“Yes, ma’am!”
“Elizabeth. You can call me Elizabeth in the office, and the normal title in the field.”
Christina grabbed the feather and the card, smiling. “I’ll have something for you soon, I promise Elizabeth!”
When the woman was gone, Elizabeth was pleased. Yeah, everyone thought she was the hard one to work with, but she knew how to manage people when it was needed. Next she picked up the phone and dialed Gabe’s private number, returning his calls. Somehow she doubted they were work related. If her husband called him trying to get her booted from this assignment again there was going to be hell to pay.
It didn’t even ring twice. “Elizabeth Blackhawk! You find out you’re pregnant and you don’t call me to tell me personally?”
“Hi Gabe. I told your wife and I didn’t think I had to tell you too. I know you’re my boss and the FBI owns my soul, but I didn’t know I signed over the womb too,” she said, laughing.
Gabe snorted at her comment. “A little call would have been nice,” he said. “Congrats and for the record, when you have the next kid don’t tell Livy until after hours. She called me bawling, and I barely could understand her. I thought something bad happened. I almost rushed home.”
Elizabeth could picture that happening and couldn’t help but enjoy every second of it. “I’m sorry, Gabe. Now, why are you really calling me?” Why not get directly to the point. “You don’t call to talk babies at nine a.m. I know you better than that, so what gives?”
Gabe sighed.
“Did my husband call you this morning to get me yanked off this assignment? Don’t lie for him. When I find the truth I’ll crucify you both, and tell your wife. You won’t get laid until the youngest is in college. That baby isn’t born yet, Gabe, so that’s eighteen long years of you taking care of yourself. Think about it…”
Gabe believed it and didn’t want to think about it. The girlfriend code was that powerful. “No, he didn’t call me this morning. We spoke the other day and don’t hold it against him. It was before the pregnancy information.”
Elizabeth wanted to be pissed, but she already knew about the first call. He was under a great deal of stress, and she knew that the pregnancy and the murdered women were weighing heavily on his mind. She would just let it go and cut him a break. After all this, she was declaring sainthood and wife of the year.
“Please come back to Quantico. I can call it retraining and then no one will ever know why but us.”
“Gabe, I’m not leaving my husband and my partner alone in the field because I’m scared and pregnant. That isn’t going to happen. I’m sorry.”
“Livy is busting my balls about putting you out in the field, and if anything happens to you, I’m a dead man. Do it for me to save my soul.” The laughter was present in his voice.
“The guilt trip now too? Gabe,” she laughed. “No, I’m staying and you can tell my husband it was all on me, and then you can tell Livy the same thing. I’m not bailing on my partner.”
“Please watch your back, Elizabeth. I’m worried about you.”
Before she could comment, her intercom buzzed. “Yes?”
“Mr. Whitefox is here, Mrs. B.”
“Be right out,” she paused. “Gabe got to run. I’m due down in the lab and the morgue.” Elizabeth hung up the phone before he could even respond. She grabbed her tablet and her gun, clipping it to her belt and heading out to the lobby. Both men were already there, talking to each other in hushed tones. It pissed her off, but she decided to ignore it and let it go. Striding right past them, she headed to the elevators. She was surprised they even bothered to wait for her. Inside she pushed the basement button and moved over to give them both room.
“Christina left your office fast. Does she still have a job?” Curiosity had him wondering what she wanted with his lab tech, other than the card and feathers. Somewhere, deep down, he found a tiny bit of control. Blackhawk had tapped into it for the sake of his marriage and tried to ask normal questions.
“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not as big of a bitch as everyone believes,” she answered, and walked out when the doors opened.
“She’s pissed at you, bro.”
“Yeah, it’s my own fault. I don’t do angry very well. I normally can keep it hidden, but this mess has me all stirred up.”
Blackhawk followed her to the ME’s work area and just let his wife run the show. She was irritated. Maybe the talk with the tech staff would be distracting and calm her down. Plus she tended to spot tiny details he often missed. There was no doubt if the ME had something in the report that peaked her interest, she’d catch it. This was his wife’s area, and he needed to just stand in the background, retaining all he could to create his profile.
