The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2)

by A. J. Scudiere

  By the time his search area met up with Eleri’s he had five small pieces of trash and two bits of plastic—which might also just be trash. He held them out to her.

  “This!” She picked up one of them; the timing since the incident was too long to be worried about fingerprints or chain of evidence. “I think it’s part of the knife.”

  Grateful to have been of use while growing his own headache, Donovan held onto the plastic but dumped the trash into the bin at the side of her yard. It didn’t look like anyone was taking it out to the curb anymore. It was as good a place as any to keep stuff. Eleri bagged what she thought was a knife shard then held up her own finds.

  Donovan looked on, impressed. “What? No trash?”

  “I left it.” Instead she held out a piece of plastic that matched his in color and texture and thickness. Only hers had some tissue dried on it. He was grateful right then that he was a trained medical examiner, otherwise it might have turned his already unhappy gut. She also had part of a molar and a piece of bone. She pushed them toward him. “Human?”

  “Looks like.” He picked them out of her hand and examined the pieces. “This is skull.” He held the one piece out. It had fluttering edges where the head had blown apart at the suture lines or been cracked into pieces after hitting something. Bone often came apart where it had grown together in the first place.

  Donovan turned over the other. “This is definitely human.” He held the tooth up. “Given the fences, the likelihood of a non-human animal of the right size or even anyone else getting their bones back here is relatively small.”

  “I concur.” She took them back and put them in the bag with the plastic. “Let’s get in the house and get some of Mrs. Sullivan’s DNA to match.”

  They let themselves in the back, Eleri once again picking a lock. The house felt still from disuse, the dust having settled into the cracks and crevices even if they couldn’t see it. Eleri didn’t seem to like being in the house, and as she’d pointed out earlier, they were really more interested in the forensics of the backyard.

  Donovan tried for conversation, thinking to take her mind off things and wondering if she was becoming afraid to touch things that belonged to other people. It had not occurred to him before now that if she got better at it, she might not be able to turn it off. She’d had that episode on the plane coming out here . . .

  “Should we set a team up to come take apart the deck? The best evidence is probably under there. Anything that went through the cracks is likely pretty well preserved.”

  “True.” She climbed the steps, looking in doors until she hit the bathroom. “If we don’t get a hit off the tooth or skull fragment, we’ll send in a team. But hopefully this will be enough. We just need to confirm that she’s dead.”

  Eleri found a hairbrush in the main bedroom and Donovan just grabbed it. They needed hair with root balls. It was best to get the whole thing. They had to assume it belonged to Mrs. Sullivan.

  This time, they walked out the front door, locking it behind them. Donovan wondered who was watching. If Davies was back, he’d see them come out the front and hopefully mistakenly conclude they’d searched the house. If he knew the case, then that would make him falsely relieved. But Donovan didn’t see him. He only saw Eleri, casually scanning the street the same as him.

  They walked down the sidewalk, not hopping over the fence again, and were almost back to the car when her phone rang. Eleri spoke for a few minutes, looking exasperated but faking a smile and a happy tone. When she hung up, she turned to him. “Can you take care of things tonight? My mom and dad are having an impromptu thirtieth anniversary celebration this evening.”

  “Where?”

  “In Vegas, of course.” Eleri gave him the same false smile. Debutante. Belle. Mainline matriarch. He couldn’t quite tell. But on his friend it looked a bit scary. She sighed. “They want me to fly in this afternoon. Look, we’re running lab tests now. I’ll work from there and it’s less than an hour away by air, in case something goes wrong. Otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  23

  Donovan was on his own for the first time. It took all of fifteen minutes for Eleri to explain to him about her parents. About the fact that they could decide to fly to Vegas—some business her father was dealing in—and then decide, since all their friends were already there, they needed to host a party.

  It would be small. Then Donovan almost snorted his coffee at the seventy person catered affair she mentioned. And that she had to get to town in time to get a gown.

  Donovan didn’t know what to make of that. He’d been to impromptu parties, but they involved beer and pot, not champagne and shrimp. He didn’t buy last minute plane tickets. If he went anywhere it was usually on someone else’s dime. He didn’t travel for vacation; he usually just stayed at home, ran in the woods and did nothing. The idea of a hotel room in a strange town was too reminiscent of an unsettled childhood to be anything like fun. To think that’s what people did when they had extra time and money was beyond him.

  But Eleri handled it like a pro, packing her things at the house even while she explained, making certain that he had the evidence bag from Mrs. Sullivan’s back yard and that he was ready to head to the Bureau to talk to Marina and get Walter on track. She promised she’d be available by phone and that she’d be working the majority of the time she was out.

  Eventually, he pushed her out the door, saying, “Yes, Mom. I have my lunch packed, too.”

  She’d laughed at him, missing the clench in his chest.

  It was a funny thing he’d heard people say in college. He’d never really felt comfortable enough to repeat it, and now he wished he hadn’t. Donovan wasn’t a man for memories. Only now did he understand why.

  He was swamped with thoughts of his mother. Of her face, her hands, her smell. Suddenly he remembered curries simmering on the stove and scenting it from down the street before he walked in. He remembered the tiny white house with the loose screen door. His breath came fast from the sudden and clear image of her smiling face. He’d loved her, and never doubted she’d loved him. His father had himself together back then.

