Boundless: A Bounty Short
Page 6
Ramon checked his watch again with a frown. “Not sure. I gave her the address twenty minutes ago.”
As if on cue, Jill’s red Malibu pulled up to the crime scene and as she stepped out of the vehicle, he could see that she had already put on a pair of baby blue latex gloves. Knowing Jill, she had a box of them in her glove compartment. She gave Ramon and Sorenson an apologetic smile as she approached. “Sorry, guys. I was downtown having dinner with my brother.”
An unexpected rush of happiness made Ramon forget his grim surroundings, if only for a moment. If his partner was reconciling with her brother, then that was a much-needed ray of metaphorical sunshine on someone whose life seemed to be perpetually cloudy. Ramon had hoped solving Trent Roberts’ murder would end the gloom, but David Gregor was still free and thriving, and with Paul Andersen’s execution coming up in a week…
Jill glanced at the trash can, arching a brow. “You alright?”
Ramon nodded, perhaps a little too eager. “So far, so good.”
Sorenson lifted the tape for Jill as she ducked under it and checked to make sure her gloves were secure.
“So what do we have?” she asked.
“Another doozy, Detective.”
By the time Jill and Officer Sorenson turned the corner into the alley, she stopped in her tracks. Juanita was hunched over the corpse, her brow scrunched in concentration and frustration. Jill’s eyes took in the body, lying prone on the soggy concrete. Though to call it a body was a stretch: between flesh that was charred beyond recognition and the fact that both legs had been severed at the knee, it was easy to see why Juanita was so vexed. Jill had to swallow back a bit of bile -- not because of how gruesome the crime scene was, but because she felt the same tug of familiarity she felt when they fished Dr. Roberts’ body out of the Inner Harbor six months earlier.
Jill knelt by the corpse, hoping her poker face held. Juanita began speaking without looking up.
“Don’t even bother asking for ID.” The ME shook her head. “At this point, I’ll be lucky if there are any teeth left.”
Jill scrunched her nose at the smell of burnt flesh. “The legs… postmortem?”
“The lack of blood spatter tells me yes.” Juanita rubbed her temples. “But I can’t think of any reason why someone would burn a person like this and then slice off the knees.”
Jill stood and gave Juanita’s shoulder a squeeze, unable to tear her eyes off the corpse. “S’okay, that’s more my department anyway.”
Jill was so absorbed in the body that she hadn’t noticed Ramon join her and Juanita. He knelt and cocked his head, reaching into his overcoat to grab a pen. Stealing a glance at his sister, Ramon sucked in a deep breath and pointed at the corpse’s right thigh. “I could be wrong, but… isn’t there something shiny there? Where the femur should be?”
Both Jill and Juanita leaned in for a closer look before Juanita’s face broke out into a proud smile. She lightly tapped her fist against Ramon’s shoulder. “Good eye, hermano. It looks like a metal rod of some sort. If I can get a serial number, I may get an ID sooner than I thought.”
Jill turned her back on the corpse. “Thank goodness for small favors.”
Ramon frowned as he watched Jill walk away from the alley before following her. They pulled their gloves off in unison, tossing them into the trash can Ramon had been hovering over just minutes before. Jill let go of a ragged sigh and her lower lip quivered. Her eyes met Ramon’s, and she could tell by the look on his face that he saw the trepidation.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked.
Jill shook her head, grabbing the ends of the trash can and hunching over the opening. She squeezed her eyes shut, and as if someone had snapped their fingers in her subconscious, a wave of memories flooded into the detective’s brain. Crime scene photographs, detailed autopsy reports, all the signs pointing to three murders committed while Jill was in high school. Her intuition had screamed at her ever since she laid eyes on the corpse, and now there was no denying it; whether Jill wanted to face reality or not, the body in that alley was another harbinger from her past.
The weight of that reality caught up with Jill, and with a lurch, she buried her face in the trash can to vomit. Ramon cringed and grabbed Jill’s ponytail to keep it out of the way, trying to avert his gaze. She coughed and hacked until the dinner she had just enjoyed with her brother was little more than a steaming pile, wiping her mouth with a disgusted grunt and standing upright again.
“Okay.” Ramon arched a brow. “That’s new.”
“Ramon…” The fear in Jill’s green eyes made her partner freeze. “Those people they say my dad killed? They were killed the exact same way as our victim.”