Waking the Dead

by Kylie Brant

  The tests were tedious and time-consuming, but Cait wanted to run them herself. Raiker would make a caustic comment about learning to delegate. But then, her boss was nearly three thousand miles away on the other side of the country. He’d never have to know.

  She placed the sample in the centrifuge and, setting the speed and time, prepared to wait a few minutes. Her gaze wandered around their makeshift lab. “Did Michaels balk at giving up another area for our use?”

  Kristy never looked up from her work. “Steve was an absolute angel about it when I asked.” She paused for a meaning-laden moment. “Of course I asked nicely.”

  Contemplating her assistant, Cait asked cautiously, “How nicely?”

  “Very nicely,” came the smug reply. “I could give details if you . . .”

  “God, no.” The last thing she needed was a pornographic image of the two of them smeared across her mind. Some mental pictures could scar a person forever. “Spare me the specifics.”

  “Well, you have to admit, it was well worth the price of a blow job.”

  Deliberately she turned her back on her assistant and wished she could turn her hearing off as easily. “Gagging here.”

  Kristy laughed. “I’m kidding. He arranged to have the entire room emptied and cleaned so I could set up. No doubts he has ideas about a suitable reward, but I have as yet to decide whether I’ll be delving into that pool of well-defined man muscle. Although you have to admit, I could do worse.”

  With a noncommittal sound, Cait removed the sample from the centrifuge and transferred the solution to a new tube. “Seemed like a lech to me.”

  “Well, what guy isn’t? But he’s sweeter than you’d think, too. I just might give him a ride. You know how long it’s been since my last meat injection?”

  Cait nearly spilled the DNA IQ Lysis Buffer she was adding to the original solution. “Uh . . . since the plane ride here?”

  Kristy laughed. “I’d call you a bitch if you wouldn’t charge me for it.”

  Which was, Cait acknowledged, a devious way to do exactly that without suffering the consequences. Her tech was getting cagey.

  She was also in an unfortunately chatty mood. “Steve doesn’t like my swearing anyway, so I should probably work harder to stop. He says people don’t take cursing women seriously and that I need to protect my professional image.”

  “A lech and a chauvinist. More charming by the minute.”

  “You’ve said almost the same thing, verbatim, on more than one occasion.”

  Because Kristy was most annoying when she was right, Cait changed the subject. “Coming up with any matches?”

  “No close composite comparisons yet. They all have high sulfur content, of course, but most of the samples you brought have more than twice the amount as the sediment we tested from the garbage bags. The others are closer on the sulfur content but missing the other elements.”

  Which meant she needed to veer farther afield from the hot springs sources, Cait thought. She’d had Sharper take her to the more touristy ones within a ten-mile radius of the cave. There was no need to expand the grid until she’d gotten samples from the government and private properties shown on maps in the same area.

  “So what do you think of Andrews? Personally I found it a little creepy the way she lit up at the thought of some psycho defleshing victims and dumping them in her jurisdiction, but, hey; maybe she’s just really enthusiastic about her job.”

  The words closely correlated with Cait’s own thoughts. She vortexed the sample for five seconds before preparing to incubate it. “Yeah, I caught her attitude, too. But she seems like a solid cop. Barnes is a little more out of his element, I think.” The deputy seemed sharp enough but slow to accept any conclusions not completely supported by substantiated evidence. Which told her he’d be a skeptic about the profile she’d already started on the perp.

  The line the sheriff had given him to follow up on was well within his comfort zone. Cait had found herself vaguely surprised how many of the violators ticketed by the rangers had previous records, however insignificant. He was concentrating on those violators with records before moving on to the rest.

  She rested her hands against the counter and leaned her weight against them. The pain in her left palm reminded her of the injury there, and she hurriedly changed position. She didn’t want to reopen the wound and risk contaminating the tests. As it was, she had the area wrapped in gauze and covered with two elastic gloves.

  “How’re you coming?”

  Cait lifted a shoulder, a gesture her assistant couldn’t see with her back turned. “This is only the third victim. I’ve got a ways to go.” And as always she was worried about the possibility of destroying one kind of evidence in search of another. But there was no help for it. She just had to pray that if a latent was present on any of the victims, it didn’t exist on the section of bone she drew the DNA extraction from.

  “What’s that other guy like? What’s his name? Sharper?”

  “He defies description,” Cait said dryly. And mentally damned her assistant for bringing the man’s name up. He’d been successfully banished from her mind since they’d parted ways yesterday. She could only assume he was as grateful for their separation as she was.

  “Steve seems to think he’s pretty cool. Says there’s no one around who knows the area better. Of course, I thought I detected the tiniest hint of hero worship in his voice. Probably because the guy’s a decorated war hero and all. Guys get all testosteroney over stuff like that.”

  She wasn’t interested. Other than his usefulness getting her around, Sharper had absolutely nothing to do with the case. But she heard herself saying, “Iraq?”

