Last Words

by Mariah Stewart

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Jojo has a huge crush on my brother.” She smiled.

  “Your brother’s in the FBI, too?”

  “Actually, they all are.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Three.” She made a face. “Actually, two now.”

  “What happened to the other one?”

  “He died.”

  “I’m sorry,” Beck told her.

  “Don’t be.” She turned off the engine and opened the door. “No one else is.”

  She got out of the car, leaving Beck seated in the front seat, momentarily stunned. By the time he followed her from the car, she’d already gone through the front door and into the building.

  Beck ignored the three news vans and the reporters gathered at the door.

  “No questions at this time.” He held up a hand as he passed.

  “Then when?” someone asked.

  “Has the body that was left in your car been identified? Is it Mindy Kenneher?”

  “The only thing I can tell you right now is that it is not Mindy Kenneher.”

  The reporters began to swarm.

  “That’s all for now. I have a meeting and I’m already late. But as soon as I know something definite, I’ll let you all know.”

  “You do know something definite, Chief,” Jenna Smith said. “You definitely know the woman that you found in the back of your car is dead, and you know she definitely was killed by the same person who killed Colleen Preston.”

  Beck paused, the door partially open. “You’re right, Jenna. I do know those two things. But nothing else has been confirmed.” He walked through the door and let it close behind him.

  “The phone’s been ringing off the hook,” Garland told Beck as he approached the desk. “It seems everyone in town has a friend on the EMT squad.”

  “What are you telling people?” Beck stopped for a moment.

  “I’m telling them you’ve been out of the office all morning and that you’ll have a statement later.”

  “Good. And now that I’m back?”

  “You’re in a meeting and can’t be disturbed.”

  Beck slapped Garland on the back then walked away. “Those people up in Boston sure did teach you right.”

  Mia was waiting inside his office when he came in. Amazing how fast she could move in those shoes…

  “I’m going to grab something from the kitchen to drink. Can I get you something?” he asked.

  “Anything cold would be fine, thanks,” she told him.

  “Then we’ll head on in to the conference room and I’ll introduce you to my officers.” His voice trailed behind him. In a moment he was back, a can of Diet Pepsi in each hand. “This okay?” he held one up.

  “It’s fine. Thank you.” Mia took the can he offered her.

  “You want a glass?”

  “No, this is fine.”

  “Let’s get on with it then.” He gestured toward the conference room.

  She followed him in and stood while he made introductions all around. She stole a glance at the fax machine that stood on a table near the back of the room, and was disappointed to find the tray empty. She’d have to put in another call for that NCIC report she’d requested.

  “FBI Special Agent Mia Shields, meet Sergeant Lisa Singer. Officers Susan Martin and Duncan Alcott.” Beck started on the left side of the table. “Hal Garrity, former chief here in St. Dennis, back on the force to help out in the summer. His brother, Phil, works part-time when we need him but he left for Canada on Sunday for a bird-watching trip.”

  Mia walked from one to the next, shaking their hands and making eye contact, then took a seat near Hal, who leaned over to pull the chair out for her. She smiled her thanks and started to say something, but the door opened and a trim woman in her mid-fifties blew in.

  “Beck, what the hell is going on?”

  “Mayor Christina Pratt, this is Special Agent Shields,” Beck said calmly. “Agent Shields, this is Mayor Pratt.”

  “Don’t get up,” the mayor told Mia. “Nice to meet you.” She turned back to Beck. “I’d like to know what’s going on. What’s this about a missing woman-”

  “Please, take a seat. I was just about to fill everyone in.” Beck closed the conference room door, then leaned on the back of the chair nearest him. “You all know about the body we found in the backseat of my Jeep yesterday. We assumed that the body was that of Mindy Kenneher, the woman who’s been missing from Cameron for the past few weeks. Unfortunately, it is not Mindy.”

  “Do we know who it is?” Mayor Pratt asked.