  Donovan had forgotten that.

  He mostly remembered Aidan as the man who pulled him from bed in the middle of the night, the smell of alcohol stumbling into the tiny homes before the man did. He remembered his father as the one who took them from place to place, from house to trailer to cheap apartment, each one worse than the one before. By the time he’d graduated high school, they lived in an area where used needles often were easily found in the gutters.

  But Donovan had managed to make that his entire history. He’d forgotten that he’d once loved his father. The memory of that better time hit him like a Mac truck. It took him apart like one, too.

  On the drive in, he nearly passed the exit for the Bureau, despite the fact that the morning traffic was barely crawling. Any faster and he would have missed it.

  Taking the ramp down into the surface streets, he made several turns and waited through a few lights, using the time to push away the tidal wave that had hit him. He hadn’t seen it coming.

  He believed when he went into the Academy that he’d learn how to use a gun and interrogate a suspect. The intellectual and academic side of it seemed enticing. He’d needed something new. He hadn’t thought they’d want him to make friends or at least alliances.

  Then they’d thrown him at Eleri, and he had probably the closest thing to a friend he’d had since grade school. Since his mother died and the easy, comfortable world he’d known had been plucked away from him one feather at a time.

  Pulling the evidence bag from Eleri’s empty seat and tucking it into the satchel he carried, he parked the small car and headed from the garage into the Bureau. Unlike the warren of halls he’d been in in Texas, this building was laid out in grids, easy to follow, each floor nearly identical to the one below. A person need only make sure they hit the right button on the elevator panel and all was well.


  As he’d suspected, Marina Vasquez was already at her desk. He knocked, only just then thinking he hadn’t brought coffee or anything—clearly not his strength to think ahead or make those nice friendly gestures that seemed natural to Eleri. “You ready for this?”

  She grinned. “You got something good? Because I’m in the middle of some damn dreary paperwork.”

  He always forgot that she had other cases. Other people asking her for help, backup, support. But she seemed to want to do this, so he smiled and said, “Yes. Come on down to the conference room when you’re ready.”

  “One minute.” She turned her head back to her screen and typed again into whatever she was working on, as Donovan turned and realized that the conference room might need to be reserved. What would happen if someone was already in it?

  Luckily, no one was, and he set his things down. He’d just come up with a plausible lie about the information when Vasquez arrived, carrying a stack of papers of her own. “Whatcha got?”

  Donovan grinned, excited about his first almost solo assignment, as small as it was. He shouldn’t have felt so very off-the-leash, but he did. “Well, Eames was called out to a family event, so she’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh.” Hand flying to her mouth, Vasquez looked stricken. “Is everything okay? She can stay as long as she needs.”

  Donovan almost laughed. “No, it’s not that kind of a family emergency. It’s her parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary.”

  “Why didn’t she say anything before?” Vasquez now looked confused rather than concerned.

  “Apparently, it’s a ‘small,’ impromptu thing in Vegas with seventy of their closest friends. And caterers.” He grinned at the silliness of it, until he realized that he may have let a cat out of a bag he hadn’t thought about.

  Shit, was quickly followed by, too late now.

  “So it’s spur of the moment and in Vegas and they want Eleri to fly in?”

  So Vasquez didn’t come from money either, or she would likely have understood the hop-on-a-plane-darling mentality. She wouldn’t have said ‘spur of the moment’ either. More ordinary turn of phrase. Well, Vasquez was an investigator and was going to figure it out one way or another. So Donovan just said it. “Eleri comes from money.”

  “Money? Like a lot of money?” Vasquez tipped her head down and eyed him from under her brows, apparently not quite expecting this new line of information. Interesting.

  He hadn’t guessed Eleri’s background either. Though he hadn’t been surprised by it, it wasn’t the one he’d mentally generated for her. “I don’t know an amount, but it’s of the equestrian-competitions and three-homes-with-names variety.”

  “Well, holy shit.”

  No. Marina Vasquez was not another trust fund baby working her way through the FBI.

  She surprised him by following that up with, “You?”

  “Oh hell no. I come from a variety of trailer parks, student loans all the way, and I’ve never even ridden a horse.” It would just be too weird.

  She looked at him more closely. “I wouldn’t have guessed that either.”

  Maybe that was a good thing. He didn’t want to cart that around with him. Instead of addressing it in any way—he’d had enough of that just on the drive back—he said, “Don’t worry, she’ll be back tomorrow morning, and you and I have some fun work to do.”

  “Then let’s get started.” She smiled despite the fact that he hadn’t brought her coffee. He’d brought her meaningful work, and that trumped all else apparently.

  “So, Eleri and I hit the Sullivan house this morning, cased the neighborhood, checked it out a little more.”

  “And you got a hit.” She could see it on his face.

  “Several, in fact.” Then he lied through his long teeth. “A neighbor gave enough of a description to make a match on a visitor. We headed back to Ratz’s house later for more info. I’ll explain that in a minute.” But could he? It was taking one lie on top of another to make it work. Then he would have to tell all his lies to Eleri so they’d line up. He veered back to the truth. “With the tip, we searched the back yard, on the assumption that Sullivan was in fact dead and from the same method as the others.”