  “Um-m . . .” There was a prolonged silence as Kristy examined her samples. “Okay, this one is another bust. I’ll document it and move on. No.” Seamlessly, she switched topics to answer Cait’s question. “Afghanistan, I think. Some sort of specialist, according to Steve. To tell the truth, I wasn’t listening that close. When I’m not in the lab I have a very short attention span. Especially since I was giving serious consideration to jumping his bones. One bone in particular.”

  Specialist? Or special ops? Cait mulled over the new information even as she gave close attention to preparing the wash buffer. She was willing to bet Special Forces. Sharper had that tough primitive look that came from living through things no one should have to imagine, much less experience.

  A look she still occasionally glimpsed in her own reflection, if less frequently with each passing year. And it occurred to her that there might be far more beneath the man’s caustic exterior than she’d originally thought.

  Maybe he was as adept at donning masks as she was herself.

  Recalling the snapped vertebrae on each of the skeletal remains, a shiver worked down her spine. She made a mental note to call Raiker. She’d yet to be in need of intelligence that he couldn’t get his hands on. And it might be interesting to see just what sort of information could be found in the guide’s military files.

  Cait sat straight up in bed, instantly awake but disoriented. There was faint light at the edges of the shades at the windows of the motel room. But it was early. Too early.

  Her cell phone rang again on the bedside table, alerting her to what had awakened her. She picked it up, checked the number on the screen, and flipped it open to answer.

  “If you’re my morning wake-up call, you’re a couple hours early.”

  Adam Raiker’s brusque voice sounded. “Thought your email said you were in a hurry for this information.”

  Cait jammed another pillow behind her and leaned against the headboard, stifling a yawn. It’d been late when she’d gone to bed. Because the east coast was three hours earlier than the west, she’d thoughtfully used email rather than a phone call to place her request with Raiker.

  Although, truth be told, he’d probably still been awake when she’d sent it. She’d often suspected the man didn’t sleep.

  “So you’ve got the informatio
n for me already?”

  “I’ve got something. Up to you whether you need more.” There was the faint rustle of papers on the end of the line before the man started reading. “Zachary Dalton Sharper, age thirty-six, honorably discharged from the Army sixty-two months ago. Served a total of twelve years, ten of them in the Rangers. Several campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Impressive atta-boy file. Couple silver stars, Distinguished Service Cross, purple heart . . . looks like your local war hero is the real thing.”

  “Any chance you pulled some strings and found out about his training?”

  “Figured you want to know that.” It was always difficult to tell if Raiker’s abrupt tone was due to his disposition or the wounds he’d sustained in the last case he’d worked for the Bureau. Given the hideous scar bisecting his throat, he had to have sustained some internal damage there. But given what she knew of him, Cait figured it could be either one. “Did several years with direct-action operations before becoming a member of an RRD team. Regimental Reconnaissance Detachment. He was a team leader before he left the service.”

  The title meant nothing to her. “And that is?”

  There was a short bark of sound that passed for laughter with her boss. “Twelve of these guys in the whole Ranger operation. They specialize in silent insertion behind enemy lines and intelligence gathering. His actual missions are classified.”

  “Meaning you couldn’t get them?”

  “Meaning I need to extend a very big marker to get them,” he corrected. “I prefer not to unless you really need it.”

  “I don’t.” The missions didn’t matter. She knew enough about elite military forces to know that silent and deadly unarmed combat techniques were part of their training.

  Like the ability to snap a combatant’s neck.

  “How’s the case going?”

  Cait gave him an abbreviated version of her findings so far, all of which Raiker listened to silently. “And the lab equipment arrived okay?”

  “Everything was in one piece. It was just a matter of finding a place to set up.” She gave a short laugh. “Luckily there was room at the morgue.”

  “Jesus. I need to get going on those plans for regional mobile labs.”

  “So you keep saying.” She rolled her shoulders, loosening the muscles. She tended to sleep in a tight ball. “Thanks again for the information.”

  “Let me know if you need anything else. And keep me posted on your progress.” A moment later the line was dead.

  Wryly, she flipped her phone shut and considered it for a moment. Raiker was even more curt on the phone than he was in person. She stretched and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The alarm clock on the bedside read five forty-five. It’d been after ten before she’d left the lab. Well past midnight before she’d finished emailing Raiker and submitting information about individual descriptors for each set of remains into the various missing persons databases, then printing off the results.

  She gave a moment’s thought to how her boss had acquired Sharper’s information so quickly and then put it out of her mind. Better not to inquire too closely about his tactics. His list of contacts were legion. It helped, of course, that the man was a legend in law enforcement circles.

  Going back to bed wasn’t an option. She’d never been able to fall back to sleep once up. Instead she rose and padded over to the missing persons printouts lying on the table in the corner of the room.

  It took over two hours to go through them all. Another fifteen minutes to decide which to follow up on first. The bodies could presumably come from anywhere, but she had to start somewhere, so she’d concentrate first on those persons originating in neighboring states who’d gone missing in the last decade. She jotted down the phone numbers to the law enforcement agencies before checking the time again. Probably still too early to try any of them now. But she could make some calls while she drove.

