Adri had taken a moment to clean up upon arriving at the Sunday Group’s base of operations. After scrubbing her hand raw (maybe not entirely necessary, but you never knew with demon crows) it was carefully wrapped, and she changed into clothes that hadn’t been spattered with her blood today.
She remembered her first visit to the morgue here. She had been warned that she might find the personnel particularly peculiar and not to be alarmed at what she might see, only to be severely underwhelmed. Jocasta would have fit right in with many of the forensic techs she had met working for the police. You had to be a little weird to work that closely with dead bodies- funeral home workers in particular were something else.
She clicked on a voice recorder as she walked in, tucking it down her shirt. It was mainly so she could talk to herself and remember what she had said later, but it was also great to listen back to everyone else’s thoughts while trying to come up with ideas.
For the most part, she listened quietly, occasionally muttering something to herself. The crow was still looking at her, its beady eyes glaring, but it had apparently given up trying to escape for now. She didn’t know why Blythe still had it and didn’t care- at least she didn’t have to deal with it.
“So, you said stab wound to the chest, incision to the anterior portal vein. Do you mean it looks deliberate, or is it just more shallow?” She came over to the body finally, frowning as her eyes swept the body. He was old but not ancient old- maybe in his forties, give or take a bit. He still would have had a decent number of years ahead of him.
“Fazel Ibrahim al-Jalasi,” she muttered under her breath as she typed it into her phone, sending it off to a friend on the force. “I’ll see if he has any other known associates around or if he was being investigated for anything in the area. No guarantee I’ll be able to get much, but it’ll give us a starting point.”
After a pause, she added, “so far, this feels personal and targeted, not random. First we have the wounds, then we have the ink. 16th century Turkey would have been a part of the Ottoman Empire, which definitely included part of the Arab world, so it could be related to where he was born and lived. Or work he did in the area. Is the ink carbon-based or iron-based?”
“Phosphine could also mean meth lab,” she pointed out. “Fazel doesn’t seem like the type, but it’s too early to rule anything out.”