  “We have a damned good idea.” Beck took the photograph he’d brought back from Sinclair’s Cove from his pocket and held it up. “Holly Sheridan. Age twenty-five, summer employee at Sinclair’s Cove.”

  Beck shared what he’d learned about Holly with the group.

  “ Duncan, I’m going to assign you to figure out her itinerary between Colorado and Maryland, what route she would have taken, find out what credit cards she had and see if you can trace them. Contact every state between here and there and see if her car’s turned up anywhere. I have her family’s contact information and I can give you that to get you started.”

  “When you were in her room, did you find anything that might give you a lead?” Hal asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Except we do know that she went into town several times each week,” Mia interjected. “Her roommate mentioned that. And we found a pile of magazines, a local newspaper, and a paperback book on the floor next to her bed. She could have purchased them locally.”

  “Did you notice which paper?” Hal asked.

  “It was the Chesapeake Weekly,” Beck answered. “Which could have been picked up anywhere. Neither the magazines nor the book had any stickers that might tell us where she bought them. Now, there are several places in town where they sell magazines, but only two or three where you can buy paperbacks.”

  “I’ll make a copy of that photo and show it around town,” Hal told him. “I’ll start with Bookends, maybe Barbie will recognize the girl. Only other place I know of in St. Dennis proper that sells books is the Food Mart. I’ll see if Bruce or one of the boys remembers seeing her around.”

  “Make it a clean sweep of all the shops, Hal,” Beck said. “We don’t know what other interests this woman had, so let’s cover the bases right the first time.”

  “Shouldn’t someone talk to the people she worked with?” the mayor asked.

  “We’ve got that covered,” Lisa said. “Beck and I already discussed that. I’m on it.”

  “How long before we know for certain if the body found this morning is Holly Sheridan?” Mayor Pratt looked worried.

  Beck looked at Mia. “How long before your lab people get back to you?”

  “Well, considering we haven’t given them anything yet, I can’t really answer that,” Mia replied. “If we can send samples out today, maybe in a few days we’ll know for certain. Unless there’s another means of identification. Maybe get dental records, ask the ME to take a look.”

  “I’ll put a call in to her parents as soon as we’re done here, see how quickly we can get those records.”

  “Why don’t you just take the photo out to the ME’s office and look at the girl and see if that’s her?” Mayor Pratt looked from Mia to Beck.

  “I’m afraid she doesn’t really look like this anymore, Christine.” Beck held up the photo.

  “But she hasn’t been dead all that long, right? Just a week or so?” The mayor looked confused.

  “She was sealed in plastic, Mayor Pratt.” Mia turned to explain.

  “Yes, so, that should have preserved her, wouldn’t it? I mean, no bugs would have gotten to her.”

  “It’s been pretty hot here this past week, as I understand it,” Mia said gently.

  “Yes. So?”

  “So imagine what might happen to a piece of meat if you wrapped it tightly in plastic, then set it out someplace whe
re the temperature was in the high eighties, low nineties every day.”

  “It would…” Christine Pratt blanched.

  “Right. It would cook.” Mia nodded. “Actually, it would sort of liquefy.”

  “I see. Well. If we’re done here…” The mayor stood and looked at Beck. “Beck, if I could see you in the hall…”

  She left the room without looking back, leaving a silent group behind. Beck stepped out behind her.

  “She was in a hurry all of a sudden,” Hal noted dryly. “Left her handbag on the back of the chair.”

  “I’ll run it out to her.” Lisa took the bag and left the room.

  “I didn’t mean to upset her.” Mia told Beck when he returned.

  “Hey, she asked.” He shrugged, then looked around the room. “Anyone have anything to say? No? No questions? You all know your assignments, let’s get moving.”

  Everyone stood and started toward the door.

  “Oh, one more thing. No one talks to the press or to anyone else. No one.”

  He made eye contact with each member of his staff.

