

"I'll leave you to have a minute alone with him," she said kindly, placing her hand on Connie's shoulder. "I'm a firm believer that they can still hear and see us, so I'm sure he'd be happy that you'd visited."

"Thank you," Connie whispered, truly feeling like an ice queen for trying to act so unemotional. Once she'd left, Connie took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
"I'm so sorry Sam," she whispered. "I just want to see who did it brought to justice. It wasn't me, and I know it wasn't Jacob, and so I need to prove that. But of course I wish that this had never happened at all. I do miss you, and I will always care for you." She pulled back the cover down to his waist after a deep inhalation, and was faced with something that nothing could have really prepared her for. His entire torso, his arms, face and neck were completely covered in blisters from the burns, and Connie felt her heart break at the sight. She understood what the police had said - a few more minutes and everything would be gone. His face was barely recognisable anymore, and most of his hair had burned away. As Connie looked down his torso, she saw one knife wound by his abdominals. It was horizontal across him, and looked like it had been quite deep. As Connie reached out to run her fingers across it softly, with a tear in her eye, the woman came back into the room.

"Oh, sorry," she whispered, as Connie jumped when she heard the door opening. "It was terrible, what they did to him. You know, strange cuts though," the woman said.

"Strange?" Connie enquired, wiping away the genuine tear that had formed.

"Well, yeah, the doctors that fixed him up a bit said it was a terrible cut... jagged, he described it as. It was like the person didn't have enough force to push it in all in one go, so they'd done it in stages." Connie found this interesting - she knew it required a lot of force to push a kitchen knife inside somebody, but she thought that someone who had enough anger to want to murder Sam in such a way would have that force.

"Suppose the police know this?" Connie asked, and the woman shrugged, presuming so. "I was just thinking - it probably incriminated me. I'm hardly the strongest; they probably thought it was the action of a nervous woman acting in distress and anger." Connie wasn't thinking that at all. She was thinking about Jacob. Surely the police knew - if they knew about the nature of these cuts - that Jacob would have been able to make a clean cut to the body.