“No. No fee. But by then, I hadn’t learned to swim. Still can’t do much in the water.” He shrugged as though it was no big deal that he had no access to a pool. She’d had one in her backyard. She’d always been a fish.
He cut off her thoughts with a wry grin. “Thankfully, there’s no swimming requirement for the Academy. It would have gotten me cut.”
Suddenly the gulf between them yawed and she was ready to be alone. “We started our day early and now it’s late. Let’s head back to the hotel. Tomorrow we have a dead girl to identify.”
No segue. Eleri lacked the energy for one. Heath—Donovan—didn’t seem to require them. She told herself at least he talked during dinner and hadn’t reverted to his usual two-syllable maximum. But with the way the conversation went, she wasn’t so sure she was happy with the outcome.
They were almost back at the hotel when he broke the silence. “We call them simply ‘bodies’, or ‘the deceased’.”
She looked at him sideways, not understanding.
“You’re not the first agent I’ve heard use the term ‘dead girls’ like it was a thing.”
Oh. That. “Sadly, it is a thing. There aren’t necessarily the greatest number of dead girls; there are definitely more dead men. But there’s a gender bias, and ‘dead girls’ is definitely a bad thing. A ‘dead girl’ is always considered part of a bigger problem.” Eleri thought for a moment. “It’s a sad statement on society. Dead men are often dead for a particular reason—something they did or didn’t do. Dead boys are often considered the same—well, once they are old enough to not be kids. But dead girls? Well, they’re often dead because they’re girls. Or at least we think of them that way. Ducklings at the shooting range. Easy prey. So a dead man? You figure out what his problem was, why he got himself dead. But a dead girl? You look for a predator.”
On that depressing note, she parked the car and they headed up to their rooms, quiet once again.
Eleri didn’t speak a word, utter a sound, listen to anything but ambient noise before climbing into bed and sacking out. Maybe that was why she dreamed of dead girls. Then she dreamed of Ruth. Dreamed of the woman in a plain red T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, hitching a ride in a rig painted orange with big blue flames. The driver was white-haired, rheumy-eyed, and nearly fused into his seat. He looked at dream-Ruth oddly but reached out to help her into the cab. She needed it, sick as she was.
Then the image changed around her and she was still Ruth, but there were people all around. Plain T-shirts, jeans with dirt on the knees, a room full of smoke, singing, and voices lifted in anger. She feared for her life.
Then she was Eleri again. On her horse at the practice ring. She was ten years old and she was alone.
That’s why she woke up already stifling the scream that tried to come.
She shouldn’t have been released from the hospital. She wasn’t ready.
4
Donovan looked at the remains of the “dead girl”—as Eames had so eloquently called her. He was used to fresh bodies; he used bruises, stomach contents, blood, vitreous fluid from the eye, basically anything he could see or touch, to make assessments. His standard practice involved running analyses of any of those fluids and tissues, checking for the presence of any compound he could guess should be tested for. That was something he was good at.
He’d been one of the best, hiding away in a small hospital, doing his work, quiet and solitary if not happy.
Here, he had a box of bones. It was all that was left of the actual girl. There were records, photos, statements, and clothing all in a file. But nothing he could examine further the way he was used to. The authorities couldn’t identify her, couldn’t return her home, and couldn’t cremate her either. In the end, they cleaned the bones and put her in a box with a number.
It didn’t seem to bother Eames; it seemed she was perfectly accepting of turning up somewhere and finding only half of what she needed. She shrugged at him. “Part of the job. You can get frustrated by it—”
Which he was.
“—or you can just look at it as part of the challenge.”
While that was the better option, he didn’t feel it. Donovan held the skull, his hands at home in the latex gloves provided by the small local office. The two of them had been left alone with the bones. They had flashed badges and been let in. Donovan didn’t think the woman at the desk had ever seen an FBI badge at that proximity before, so she’d have no idea if they were forged. He and Eames could abscond with the evidence and no one would be the wiser. Trying to tamp down his thoughts of using his shiny new badge to perpetrate crime, he checked the teeth, taking photos on the camera he held.
He could do his part—match or discard dental records. Eames was the forensic specialist here. While she didn’t have a PhD in forensic anthropology, she had multiple forensic majors and a lot of hands-on experience. He let her line up the ribs, spine and long bones, looking for cause of death.
The file was slim. To them this was just a single dead girl.
The local office was stretched thin. The small town didn’t even have a police department, which meant the district was covered by the sheriff’s office. The sheriff also acted as the coroner—declaring the girl dead on the scene. Passing motorists, a young couple, had spotted her crawling along the roadside and stopped to help. She died before the deputies could arrive on the scene. It had taken them thirty minutes to get there. The time and distance would have shocked him, but he lived the same way—at the very edge of a small town outside a bigger one. Living outside the city limits meant no police department had jurisdiction at his home.
Job one was determining if this was the missing Jennifer Leigh Cohn. His lungs contracted, though he’d never met the agent who was her father. He knew nothing of them except what he and Eleri had in the file they carried. But the ache in his chest, the thought that this wasn’t just a dead girl, but somebody’s missing daughter was more involvement than he wanted. It was why he liked to work his cases before he knew anything about them. It made it harder to invest. Instead, Westerfield had invested them, like it or not.
