by Mary Burton
“That timetable matches with forensic evidence found in the room in the ranch. We have an idea of who we might be dealing with here, but so far no confirmed identification.”
“We might have caught a break with victim number three,” Nancy said. “She has a metal plate in her right femur.”
“Did you reach out to the manufacturer?” Faith asked.
“I contacted the surgical implant company late yesterday, and I heard back just a few minutes ago,” Nancy said.
“What did you discover?” Faith asked.
“The plate on the femur of victim three was indeed surgically placed in a young girl by the name of Kathy Saunders. In 1985, Ms. Saunders, age fifteen at the time, was involved in a bad car accident. She suffered a broken femur requiring the plate.”
Faith felt a surge of satisfaction as she always did when the pieces of a case fell into place. She walked up to the second gurney and picked up the brittle white femur with the metal plate. She tried to imagine this was once a living, breathing young woman.
“Oddly,” Nancy said, “the forensic team found a ballpoint pen with this victim. Most of her clothes have long disintegrated, and they theorize it might have been in her pocket. It’s going to take more testing, but they believe that’s the pen the girls used to write in the magazines.”
She was accustomed to the dead telling her stories through their remains, but there was something far more sobering and disturbing in reading their thoughts. “Were there any signs of fetal or infant remains?” Faith asked.
“None. If their infants didn’t survive the births, they weren’t buried with their mothers. The pelvic bones also don’t show signs of childbirth, which tells me if they did deliver, the mothers died very soon after.”
The utter insult to these girls sent tremors of rage through Faith, and it took her a moment to corral it before she could speak in an even tone.
“The Texas heat coupled with vultures and wild animals could have turned these bodies into bones in a matter of days,” Faith said. “Out there on that isolated ranch, they could have been scattered and rendered into dust. But the killer chose to bury them.”
“I can’t believe it was out of respect,” Nancy said.
“I’m not defending the killer. I’m trying to understand why he didn’t just leave them out in the open. Why put grave markers?” She thought about Marissa, who, if the ancestry site was correct, was her half sister. Marissa’s birth date fit with the disappearance and death of Olivia Martin. “Maybe he fathered all the babies.”
“Why would you say that?” Nancy asked.
“There was no evidence suggesting any of the three girls that went missing were pregnant. Just thinking out loud,” Faith said. “There are sociopaths who are obsessed with passing on their DNA.”
Nancy shifted her gaze back to the bones. “This was his own little baby farm?”
“I think so.” The idea was too disturbing for her to consider right now. “Any signs of trauma to the bones?”
“None,” Nancy said.
These girls could have died any number of ways that would not leave a mark on the bone. Drowning, suffocation, poison, or hemorrhaging could be detected in the tissue, but once it had decomposed, the clues that would have solved the manner of death would have been lost.
“Check all the teeth and see if you can get mitochondrial DNA. That might help if any offspring are identified later.”
“How would we even begin to find these kids? They would be adults now.”
“We’ll worry about that later,” Faith said.
The walls of the room felt as if they were shrinking, and her head felt light. The idea that she was the product of a madman and an imprisoned runaway made her physically sick. “What else is on the schedule for today?”
“The bodies of Garnet and Sullivan have also arrived,” Nancy said. “They’re both ready to be autopsied.”
“When it rains, it pours,” Faith said. “Did the detectives say which body they wanted us to begin with first?”
“Captain Hayden asked that you start with Heather Sullivan.” Nancy shook her head. “I’ve seen a lot of gruesome deaths in my years here, but the last week has taken it to a whole new level of evil.”
“It’s not been easy. Hopefully we can help stop the killings.”
Both women knew they had to do something, and do it fast.
“Set up a room,” Faith said. “I’ll be ready to go in a half hour.”
“Will do, boss,” Nancy said.
Thirty minutes later, both were in the suite ready to begin when the swinging door opened and Mitchell Hayden, now gowned up, entered the room. He moved with quick, purposeful strides, his gaze holding hers only for a second before he nodded and said hello to them.
Faith tugged down the overhead microphone. “Captain Hayden, is a detective from Austin police joining us?”
“Their detectives are running down surveillance tapes and witnesses.” He tugged on latex gloves. “Ready?”
She nodded to Nancy to pull back the sheet.
“According to the police report, her name is Heather Sullivan, age forty-nine,” Nancy stated.
Faith studied the round face etched with deep lines around the eyes and mouth. Age spots darkened portions of her forehead and the sides of her cheeks.
“I’ve run a toxicology test,” Nancy said. “She has the look of a drug user.”
When Heather Sullivan had been dressed, she’d looked trim, but here on the table Faith could see she was painfully thin.
“X-rays of her lungs showed a couple of questionable spots,” Nancy said.
Faith turned her attention to the victim’s neck, which had been stabbed and sliced. Judging by the angle, she guessed her killer had been behind her.
“Nancy, did you get a liver temperature?” Faith asked. Rigor mortis gave an approximate time of death, but either a rectal or liver temp was the most accurate way to go. After death, the body lost heat at a rate of thirty-four degrees per hour until it reached the temperature of its surroundings.