Doctor Leonard grinned at the three in his presence. He loved working with the Blackhawks, and he was glad he took the job. He’d worked with Elizabeth before she left the FBI and her husband for the first time when they exhumed Charlie LaRue. Once Elizabeth Blackhawk had offered up one of the best labs in the country, only second to Quantico, he knew he had to jump at the chance and work with them again.
“Doctor Leonard, what do we have on the woman with flesh?” inquired Blackhawk.
He stood, pulling out the morgue tray that had the remains and pulled back the sheet. “We cleaned her up, she wasn’t too badly decomposed on the outside, but inside she was soupy. The adipose tissue began breaking down with the bacteria and the heat from being below the ground. We found a hot water spring underneath the burial site, so that warmth sped decomp and boiled the inner contents.”
Elizabeth typed on the tablet, hoping she didn’t have to see him lift the dead woman’s eyelids, or what was left of them. Soupy she could do, dead eyes not so much.
“She was definitely with child. I’m giving gestation at about twenty six weeks; bone was in the beginning stages of hardening, and no longer soft like cartilage. She had some debris in her hair that we didn’t find near the site, and she had clay like dirt under her nails. I believe the debris was crushed leaves. I’ve already shipped the samples to the tech lab.”
“Was she dead when he buried her?”
“Yes, she was. Our victim exsanguinated. Very little blood was left in her body, but we had enough to work with to do the normal testing. We also used the vitreous fluid.”
“Great,” Elizabeth answered, shuddering.
Doctor Leonard laughed. “I know. It creeps you out.”
“Doc, a needle inserted into the eyeball should creep everyone out, not just me. That’s a standard in life.”
“And that’s why I’m the ME and you’re the one with the gun.”
Elizabeth snickered. “I’ve seen you shoot, and that’s why you should play with eyeballs and not loaded guns.”
“Good one,” he laughed, giving her a fist bump.
“Wounds?” she continued.
“She had a puncture wound relatively close to her heart. It didn’t pierce the organ, but it did cause the bleeding and ultimately her death.”
Blackhawk spoke, “Weapon?” His wife never looked up at him, just continued typing and adding notes to the file.
“I would say an arrow, but I believe your tech team is now working on finding an exact weapon. I believe they’ll concur, but we’re covering all our bases.”
Blackhawk’s gaze flickered over to his brother. They had just had the conversation regarding the arrows in his dream.
“What about tox report, Doctor?” Elizabeth asked, continuing.
“Right here,” he paused, reading it over. “She was drugged, and that’s most likely how he subdued her. Her tissue came back with levels of Chloral Hydrate.”
Whitefox had to ask, “Where do you find that drug?”
It was Elizabeth that answered for the doctor. “I’ve run across it before. It’s a sedative. Mostly used in veterinarian hospitals now under the name Equithesin,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It’s been around a long time, and I’ve worked cases where it was use
d as a date rape drug.”
This is why Blackhawk loved being her partner. Elizabeth was a fount of information. She was his walking Google search in jeans and cowboy boots.
“I know we had one other victim with partial flesh. Were we able to get a tox on her?” she asked, continuing to add information into her tablet.
“No, it was compromised, but the tech team made a slurry.”
Whitefox was sure he was going to be sorry that he asked, but he was missing the lingo and needed cliff notes. “What’s a slurry?”
Elizabeth looked over at her brother-in-law. “They collect the maggots, bugs, and other creepy crawlies and put them in a blender to analyze what they’ve been snacking on down in the hole.”
Blackhawk noticed she was offering up eye contact to his brother, just not him. That pissed him off again, and more irrational anger bore down on him. A little wave of jealousy washed through him, and he had to talk himself down off the ledge. Somewhere inside him he was aware it was irrational, but it still clawed at his gut.
“That’s pretty damn disgusting.”
