by Burton, Mary
“Legal issues up the ass. But if the heir’s sainted widow moves the graves, there’s less fuss. People feel for her and they let her do the job. So far she’s only had that nut Dr. Heckman to handle.”
“You put Ms. Barrington in a tough spot.”
“She’s a big girl who negotiated a good price and insisted we close the sale immediately.”
“When did you close?”
“Early February. And she didn’t waste a day cashing my check.”
Vega rested a tanned hand on his hip. “Why the delay?”
“State regulations. Even a saint has to jump through hoops when she wants to move a grave. Once she received approval, our deal was she had thirty days to finish the job or give the money back.”
“Any idea who those unknown graves might belong to?”
That seemed to amuse him. “How the hell would I know? I bought the property, not the history.”
“Why buy it?”
“Great piece of land. Location. The river. It doesn’t get much sweeter.”
“I understand you made an offer to Adrianna Barrington a month before her husband died.”
“I read the papers. According to the newspapers, Thornton was in an irreversible coma. I did a little digging and found that he had no other blood family. A young wife with no lasting ties to the Thornton family was the sole heir. Expensive nursing home. Family debts. All added up to a sale. The problem was she couldn’t sell while her husband was alive.”
“And he died a month later.”
“Lucky for us all.”
“You’re keeping the house?” Vega said.
“If it were up to me, I’d bulldoze the place, but my wife has an idea to restore it. She has a vision of landing a spread in House and Garden.” Mazur rested a manicured hand on a worn belt. “And I’ve got to admit that living in that house gives me a measure of satisfaction.”
“Why’s that?”
“Poor kid from south side of Chicago makes good. Has the fancy old house and young hot wife to prove it. I plan to rename the place and start my own dynasty.”
Gage sniffed. “You aren’t fond of the rich, are you?”
“Everything I have, I took for myself. No one gave me shit, parents included.”
Six hours later the sun had sunk in the sky and the police had turned on portable floodlights, powered by a generator, knowing darkness would soon follow. Tess’s back ached. And her stomach grumbled painfully for food.
She and Alex had been working over the burial site, meticulously removing and sifting through dirt. They’d excavated about twenty-five inches around the top portion of the skeleton. The body now appeared to rest on what looked like an earthen platform.
The remains were completely skeletonized. All the flesh had decomposed. With the head, shoulders, and torso now exposed, Alex theorized that the body had been buried on its back, legs extended, left hand positioned over the chest, and the skull turned to the right.
Tess rose from her knees and stretched the soreness from her lower back. A touch of resentment burned as she watched Alex hunched over the skull. She was running on empty while these long hours had energized him.
God, but she’d kill to escape to the forensics van to make a hot cup of coffee and grab a handful of crackers. However, to admit she couldn’t keep up with him was galling.
“How about a break?” His gaze remained on the bones.
Okay, she could add mind reader to his list of annoyances. “Nope. I’m good. I can keep going.”
“I’m starving.” He laid his trowel down, mentally seemed to note its position, and rose.
On cue her stomach grumbled. “If you insist. The closest place to get food around here is ten miles down the road.”
“I brought a cooler.”
She raised a brow, not sure if she was impressed or annoyed. “You think of everything.”
“Usually.”
Tess and Alex walked in silence to his car. He popped the trunk. The contents were all neatly organized: blanket, cooler, change of clothes, MREs, even a couple of large flashlights. “Looks like you packed for a camping trip.”
He reached past her, his shoulder brushing her arm as he pulled out the cooler. “I never know how long I’ll have to remain in the field.”
“Let’s head to the forensics van. I can make us hot coffee.”
“Excellent.”
They climbed in the back of the van. It was six by twenty and looked like a mini command center with cabinets on either wall, counters to process evidence, and a television mounted behind the front cab.
Alex’s blond hair was in need of a trim and the bangs drifted over his forehead into his eyes, which forced him to push it back with his long fingers every few minutes. He wore a white button-down, pressed khakis, and of all things a pocket protector that held three ink pens. His body was lean and muscled, signs he kept himself in shape.
Tess pulled coffee from the cabinet, filled the coffee machine filter, and poured water from a gallon jug. Within seconds, the coffee perked.
Alex handed her a sub sandwich wrapped in wax paper. “It’s turkey on whole wheat, no mayo.”
Her stomach growled painfully and she had to laugh. “I’d eat bark off a tree right now.”
“I thought you weren’t hungry?”
“I lied.” She bit into the sandwich. It tasted like heaven. She ate half of it before she stopped and poured coffee for them both. With a little food in her belly and hot coffee in hand, she felt almost human. “So how much longer is this going to take?”
“We should have the second half of her removed in the next few hours.”
Tess tensed. “You said her.”
“Yes. Definitely female.”
Tess picked at the rim of her Styrofoam cup. Up until now she’d not asked for his opinion so that he could focus on his work. “What else can you tell so far?”
“At this point beyond sex and race, it’s just going to be the basics.” He sniffed and took another sip of coffee. “Good coffee.”
