Decoherence

by Liana Brooks

  “Dr. Dom,” Ivy said to the room at large. “Doctor? It’s Officer Clemens from New Smyrna.”

  A chubby man with a gleaming bald head wheeled across the room in an oversized office chair. “Officer Clemens! And visitor. They sent me the visitor’s signature, but I couldn’t read this.” Narrowed eyes glared up at Sam accusingly. “With handwriting like that, you better have a Ph.D. Who are you?”

  “Call me MacKenzie,” Sam said, holding out her hand.

  Dom shuddered. “Eww. No. I have spent too much time studying the wealth of biology growing on human flesh.” He looked away in disgust and took a moment to recover. After making a gagging face, he said, “I’d say please come in, but we all know I don’t really want that. But, come in anyway. There’s not much to see.”

  “Have you identified her yet?” Ivy asked.

  “One of my assistants is running the dental work now. Very unusual amalgam.”

  A red flag went up in Sam’s mind. “Can I make a guess about her physical description?” Sam asked. “Female, Latina, long black hair, beaten-­in face, just over average height, below average weight, and under thirty?”

  The ME turned his chair to look at her with focused interest. “Do you want to guess the lotto numbers next?”

  “Miss MacKenzie was hired by Lexie Muñoz’s family to ensure her killer comes to justice,” Ivy said. “She thinks that Lexie was possibly murdered by a serial killer.”

  “If this girl fits the pattern, she’s number ten,” Sam said.

  Dom grimaced. “I was under the impression this was a very open-­and-­shut domestic abuse case. Find the boyfriend, find the liquor, and the case would be closed.”

  Sam shrugged. “That’s what we thought about the other cases. So far, all the victims have been single. But anything is possible.”

  “But not likely,” the ME grumbled. He kicked off the floor, sending his chair sailing into the next room. “This way! Our Jane Doe is in here.”

  Sam walked in and stared at the corpse, who wore a set of loose, navy coveralls with the patches torn off. She pulled on gloves and touched the suit. “Any idea whose uniform this is? One of the garbage companies or something?”

  “No tags, no patches. Once I get her on the table, I can check the other tags, see if there’s anything that gives us a pointer, but right now, they’re just clothes. You can buy coveralls like that at half a dozen stores around here.”

  The fabric felt strange through her gloved fingertips, like it wasn’t quite the right thickness or weight. “How long has she been dead?”

  “Hard to tell,” said Dom. “Her body’s colder than it should be for where we found her, so I’m guessing she was moved.”

  “Where was she found?” Ivy asked.

  “In Carroll Park. A patrol officer discovered her along the jogging track,” Dom said. “There are footprints, but nothing to indicate a struggle.”

  “And there’s not enough blood and her body is the wrong temperature, and there’s a circular breakage pattern on her bones that’s very unusual,” Sam said. Mac needed to be here. They might as well label this girl Jane Three. If the facial reconstruction pulled up her own face again, Sam was going to vomit out of sheer anger. “Skip that. What’s the murder weapon?” She looked over at the silent Dom. “No guesses?”

  “You seem very well informed about this case.”

  “I’ve seen a few like this before.”

  Ivy frowned. “I haven’t, and I checked the records. Even the police database.”

  “Some of them were very, very classified records,” Sam said. “If you have enough money, you can make sure your loved one’s death isn’t fodder for the media doom-­and-­gloom machines.” She pointed to Jane Three. “Murder weapon?”

  “My guess is fists and boots.”

  “Just like the others.”

  Ivy groaned. “Troom has an alibi.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Sam cautioned. “We still need to tie this victim to the others. Unless we can put all of them together with one person, we’ll need to find a weapon, or trace material, or something. Otherwise, we have no case.” And Henry Troom stayed in jail. She looked at Dom again. “You said boots. Did you get a make or style? Manufacturer imprint? Please, I’m begging, tell me it’s a rare doeskin boot hand-­stitched on one remote farm in north Georgia or something. That would do so much to speed this case along.”

