When Jack arrived at the medical examiner's office, Mac Taylor's female deputy, Stella Bonasera, was already present. Lying on the autopsy table was the dissected body of Kevin Carter, the victim of the stabbing.
A wiry old man with graying hair and black-rimmed glasses was busy under the glare of the surgical lights, scooping the stomach contents from the deceased with a long-handled ladle.
In general, when medical examiners go to a crime scene, especially for fresh corpses, they may not always wear masks. However, once an autopsy begins, full protective gear is standard. After all, there's no telling whether the deceased had any infectious diseases, and the dissection process often involves flying tissue and blood. In cases where decomposition is severe, even full face shields with filters become necessary.
Clearly, the CSI team was overburdened, as they were just starting the autopsy on a case from three days ago. Jack greeted Stella and stood beside her, observing as the old coroner ladled out stomach contents into a large glass jar.
"Usually, starch is quickly broken down by stomach acid, but since the deceased ate so much, I can still find small pieces of bread. Look," the old medical examiner said, using a smaller spoon to transfer a barely recognizable semi-solid piece of bread into a petri dish to show Stella.
Jack, putting on gloves, carefully took the large glass jar with the coroner's permission. He grimaced as he inspected its contents.
"Looks like steak, asparagus, some vegetable salad, and corn. It seems Mrs. Carter is quite the accomplished home chef."
Though the coroner's expression was hidden behind his mask, his raised eyebrows revealed a hint of excitement, as if he'd found a kindred spirit. "You know, I'm always amazed at how corn kernels manage to resist stomach acid and make their way through the entire digestive system."
Jack, sharing the macabre humor, offered his own anecdote. "Did you know that a guy in Florida had the same curiosity? He did an experiment with enoki mushrooms and corn kernels. Turns out, corn digests faster than enoki mushrooms. Corn only takes three digestive cycles, while mushrooms take a full fifteen."
"You two are absolutely the worst." Stella, who had maintained her composure while facing the corpse, couldn't handle their morbid humor any longer and quickly interrupted them.
"Can we get back on track? According to Deborah Carter's testimony, she stabbed her husband after he had just sat down at the dining table and taken one bite of a bagel. That's supposedly the bread where we found the unknown DNA. So, where did all this other food in his stomach come from?"
The old coroner, Hammerbeck, shrugged nonchalantly. "That's your job to figure out. All I can tell you is that the food in his stomach was consumed within 20 minutes of his death."
When Danny Reagan arrived at the CSI lab, his face lit up with excitement, only to find Jack and Stella intently analyzing photos of food on a computer screen.
"What are you two doing?" Danny asked, bewildered.
"Shh, don't talk," Stella hushed him without even looking up. "We'll get to your part soon."
She then continued flipping through crime scene photos. "There's about half a pound of asparagus scattered on the ground—enough for two people. The portion of creamed corn soup spilled is also significant, and the steak remains untouched."
Jack pointed to a salad bowl that had avoided being swept off the table. "The salad hasn't been mixed, so it clearly wasn't eaten. Most of the plates that were shattered were clean—except for the steak knife used to stab the victim seventeen times. But even that knife has blood on it, not grease."
"Wow, seventeen stabs. So this is what eight years of marriage leads to?" Danny said, flipping through the case files on the table and letting out a whistle.
"You make it sound like your marriage with Linda has been any shorter," Jack replied, drawing amused side-eyes from both Stella and Danny.
Stella frowned, puzzled. "What are you trying to say?"
"A wealthy middle-class life—comfortable and easy. If Deborah Carter had only married her husband for the money, she would've pretended she saw nothing. She would've put the ring back in the box, hung his coat neatly, and sat down to enjoy the steak and the bottle of fine Merlot," Jack explained confidently.
His words made Danny's face darken, but then he smirked, shrugging. "Love turning into hate—it's not limited to marriages. Honestly, you should be more worried about yourself."
"Uh..." Jack hadn't expected his comment to come back to him so quickly. Was this the infamous boomerang effect in action?
"Okay, regardless, we need to find evidence that a third party was present," Stella said, stepping over to a rectangular evidence table. She draped it with a white cloth, then pulled over a chair and gestured for Danny to stand next to it.
"You're now Kevin Carter. According to Deborah's statement, you just got home, sat down at the dining table, and eagerly grabbed a bagel from the breadbasket."
Danny played along, picking up a roll of tape from the table and pretending to take a bite. Stella approached him like a playful wife, smacking his hand away as he went to take a second "bite." Danny sheepishly placed the "bread" back on the table.
"You've been traveling for work a lot recently. I've been burning with love and prepared a lavish dinner for you," Stella said, gesturing dramatically at the scattered office supplies on the table, which they were using to stand in for the food.
Danny, playing along, continued, "And I'm such a great actor that even though I've already eaten, my little performance of fake hunger totally fooled you. And then... I got careless."
He shrugged off his jacket and casually draped it over the back of the chair, then turned away, pretending to leave the scene.
Stella picked up his jacket, miming as if she'd found something inside. "Look what I found! A ring box and a card."
She pretended to open the card, smiling as if expecting a sweet surprise from her husband. But her expression turned to shock as she "read" the message: 'To my dearest Kevin.'
"I was stunned. Then I opened the ring box and saw a man's ring with a peridot stone, and everything became clear!"
Meanwhile, Danny, still in character as the unsuspecting husband, returned to the table. He sat down, pulling out the chair dramatically. Stella, now holding a mock ring on a plastic tray, circled around him with fury in her eyes.
Danny's face transformed into one of mock horror, raising his hands defensively. But before he could do much, Stella let out a battle cry, grabbed a stapler in both hands, and swung it down on his chest like a knife.
Her force was so strong that she nearly toppled Danny, chair and all, onto the ground. Jack, anticipating this, deftly hooked the chair with his foot to soften the fall, preventing Danny from hitting the floor too hard.
Danny instinctively grabbed the tablecloth as he fell, causing all the "props" on the table to crash to the ground in a chaotic mess. Stella, not done yet, straddled him, repeatedly "stabbing" with the stapler in her hand.
"Clap! Clap! Clap!" Applause erupted from around the room. Clearly, Jack wasn't the only one watching the impromptu performance. Even Mac Taylor, who had just returned from the precinct, joined in the applause.
"Honestly, it's a pity you haven't applied to Broadway," Jack quipped as he helped Danny up from the floor. He turned to Stella, gesturing at the mess around them.
"From the physical evidence and Deborah Carter's testimony, we can pretty much reconstruct the whole sequence of events. So, where did the third person's DNA on the bread and knife handle come from?"
Mac picked up the roll of tape from the floor and waved it in front of them. "That's the million-dollar question."
"I have an idea," Jack said, exchanging a glance with Stella.
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Reborn as Humanity's Emperor Across the Multiverse (Chapter 703)
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