by Mary Stone
Six months ago, Beth might have bit back the words she was about to speak. She might have kept them to herself for fear of the despondency they would bring to her granddaughter.
Now, however, she knew how silly such a line of thought was.
“You know, Winter,” Beth started, raising an index finger. “Your mother used to do the same thing. She’d stay up with Jack until twelve on a school night watching Star Trek. They’d always sneak out to the living room after I went to bed, like I didn’t know what they were doing. And then the next day, they’d both be a couple zombies.”
“Really?” Though there was a wistful tinge in Winter’s eyes, her smile widened, and Beth knew she had made the right decision.
“Really,” she answered. “Your grandpa and your mom were a couple of nerds. When Jean was old enough, Jack bought her all the Lord of the Rings books. I don’t know how many months it was, it might’ve even been a year, but they’d walk around talking to one another in Elvish. It was the most ridiculous, adorable thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I had no idea.” The sound of Winter’s laugh filled Beth’s heart with joy. “She must have hidden it pretty well.”
“I’m not so sure about that, honey.” Beth waved a dismissive hand. “She married a college professor.”
Winter covered her mouth to stifle a burst of laughter.
Beth wasn’t sure how long they sat at the circular table while they recalled stories of Jeanette and Bill, of Jeanette and Jack, or of all three. But by the time she made her way around the living room and kitchen to shut off the lights for the night, she felt like an impossible burden had been lightened.
I never wanted any of my patients to die. To watch them close their eyes that one last time was a testament to my failure, and in some ways, I mourned their loss.
Human beings were fragile creatures, their lives fleeting and ultimately insignificant. But every time I watched one of them die under my care, I thought of what they could have been. Of the greatness they could have achieved, and the lasting effect they could have had.
Jensen Leary had shown promise, but promise didn’t always equal progress. And in Jensen’s case, I suspected he had simply not been equipped with the right genetic profile.
A person’s genetic makeup was responsible for so many of their physical attributes. I was sure there had to be a marker that determined whether or not they had the capacity to develop the same abnormalities as Robert Ladwig’s Patient Zero.
Unfortunately, Jensen had not been in possession of the ever-elusive marker.
With a sigh, I pulled down the plastic face shield I used during autopsies.
There were a number of television shows that depicted surgeons as a studious lot who listened to classical melodies while they tended to both the living and the dead. And sure, there were some of my colleagues who played Beethoven or some other dead man’s compositions while they prepared for surgery.
But, to be honest, I’d always thought it made them look pretentious.
Just because I had the letters “MD” behind my name didn’t make me a classical music aficionado, and just because I could remove a brain tumor from a six-year-old kid’s head didn’t mean I could tell Beethoven apart from any other famous composer. As far as I was concerned, Sebastian Bach was the front man for an ‘80s hair band, not a classical composer.
I used different playlists for different occasions. For surgeries performed on the living, specifically in a hospital, I preferred upbeat tunes.
Though I was sure it drove the other doctors and nurses insane, my latest preference was Korean pop. Anything more down-tempo than K-Pop was not conducive to the right train of thought for surgery, in my opinion.
Autopsies, on the other hand. Those were different. Sure, cutting into a dead man’s brain to discern what had led to his untimely death took precision, but precision was second nature to me. I was about to turn fifty-three, and I’d been performing surgeries since I was in medical school.
When I conducted an autopsy, I liked to take a stroll down memory lane. The follow-up song was different each time, but I always started the procedure with one of my favorite songs to come out of the ‘90s, “Kiss from a Rose.”
The process was long and messy, and if it had not been for the mix of tunes from the ‘90s and the present, I didn’t think I could stand to finish it all in one sitting.
In addition to examining the brain and a handful of other vital organs to check for damage and abnormalities, I had to remove any pieces or parts that could be used to easily identify the poor son of a bitch.
In the past, that had only meant teeth and surgical implants. Now, pacemakers and other devices were all outfitted with serial numbers that could make identifying the deceased as easy as if they had been buried with their driver’s license. Killers had been identified with less, I reminded myself.
I wasn’t a killer, but I knew better than to think the police would agree. They were incapable of stepping back to view the bigger picture. They couldn’t tell the forest from the trees.
The strongest acids were monitored heavily due to their use in explosive devices, but lye was still just as easy to buy as plant fertilizer. Though potent, lye by itself or with water was not quite enough to eliminate human bone. Methods existed to speed up the process of dissolution, but they required much more water along with large, expensive pieces of equipment that would raise more than a few eyebrows.
For the time being, I’d have to make do with a fifty-five-gallon drum, a few pounds of lye, and a healthy dash of water. It was still risky. For a human skeleton to completely decompose in such circumstances, it would take at least four years for no DNA or RNA to remain. Which was the end goal, needless to say.
So, I had to be clever and bury the barrels in places they wouldn’t be discovered. As luck would have it, I was very clever.
Even the men and women in charge of the larger operation would never know where I buried the bodies.
There was one person I trusted with that knowledge.
Myself.