  “Well, um, first, it’s a partial imprint,” Dom said. “We matched the bruising to the ridges of a boot, but not one that’s on the regular databases.”

  “Any links to other cases?”

  “One,” Dom said. “A locked case from Alabama District 3 last summer. I put in a request to have the files opened.” He held up a datpad for Sam to look at.

  The temperature of the room dropped a few hundred Kelvin.

  “Do you think they’ll open the record?” Ivy asked.

  Sam shook her head no as Dom said, “Yes.”

  He scowled at her. “I have top secret clearance. I assure you, if they let you look at it, they’ll let me.”

  “If I did see something,” Sam said as she thumbed through the information, “it wouldn’t have been through official channels. Wait, what’s this? Grease on her hands and under her nails? I don’t see an analysis of that listed.”

  “There isn’t one yet,” Dom said. “My tech brought back some data that were just impossible.”

  “How?” Ivy asked.

  “She said the grease had high levels of polychlorinated biphenyl. You can’t even find those in trace amounts in Florida unless she worked on antique machines. Even then, it’s odd. We’re recalibrating the machines and doing a secondary test. We should have a better reading by tomorrow.”

  Ivy’s and Sam’s eyes met. Ivy looked worried.

  “It’ll be soon enough,” Sam said. After all, what’s the absolute worst that could happen, someone else could die? It wasn’t like Mac could get any further away. He was lost in time. Kidnapped by—­probably—­the dead woman whose autopsy she was holding. At least she hoped it was Jane’s autopsy and not hers.

  She rubbed her head, trying to knock the anxiety loose. Being two breaths away from a panic attack wasn’t going to help anything. “Okay. I guess Clemens and I will hit the park. See if anyone knew her or if we can find anyone in the uniform she was wearing. Doc, can I give you my number, get a phone call if you have information?”

  “Do you have clearance?” His button nose twitched in the air like a sanctimonious rabbit from a kid’s cartoon.

  She pulled a pad of paper from her purse and scribbled her number under the contact information for Tickweed Meadow. “Call me. Or I can hack in, check the files, and leave your screensaver set to the kind of pictures that will get your clearance revoked while they drag you to jail.”

  His thin eyebrows went up. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Your security code is 046471. You drive a white Delion Breeze, the 2064 model, and the left-­rear taillight has been out for over a month. You eat rice bowls for lunch every day and two burgers from Swing n’ Snack for dinner.” Sam leaned down to look him in the eye. “Would you like me to keep going?”

  “H-­how do you know this.”

  She smiled. “I know ­people. I know things. It’s my job.” And she had a very good memory for obscure details. The first time she’d met Dom, he’d been enthusiastically showing her around while covertly trying to determine if she was a clone. His password was close enough to her old gym locker combination that she wasn’t likely to forget it.

  “Is there a leak in the CBI?” He sounded genuinely worried.

  Her smile gave nothing away. “Maybe. Or maybe I have better clearance than you think. Do you want to play chicken and see who gets fired first?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he choked back fear. “No. I don’t think that’s n
ecessary. I’ll keep Officer Clemens informed. Degrees of separation and all.”

  “Scapegoats and plausible deniability.” Sam nodded and smacked Ivy’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get to the park before the good citizens trample our evidence. Dom will call when he has more.”

  Ivy hurried after Sam’s long steps. “Where did you get all of that? I . . . I can’t be your scapegoat.”

  “You won’t,” Sam promised, only now realizing how it must have sounded: Break the rules, blame the clone, and dance away without consequence. “I have some friends in the CBI, and this isn’t my first case working with them. That’s kind of why I don’t want to work with them if you catch my drift?” She hoped Ivy did because she was still assembling the lie in her head.

  But Ivy shook her head. “Are they mad at you?”

  “You ever met Feo Petrilli?” Sam asked. “Tall guy, handsome in an Italian Stallion sort of way? Likes to flirt?”

  The pink tinge on Ivy’s cheeks told Sam all she needed to know.