He had a stack of files on missing women from an extended search area. So he started comparing. The skull—he refused to think of her as “possibly Jennifer”—had reasonably healthy teeth. One tooth had a cavity that was getting bad but had not yet been filled. One filling in a back molar was silver and the compound identified it as having likely been done before 2005. That helped a lot. But lack of dental work left a lot of candidates in the pile.
Beside him, Eames examined the evidence before reading the file the locals had compiled on the girl. Eames didn’t want to be influenced, she said. She was also talking quietly to herself and making notes. He didn’t take her for a mutterer.
She must have caught that from his face, because she looked up. “Sorry. I hope it doesn’t bother you.”
“That you talk to yourself?”
“It’s a technique.” She sighed.
Since when was that a “technique”? Head tilted, he waited for an explanation on that one.
She didn’t hesitate to set him straight. “Some psychologists consider four levels of thought. Input: I listened and understood the words and basic meaning. Consideration: I can think about these ideas. Verbalization: I can organize these thoughts enough to speak of them. Writing: I can organize these thoughts into complete and distinct pieces and understand them well enough to apply grammar and commit them to a lasting document. So by talking it through, I hit level three. The Consideration level is often nebulous and doesn’t require complete or formed thoughts. Verbalization does.”
Well, crap. She made a case. He really had not paid attention in psych. Then again, why should he? Cadavers didn’t have thoughts. “Go right ahead and talk to yourself then.”
She did, but this time he listened in.
“No damage or breaks to long bones. Though there is evidence that the radius was broken and healed in the past. Possible defensive wound.” Looking
scientific in her magnifying glasses, she picked up the bone and examined it, her expression intent. Reaching out, she turned on a small recorder and repeated a little. “There are no perimortem or recent breaks to the long bones of either arm. However, the right radius exhibits evidence of a past fracture. Several years old from healing evidence. Possibly a defensive wound. The healing pattern indicates the bone was not properly set. There is no evidence of modern medical techniques applied to the healing process.”
Eames turned the recorder off and looked up at him.
“Not that many reasons for a group of people to not seek medical attention.” If they were right about the measles, now this . . .
She went back to her mumblings and he continued through his stack of photos. Face after face of missing young women assaulted him. It was more bothersome that these were just the claimed ones. So many went missing and no one reported it. Abusive parents who didn’t want anyone finding out what they’d done. Negligent parents who just didn’t care that their kid had disappeared. Kids with no parents; foster kids, whose paid caretakers wanted to continue getting money from the state. Donovan shut up his inner monologue before he got depressed. People were not his favorite species.
He hit the last one and the air gushed out of him in relief that he had not found a definitive match to Jennifer Cohn. He was also disturbed that he hadn’t found any salient match—had he matched these bones to some other girl, which would have ruled out Jennifer. But no. Unfortunately, he still had too big a stack of “maybes.” The problem—well, one of the many challenges, to use Eames’s optimistic language—was that some of the missing reports were recent, but many more were old cases, cold cases. Like Jennifer. Any of them could have been this twenty-something woman up until about five weeks ago. A lot of them had been missing a long time. Donovan ignored the heartbreak their families would feel and sifted again.
This time he sorted for the break to the right radius, but none had that mentioned. “How old was that break? Can you give me a minimum number of years?”
“Three minimum. After that I can’t tell.”
He was able to pull two out of the stack. Each had been missing less than three years and neither had a break to the arm. Given the odd healing, there was no way it would have gone unnoticed by the parents.
Eames looked up at him. “She was muscular. Hardworking, physically. And had been for some time.”
“What’s ‘some time’?”
“Probably several years. Maybe her whole life given the apparent bone density. I’d need tests to be sure.” She didn’t look up at him, just lifted the remaining pieces of a person and gleaned what she could. “I’m guessing they don’t have the solutions for a density test here.”
He didn’t contradict her but pulled a handful out of his “maybe” pile, pushing them into the “definitely not.”
Eames tossed out a real gem the next time. “She was left-handed.”
Now his stack was winnowed to fifteen. All natural brunettes, or could have been given the age progression. Only a few recently gone missing, and each of those four had been athletes in school, thus matching to the musculature his senior agent saw evidence of. Most had disappeared when younger, elementary or junior high age. He stopped his stomach from rolling and distanced himself. He compared the last five against the photos taken before they’d interred her bones.
“There are none left. Except Jennifer.”
ELERI LOOKED UP SHARPLY. Donovan held the stack all in one long-fingered grip. Previously he’d had two piles. “Jennifer?”
It was unusual to have the “maybe” pile down to one. Especially since they’d weeded the missing with a tendency to over-accept before they even got here. But he shook his head at her and thrust the pile out. “You check it.”
She did.
A handful of the girls had records of previous dental fillings that weren’t present in the skull. Since the teeth were still attached, there was no denying the rejection. Other dental anomalies or features weeded still more. Faster than his initial assessments, Eleri set aside each girl they knew had made it until three years ago without a break to her right radius. Then she pulled out the ones who’d gone missing recently—the ones she had info on that were clearly not this strong, physically fit girl now laying on the table as a bone puzzle.
