✔ᵉⁿᵍˡⁱˢʰ War Dogs [The Punisher | Frank Castle]✔

─⌖❖ 16

As long as there was no body, Tobias Ebonathy was still alive. As long as Page didn't see the suspect's body with her own eyes, the guy wasn't dead. And exactly this attitude, would bring her, thanks to the next plot, a lot of trouble. The advantage was that Castle was also considered dead, though he wasn't, so exhuming Ebonathy shouldn't be a problem.

While her request went through easily and was on her desk approved a few hours later, Page had not told anyone about her plan and caused a bit of discomfort among her team with this news. When asked if this had been cleared with any of her superiors, the answer was a no, sinking their spirits once again. Hasty and a bit rash, but she didn't care about the agents' objections.

If Page had informed one of her superiors that she was going to dig up a dead body, the question would have been why. Based on a suspicion that came from Frank Castle telling her that Billy Russo would not be trusted, and with that explanation, her exhumation would have been off the table.

─⌖❖⌖─

It took more than two hours before Ebonathy's grave was finally dug up and the coffin lay exposed. The moment of truth thus drew nearer and nearer, the coffin lid was opened and in it, lay a person. A pale person who could have been any white male. The face was unrecognizable, not because it was eaten by larvae, worms and beetles, but, the skull looked as if someone had beaten the person until there was nothing left to break.

"What else do you think Tobias died of?" asked Page, looking at the dead man, "I don't even want to know how many dead people live in New York and meet us every day."

"Overdose," according to the file, causing Page to chuckle and the forensics team to begin taking their samples to run a DNA test and check the results against the database, "What if he's not our perp?"

"Then at least we've made sure Tobias Ebonathy can go back to his old life," which I guarantee the man didn't want, otherwise he wouldn't have faked his death, and Page wouldn't be standing here, "How long do you think it'll take if every cop in town is looking for Ebonathy's face?"

Depends on how dumb or smart Tobias is.