  “Yeah, he and I . . . yeah.” Sam looked at the floor and mentally apologized to Petrilli. “If I can, I want to avoid him this trip.”

  Ivy nodded. “I can understand that. He’s never been bad to me or anything, it’s just . . . has he ever met a woman he didn’t make a play for?”

  “Not that I know of,” Sam said. “Let’s get to the park. I want to see the grounds before we do anything else.” Because Jane Three wasn’t the first unidentified woman to drop out of a cloudless sky into Sam’s life. She just hoped Jane Three was the last.

  Ivy watched Miss MacKenzie circle the crime scene twice without comment. On the third lap, she lost patience. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

  The other woman shrugged. “Do you see anything that indicates this is a crime scene?”

  “The police tape?” Ivy suggested, but since Miss MacKenzie had invited her to enter the crime scene with a look, she stepped forward. The grass was watered by the city sprinkler system, but the drought-­dry earth had greedily drunk every sip of moisture down, leaving the jogging path dry, and the green grass was limp.

  Miss MacKenzie stepped across the tape and stood beside her. “If this is where she died, what would we see?”

  “Blood?”

  “Broken grass. Broken branches. Scuff marks. Mud. If someone dragged her here, there would be drag marks. Maybe even some impressions in the ground.”

  “It’s a dump site, not the original crime scene,” Ivy agreed. “We knew that already. So what do we do?”

  “We widen our search. No one comes from nowhere.”

  “Clones do,” Ivy muttered.

  Miss MacKenzie gave her a sharp look. “You came from a lab, yes, but there was a twisted sort of love behind it.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Yeah? Well, take it from someone whose biological parents dropped her off at a boarding school at age four, clones aren’t the only ones who get forgotten.”

  “You were loved.”

  “Not really,” she said, as they walked down the path. “I was a gimmick for my mother’s career. As soon as she got what she needed from me, she dropped me. It happens.” She didn’t seem bothered by the admission.

  Ivy frowned. “There are no security cameras out here.”

  “Either the victim came to the park on her own and was murdered somewhere out here, or her killer brought her here. Somewhere, there is a sign of one of those two events.”

  “Why here?” Ivy asked, looking around at the trees. “This is a community park, part city-­owned and part paid for by user fees and donors. It’s well lit, heavily used, patrolled by an off-­duty officer. I know the ­people who patrol here. They come to walk the trail to get their workout in and get paid extra to do it in uniform. It’s one of the worst places to dump a body I can think of.”

  Miss MacKenzie nodded in agreement. “Which suggests two things. What are they?”

  “Is this a class?”

  “It’s mentoring,” she said as she brushed a leaf aside to look at the underside. “Come on. Play along.”

  Ivy rolled her eyes and tried to think. She’d audited psychology classes but never had to use them in the field. The CBI took murders. The local PD handled the rest, but all she ever did was ride along. “Maybe the killer wanted her to be found. A, ‘Look at me! I’m here!’ sort of taunt to the police?”

  “Or because the killer threatened the victim before and now wanted to prove they’d won something. It’s common enough with stalkers and domestic abuse.” Miss MacKenzie pointed at something that was little more than a rabbit trail. “Thoughts?”

  “It looks used, but there’s deer here, wild pigs, stray dogs.”

  “Still.” Miss MacKenzie started walking, following the trail of scuffed earth and broken bushes. “The other reason the killer might have left the body here is because they aren’t familiar with the area. The park is next to wildlife land, isn’t it?”

  “Tomoka and Tiger Bay are just north of here. And there’s South Tomoka to the east.”

  “And there’s I-­95 running from Miami to New York, I-­4 headed inland, and 92. All major roads with plenty of traffic. Around here, if you don’t know better, you can turn off the highway and think you’re in the middle of nowhere. If the killer is transient, and they have to be if all these murders are connected, then they could have turned off anywhere, taken an access road.”

  “And failed to notice the lamps and paved trail?” Ivy asked skeptically. “Criminals aren’t that dumb.”