  Rising, she headed toward the shower. She’d planned another long day at the lab trying to lift those latents, but she could afford a detour first.

  Because she wouldn’t be satisfied until she’d gotten a soil sample from Sharper’s property.

  A fine mist started falling about halfway to McKenzie Bridge. Oregon sunshine, she’d heard it called, but rain was rain to her. She just hoped it stopped before she got to Sharper’s place.

  She filled her time on the drive calling the various agencies affiliated with the missing persons responses she’d gotten, mostly leaving messages for the case detectives she got routed to who were away from their desks. But she was able to have conversations with a few of them, like Detective Paul Drecker in Seattle.

  “Raiker Forensics, huh? Heard of you guys. Met your boss at a conference once when he was still at the Bureau. Brilliant guy. Funny as hell.”

  Funny? Adam Raiker? The description was baffling. But then Cait hadn’t known him until years after the case that had nearly killed him and ended with his retiring from the FBI.

  Drecker had already gone on. “Marissa Recinos you said?” She could imagine the man shaking his head on the other end of the line. “Not ringing a bell . . .”

  “She was last seen five years ago in December, in Pike Place Market,” Cait prodded. “Her mother reported her missing when she didn’t show up for the family dinner the following Sunday.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Recinos. Now I remember that case. Never did find her. I always liked her ex for it, myself. Real asshole, and it was a messy divorce. She’s loaded and he felt like he got screwed on the alimony.” He snorted. “Ever known a guy to get alimony? Someone should tell my two exes about that. Anyway, he’d made some threats a couple years earlier.”

  “He was alibied?”

  “Airtight. So your remains are Hispanic?”

  “All the remains are minus the skulls, so I can’t determine ancestry. But I wondered whether she had skeletal identifiers.”

  “Yeah, guess that description of her tat isn’t doing you much good, huh? Well, let me check into it and get back to you. I’ll probably have to call her mother. What exactly should I be asking about?”

  “Her medical history. Did she ever suffer a fracture and to which bone. How long ago.” The remains in question had a fracture to the left wrist that must have occurred within the final year of her life. She paused and thought a moment. “Also ask her if Recinos had osteoarthritis. If her knees bothered her. Any Xrays in her medical files. Anything I could possibly use to validate the remains.”

  “I’ll ask. Can I get you at this number?”

  “Yes, or feel free to email me.” Cait gave him her work email address.

  “Will do. I’ll get back to you.”

  The rest of the calls filled the driving time. After they were finished, her complete attention was required to recall exactly where Sharper’s place was.

  She had a photographic memory for anything she read. It had certainly made academics a whole lot simpler. But when it came to directions . . . not so much. She’d backtracked several times before giving up and driving to the Springs Resort, and then trying to find her way from there.

  She was more successful this time, although she missed the narrow drive to his place once and had to turn around yet again. When she came to a chain barring her approach on the drive, for the first time she considered what she’d do if the guide happened to be home today.

  With an eye to the sky, she decided that was a long shot. It didn’t look like it had rained here, although the clouds overhead looked ominous. And with all the bitching he’d done about being kept from his business, she couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t already be in Eugene. It was after ten already.

  Grabbing her pack, she locked the vehicle and hiked the rest of the way up the drive, marveling again at the private area. She’d dropped by the Lane County Courthouse before taking off this morning. According to the assessor’s office, Sharper’s property encompassed twenty-five acres and was worth upwards of a million dollars.

  The amount alone was brow raising. He’d s
aid something about inheriting the land from his grandfather, she recalled, as she strode rapidly up the drive. Pretty nice inheritance. And the house he was building wasn’t exactly a shack, either.

  On foot, it took fifteen minutes before the house came into view. Cait stopped to scan the area. There was no sign of Sharper’s Trailblazer. The battered red pickup she’d seen here before was parked in the same spot. The place had a deserted air.

  Pulling the NRCS map out of her pack, she studied it for a few moments before raising her narrowed gaze to his property again. If she established a grid and took samples from each corner and random points in the center of it, that’d still put her back at the morgue by one or so. Cait shoved the map back into her pack and continued walking. She’d start in the back of the property and work her way forward.

  She was on her fourth sample before she ran across a small hot spring. Compared to the ones Sharper had chauf feured her to, it wasn’t much more than a trickle. It was the smell that gave it away. If she were the fanciful type, she’d say it brought images of brimstone. Water erupted from the earth in wide cracks and then disappeared back into the ground after several feet before making a surprise appearance again. She imagined it coursed freely well beneath the surface, and made a note to research the acts of nature that had formed this land. Despite her mother’s lifelong efforts to pretend otherwise, she was a science geek at heart, whether she looked the part or not.

  She was going to end up with more samples than she’d originally planned, but she worked swiftly, still intent on making it back to the lab in time to start the latent testing. One moment she was carefully inserting her core sample into a plastic container and labeling it. The next a voice sounded behind her.

  “It’s a world-class ass. But I still want to know what it’s doing on my property.”