16
Brad Rathbun thought he would head to the construction site at the edge of town like he did every day. He thought he’d ride around in a Bobcat to dig space for future basements like he always did. He’d been in the construction business for more than twenty years, and he had seen almost every little oddity and quirk that came with the occupation.
Once, about six years back, he and his crew had even come across a body.
It had been a skeleton, and the old-timey dress and shoes were stained and frayed. According to the medical examiner, the lady had been dead for over a hundred years.
A single gunshot to the back of the head left little doubt that she’d been murdered. Brad looked up the old case on occasion, but they still hadn’t identified the poor woman, much less discovered her killer.
After that, he was sure he had seen everything, but on this ordinary Tuesday morning, he was about to be proven wrong.
A flicker of movement snapped his attention away from the panel of gear shifts and controls and up to the windshield. Pete’s neon yellow vest glimmered in the sunlight as he waved his arms. He looked like he was making an attempt to fly away, but Brad curbed his amused chuckle as soon as he saw the man’s expression.
“What is it?” Leaning his head out the window, he glanced from Pete and then over to the new guy, Will.
“I don’t know,” Will answered with a shrug. “Pete, what the hell’s going on?”
“There’s something here. You hit it, Rathbun! I think you dented it, but I can’t tell if it’s broke open or not.” Pete hopped up from the wide, shallow dirt pit and made his way to stand beside Will. “Back that thing up, will you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Brad muttered.
He and Pete had been friends for years, and his feigned exasperation was all in good fun. Turning the key over to kill the engine, Brad climbed down to the grass.
“It’s a barrel,” Will announced as Brad returned. “Fi
fty-five gallon, by the looks of it.”
Brad raised his hardhat to scratch at his sweaty head. “You think it’s full of oil?”
“Shut up, guys.” Pete reached into the pocket of his well-worn jeans to produce his phone. “Nothing good ever comes in a fifty-five-gallon drum buried out on the edge of town. I’m calling the cops.”
Pete was normally a jovial guy, and his grave tone was more than enough to set Brad and Will on edge.
As it turned out, this Tuesday morning was anything but ordinary.
Three weeks earlier, Aiden had come to the conclusion that Justin Black was a sociopath. And three weeks earlier, Bree and Winter had hit a brick wall in their pursuit of Justin’s whereabouts. For three weeks, the only reason Aiden went home was to sleep.
His time hadn’t been spent chasing after Jaime Peterson or Justin Black. He’d bounced from case to case in his own department as he provided much-needed insight to the members of the BAU.
For three weeks, he’d done his damn job, and that was all he’d done.
Even after all the work they’d put in to find just a trace of evidence to lead them to Justin, Aiden had only crossed paths with Noah Dalton on a handful of occasions. And on none of them had he felt it necessary to strike up a conversation.
Unlike Winter’s disappearance after Kilroy’s death, she had left them all with a brief email to announce her absence. The explanation was half-assed, but he figured it was better than nothing.
Before the login screen on his computer had even finished loading, a shadow of movement behind the closed blinds of the door was followed by a sharp clatter as the visitor knocked.
“It’s unlocked,” he called.
As the door creaked open, he reached for his usual cup of coffee. When he swiped at air, he was abruptly reminded that he had not bothered to stop at a café on his way to the office. In the interest of saving a few minutes, he had convinced himself that he could subsist on the breakroom muck until he had a chance to walk to the coffeehouse down the street.
At the thought of the bitter brew provided for free in the office, he wondered what the hell he had been thinking.
He felt the corner of his mouth turn down in a scowl, and when the morning visitor stepped into the dim room, the expression of distaste deepened.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, SAC Osbourne?” His tone was laden with sarcasm.
He might not have had a personal issue with Max Osbourne at the beginning of summer, but a month had passed since their pointed conversation about Winter’s absence.
Though he would never admit it to Max—or anyone, for that matter—the seasoned SAC’s words about Aiden’s behavior toward Winter had hit a nerve. And unflattering observations only hit a nerve with Aiden when they were accurate.
A twitch of amusement passed over the man’s lined face as he took a seat in front of the polished, wooden desk.
“Good morning to you, too, Parrish.”
Leaning back in his chair, Aiden crossed his arms over his black suit jacket as he fixed Max with a flat look. “Good morning, SAC Osbourne. Now, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Right down to brass tacks. That’s one thing I’ve always liked about you.” For emphasis, Max held up a manila folder before setting it down in front of Aiden.
“What’s this? A case file?” He flashed Max a questioning look before he flipped to the first page.
An autopsy report with more blank spaces than filled. Beneath the diagram were a handful of glossy, eight-by-ten photographs of a human skeleton. Well, the majority of a human skeleton. The bones were brittle and worn, almost like they had been retrieved from an archaeological dig site. Flashes of memory poured through Aiden’s mind as he shifted through the folder’s contents.
“This is the new one.” Max’s voice snapped Aiden’s attention away from the picture as the man produced a folder nearly identical to the first.
This folder, however, held even less information than the other. Rather than a skeleton, the solo photograph showed a fifty-five-gallon drum amidst a heap of fresh earth.