  “If anyone in this room does not understand what that means, speak up now, because if there’s a leak, if I hear something coming back that I didn’t personally put out there, someone’s head will roll. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “All right then.” He pushed in the chair he’d leaned on. “Agent Shields, if you’re ready, we’ll take a run out to see Dr. Reilly. Maybe she’ll have something to tell us.”

  The lab was located in the basement of one the county-owned and-operated assisted-living facilities.

  “This is a little weird,” Mia noted as she parked her car near the entrance. “You have all these elderly folks out here for their afternoon strolls, and downstairs you have the morgue? Am I the only one who thinks this is strange?”

  “Hey, the county had the space here.” Beck shrugged. “At least you didn’t make any lame jokes about the residents not having far to go when they pass from one life to the next.”

  “Don’t think I wasn’t tempted,” she said as she got out of the car. “Which way?”

  “Door around the side of the building.” Beck joined her on the sidewalk.

  “Well, that’s certainly better than using the elevator in the main lobby.”

  He laughed and led the way to the door leading to Dr. Reilly’s quarters, one flight down behind a black door. Beck knocked, then tried the knob.

  “Hey, Beck,” Vivian Reilly greeted him as he opened the door into her office.

  “Viv.” He held the door for Mia, then allowed it to swing closed behind her. “Viv, this is Agent Shields from the FBI.”

  “Good to meet you.” Vivian put down the files she held and extended her hand.

  “Thanks. Nice to meet you, too.” Mia took the hand that was offered. “I hear you’ve been busy.”

  “And not in a good way.” The medical examiner shook her head, then turned to Beck. “This latest one, the one from your car? What a mess. I hate to turn her over to her family like this.”

  “They’re having a hard enough time as it is.” He nodded. “I called them while we were driving out here. Had to ask them to get their family dentist to have Holly’s dental records overnighted. The dentist is the girl’s aunt, so there’s no problem getting the records. I can tell you the Sheridans are reeling from this, especially not knowing for sure if this is their daughter.”

  “As any parent would be.” The doctor put her files down on the desk. “I’m assuming you came to see her, not me. Let’s go.”

  Beck and Mia followed her down a short hall and through a heavy metal door into the county morgue, which was dimly lit and cold.

  “Let me just get a little more light in here,” Dr. Reilly said as she flicked on the wall switch. She walked to one of the drawers built into the wall and partially slid it out.

  “We’ve had to keep her somewhat contained,” she explained, “since so much of her was falling apart.”

  “Tough to make the call on cause of death,” he said.

  “Yes and no. Because of the decomposition, it’s harder to find any of the usual telltale signs. But there’s enough to convince me that she, like Colleen Preston, was alive when she was wrapped up.” She turned to face the victim. “The lungs and the brain show sign of bleeding, the eyeballs are bulged. All signs that her body was trying to force her to breathe. Wrapped up the way she was, the lungs couldn’t expand, they couldn’t get oxygen, that caused the petechial hemorrhages in the eyeballs, the lungs, the mouth. What hadn’t fallen away held the evidence.”

  “So you’re saying suffocation?”

  “Yeah,” the ME told him. “Just like Preston.”

  “She have any distinguishing marks, Viv?” Beck asked.

  “Birthmarks, tattoos?”

  “A tattoo, yes. On the upper part of her right arm there was something. Not sure what it was originally, but I can tell you it was green.”

  “Green,” he repeated.

  “Yeah. The ink they used was green.” She pulled the drawer all the way out. “Here, take a look.”

  He bent closer, seemingly oblivious to the odor and the grotesqueness of the corpse.

  “I see some loops there. Not enough flesh, though, to see the entire shape.”

  “Unfortunately, some of the meat just fell off the bones,” she said, then glanced up at Mia to see if there was a reaction. Finding none, she continued. “As you know, the victim was in a state of partial decomposition when she was found.”

  “The woman we think this might be…she’d only been missing for a week. Could that be possible, that she’d deteriorate so much in so short a time?” Beck asked.