“I did,” Nancy said. “It was taken as soon as she arrived here. The temp was seventy-eight degrees, which almost matches the air temp at the crime scene. Her body was burned so that might throw off my estimate, but best guess, she’s been dead less than twenty-six to thirty-five hours,” Nancy said.
Faith inspected her charred skin. “The burns occurred after death.”
“We think the same person killed Sullivan, Garnet, and Crow,” Hayden said. “In Crow’s case, he used a hammer before the man suffered a heart attack and died. With Garnet the killer used a hammer first and then sliced his throat.”
“He didn’t use a hammer on Heather,” Faith said.
“Maybe she was frightened enough and talked before he had to.”
Faith continued her external exam, cataloging scars and any signs of old injuries. She found nothing else that might hint that there’d been trouble in this woman’s life.
She reached for the scalpel, made her incisions, and removed the rib cage. She took out and weighed each organ.
The uterus showed no sign of pregnancy, but there was significant scarring. “I doubt she could have had children. I believe she may have had a botched abortion or a miscarriage that wasn’t treated properly.”
She removed, weighed, and cataloged all the organs and then repacked them back into the abdomen. She opened up the throat and noted the damaged jugular.
As she tipped the head back and studied the throat, she saw what looked like a white piece of paper. She adjusted the headlamp hanging above, picked up tweezers, and used them to pull out the card.
Both Hayden and Nancy watched as she carefully unfolded it. It was the queen of hearts.
“A card. Just like with the Crows and Garnet,” Hayden said.
Macy felt the warm embrace of the long fingers that reminded her of her mother’s. There was a calming voice hovering over her, and she could make out sporadic words now. “Getting better. Sleep is b
est. Vitals good. I never knew about you. I wish I had. It would have all been different.”
She couldn’t nail down who was speaking, but she felt calm when the person was close. As much as she wanted to tell this person she was alive and only trapped in her body, she couldn’t get her eyes to open, regardless of how hard she tried.
Macy’s frustration grew with this broken body of hers that refused to cooperate. If she could just open her eyes, she would see all the answers that were so close.
As Faith returned to her office after visiting Macy, she pulled the rubber band from her hair and rubbed her scalp. She drew in a breath and rolled her shoulders, trying to chase away the tension. With a solid identification in hand, she called Detective Lana Franklin in Austin’s Homicide Unit.
Franklin picked up on the second ring. “Franklin.”
“Dr. McIntyre at the medical examiner’s office. We have a positive identification on the third victim. It’s Kathy Saunders.”
Franklin shoved out a sigh. “Good. We at least have a confirmation.”
“I’d like to talk to the family. What was the contact information for Saunders?”
Papers rustled in the background. “After we met, I tried to update the info on family members. As luck would have it, Kathy’s sister is still in Austin. Her name is Diane Saunders and she lives in the Hyde Park neighborhood.”
Faith jotted down the address. “This is perfect. Thank you. I’ll let you know when we have more on the other two victims.”
“After all these years.”
“The girls are finally going home,” Faith said.
“Thanks, Doc.”
Faith hung up, changed, and within fifteen minutes was driving to a neighborhood that had been originally built in the 1890s. The homes were modest, but the area’s proximity to the university made it desirable, and many of the older homes were being purchased at a premium and renovated. Diane Saunders’s address was a bungalow tucked back on a wooded lot.
She parked and got out of her car, noting the modest red car in the driveway. She hurried to the front door and knocked. Inside she heard violin music and a small barking dog. The music turned down as a woman shushed the dog. The woman who appeared had gray hair pulled up into a loose bun. She wore glasses, and the deep lines around her mouth and eyes suggested she either laughed or worried a lot. Maybe both.
“Diane Saunders?” Faith pulled out her medical examiner’s badge.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Dr. Faith McIntyre, medical examiner. I’m here about your sister, Kathy Saunders.”
“Kathy has been gone for almost thirty years.”
“I know.” A car drove behind her, and she hated that she was having this conversation on the porch. “Do you mind if I come inside?”
Those lines around her eyes and mouth deepened. “It can’t be good if the medical examiner is here.”
“It’s not good news.”
An old dog wobbled up to Diane, stared up at Faith, and then barked. Diane snatched the dog up. “I’m sorry. She’s protective.”
“It’s okay.”
Diane and her dog stepped aside, allowing Faith inside a house that couldn’t have been more than a thousand square feet. There was a main living room with an overstuffed couch, a flat-panel screen mounted on the wall, and several bookcases that hugged every spare square inch of wall space.
“I teach history at the University of Texas,” Diane said. “I’m a bit addicted to books.”
“They’re impressive. I don’t get as much time to read for pleasure as I’d like.”
“You must stay busy if you’re a medical examiner.” Diane held her hands together so tightly her knuckles were white.
Sometimes the small talk helped families brace for the news they knew was coming. “It does keep me on the go, but I love the work most of the time.”
Diane drew in a breath and motioned for Faith to sit. Faith settled on the sagging cushion while Diane pulled up a wicker chair, cradling her dog in her lap.
“But this is one of those times that you don’t enjoy your job?” Diane asked.
