“We held off until you got your first look,” she offered. “Since she’s opened up, we didn’t want to disturb any of the organs.”
Again, he was happy with his team.
They were damn good at their jobs, even when they thought he wouldn’t be there to work.
Without hesitation, the two men began digging around in the remains. It was a tight fit for all four of their hands. The woman on the table wasn’t large, and in fact, she looked like a teenager. It wasn’t lost on either man that she’d died way too soon because of a brutal life.
“What a terrible waste,” Chris admitted.
Doctor Perette shrugged. “When you live by the sword, you die by it.”
Elizabeth shook her head. This is why Christopher Leonard was so damn good at his job. After all these years, he still had that one thing that many ME’s lost after years of cutting into countless victims.
Compassion.
In fact, her whole team had it. From Callen, to Ethan, and right down to the techs, they felt for the dead. That’s why they fought so hard to give them justice.
This helped her in ways they’d never understand. When she wanted to quit, she forgot about this. She forgot that if she walked away, there would be one less person caring about the dead.
Tony had been right.
This was her calling.
It was her cross to bear, even when it felt like it was too heavy to carry on.
This was who she was meant to be.
“You have to care,” Chris stated to the doctor. “Once they stop being people, you stop finding justice.”
The man shrugged. “Let’s just do our job.”
Elizabeth said nothing. This was part of the process. The MEs would need a little time to do their thing. While they did, she had other people to torment. As their head tech moved around the room, doing her job, she motioned to Merry.
The woman glanced over.
Elizabeth decided to bust her ass. The woman was all cheery and smiles. In the morgue, that meant one thing. Cupid had hit the target, and someone had gotten lucky—and she didn’t mean by winning the lottery or catching some shiny beads.
Her head tech had bagged a Native detective.
‘You have a hickey,’ she mouthed, as she pointed to her own neck.
The woman’s hand went over her throat in horror.
Elizabeth started laughing at her reaction. It was priceless, and that was saying a lot. Merry was generally cool and collected at work.
At the sound of her laughter, everyone looked over.
“Sorry, I was having a private conversation in my head. You know how it is when the crazy gets you.”
Merry hustled away to look in a mirror.
“Okay, Doc and Doctor, what do you have?”
The older ME cleared his voice. “First, I would like to say that I’m running this. I was asked to come back.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest.
“It’s okay, Lyzee. I’ll let the doctor take the lead. I’m just glad to be cleared.”
She looked at her husband.
This was the mess she didn’t have time for, and he’d added to her stress. She gave him the ‘I’m a very unhappy wife’ look. It screamed of sexual abstinence and no frilly lingerie until the turn of the next century.
He got the not so subtle hint.
This was just one more issue with working with your spouse. When it was good, it was very very good. When it was bad…
Yeah, it sucked.
“You’ll both be equals on this one, gentlemen. We need both of you,” Blackhawk offered. “Your coming back wasn’t a sign that you’re going to boss Elizabeth’s team around. Doctor Leonard has full reign over them. They’re his team. We value your input, but we’re not going to play morgue hierarchy.”
It seemed to mollify everyone, including the angry woman wearing a gun. In the end, that was his main goal. He didn’t need a pissed off wife running around New Orleans.
She glanced at her watch, gauging how much time she’d given them.
Now it was time to do her thing.
“Okay, time’s up. What do we have?” Elizabeth asked.
While Chris wasn’t shocked, the other ME certainly was. He wasn’t accustomed to dealing with Elizabeth Blackhawk, or anyone even close to her caliber.
The fun was about to begin.
If you couldn’t keep up with the big dogs, you shouldn’t come into the yard. Working for her was like running a hardcore marathon. She didn’t let you take a break, and if you weren’t puking by the end, she didn’t work you hard enough. The city ME was in for one hell of a day.
“Tick tock,” she stated.
It was clear Elizabeth wasn’t kidding. She wanted details right away—not on anyone else’s timeframe.
“I’ll have my preliminary answers in about three to four hours when I’ve completed everything,” Doctor Perette stated. “Then I’ll be more than happy to revisit this conversation with you. Until then, you’ll have to be patient.”
All the techs started laughing as Elizabeth sat on a silver morgue table swinging her boot-clad feet.
Patient and Elizabeth weren’t two words you’d ever use in the same sentence. If you did, she’d kick your ass.
“Oh, by all means, Doctor. I’ll just sit here, apply some lipstick, and look damn pretty while you take your sweet old time. Who cares if the killer is escalating or screwing with us. Your well worded report is my first priority.”
He glanced up.
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Yes. Know how you can tell?” she asked.
“How?”
“Team?” she asked.
They all raised their hands. She randomly picked one of the male techs. “Thomas, how do you know I’m being sarcastic?”
“She’s talking.”
Ethan started laughing. It was absolutely true.
“Now that we’ve cleared that up, how about we start our damn jobs? Time is a wasting, and I have a lunatic to find.”
Doctor Perette muttered something under his breath.