  “Wrapped up the way she was, in this heat…and if she’d been left in a place that was closed up so that the temperature went over one hundred for days on end, yeah, she could have turned soupy pretty quickly.” She looked at Mia again and said, “Sorry.”

  Mia shrugged.

  “How long have you been with the FBI, Agent Shields?” the ME asked.

  “Almost nine years.”

  “Then I guess you’ve seen pretty much everything,” Vivian said.

  “I have now,” Mia replied.

  “I feel the same way,” Viv assured her. “Bastard who did this-”

  “Enjoyed every minute of it,” Mia murmured.

  “Yes. He probably did.” Vivian drew a hand through her hair. “How do you find him? How do you stop him?”

  “We get to know him through his work,” Mia stated matter-of-factly. “We let him lead us to him. If we pay close attention to what he’s already told us about himself, sooner or later, he’ll lead us right to his door.”

  “Do you really believe that?” the doctor asked.

  “Absolutely,” Mia assured her.

  “What has he told you about himself so far?”

  “Well, there’s the control thing.” Mia looked at Beck. “We’ve already talked about that. How he likes to be in control of the entire situation, probably from the first moment he picks out his victim. If her flesh hadn’t decomposed, I’d expect to see signs of restraints, bruises or marks on her wrists, her ankles. He would have had her every move under control.”

  “The first victim, the Preston woman, she did have those marks,” Beck recalled.

  Mia nodded. “For however long he’d had her, she would have been restrained except for those times he either wanted sex or wanted to reward her.”

  “If you’re a good girl, I’ll untie you for a while,” Beck said.

  “Exactly. And he’s a neat freak, efficient. He kills his victims in a way that lets him maintain maximum control and watch every last excruciating breath she takes, while it also eliminates any messy cleanup on his part.” Mia crossed her arms over her chest. “No fuss, no muss, no nasty smell, as long as she’s all wrapped up. He could keep them for months, for years, even, and they’d remain nice and tidy. A bit mushy inside the plastic, but nothing he’d have to
deal with.”

  “Don’t you wonder how a soul gets that twisted?” the doctor asked.

  “All the time,” Mia said simply.

  “I mean, what makes someone want to do something like this?”

  “The mayor’s pretty adamant that we ask the FBI for a profiler,” Beck spoke up. “That’s what she wanted to talk to me about when she called me out of the meeting this morning. Are you going to be insulted if we do that?”

  “No. As I told you earlier, I’ve had a lot of training, but standing here, looking at what he did to this woman, I’m thinking you’re going to need to explore the why in order to find the who. And we’ll need someone with more experience than I have to help figure out why. I have pretty good instincts, but I’m not a psychologist. And frankly, I think that’s what you need here.”

  “Do you want to make the call, or should I?” Beck asked.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll call my boss. We have several really good people, but there’s someone I’d like to request.”

  “The sooner, the better,” Beck told her.

  “While I do that,” Mia said, “if you could get the audiotape you found with the body to Beck, and give us a sample of hair we can get DNA from, we’ll be pretty much finished here. Unless Beck has something else in mind?”

  “No, just the tape and the samples.”

  “I’ll get both right now,” The ME told him.

  Mia called her office and spoke for several minutes. When she was finished, she told Beck, “My boss has agreed to check into the availability of the person I’ve requested. At the very least, we’ll have someone by tomorrow.”

  “Great.” He held up the evidence bag with the tape in it. “Too bad we won’t have this ready by then, but the other tape will be available.”

  Dr. Reilly approached with another small bag, which she handed to Mia.

  “Hair. You’ll let me know if it matches?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good.” She turned back to the gurney that held the body. “We want to be able to send her home as soon as we can. I hate to see them stay here for too long. It just doesn’t seem right.”

  “We’ll do our best,” Beck promised. “And I’ll let you know as soon as we have a positive ID.”