THE SETS OF NEGATIVES; AND WHAT WAS WITH TEETH??

When Santina flipped the switch of her improvised lightbox, she slid two sets of photographic negatives onto its empty plate then she motioned at Mikael to look at the negatives himself.

Mikael crossed the room as per Santina's instruction and while he was at that, he was also stripping his gloves off.

He then threw his gloves at the bucket reserved for medical wastes as he walked past it.

When Mikael was already at the front of the table, he squinted his eyes and looked into the magnifying glass that Santina held over the first set of negatives.

The photo showed the black and white thin and scratchy marks that were gouged through the flesh straight into the child's chin bone

"This one belonged to our newest victim, Number Sixteen. The marks are a bit difficult to see with since most of his flesh was still clinging to the bone but if you would only try to look closely, you would see what I mean."

Santina told Mikael in case the other party was not seeing it.

She had autopsied the rest of the other victims months after they were actually killed. So by then, it was only normal that most of the remaining flesh of those victims had already decomposed. With that, any marks that had been made from the bone surface were far more visible compared to the one that they have at the moment

Santina let Mikael stare a little longer on the negatives before she moved the magnifying glass over the second set of negatives.

"This one over here, however, was the second set of negatives that were taken from the chest plate of our victim after I made the Y-incision and completely eviscerated his body for good."

She explained as Mikael examined the negatives closely.

"These marks were long and deep. Do you think it was the same blade?"

Mikael commented after a short while

"Nope, the blade that the killer used to notch the ribs is way thicker."

Santina gave him her honest observation.

"Don't you think the killer used the tip instead?"

Mikael suggested after a short while but Santina shook her head and contradicted him right away.

"Nope. That would still be too thick to be our weapon. In fact, I don't think that it was even a blade at all."

She said as she switched the light off on the device while Mikael, on the other hand, stepped back and walked towards the body that was left on the autopsy table.

"How about sexual assault? Have you noticed anything that suggests one?"

"Nada."

Mikael nodded his head, a bit satisfied with what he heard.

"Well, at least despite how monstrous his passion for killing his victim, our killer was still not one of those jerks who was sick to the bone to think about sexually harassing its victims while they were dying. But at the same time, I still could not understand why the killer was excising the genitals. I believe that there was an underlying sexual conflict that prompts our killer to include that in his detail of committing his crime. Don't you think so?"

"Have you seen their teeth before???"

Rather than giving a direct answer to Mikael's inquiry Santina changed the topic instead and asked him an out of the box question all of a sudden.

"Nope and what was with their teeth to be curious about then??"

"There were heavy pitting and fissures at their front teeth and it most likely because of a soft diet."

"And what was with our victims' diet and having bad teeth has anything to do with us???"

Mikael retorted with an awkward expression on his face.

He could not understand why the other party was suddenly bringing up such a weird topic.

"Don't you get it??? Look, this one crucial information could be our lead as well as our further proof to prove our previous conclusion that most of the victims, as well as the possible targets in the future, could be from extremely poor families."

"I really don't get it. Would you mind being more specific? Look, my average brain cells were obviously having hard a time to keep pace with that extremely advanced mind of yours."

Mikael replied using the same intonation that Santina used when she said her statement.

Santina on the other hand rolled her eyes when she noticed that Mikael was deliberately making fun of her but in the end, she still spared the other party the clarification that he needed.

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