“Other than toast, my one culinary talent.”
Alex, she sensed, catalogued the detail in some dusty corner of his brain along with the trillion other facts he had stored. “Miller’s guys took a chunk out of her skull when they dug into the site.”
Her nerves settling thanks to more food, her sense of control grew. “How can you know that?”
“By the bone. The edges are white, freshly cut. If the cut had been old they’d be discolored like the rest of the body.”
Tess could count on one hand the facts she’d confirmed about Alex Butler. One. Alex despised unanswered questions. Two. His quest for truth bordered on obsessive. Three. One and two made him one of the best medical examiners in the country. Four. She realized there was no four. That’s all she knew about him. “How do you know the body is female?”
“Based on the skull.” He sipped his coffee. “The brow ridge isn’t as pronounced or as thick as a man’s. We menfolk are a little more Neanderthal than you gals.”
She picked a stray piece of lettuce off the waxed paper and ate it. “My ex-boyfriend proved that theory.”
“An ex-boyfriend? Now that’s a first.”
“What do you mean?”
“All you ever talk about is work.”
“It’s about all I do these days.” She tipped her cup toward him. “No one’s heard many details about you.”
Alex shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
“Wives? Exes? Kids?”
“None of the above.”
Pleased for reasons she couldn’t explain, she set her sandwich down. “So what do you do for fun? You can’t be all work and no play.”
“I hike. I hang with my brothers. Watch old movies.”
“You have brothers?”
He lifted a brow. “I wasn’t hatched in a lab, Tess.”
The hint of humor had her cringing slightly. That had been one of the theories she’d floated around about him at the Christmas party last year. Had it gott
en back to him or was the word choice a coincidence? She cleared her throat. “Your brothers live around here?”
“Sure do. All three are with the FBI.”
“All as smart as you?”
“They’re smart enough.”
“Your kind of smart?”
“Close.”
“So do you all read math and physics books for fun?”
“Sometimes.”
A joke danced on the tip of her tongue, but she decided against sharing. She was beginning to feel a little comfortable around him and that was just too weird for words. She shifted back to work. “What else about the victim?”
“She was Caucasian.”
“You know this because?”
“The bones between the nose and chin are flat and the nasal tall and narrow. If she’d been African American, her skull would have been more rounded. And if she’d been of Asian descent the face would be wider, flatter, and the cheekbones would be more prominent.”
“What about her age?”
“Rough guess…and I do mean rough, I’d say late twenties. The fusing of the cranial bones is almost complete but not as complete as someone in their late thirties.” He drew his finger along the top of his own skull to demonstrate. “I’ll know more when I get the rest of her unearthed.”
“How?”
He pushed off from the counter. This close she could smell the earthy blend of dirt and his clean scent. “The pubic symphysis, the point were the right and left portions of the pubic bone meet, undergoes gradual and subtle changes as we age. It’s bumpier during the teen years and smoothes in the twenties. By forty it erodes.”
All his description started to paint a picture of the victim in her mind. A twentysomething female. She wondered what her hair color might have been or what she did for a living or for fun. “How long has she been in the ground?”
“Not more than a few years.”
“So she’s definitely not some kind of servant from the past that might have worked for the Thorntons.”
“Definitely not. The bones still have a greasy feel. We call that green bone. If she’d been belowground a hundred, fifty, even twenty years, the bone would have been drier.”
“How long does green bone last?”
“If she were on the surface, a year or less. But she was about twelve inches belowground, so a couple of years would be reasonable.”
“There’s an odor. Like candle wax.”
“That’s residue from the bone marrow. That can last several years.”
Tess tapped a long index finger against her coffee cup. “So we have a white female, late twenties, dead less than five years, and I’d say she was, what…five-six?”
“Give or take.”
“Cause of death?”
“That I’m not certain. Miller’s men cracked the side skull up pretty bad. But I did try to put the pieces together and I think there’s a bullet hole. I’ll figure that out at the lab.”
“I’ve sifted every inch of dirt you’ve given me. No bullets so far. But it could very well be under the body.”
“We’ll know when we get the bones removed.”
“I’d like to stay close to this case. You know bone better than most and I’m curious.”
“Sure.”
She gulped the last of her coffee. “Do you think there is a second body?”
“Definitely.”
She bit into her sandwich and let her mind wander to the killer’s motivation. “God, why bury them out here?”
“Logical. Three to five years ago, this land was deserted, and the chances of it being sold minimal.”
She set her half-eaten sandwich down. “I wonder if he shot her here.”
“Hard to say.”
Tess stared out the open back door of the van into the dark. “She must have been terrified.”
“No doubt.”
“Don’t you ever think about the victims? The people they were before death?”
“I may consider habits or behavior as it relates to the cause of death, but beyond that, no, I don’t think about them. It’s pointless.”
Dr. Butler’s logic was useful but often annoying. “Do you ever try to put yourself in the victim’s mind? See what they saw last?”
Alex’s gaze settled on her. “The bodies, these bones—they’re just evidence. To think of them as people is not productive.”
