Cut and Run

by Mary Burton

She crossed to the small L-shaped kitchen. No dishes in the sink; the counters, though covered in dust now, had been wiped clean; and the washed dishes were in the drying rack. She put her hand over her mouth and opened the refrigerator. Hayden braced, knowing it could be a capsule of revulsion. However, the appliance had been wiped clean, and the freezer emptied.

  They entered the bedroom and found the bed made. The towels in the bathroom were hanging neatly on the drying rack, and the trash cans had been emptied. A fine coating of dust covered the counter and faucets.

  Faith opened the closet in the bedroom and paused. “Have a look at this, Captain.”

  He came up behind her and saw five boxes of newborn disposable diapers. There were also several canisters of powdered baby formula, unused baby bottles, and packages filled with yellow baby blankets.

  “An odd thing to be kept at an empty house.”

  “Yes, it is.” Hayden opened the door from the kitchen and flipped on a light that illuminated a set of wooden stairs. “Watch your step.”

  Faith followed him down the dozen steps to a basement that stretched the length of the house. To the left was an upended cot, as well as a laundry room with clothes hanging on the line. She walked toward the clothes, inspecting them. “Big enough for a pregnant belly. They’re dry.”

  He turned to the other side of the room and saw the next door. He tried the handle, but the door was locked, so he called up to the uniformed officer and asked for a crowbar. He banged on the door. “Paige, are you in there?”

  They both listened but heard nothing. He didn’t want to imagine the girl unconscious or dead, but the possibility was very real. Footsteps on the stairs had him turning toward a young uniformed officer carrying a crowbar.

  The officer handed the bar to Hayden, and he wedged the tip under the lock. With a hard jerk, he popped the lock. The officer held the door handle and stood ready for Hayden to give him the word to yank.

  “God, I hope we find her,” Faith whispered.

  The door swung open in one quick motion.

  As the officer covered Hayden, he moved into the room and flipped on the light. He cut his eyes left, right, and up, making sure that no one had planned an unpleasant surprise. He continued to sweep the room, looking behind a curtain that hid a toilet and shower. When it was all clear, he motioned for Faith to come inside.

  “She’s not in here.” He holstered his gun.

  She entered the room, her posture tense as she looked around the small space. Her expression was stoic, but her eyes betrayed her distress as she looked at the tiny bath facility, what amounted to a kitchen, and the mattress. Her gaze settled on the chain and the cuff that lay open on the floor.

  She knelt, hand outstretched, not touching the cuff but studying it closely. Tears glistened in her eyes before she blinked them away. “There’s dried blood on the metal.”

  “We’ll have it tested for DNA,” Hayden said.

  She drew her fingers back from the cuff as if they burned. “It doesn’t look that old.”

  “I think when Macy came out here, someone was watching the camera feed and saw her,” Hayden said. “Whoever was held here was moved.”

  “It has to be Paige. There are large clothes to accommodate a pregnant belly and baby diapers in this house.”

  “That blood will tell us if she’s in our data bank.”

  “Jack Crow knew about this place, and he left that phone with the address for Macy. He knew he was running out of time and wanted to tell her something.”

  She crossed to the dresser and opened the top drawer. She inspected various undergarments before she moved to the next drawer, filled with more oversized shirts and pants.

  He looked at the dust on the floor and saw that the dresser had been recently moved.

  “Let me have a look behind the dresser,” he said.

  She stood aside as he gripped its sides and moved the piece of furniture. His gaze went first to the wall, which was solid cement. He then shifted to the back of the dresser. It was cheap particleboard tacked to the flimsy frame. But at the base of the board were letters carved into the wood.

  “Officer, help me move this out more.” Together they slid the dresser out several feet so that Hayden could stand behind the dresser. Faith joined him. He looked over the letters, his body tensing when he saw PS.

  She drew in a breath. “Paige Sheldon. She was here. And there are three other sets of initials.”

  “And three stones outside.”

  JJ, OM, KS, PS. “Dear God.” Her voice choked and dropped to a hoarse whisper. “He held them all in this room. JJ. Josie Jones.”

  Upstairs, voices of the forensic team drifted around, and he knew it was time. “We need to get out of here and let the technicians do their job.”

  She rose slowly as she studied the room again.

  “Captain Hayden,” an officer called down the stairs. “We have something.” They climbed the stairs and found Brogan standing on the porch. “Might want to come out and see this.”

  Faith glanced up at Hayden, and he glimpsed fear and worry in her expression before she dropped her eyes, squared her shoulders, and walked out of the house. She stepped out with no hint of emotion on her face.

  The warming sun was climbing in the sky now, and it reflected on a new red flag stuck in the ground and gently flapping in the breeze.

  Neither spoke as they crossed the dusty yard to the ground-penetrating radar machine. Pollard turned on his computer display and showed them the image. Faith leaned forward, took one look, and instantly knew.

  Hayden had seen several images like this over the years, and he knew the odd, apparently random waves demarked bones. “Do you think the remains are human?”

  “Hard to say at this point,” Pollard said.

  It was easy to assume buried remains must be human, but people did bury pets—or perhaps it was a trash pit with animal remains. These bones were in close proximity, not scattered.