Faith nodded. “There was a ranch outside of Austin,” she said. “We found several sets of remains. We know that one set belonged to your sister, Kathy, because of the metal plate in her leg.”
“The hit-and-run settlement was supposed to help her through college.” She rubbed the dog between the ears until it settled on her lap. “She was fifteen when it happened. She wasn’t at fault. The company that employed the driver settled, and the money was more than enough to repair her leg and cover college. Unfortunately, my divorced mother met a new beau, who in turn convinced her to take the money and run. I was a senior in college and barely scraping by. I tried to help Kathy, but she was strong-willed. She wasn’t interested in college and told me she had a new boyfriend who was going to take care of her. I was heartbroken.”
“What happened?”
“She vanished. One day she was working, and the next she was gone.” She rubbed the dog’s delicate ears. “How did she die?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“We don’t know for certain yet. But we’ll keep you updated.”
The dog seemed to sense Diane’s pain and climbed up on old, rickety hind legs to lick her face.
“Do you have any pictures of the boyfriend? Any clue as to who she was hanging out with around the time she vanished?”
“I have a few pictures taken toward the end. I always held on to them because I didn’t want to give up hope.” She rose and, carrying the dog, went to a desk piled high with papers and opened a small drawer. She retrieved a thin collection of pictures and sat on the couch next to Faith.
Diane settled the dog in her lap and handed Faith the first picture. “I only have four pictures. I wish I had more. This one was taken right before the accident.”
Faith lowered her gaze to the smiling girl who was standing with another young woman who looked so much like her. “This is you?”
“I was in school, and she came to visit for the day.”
“You two look a lot alike.” As she studied Kathy’s features, she had an odd sense of déjà vu but could not place why she felt like she knew this girl.
In the next picture Kathy had coiled her hair up into a fashionable twist that she must have thought made her look older and more sophisticated. She wore a slinky black dress and high heels. “When was this taken?”
“December of 1989. She vanished four days later.”
Marissa had been born in May of 1989, so she couldn’t have been Kathy’s child.
Diane handed Faith the next picture. “Kathy sent me this picture and the next because she wanted me to see she was doing well.” It featured Kathy standing with a young Danny Garnet, who actually looked dashing in a tux. The bastard was like a damn cancer. He was everywhere. But the last picture was most telling.
Kathy was dressed in a waitress uniform, and she appeared to be working at a country club. Faith recognized the club. It had been her father’s club. In the background there was a banner that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PETER. Peter Slater—her father’s law partner. In 1988, he’d have just turned forty.
Before she could fully process, Faith’s phone rang. It was Dr. Bramley at the hospital. It went directly to voicemail.
“Diane, I’m going to have to return this call, but can I snap pictures of these photos?”
“Sure. Do you have any idea who took Kathy?”
“We do. But it’s going to take more evidence to fill in the entire picture.”
She snapped each photo and then fished out her business card. “I’m going to be in touch.”
“I’ve waited thirty years. Don’t make me wait much longer.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Diane rose and from her desk picked up her card. “This has all my contact information. Whatever you need, just call me.”
Faith stood. “I promise to get back to you soon.”
She called the hospita
l and asked for the nurses’ station on the neuroscience floor. “This is Dr. McIntyre returning your call.”
“Yes, Doctor. I have good news. Macy Crow is awake.”
Faith closed her eyes, almost fearful to ask. “Is she coherent? How is she doing?”
“She’s responding to basic questions. And she seems alert.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Faith said.
She was so focused on getting to the hospital that she barely remembered the drive. She parked in the spot closest to the entrance and raced across the parking lot and up the elevator to the second floor. She tossed a quick wave to the nurses and dashed down the hallway.
When Faith entered Macy’s room, Dr. Bramley was standing by Macy’s bed checking her pupils with a small light.
Faith couldn’t see Macy from this vantage point, and as much as she wanted to insist the doctor get out of her way, she held back, waiting for him to finish his exam.
The doctor had said Macy was awake, but with a brain injury she could be facing a whole host of problems that affected her memory, cognitive skills, emotions, and even her ability to walk and move.
The doctor glanced over his shoulder and then stepped back. “Dr. McIntyre. I understand you and Ms. Crow have not met.”
As Faith gripped the strap of her purse and came forward, Macy’s eyes were not only open but also alert. The instant Macy saw Faith, she blinked and looked to the doctor, back to Faith, and then nodded as if she remembered.
“She’s real,” Dr. Bramley said. “Her name is Faith McIntyre. She’s visited you every day. We believe you two might be related.”
Faith set her purse in a chair and stepped forward. “Hi, Macy. We’ve not formally met. But Dr. Bramley is right. We might be sisters.” Telling her about Marissa would come later. For now, it was about the two of them.
Macy shrank back a fraction before she nodded. She tried to speak, but the words came out garbled. Her brows knotted, and the fingers of her good hand clenched into a fist.
“I was just having a talk with Macy,” Dr. Bramley said. “She’s come out of her coma better than we’d hoped, and she’s responding to questions, light, and small pinpricks. Finding the right words may be a challenge initially. She has a lot to recover from. But I’m very hopeful.”