The left-handedness ruled out more, the pictures completely discounting the last few stragglers in the maybe pile. “You’re right.”
He didn’t take offense at her checking his work. They would be checking each other. Unlike the movies, there were no asides for a quick view into the bad guy’s secret lair. Joseph Hayden Baxter was simply an unknown quantity, one they would uncover only with the evidence they gleaned and built. So they would always double check.
“There are still options.” She told Donovan.
“Of course.”
“Unreported among the missing. The file could be older and not registered into the national database. Or she was taken from another quadrant of the country.” All valid reasons this might not be Jennifer. They hadn’t checked outside a particular geographic radius. Secretive cults didn’t tend to travel. Which was a shame; it might have made this guy easier to track.
Donovan’s next words led her to believe she was on the right trail.
“His parents raised him on church property, here in Texas. Outside the little town of Nolan, which is outside of Sweetwater. It’s about a two-hour drive from here.” He added that last bit as though he could hear her thinking about taking a day trip to talk to the elder Baxters.
“It’s not just them. I’d want to talk to anyone who knew this guy growing up.” Kids raised in cults were notoriously hard to get a handle on. “I’m not sure I’d trust much those two have to say. Certainly can’t take it at face value, but maybe we could get something.”
“Tomorrow?” He didn’t look at her. Once again, he held the dead girl’s skull in his latex-covered hands, turning it one way then another before setting it down with a sigh. He opened the file, reading through it, before starting to rummage through the box the sheriff’s office had maintained.
Eleri had no idea what he was looking for. Indeed, he was like a kid raking through a toy chest, checking and discarding toys as he went. But he’d been one of the top-rated MEs around the South. He was one that people sometimes shipped their bodies to when no one could figure out what happened. So while Eleri was unsure what he was doing, she trusted it was valuable and turned back to the bones.
This girl had been beaten to death. Her face swollen. Pictures had been taken before they cleaned the bones, but it wasn’t easy to match the body to smiling photographs of missing girls. The only thing they had for certain was that this wasn’t Ashlyn Fisk. Ruth’s confirmation of seeing the girl at City of God was beyond the timeline with this death, and the dental work was a clear negative.
Lining up the ribs showed a series of bruises and breaks all occurring right around the time of death. Near her spinal column, radiating fractures indicated she’d been hit with something rounded and hard—maybe the tip of a work boot?
Her skull had a dent from something making impact there, too. If they could find the item that made the fracture, there might still be hair or at least blood on it. That would help determine if this girl fell onto the object or was struck by something swung at her.
Eleri pulled her thoughts back. Too much wishful thinking. What she needed to do was categorize the shapes and types of things she would be looking for, so she might recognize them later if she saw them. There were only minimal characteristics, but she was good at this. Too much time in the FBI had her looking at everyday objects and wondering what damage it could do to soft tissue and bone.
“Eames.”
Pulled from her reverie, she lifted her magnifying glasses. Since she was never able to talk to someone looking at her intently with googly eyes, she tried not to do it to anyone else. She corrected him. “Eleri, please. Westerfield was right. This is a clusterfuck and we a
re in it. Might as well go first names, it’s gonna be a while.”
He nodded, but that wasn’t why he’d spoken. Looking off to the side a little, he opened his mouth, and his next words startled her a bit. “There’s something you should know about me.”
Automatically, her brain went horrible places. She tracked killers, profiled masochists with no conscience, saw brutality that most people didn’t know existed, and she managed to keep her breakfast down most mornings. But she was already reining in her thoughts as he spoke again.
“I have a really good sense of smell. Really good.”
He was looking at her earnestly, so she floundered a moment before saying, “That’s very nice for you.”
A small laugh pushed out of him, one she didn’t know existed, and it startled her.
“I can smell when someone has come in contact with someone else who has been smoking. Perfumes and dyes drive me crazy.”
She nodded, and he seemed to take it as a sign to keep going. “Someone put a cat in our rental car before we had it—”
Eleri felt her mouth open. Her bad sense of smell had been legendary at the Academy. Her eyes were half again as good as most people’s but by scent she often could only distinguish that something tasty was baking, not what it was. Wines were rated only by the bite of the alcohol on her tongue or the smoothness thereof. There was no such thing as a “bouquet” in her drinking world. She loved strong flavors in her food, maybe because she couldn’t detect the subtle ones. So Donovan saying he could smell that a cat had been in their rental car was well beyond her.
“—I can smell some toxins and the occasional cancers on dead tissue. It’s how I know what to test for in an autopsy.”
Her grin was disbelieving. “What are you, a dog?”
His smile disappeared.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that as an insult. It’s actually kind of amazing. I sure can’t smell that well. You’ll get no arguments from me if you say you smell something.” She put her hands up, warding off his offense and only then did she notice he was holding the brown evidence bag that the girl’s clothing had been placed into in one hand. In the other, he held the dirty, bloody, plain T-shirt she was wearing when she died.
The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1) Page 4