She didn’t even have to refute his comments. They all knew what was coming. If the man couldn’t handle the fire, she would deal with the one who could.
“Christopher, make me happy.”
He didn’t hesitate to give her exactly what she wanted.
Truth be told, he was more than happy to do what she asked. He was so damn glad to be back to work, that he wouldn’t even put up a fight.
It was worth it to break his rules.
“Her liver is gone, and she has the same wounds as the last two women. Since he cut open her clothes, by the looks of the heels, and the length of that skirt, chances are you have yourself another lady of the night.”
Elizabeth waited for some Miss Kitty comment, but then she realized Tony wasn’t there.
“Hey, where’s my bone guy?” she asked. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with him running amuck in the city, especially since there are all those cemeteries above the ground. You know how he gets.”
Yeah, they all did.
Blackhawk had it covered.
“Believe it or not, Elizabeth, he’s out buying beetles and not on some cemetery scavenger hunt,” stated Ethan. “I messaged him when we found her, and he was all excited. Apparently, there is a specific beetle native to this area that he wants to try out.”
Chris and Elizabeth looked at each other, as if they were sharing some private conversation.
When they laughed, Ethan had to ask.
“What exactly did I say that was so amusing? I’m pretty sure that beetles aren’t funny.”
“Did he say they were for the body or for him? Is he going to eat them?” she asked.
That horrified Ethan.
For that to even be a possibility was probably the grossest thing he’d heard all day, and he was standing in a morgue with a dead hooker.
“Uh, I hope not. Why? Has he been known to do things like that on a regular basis?”
Chris started laughing as he rooted around in the woman’s gut. “Elizabeth and I had a case once where he wanted to see what they tasted like. Apparently, the smaller the beetle, the more like popcorn.”
All the techs made the same ‘ewwww’ sound.
Ethan, in this case, had to agree with them.
“I’ll make sure he’s getting them for the body. He’ll have to snack on bugs on his own time, and not on the FBI dime. I’m not sure how to even do the paperwork on beetle snacks.”
She snorted as she whipped out a text to someone. “Spoken like the money man.”
When Ethan’s phone vibrated, he pulled it from his pocket to read the message.
‘I love you. Thank you for this. He needed his family and I won’t forget what you did for him today. You are his family too. We all are. He’s going to be okay because of what you did for him.’
Blackhawk glanced up and smiled at his wife. She needed them too. He saw that now.
‘I’m sorry I doubted you. I see that you need them just as much. I love you. Please forgive me, baby. Sometimes, I lose sight of the forest through the trees.’
She read his message and appreciated it. To be past this bump in the road, it gave her focus back.
Now she could do her damn job.
Elizabeth was back in her groove. Her bone guy was looking for bugs, her ME was digging in a dead hooker, and she was running the circus like she never missed a beat.
This was her jam.
“Tell me about her wounds, Christopher,” she stated as Ethan took over Callen’s role of taking notes.
Before he could answer his boss, the other doctor interjected his opinion.
“You can’t be serious about wanting details this early in the game,” Doctor Perette stated.
“Oh, she’s serious,” Chris stated.
“Like a hooker with a venereal disease, Doctor.”
Chris took that as his sign.
He did his job.
“Lyzee, she wasn’t alive when he cut her open. There’s no pinkening in the tissue at the cuts. Our girl’s heart wasn’t beating when he removed her liver.”
Well, at least there was that.
Oh, and that the killer wasn’t switching it up too much. Elizabeth hated changeups in the game.
Merry came back in and had the woman’s possessions in a bag. “Want me to do the deed?” she asked.
“Sure. Dig away.”
The head tech dumped out the contents onto a tray. With gloved fingers, she began rooting around in the items. “We have an ID.”
Great.
Elizabeth loved when that happened. Now they could start the process.
“What’s her name?” Elizabeth asked.
“We have Victoria Paul, and she liked condoms. From the look of it, she favored the jumbo ones.”
“You have to love a woman with discriminating taste,” Elizabeth stated. “Cowboy, blow my mind.”
Ethan began running her for his wife. It was the least he could do to help out. He was simply proud of her. They had managed to overcome a huge issue.
Elizabeth had forgiven him, and she was in her comfort zone.
Blackhawk sent the research to the big screen in the room from his tablet. “Chris was right. She was definitely a prostitute. She had numerous hits for drugs, possession, hooking, and some indecent acts in public.”
He kept reading. “Holy shit!”
“What?”
“One incident involved a nude statue.”
She started laughing. “We had a wild one here,” Elizabeth stated. “How did she die, Chris?”
He didn’t hesitate to move to the woman’s skull. He touched her face, scalp, and neck, searching for anything to give his boss.
Doctor Perette wasn’t nearly as magnanimous.
“I can’t work like this. We should be stripping her of her clothes, doing trace, and then working on what COD is.”
“This is why you’re working with my ME, Doctor. He knows how I run my shop. We move a little differently than you do. I don’t always have the luxury of giving my team four hours to prepare a report. We deal with serial killers and violent crimes. In our jobs, time means another person living or dying.”
