I looked back over my shoulder in response to the sound and then glanced over at Felicity. She was clutching my arm tightly and staring upward while absently chewing at her lower lip. She had been to a few crime scenes before but had not been subjected to anywhere near as much of this grisly scenery as I had. Still, she looked stable for the moment, so I returned my stare to the three-dimensional horror show that was playing out in front of me. I swallowed hard, because to be honest, I was only a half step away from heaving myself.

“Ya’know, Doc Sanders told me once that the average adult has about thirty feet of intestines.” Ben paused for a moment after reciting the fact. “Man, I’ve seen a lotta crap in autopsies, but I never really expected to see anybody’s guts stretched out like that.”

“Disembowelment was not uncommon during the Inquisition.” I spoke quietly, struggling to keep my voice even. “Actually, it was a favored form of punishment and torture.”

“You mean he did that to ‘im while he was still alive?” Ben asked with a thin strain of disbelief in his voice.

“Oh, yes,” I nodded as I spoke, then swallowed hard again. “Probably rather slowly…”

As I’d known it would, my headache was starting to get worse. The stark chill of fear climbed up my vertebrae and began clawing at the base of my neck. There was something unseen here that was begging my attention, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to give it.

“Jeezus…” He shook his head. “Guess I shoulda suspected that, considering…”

I knew full well what his unspoken words implied. Eldon Porter made a habit of torturing his victims mercilessly before finally bringing about their end. During his last spree, he had even burned two of them alive.

I allowed my gaze to fall away from the corpse as I turned my head, but I didn’t have to let it fall far. I was of average height, but I still had to crane my neck back to look up at Ben’s face; average in stature he definitely was not. His particular pencil mark on the doorjamb had hit six feet when he was in junior high school, and he had still proceeded to grow another six inches after that. He was no stranger to the weight room either, and the rest of his physique made a perfect match for his elevated height.