Weak Flesh Read Online Free Page A

looks like a thumb print on one side and maybe three fingers on the other, like this." He demonstrated with his own neck.
    "Perhaps," Williams said cautiously.
    After removing the cloth, the doctor moved on to the genitals. "These marks on the torso could be from the water's battering," Williams speculated.
    Gage stepped closer to the splayed body. He composed his face to show neither pity nor abhorrence for the once-lively woman. Small round bluish spots on one breast stood out against the white flesh. Grappling, he thought instantly, not the river's damage. Someone had squeezed or grabbed her breast.
    After a moment Williams continued, "No clear signs of sexual assault, no bruising, no scratches in that area. No semen or blood, although the river would've washed the evidence away. No obvious sign of pregnancy."
    That would, at the least, relieve her parents' minds.
    "However, disruption of the hymen, swelling and enlargement of the canal indicate she engaged in intimate relations shortly before her death." William added, "Consensual."
    The other men looked at him as if to say that jot of information was expected.
    To Gage it represented motive.
    Satisfied with the external examination, William performed the first incision from the breastbone to the pubic bone and then executed the horizontal cut. He desecrated the girl's beautiful breasts, laying the flaps of her chest cavity wide.
    Using his scalpel, he cut the cartilages and with some effort removed the ribs and breastbone. He inspected the chest organs, excised them in a bundle, and examined them in the silver basin. All the while the other men leaned over to examine his methodical actions.
    Next Williams dissected the lungs, revealing the surfaces of the large airways and the great arteries. "I'm looking for pulmonary edema," he explained, examining the lungs.
    "Drowning then?" Gage asked, trying to keep the hopefulness out of his voice. He didn't mind the puzzle of solving a murder, but an accidental drowning would sit much easier on the family and the community.
    "Ultimately, yes." Williams pointed to the lungs in the basin. "If someone drowns in seawater, those small pockets quickly fill with water as you see here. Nell was alive when she went into the river, but – " 
    "But someone knocked her unconscious and put her in the river to drown," Freeman finished.
    "She could've fallen into the river," Oliver Nolan, the banker, contradicted.
    "Completely by accident," agreed Seth Adams, who always looked for the easiest answer.
    Gage looked at the men surrounding the table. Were they all so eager to certify Nell's death an accident? All except Alan Freeman, who seemed determined to look for murder?
    Dr. Sparrow, the physician from Elizabeth City, had remained at the head of the table where he now pushed apart the tangled blonde curls. "See here." He exposed the pale bluish area at the left temple. "Particles of some kind."
    He reached for a tweezers from the array of instruments on the metal tray. Delving through the curls, he pulled out a minute dark sliver and then four or five similar ones and placed them alongside the first on the white towel.
    "Slivers of wood?" Gage asked. "A weapon?"
    Williams shrugged. "Or she hit her head on a log when she fell."
    Gage cut his eyes sharply toward the doctor. No, not a fall, he thought. "She stumbled and fell ... forward, striking her left temple."
    He lifted Nell's right, then her left hand, turning each over to inspect the palm. No abrasions, cuts, or bruises. "Wouldn't she brace herself?" He carefully turned her jaw from side to side, showing smooth white flesh, no bruising. Yet, there were the marks on the neck.
    Deep in thought, no one spoke. 
    "Not necessarily," groused Adams, the blacksmith.
    But Gage watched Williams and Jack Butler, the saw miller foreman, make the mental adjustment and slowly nod in agreement.
    "If Nell Carver were struck in the head by someone facing her, a right-handed someone for the blow is on the