“If you think it sounds gross, you should see the joy the bug people get when they put them in the blender and turn it on. They’re like killers on a spree,” she grinned at him, and then went back to inputting data on her tablet.
“They ran the chemical analysis and found the same trace of Chloral Hydrate, but in lower quantities. The bugs had ingested the contaminated flesh and organs and it was lessened in their own bodies as they processed it.”
“Do we have an ID on the woman?” Blackhawk asked.
“As a matter of fact we do,” he paused, “and we don’t.”
All three looked at him obviously confused.
“She had ID in her back pocket- a driver’s license. Sadly, it was sitting in the soup, so they are trying to get the magnetic strip to work. The picture’s a total loss. The tech team has it,” he finished.
“Thanks, Chris,” she said. “You’ve been a lot of help. Can you email me anything else you find?”
“You got it, Lyzee,” he said, covering the body back over. “So you know I did the interview for the new backup ME.”
“Find anyone suitable?” she asked, pausing at the door.
“I found one woman that’ll be a perfect fit for the team. Her name is Doctor Desdemona Adare.”
“By perfect fit do you mean qualified, not just cute in a lab coat, right?” she asked, grinning.
He just laughed.
Elizabeth nodded. “Okay, ship the files up to Ginny with your signature, and I’ll sign off on her if you believe she’s the one to be your backup. I trust your judgment,” Elizabeth looked over at her husband. “Ethan do you have any problem with Doctor Leonard picking his back up ME?”
Blackhawk’s muscle in his face twitched. It pissed him off that she and the ME were on a nickname basis. Deep down, he tried to not let it make him lose what little control he had remaining. “No, I’m fine with it, Elizabeth.”
“Okay, send me all the paperwork, and I’ll push it through. I can’t wait to meet her.”
“She’s a pleasant surprise.”
Elizabeth could see the tension on her husband’s face, as all three entered the part of the lab marked ‘Anthro’. If he wasn’t in such a miserable mood, she might have asked him what was bothering him. Clearly she was the problem today, or he perceived her to be the issue. The kicker was she was supposed to be the hormonal cranky one and not him.
Ethan Blackhawk found that he was so angry at that moment he couldn’t speak. His wife was ignoring him and being overly friendly with the staff. The jealousy began ripping him apart inside, as he dwelled on the relationship she was having with the staff. It was completely irrational, but his nerves were shot thanks to the killer.
“Doc, tell me you got something from the bones,” she said, hopping up on the empty table and placing her tablet on her lap. “We need a direction to take this assignment. Tell me all you can on the women.”
“Well, if it isn’t my most favorite agent in the entire FBI realm, and as demanding as ever.”
Elizabeth snickered. “Whatcha got for me, Tony? Talk bones to me and keep it simple. I’m out of practice for the last year. So you’ll have to give me time to work back up to speed.”
He smiled because he’d worked with Elizabeth before, many times. When the offer to transfer out west to head her Anthro department for the FBI came up, he jumped at it. She was great to work with; her husband just seemed very by the book and stuffy. The tech team each had their favorites, the men tended to want to follow her and the ladies loved him. It was pretty obvious why the divide.
“I have the bones of three from the hole, and the bones of three from the river bed and surrounding area. Chris will be stripping the other girl’s remains shortly after they get ID, and then we can check her out too.”
“And? You know what I need to know,” she smiled at him. “Give me the goods, Doc. You always hold back and make me beg for the good stuff.”
Blackhawk was ready to blow. They were going to be having a conversation and soon. It would be happening as soon as they got back upstairs to their offices. Her blatant flirting with the lab staff to put him over the edge was crossing a big line.
“You know me too well, Lyzee. Here’s what I can tell you so far. All six that I have are female.” Doctor Magnus slid a table out and pointed to one of the victims. “As you can see this lady was in pieces in the river bed. She’s missing bones, but I believe we rearticulated the skeletons as accurately as possible with her parts.”
“Ethnicity?” asked Whitefox, hoping they wouldn’t be from the reservation.