“I know that. And I tell myself that a lot.” She picked at a piece of sandwich crust. “But I can’t think that way.”
“You better or you’ll go insane.”
Chapter Eight
Tuesday, September 26, 9:00 p.m.
Gage closed his phone and he turned down the tree-lined driveway that wound into the woods toward the Wellses’ house. He’d called Dr. Butler and gotten an update on the body. The skeleton had been excavated and was now being moved bone by bone to a collection of bags. No bullets had been found and Alex and Tess were calling it a day in the next hour. A little rest and both promised to return first thing in the morning.
Gage drew in a breath. He’d told Vega not to assume they’d found Rhonda Minor, but right now he’d bet a paycheck they had. More than ever, he believed that Rhonda and Craig had been having an affair, she threatened trouble before the wedding, and he killed her. The trick was proving it. Thornton was dead and there’d be no trial, but solving this case would give Rhonda’s family some measure of peace.
Losing someone hurt like hell, but the not knowing was worse. Those four days Jessie had been missing had been the worst in his life. Each moment of each day his gut turned as if he’d swallowed cut glass and his head pounded as if an anvil kept striking. There’d been no sleep. No eating. No peace.
Even now, remembering made his insides clench.
He parked on the street in front of a neatly kept white trilevel and checked the address in his notes. This was the home of Dwayne and Marie Wells. He’d called ahead and asked if he could interview them and they’d readily agreed.
Gage moved to the front door, lighted by a single bulb that sent light pooling on the stoop. He rang the bell.
Seconds later the lights in the living room clicked on and the door pulled open. The man standing on the other side of the screened door was in his midsixties and had a potbelly and gray hair cut in a crew cut. He wore jeans and a thick blue sweatshirt.
Gage pulled out his badge. “I’m Detective Hudson. I called earlier.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, nodding. “I’m Dwayne Wells. Please come in.” He pushed open the door.
Gage stepped inside to a neatly kept living room furnished with a green tufted sofa, matching wing-back chairs, and an upright piano. From the kitchen, the sound of water running in a sink stopped and a woman appeared in the kitchen door wiping her hands on a checkered cloth. “Ma’am.”
Dwayne held out his hand, inviting Gage to sit. “Detective, this is my wife Marie.”
He nodded. “We met at the Thornton estate today.”
Marie came into the room. “Can I get you a cola or some sweet tea?”
Gage nodded his thanks. “I appreciate that, but no, thank you.”
“Water?”
“No, ma’am.” Marie reminded him of his own mother. She’d keep offering until he accepted something.
She looked disappointed and moved into the living room to stand beside her husband. “It’s just awful what they found out there today. Just awful.”
The three sat, the Wellses on the sofa and Gage across from them in a wing chair.
“So you’ve known the Thornton family long?” Gage said.
“Since we were both teenagers. My first job was tending the property. Marie got her start there cleaning for the family. That’s how we met.”
“And you own a moving company?”
“That’s right, with my boy, Ben. We do mostly specialized work now. Move art and fine antiques. Travel all up and down the East Coast. My boy oversees most of the day-today operations. I’m doing the paperwork these days. R
uined my back about five years ago.”
“How’d you get into that line of work?”
“Through the Thorntons, of course. The old man brought me to work in his gallery. Art needed to be moved and I learned how to do it right. From there the business just grew.”
“That specialized work keep you busy?”
“We do just fine. In the last year it’s been a bit slow—the new owner of the Thornton Gallery is farming work out to other companies. But Adrianna started calling us to do some work for her clients. Most of them are rich folks and the furniture they have is expensive, almost like art in some cases.”
Gage flipped open his notebook. “What can you tell me about the Thornton family?”
Dwayne and Marie looked at each other, their eyes softening with clear fondness.
“They was kinda like local royalty,” Dwayne said. “The family’s been in the county for a century and a half. And as I recall, that house was built on tobacco money. Later they switched to banking. Then Robert Thornton’s daddy got them into the art business.”
“Rich folk from way back,” Gage said with a grin.
“You bet,” Dwayne said.
“What do you think about Adrianna selling?”
Marie sighed. “I don’t think she had much choice. She hasn’t said anything, of course. She’s too loyal to the Thorntons, but the last couple of generations haven’t been the best or smartest workers. Craig, his father and grandfather liked to throw parties and live it up well. Craig and his daddy didn’t always choose wisely when it came to art and ended up selling many pieces at a loss.”
“How do you know?”
“They talked. I listened.”
Dwayne shook his head. “Robert did his best to make that boy in his image.”
Gage flipped the pages of his notebook. “What can you tell me about Robert Thornton?”
“Well, he was book smart. And like I said, loved art,” Dwayne said. “Stayed in the city a lot while his wife Frances stayed on the estate. She liked to garden and have friends up for long weekends.”
“Craig their only child?”
“Yes. Born to them after they’d been married about eight years. You never saw a daddy as proud as Robert Thornton when Craig was born. That boy never did without once.”