Malone paused the media player on her phone and removed her headphones when Ellie entered the office followed by a harrowed woman. [i]The client.[/i] Malone thought. Ellie looked somewhat flush, but that wasn't all that strange for someone with her complexion.

	They all filed one by one in the meeting room and sat around the table. Short introductions followed and Ellie began her presentation. The client, Madaline Holt, who looked to be in her thirties, had apparently contacted Ellie to do a follow-up autopsy on her sister after COD was determined to be suicide by gunshot. The woman seemed adamant her sister wouldn't kill herself.

	Malone knew suicide was hard to comprehend for the relatives. Even when faced with indisputable evidence to the fact. But since they were all here it meant Madaline was right about her sister and the poor girl probably didn't take her own life or if she'd done so, she wasn't in her right mind or in control of her actions.

	Malone stared at the misshapen face of the young woman with grimness. She could feel the rage begin to boil within her. It was a familiar occurrence after her last case with the Bureau, but she'd learned to temper that in the year or so that followed and especially after she'd joined the Group and started feeling better equipped to hunt the monsters. She allowed the rage to build in intensity, but wouldn't let it spill out of control. Instead she transformed it in a form of edgy determination that etched across her features whenever she was working.

	Young Cassandra was robbed of her life and she would offer whatever she knew to make the responsible parties pay.

	"The entry wound is unusual." She crossed gazes with Ellies. [i]Her eyes seem brighter than usual.[/i] Malone thought. "With suicides by gunshot, people usually go for the temple, the chin or the mouth. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to shoot yourself in the eye. Plus she would have to be at least left-handed to do it in the right eye." The ex-FBI profiler mused. She spoke quietly, politely in deference to the rage boiling within her.

	"Miss Holt, you said your sister was doing fine after her breakup with her boyfriend and was planning a life for herself in Portland. That alone with the unusual shooting method should have raised flags for the investigators. You also said your sister didn't demonstrate any suicidal tendencies and her behavior seemed to change only after she met with this new group of people."

	Malone directed her attention to Ellie once again. "We should try to find out everything about those people. Although Manny is right, we should look into the boyfriend as well. Even though he was out of the picture well before that we'll need to rule him out." Malone paused looking at their client. This couldn't be easy for her and the woman was doing a valiant job of listening to this discussion about her recently departed sister. Malone's jaw clenched and unclenched, her eyes flashing in anger for a nanosecond. She made a conscious effort to temper it and continued.

	"It is too early to do a proper determination of Cassandra's state of mind prior to her death, but I would be inclined to think she did not shoot herself even under duress or under someone or something else's influence. There is the positive GSR test though. Someone could have held her hand and the gun and pulled the trigger. If that was the case the GSR pattern on her hand should be unusual."

	Malone fell silent. She still wasn't well versed in all things paranormal, but Ellie had proven foul play with the autopsy and they had venues to explore. As of right now, they still had precious little to go on and they would have to hunt for more clues.