Chris hated it, but he’d learned that this was how she worked, and he had to adjust. He understood the doctor’s angst.
“Back to COD.”
Doctor Perette was appalled that his concerns were being dismissed. It was clearly on his face.
“Deputy Director Blackhawk, can’t you do something?” Doctor Perette asked.
“Actually, this is my wife’s area of specialty. I’m only here to do her research and begin working on a profile. If she feels she needs to push the team, there’s generally a very valid reason.”
“How do you do your job under this pressure?” he asked, staring at the other doctor.
Elizabeth fielded it for him. “He does it like this.”
“Chris, give me all you have.”
They were about to show the man how a well-oiled machine worked.
“She has wounds to her face. There is bruising starting to form on her cheekbone. It looks like she was struck. Nothing is broken, so I’m betting this abrasion to the back of her head is what knocked her out.”
“Is that what killed her?”
“No, it likely only stunned her.”
Doctor Perette voiced his dissatisfaction. “There is no way you could know that without opening up her skull.”
“Actually, I can postulate that she wasn’t dead.”
“How?” he asked, staring at him.
“Give me all you have, Christopher. Make me a happy boss, and I won’t be so bitchy.”
He grinned. “I like you bitchy. It scares the straights,” he said, jerking his head toward the other ME.
She snorted. “Chris.”
The screwing around was over.
She meant business from this point on out.
“Victoria Paul has tape residue on her face and arms. When I was moving her head, my glove stuck to her lips. If the strike to the head killed her, he wouldn’t have needed to tape her up.”
Elizabeth was good with that.
Merry rushed over with tweezers and a little container. She examined the woman’s mouth, and pulled a fiber. Then she went to work on the girl’s arms.
“Tell me something, Merry, that I didn’t know two minutes ago?”
“He took the tape, so he didn’t want us finding anything that he might have left behind. Our guy is tricky,” she offered.
“We don’t know this is the same killer. The last one left bodies in a cemetery. This is a morgue.”
“I can tell that it is the same killer,” Chris offered.
She was grinning. “Do tell, my favorite ME this side of the Mississippi. Impress me with that big brain of yours, Newton.”
He grinned. “Technically, because of the curves in the river, New Orleans is on both sides.”
She snorted. “Now you’re showboating, Doc.”
Yeah, he was.
So, he really began, trying to blow her mind.
“Our killer cut her open from left to right. From the way he began the incision, I can tell it was the same knife. It’s jagged and very distinctive. He’s not using a medical grade scalpel.”
“So, we don’t have a doctor. It looks like you’re in the clear,” Elizabeth stated, glancing over at the other ME. “Well, for now.”
Perette looked horrified that she would even suggest he could be involved in this.
“Go on, Chris.”
“I can also tell that he’s clueless. He’s opening her all the way across when her liver is on the right side. It’s overkill. He didn’t know where it was. Again, not a doctor. A first year medical student can pinpoint it on day one.”
He had a point.
Elizabeth motioned toward the giant pink elephant in the room. “Let’s address her neck. It’s hard to miss that she’s got big puncture wounds in her throat like someone use
d her as a pin cushion.”
Doctor Perette picked up the tubes, twelve gauge medical needles, and held them out. “He left this behind.”
Chris checked out the tubing. “He wouldn’t need these unless he wanted to take some blood with him.”
Merry immediately began counting the inventory.
“It’s our gear, boss.”
They all focused on her.
“I know how he carried out the liver and blood. We’re missing a large specimen container.”
The city ME stared at her. “You count your specimen containers?” he asked.
“You don’t?” she replied.
Elizabeth snorted. “Okay, so we know he took her liver, and he played in her neck. Why would someone take a liver and blood? They don’t exactly go together. You don’t need one or the other, or both, right?”
Chris thought about it.
There was something bothering him. He’d seen a case on it, and he wanted to think about it for a while. The details were sketchy.
“I might have an answer, but I need to do some research. Give me some time.”
She could do that. “Okay.”
Doctor Perette stared. “He gets time for that, but not to figure out COD?”
“Yep. I trust his skill. We’ve worked together for a very long time, Doctor, and I don’t need to know about a suspicion. I need to know how she died, so I can do my job.”
Still, she wasn’t letting Chris off that easily.
“Time to pay the piper in advance, Christopher. I’ll give you a whole day, if you can tell me if she was dead or alive when he syphoned off a few pints.”
The ME stared at her. “You’re a sick woman.”
The team started laughing.
She pointed at them. “Don’t make me come over there or you’ll see how sick I can really be. I’ll shove you all in the cooler boxes for a time out.”
They saluted.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes in amusement. Her team kept her on her toes.
“Anyway, Christopher, give me the good stuff. I know you’re more than likely holding back.”
“I can tell you that she was dead when he was taking the blood.”
The ME crossed his arms. “How the hell can you tell her that? We don’t have a liver to do TOD, and she’s a bloody mess.”
Blood Shall Run (An FBI Romance Thriller Book 15) Page 33