  Vasquez nodded until he held up the evidence bag. Then her eyes flew wide.

  “We recovered this—”

  “Is it human?”

  Always a good question to ask when a person recovered bones. As the Medical Examiner, he’d sent students out to ID bones as non-human more times than he could count. On the first few requests he’d gone out himself, thinking people had interesting finds, only to discover what they thought was a human skull was a wild pig, or something else so clearly not human, that he’d quit going. “Yes. I’m board certified in pathology, and Eleri has a forensics background. In fact, it’s a human maxillary M2.”

  She frowned.

  “Second molar, top of the mouth.”

  “Oh! So we’ll test it then?”

  He nodded again, grinning along with her pleasure at the evidence. Maybe she wasn’t turning green because this was dry? Still, there were only so many people you would please by bringing them a broken tooth from a dead person’s mouth. He was one of them. Good thing she was another. Then he pulled out the rest of it. “And we have her hairbrush to compare DNA from the root balls.”

  “Excellent.”

  Yes, a brush filled with someone else’s hair was “excellent.” He was in the right job for him, despite the fact that there were days he very much doubted it. “There’s more. The reason we checked Ratz’s house is because two local PD showed up on the scene at Sullivan’s. Harding and Davies. Write that down.”

  She did and he kept talking.

  “While we were there, Davies said something about bombs.” Donovan lied through his teeth again. “Since we hadn’t mentioned it, and she was just a missing person, we found that odd. So we flashed his picture around Ratz’s house, and we got a hit.”

  “You have a statement?”

  And this was exactly why you didn’t lie. “No.” He thought fast. “Neighbor wanted to remain anonymous. Wouldn’t give a formal statement since it’s against an officer.”

  Vasquez nodded as though he made perfect sense. So Donovan pushed forward before anything could enter through the massive holes in his lie. “Even without the statement we have enough to check up on Davies’ background. And Eames and I are going to make that happen. We’d like Harding checked, too. Is he usually with Davies as a partner? Or was that just a daily assignment?”

  She nodded, “You want to assess whether there’s any reason to believe that Harding and Davies are working together or if Davies is going it alone.”

  “Well, probably as part of a cell.” Donovan inserted, glad that she’d taken his change of track away from the odd path they’d taken to almost opening a formal investigation of a police officer. Then he wondered why she hadn’t suggested they contact the Terrorism Task Force yet. They should have. Was she just following their lead? She shouldn’t. Even as a junior agent, she’d gone to and graduated from the same Academy as both of them. Probably in a class or two right before or after Donovan for all it was worth. She should know. Why hadn’t she said anything?

  “So,” Vasquez interrupted her thoughts. “You want to me check in on him? Put a tail on him?”

  “Yes, check in on him, paper check only.” Then he grinned. “We want to put Walter on his tail. He’ll never see her coming.”

  Cooper looked out his window. The downtown apartment was one of three he maintained, even though he only paid for one. This one was an empty unit. The owner had committed suicide, and the case remained open. In the meantime, Cooper had a very nice living room and bed room. He simply didn’t go into the master bedroom and deal with the mess that was in there. It had been cleaned so it didn’t smell, and that was enough.

  Death didn’t bother him the way it had when he was younger. The way it had when he first entered the service, where every death was in his
face and each one rocked him to his core. He’d learned to put it away. To remind himself that death for country and freedom was an honor and that the brave men and women he’d seen die had chosen it. He’d been good that way for a long time.

  Then he’d joined Special Forces and had to deal with the odd deaths. The necessary ones—the people who didn’t have to die because of themselves, but had to go because they were in the way of something that had to happen. He’d talked himself into accepting those deaths, too.

  Deaths overseas were somehow okay. As long as deaths at home were safe. Old people, stupid people, awful people. Everyone needed a category in his mind that made their death okay. Then Cooper could go on with his day, which often involved sitting around waiting for something to happen. It involved playing a stupid-ass game of cards while speaking only Pashto. That thought alone brought him around to Ken Kellen—languages expert. He could insult them in any language at all, it seemed. He even had a grasp on a few African dialects.

  Barner once asked—actually harassed—him about it once, but Kellen had grinned and said, you never know. That day, he’d laughed and agreed with Kellen. That day, Kellen had been his friend.

  But the deaths by betrayal, Cooper couldn’t handle them.

  The deaths that he couldn’t categorize brought on the headaches and the voices. They screamed for redemption, for forgiveness, to be believed as the good men they were. But Cooper didn’t know if they really were what he’d thought. He’d come to the conclusion that he might never know. If he couldn’t tell, how could he sort them? How could he justify it? How could he quiet the voices and go home to his family?

  As he looked out the window, he spotted two of the agents in an apartment across the street. Watching him. Watching more than him.

  He gave them credit. They picked a good spot. View from one window of the apartment right into his living area. They’d found an apartment that he didn’t have any paper trail to. That indicated the tag on his phone was most likely from them.