  Faith said, “They were discarded in holes like trash.”

  Hayden had been to his share of horrific murder scenes, but hearing Faith’s quiet outrage threaded with pain struck him to his core. She was hurting, and that bothered him.

  “The spot was marked with a stone, correct?” Hayden said.

  “Yes,” Pollard said. “All the stones appear to have been pulled from the area. There’s nothing special about them individually.”

  “But arranged as they are, they look like headstones,” Hayden said.

  “I know some serial killers like to return to the scene of their crimes and visit their victims,” Faith said. “He would have had no problem remembering where he buried them.”

  “Two more stones doesn’t mean two more bodies.” He said the words for her benefit.

  “You’re wrong.” Faith reached for her cell. “They’re all headstones, and if Macy had been a few weeks later, there’d be a fresh hole with another dead girl in it.”

  “Jack Crow was tortured for a reason,” Hayden said. “Someone was looking for something.”

  “This place?” she asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll call the medical examiner’s office and have them send a crew so we can start excavating the sites.”

  Josie Jones, 1988

  Things I like. Flip-flops. McDonald’s french fries and hamburgers. Rain on my face. Cheers. My birthday. “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” Whitney Houston. My sister. And you, most of all. None of this is your fault.

  Things I hate. Broccoli. English class. Parachute pants. Perms. My foster family. This room.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Wednesday, June 27, 10:00 a.m.

  Faith leaned against the medical examiner’s van, studying the collection of three red flags that now fluttered in the warm wind. Officer Pollard had found bones buried under each of the stones, and all appeared to have been in the ground for a long time.

  The three grave sites were cordoned off, with a crew working on the first site. The team had dec
ided to start at one end and work to the other, handling one grave at a time.

  The excavation process was tedious because it wasn’t a matter of digging up what the ground-penetrating radar had located. The soil would have to be carefully removed layer by layer so that no evidence, including clothing and jewelry, was lost.

  The crew had dug down eighteen inches into the soil. The grave had been shallow, but excavating it had taken nearly an hour.

  Hayden hadn’t spoken to Faith for a couple of hours. He’d been busy searching the house and the grounds and coordinating a more extensive background search on Sam Delany. But she was glad for the solitude. So far she’d done a good job of controlling her emotions, but as Pollard had planted each flag into the ground, she had found it harder to keep her mind on point. Three sets of initials. And now three graves.

  Pollard was working with Angie Chesterfield on the first site. Faith and Angie had crossed paths several times, and she’d found Chesterfield, a petite redhead, to be efficient and smart. While Pollard methodically scraped away the soil, she documented the discovery with her digital camera. She never looked in Faith’s direction or spoke in tones louder than Pollard could hear.

  The community that took care of the dead was a small one, and news had traveled quickly that the body in the grave might be related to Faith. She understood why they distanced themselves from her while they worked. She’d have done the same. But she didn’t like it. It made her feel vulnerable.

  Minutes later Pollard and Chesterfield stopped work. Stillness fell over the technicians as they leaned back and glanced at each other.

  Faith pushed away from the vehicle, and as she tugged on fresh latex gloves, she strode toward the team. She looked into the eighteen-inch hole they’d dug to find an exposed human skull. Her breath caught in her chest. Everything around her vanished as she mentally juxtaposed the skull to the Josie Jones mug shot.

  The tech gently brushed the dirt away from the bone with a soft-bristled paintbrush. Each swipe of the brush perhaps brought Faith closer to the secrets shrouding her birth. She’d always wanted to know, needed to know, her birth mother. Many times she’d imagined their first meeting, but the scenarios had never been anything remotely like this.

  She was aware of Hayden moving beside her, and she knew if he touched her, she’d shatter. She may have looked cool and controlled, but she was barely hanging on right now.

  Hayden didn’t speak to her but watched as the tech unearthed the bones. He’d lived in a moment just like this one when Sierra had died, and though their losses were different, he seemed to understand that words, no matter how well intentioned, would fall short and ring hollow. Still, having him close was comforting. It made her feel a little less alone, less adrift in a life that now appeared to have been built on sand and lies.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she watched the tech remove the top portion of the skull. The lower jaw, no longer attached by ligaments and muscle that had decomposed a long time ago, stayed anchored in the soil.

  “Dr. McIntyre, would you like a closer look?” Chesterfield asked.

  PJ’s information, the mug shot, and the initials on the back of the dresser were all parts of an equation that added up to the harsh fact that this skull belonged to her birth mother. This calculation could of course be proven wrong, but deep in her bones she knew it wasn’t.

  That conclusion led to another argument. She was too close to this case and should not be present at the crime scene. And maybe sooner rather than later she would recuse herself, but for now, she felt an obligation to Macy, Josie, and the faceless women who’d been imprisoned in that forgotten basement cell to be here and bear witness.

  “Yes, I would like a closer look,” she said. Again, Hayden didn’t speak, but she heard him shift his stance and felt the tension radiating from his body. He might not have liked her response, but he understood it enough not to challenge it.

  As Chesterfield shot more photographs, Faith knelt down and held out her gloved hands, accepting the skull. Her heart raced, and she turned it around and peered into the eye sockets.

