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flesh. The number and severity grew exponentially as they got closer to his groin, which, I could now see, had been burned black.
    I flipped the photograph over and stared at Denton’s desktop for a moment as I struggled to settle my galloping heart. Only after I had managed to slow my breathing and convince my nerves to calm did I reach back out and nudge the photograph back over for one last look. It was important to do this, I told myself, as I was not likely to get a second chance.
    Once again I was instantly assaulted by the brutalized sight of the captain’s body. Even so, I forced myself to look closely at the wound on the near side of his head. Just like the one administered to his wife, this one had also been fired with the gun’s barrel almost touching his skull, as the entry wound was as neat and pristine as what a surgeon might administer. And like his wife, the spectacle on the opposite side was one of utter wreckage. The delivery of such a definitive blow assured me that Trevor Bellingham had been alive when it was administered. He had suffered through the horrors of the burnings only to be murdered once the killer had extracted whatever he had been after. Perhaps Captain Bellingham had finally confessed for the solace of death, for while there was no mercy in his destiny, it had surely brought him peace.
    I laid the photograph beside the other one, grateful to be done with them, and started flipping through the papers beneath. Perfunctory descriptions came first: height, weight, age, nationality, hair color, eye color, and so on, followed by the autopsy reports, the last one belonging to Captain Bellingham. With a hand less steady than I wished, I picked up a pencil from a jar on the desk and began scribbling some notes.
    There were 371 match burns across the whole of his body. Of these, the greatest concentration were found along the insides of his thighs from his knees to his navel. His sex organs were charred and blistered, having been set afire. Deep lacerations and severe hemorrhaging encircled his wrists and ankles as a result of having been bound to the chair, with one area on the back of his right wrist cut so deeply that it revealed a spot of bone. The captain had endured immeasurable pain.
    I let my eyes drift farther down the sheet, stopping when I found the description of the mortal wound to his head. It had been fired, just as I had figured, directly against his cheekbone. The bullet, a forty-four-millimeter arrow-shaped missile, had proceeded through his cranium on an upward trajectory, cleaving his cerebral cortex as it arced through his skull before exiting about an inch above his opposite ear, leaving an exit wound better than six inches in diameter.
    â€œYour prince awaits . . . , ” Denton Ross purred from out of nowhere, startling me enough that I dropped the sheaf of papers. He chuckled. “On edge, are we?”
    â€œI’m fine!” I snapped too vigorously, and as though to prove my point I stuffed the papers back into the file and slapped it closed before pushing myself up onto legs that were, in truth, not quite ready to support me. “Let’s go.”
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œI’ve seen victims of violence before,” I reminded us both.
    â€œAnd so you have.” He swept his arms wide like a carnival barker. “And this is one, I am sure, you will never forget.”
    I scowled at him as I started for the door. “It’s remarkable, the pleasure you take from your work.”
    He chuckled again. “No one ever complains.”
    I pushed past him and back out to the frigid examination room. Little had changed save for the fact that there was now a draped body reclining atop the table at the room’s center. It was a morbid sight, but then it always is, for there can be only one explanation for the cause of that shape beneath the cloth.
    I tried to keep my breathing even as I felt my feet begin to drag. I desperately did