Tapping a finger on the newer folder, he shifted his gaze back up to Max. “How old is this?”
“Found on Tuesday morning. So, about twenty-four hours since discovery. That’s why there aren’t any autopsy charts or pictures of the body. We don’t have them yet.”
“All right. Now, aside from the fifty-five-gallon drums, what else do these two cases have in common? Disposing of a body in a barrel isn’t exactly unique. The cartels and the mafia all like to dump bodies in barrels like this, so what’s to say this isn’t some cartel shit?”
“That first one, I guess you didn’t get to the back of it. You’re right, Parrish. You usually are.” Max didn’t pause long enough for Aiden to soak up the compliment. “Cartels and Italian crime families do like their barrels, but they also like to leave calling cards. Warnings for other gangs not to fuck with them. There was nothing like that at either of these sites, and considering who worked on the first one, I’d say it’s a safe bet that organized crime doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Who worked it?” Even as he asked the question, he already knew. Even so, he turned to the agents’ notes at the back of the file.
“You and Agent Stafford,” Max answered.
“Thirteen years ago.” Aiden glanced up at the SAC and then back down to the chicken scratches he recognized as Bree’s handwriting. “Stafford was the case agent. Shit, we never even figured out who the victim was. Based on the fact that her name’s still listed as Jane Doe, it doesn’t look like much has changed.”
“It hasn’t,” Max admitted. “But it might now. I just got word from the ME’s office that your John Doe there has the same precise marks on his bones as Jane Doe. Some of them are even in the same spots. And, just like Jane Doe, someone cut open his damn head.”
Aiden nodded, remembering the marks vividly.
“I’m bringing it to you first because I figured you’d want to take it,” Max went on. “Stafford’s already on board, and I’m going to assign a couple more of my people to it too. Because whoever the hell is doing this has a lot of experience doing it, and I sincerely doubt that these are the only two bodies like this out there. Sheriff already handed it over to us. They don’t have the resources to identify bodies in this state of decomp.”
The golden light from Aiden’s desk lamp glinted off the silver band of Max’s watch as he raised his arm to check the time. “Fifteen minutes, Parrish. Downstairs, in the briefing room. Provided you want in on this, that is.”
With a self-deprecating chortle, Aiden stacked the folders to hand them back to Max. “You know the answer to that, Osbourne. I’ll see you down there.”
“Oh, real quick,” Max started, glancing back to Aiden as he pulled open the glass and metal door. “Agent Black is back for good starting today. Stafford ran out to get a cake, even though I told her not to. Hope you like German chocolate, because apparently, that’s Agent Black’s favorite.”
He ignored the cold creep of adrenaline as he nodded. “German chocolate is good.”
“Great. See you in a few.”
In the minutes he had to spare before the trip down to VC, he drank a cup of breakroom coffee as fast as he dared. The brew tasted just as foul as he remembered, and he mentally vowed never to make the same mistake again. After fishing a piece of gum from a desk drawer, he made his way to the VC briefing room.
Like they were guided by a laser, Winter’s eyes snapped over to him as soon as he stepped through the doorway. He offered her a practiced smile and nod before he took a seat beside Bree.
When Noah Dalton walked into the room, Aiden didn’t miss the taller man’s eyes go wide as he spotted Winter.
Apparently, Winter’s return was a surprise to everyone. Everyone other than Max, at least.
Brian Camp and Miguel Vasquez filtered in not long after Noah, but as soon as Aiden caught a glimpse of the next attendee, he purposefully averted his gaze. There
was a light clatter as Sun Ming eased the door closed behind herself, but he didn’t look back to make note of her arrival.
Dropping a little paper plate into the trash can at the front of the room, Max dusted off his hands and glanced around.
“Looks like that’s everyone,” he said. “This case is going to be anything but, so I’ll try to keep this briefing short. Yesterday morning, a construction crew building new houses at the edge of the city was digging up a lot to start laying foundation.” Max paused to press a button on the remote in his hand.
From where it was projected onto the whiteboard at the man’s back, the dark earth and the navy-blue drum seemed washed out and faded.
“A fifty-five-gallon barrel buried underground,” Miguel remarked. “Never a precursor to anything good.”
“It sure isn’t, Agent Vasquez,” Max replied. “In all my years with the bureau, I’ve never gotten a call from the local PD to tell me about a barrel they dug up and cracked open that was full of candy. I’m still holding out hope, but it’s looking less and less likely as the years go by.”
Vasquez’s tanned skin darkened even more. “No doubt, sir,” he said with a little salute thrown in.
“Anyway, I’m sure no one’s surprised that there was a decomposed body in that drum. The Haz-Mat people geared up and went in to check it out after one of the guys at the construction site mentioned a nasty smell. And it’s a good thing they did because John Doe’s body had been doused in lye.”
No one said a word, but Aiden felt more than saw the grimaces.
“To say it was a mess is a serious understatement. I don’t know how they did it, but they got what was left in that barrel to the ME’s office. They’re still processing the scene, trying to find something that whoever put John Doe there might’ve left behind, but so far it doesn’t look promising.”