  She didn’t speak until she was certain her tone and inflections were carefully under control. She pushed aside her feelings and focused on the facts. “The nasal bridge and aperture are high and slim, respectively. This suggests the victim was likely of Caucasian descent.”

  “Hard to be sure with a look.” Hayden played devil’s advocate, a roll well suited for his analytical mind.

  Professionally she understood it, and personally she appreciated it.

  “You’re correct, Captain,” she said. “Though each race has its own unique characteristics, defining this individual’s race with a cursory glance isn’t scientifically sound. It will take more analysis in the lab to confirm the individual’s ethnic origin.”

  But if he’d asked her to put money down, she’d have bet large. She ran her thumb over the brow ridge. “The bone is relatively smooth, and the brow ridge less pronounced, suggesting a female. The orbitals have a sharper ridge, which also suggests a woman. But again, the final call can’t be made until we examine the pelvis.” A female’s pelvis was broader to accommodate childbirth. And if these bones were indeed female, there could be markers on the pelvic bones that would indicate childbirth.

  “Any idea about cause of death?” Hayden asked.

  “There’s no damage to the skull,” she said. Head trauma would have left cracks, but if the manner of death did not impact her bones, determining cause could be difficult, if not impossible. “I’ll need the full set of remains to make a definitive statement.”

  Faith handed the skull back to Chesterfield and studied the faint outlines of the bones just below the thin surface. The woman had been laid in the ground in a fetal position. Had whoever buried her been rushed? Were they stunned by her death, or had her ending been planned since the day she’d been locked in the room?

  “This is going to take some time,” Hayden said. “We won’t solve any of this today.”

  Pollard nodded. “We’ll be out here today and the better part of tomorrow. We’ll start sending the remains to the medical examiner’s office as soon as we excavate each site.”

  “Yes, this can’t be rushed. I don’t want any potential evidence lost.” Faith rose, brushing the dust from her gloved hands. “I could stay, but you have this under control. If you need me, I’ll return to the site immediately.”

  She turned from the grave, grateful not to be hovering. She yanked off her gloves and wiggled her fingers, wishing she could forget the weight of the skull in her hands.

  There was never any such thing as an easy death investigation. Death, even when it was a mercy, was never stress-free. She’d learned over the years to guard her emotions. Country music, Nancy’s steady comments, and the exhaustion after a long run all kept her mind on an even keel. However, this site would require every tool in her bag of tricks.

  “I’d like to show you something we found in the basement room.” Hayden’s long strides caught up to her easily as she reached the forensic van.

  “What is it?” She tossed her gloves in a disposal bag.

  “It’s better if you see it,” he said, giving no hint.

  She braced, truly not wanting to return to that wretched prison. “Of course.”

  He guided her back toward the house and up onto the porch. They each paused on the front steps and pulled on fresh gloves as well as paper booties. This house was now an active crime scene and the less contamination they brought into it, the better.

  Her eyes adjusted to the interior as she followed Hayden through the house and down the basement stairs. Inside the room a light flashed as a forensic technician snapped photos.

  Hayden motioned for her to pause as he entered the room and spoke in low tones to the technician. The man soon appeared at the door, nodded to her, and stepped aside. Hayden stood behind him and signaled her forward.

  In the room she noticed the dresser was still away from the wall. But she
also noted that a ventilation grate behind it had been removed and was encased in a plastic evidence bag.

  “What did you find behind the grate?” Her voice sounded so professional that for a moment she wasn’t sure that it didn’t belong to someone else.

  “Two magazines,” Hayden said. “They both date back to 1987. They’re on the table.”

  She shifted her focus to the small round table and the two magazines. Both were fashion magazines and featured headlines such as “Beauty Blitz,” “100 Ideas for Spring,” and “How to Talk to a Boy.” The smiling girl on the cover had rich dark hair and wore a red sweater, striped miniskirt, white tights, and flats. A thick gold chain with a heart dangling from it hung around her neck. A black-and-white composition notebook in her hand, she stared coyly at the camera.

  Hayden carefully folded back the wrinkled cover of one of the magazines to the title page. Words were written in a teenager’s loopy style all along the margins.

  The first entry was dated 1988, the year Faith was born.

  My name is Josie Jones. I’m nineteen. I am your mother, but you will never know me.

  “Josie wrote messages in this magazine,” Faith whispered.

  “Yes,” Hayden said.

  Pain, sadness, and anger hitched in Faith’s throat as she scanned the words scribbled in fading ink. She imagined the young girl sitting at this very table, locked in this room, pregnant, and alone. Somehow Josie had known she wasn’t going to get out alive. “Does she name the man holding her?”

  “She called him Daddy. He must have never told her his name.”

  “Does she say who fathered her baby?”

  “I haven’t gotten that far yet. It’s going to take some time to go through this.”

  She turned to the next page, and in the white margin, the top line on the left page read,

  I’ve begged and pleaded with him to let me go. He swears he’ll let me go, but he has lied before.

  She pressed her trembling hand to the page and felt the deep creases the pen tip made in the thin, glossy paper. “She never stood a chance once she entered this room. None of them did.”