  “Yes they are. Especially if they’re intoxicated, on drugs or the buzz of killing.” Miss MacKenzie stopped as the trail at a gopher tortoise hole. “I hate this. I hate having nothing. Ten crime scenes, and all I have is a psych profile, and a dodgy one at that.”

  Ivy led the way back to the main trail. “You know what we wouldn’t find a trace of? Wheel marks. If I were going to drag a body somewhere, it’s not like I’d throw them over my shoulder and jog out here. We’re over a mile from the main parking lot.”

  Miss MacKenzie raised an eyebrow. “But lamps mean someone needs to get a maintenance truck in.”

  “Which means an access road,” Ivy said. There’s an access point about three hundred meters this way.”

  The path curved, and there was an open space under several aging oaks. There was a rest area with a bench, a flower bed, and several chin-­up bars next to a plaque with the name of the donor. Ivy smiled. “Look at the sandbox. Someone was feeling zen on their workout this morning.” They’d gone and drawn perfect concentric circles in the sand. They’d even gone and trampled down some of the grass.

  The beauty was somewhat marred by what looked like a drunk’s unfortunate encounter with the petunias.

  Miss MacKenzie’s face twisted in disgust and fury.

  “They’re just annuals,” Ivy said. “Flowers like that, they’re ripped out and replanted in a month.”

  But she wasn’t looking at the flowers. She was glaring at the sand art as if it had pulled her hair, stabbed her kitten, and stolen her car.

  “Ma’am?”

  She held up a hand and stalked into the grass. “A gun,” she said reaching between some tree roots and pulling out a dark gray weapon. She sniffed it and nodded. “I bet I know what murder this belongs to, too.”

  Ivy shook her head in confusion. “The victim wasn’t shot, she was beaten. I mean, we need to take it in, but it’s not related to our murder.”

  “Oh, it is. The killer was carrying this but didn’t use it. What does that say about them?” Miss MacKenzie demanded.

  Ivy hesitated. “They had a weapon, but they used their fists? That seems angry to me.”

  “Me too,” she agreed. “And angry ­people make mistakes.”

  Ivy took an evidence bag from her pocket and held it out.

  Miss MacKenzi
e chuckled. “It’s not part of the murder, and it won’t help the investigation.” She tossed the weapon up in her hand.

  “You said it belonged to another crime.”

  “It’s a hunch.”

  “Worth testing the ballistics.”

  Miss MacKenzie shook her head. “Not really.” She waved a hand at Ivy’s protest. “It’s complicated, and the case this might belong to is out of my jurisdiction. If I bring it in, things will get complicated.”

  “Out of your . . .” Ivy’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you were private sector. You don’t have jurisdiction.”

  Her smile was sad and amused all at once. “Yes. That’s a good thought. Run with it.” She tossed the gun in her hand again. “It’s not too heavy, either. Do you want it?”

  “I can’t have a gun.”

  “You can’t legally purchase a projectile weapon or own a long list of guns. I promise, this one isn’t made by any of those manufacturers, and I’m not selling it.” She opened the chamber. “It is missing a bullet, though. How are you at metalworking?”

  “What?”

  “You won’t be able to find bullets for this gun anywhere in the Commonwealth.” Miss MacKenzie held it out to her. “If you learn to make your own bullets and always wear gloves when you load it and clean it, you should be fine.”

  She stared at the strange weapon. “What do you mean you can’t find ammunition for it in the Commonwealth? Where does it come from? Where do you come from?”

  Miss MacKenzie didn’t answer right away. As Ivy grew impatient, Sam held up a hand. “Hold on, I’m trying to think of an honest answer that won’t significantly shorten your life.”

  “Because you’ll need to kill me if you tell me? That’s a bit trite.”

  “I don’t kill ­people,” she said. “I drive them mad and arrest them. Or I arrest them and drive them mad. Sometimes the order gets switched up. Either way, they live. But there are ­people who will kill to protect certain secrets, or to own them. Since I’m not in the habit of endangering ­people without a reason, let’s try this: You might need this, and I’m basing that off a hunch.”