“Well, here’s the issue with me giving you that information. There aren’t going to be a great deal of cranial differentiations to give us the markers needed to tell you that. I can give you a guess, and it’s going to be no more than a fifty-fifty at that.”
“Doc, come on and help a girl out? We’re desperate here.”
“I can tell you what they aren’t with certainty. I’m more comfortable with that route. Take note of the nasal area. They aren’t African American. If they were they would have a wider bridge of the nasal structure. Then let’s look at the mouth. Just by looking at the teeth I can tell that they aren’t of Asian descent.”
“We’re running out of time here, Tony. If you were going to guess, tell me what and why.”
“Lyzee, you know I hate to guess. This isn’t like TV shows. Those aren’t real anthropologists, and they aren’t really doing the job.”
“Tony, I have dead women who I need to get justice for so please, help me out here,” she pleaded. “I need a direction to find out who they once were, or this guy is going to keep going.”
Doctor Magnus sighed. “Okay, against my best judgment. Victims one, three, and four are American Indian. I suspect that because the facial bones are vertically aligned with the nasal cavity. The cranium is more rounded with a bulbous parietal. If you look here,” he pointed at the forehead of the one cranium before continuing, “the more flattened structure and the strongly projected zygomatic bones make me lean that way.”
Blackhawk and Whitefox both looked confused and lost.
Elizabeth could see it in their faces; she at one time had the same issue with Doctor Magnus, until she studied up. She hopped off the table and walked toward the men.
“Here let me show you here on Ethan,” she said touching his face and turning it toward his brother. “The Zygomatic bones are the bones right here,” she said, touching his cheek below the eye socket. On both of you, the bones are more obvious and stick out. It’s what gives you your predominant cheek bones. If you feel yours and then feel mine,” she took both men’s hands and touched them to her own face. “You can feel the structural difference. The parietal bones are back here,” she stated, walking behind her husband and touching the back of his head. The temporal bones meet the parietal bones right here. Doc is saying the shape is different in the back of your skul
l compared to mine.”
“Good job, Lyzee. You always were my favorite student,” said Doctor Magnus as she returned to her perch and accepted a congratulatory fist bump. “I see I’m rubbing off on you.”
“Yeah, you wish, Doc. I’ve had to read the books you recommended to keep up. Not exactly titillating reads either.”
“If I’m right though…”
“If you aren’t lying I’m buying. I haven’t forgotten our arrangement. Happy hour and the beer is on me.”
Blackhawk tensed. This was a whole side of her he had never seen before. She seemed to keep it to herself, and it made him edgy too. When did she develop camaraderie with their lab staff? Especially all the men on their staff, and when had she started going to happy hour with them? Immediately he thought back to the last few weeks, had she been late coming home?
“I suggest you start with missing reports of women from early twenties to maybe thirties. We have some cranial similarities and that’s the age I put them all at approximately.”
“How about the fetuses?”
“Here’s the weird part, and I have seen many weird things in my life. We recovered the bones by sifting the river bed, but the skulls were never recovered at the scene.”
“How the hell do we have fetus skeletons without skulls?” she asked, incredulously.
Doctor Magnus hopped up onto the table she was sitting on and took a spot beside her. “Some cultures will dig up the bodies of the dead after composition and take the skulls as a trophy of sort of for rituals. It was quite common in the Aztec civilization, some nomadic tribes, and even back far enough into European culture.”
“This’s just creepy.”
“Shamanistic practices are also known to use the skull, too. Look at Tibet and Mongolian societies. They used the skull as a bowl on their ritual altars and as a serving bowl at dinner.”
“Well, I’m glad I had breakfast. After this morning, I’m back on the morgue diet once again thanks to you and Chris.”
“Sorry, but we’re a culture tied to our dead. It’s just part of the makeup of our beings. Celebrating birth and death is what makes us a step up the food chain ladder from the other species.”
Sacred Burial Grounds (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 2)) Page 18
