by Kylie Brant
Whatever her reasons, the sheriff’s restraint so far pleased Cait. There was nothing worse than a press-hungry law enforcement officer spilling details that she’d prefer not being made public.
When Andrews began speaking, her words mirrored Cait’s thoughts closely. “I’ve been talking to the press regularly, but putting them off with any real details until we could be certain what we were dealing with.” The expression in her eyes was shrewd. “I don’t want to make something public that will later be proven untrue. But media speculation can be just as damaging, so I want to be careful. I’ll share some of the facts, and your expert opinion. So we need to separate out the information we have so I can decide what’s safe to go public with.”
Cait leaned back as the waiter returned with their soft drinks. When he’d moved away, she said, “I assume Deputy Barnes updated you about the discovery he delivered to the lab today.” At the woman’s nod, she went on. “The species identification results won’t be available until tomorrow, but I can tell you unequivocally that the saw your officer found isn’t the instrument used to decapitate these victims, although the instrument used was a bone saw.”
If the sheriff was disappointed at the news, it didn’t show. “You’re sure of that?”
“Absolutely. I conducted saw mark analysis on the serrated areas of the bones. When I examine the characteristics of the kerf walls and floors in the bones, I’m able to get a fairly accurate estimation of the size, shape, set, power, and direction of a saw.” The sheriff was leaning forward, listening intently. “The tool used is hand powered. Ten TPI—teeth per inch. A rectangular blade. The perp is right-handed. And here’s the good news.” Cait paused, reliving the satisfaction she’d experienced when she’d made the discovery. “The same blade was used on all of the victims. There’s a slight imperfection on one of the teeth.”
“So if the UNSUB has the saw in his possession, it links him to the murders.”
She nodded. “But that isn’t information you want to release to the public.”
“Of course not.” The sheriff broke off as their food was delivered. Then she picked up her fork and started in on her seafood curry. “Neither are the beetles. So let’s talk about what we can safely release.”
“The cave’s a secondary scene.” Cait tried her stir fry, found it delicious. “The newest set of remains was probably put there sometime in the last several months. The manner of disposal has your department treating the deaths as suspicious.” She’d had plenty of experience over the years putting together case information for press releases. Unfortunately, her advice was often ignored. Law enforcement officials had to deal with local politics, which sometimes edged out caution when it came to releasing facts to the public. “The deaths are connected, and you’re following up on that link as vigorously as possible. You don’t feel the residents are in immediate danger, but they should remain cautious and report any suspicious activity to your office, yada yada yada.”
Andrews chewed thoughtfully. “That isn’t going to be enough to satisfy them.”
She was right. But then, nothing would be enough to satisfy a press corps hungry for details about the most sensational case to hit the area in decades. The trick was to keep them from realizing just how sensational it was before the investigators knew themselves. “If pushed, I suppose you could tell them we’re matching the remains with persons reported missing, and every attempt is being made to identify the individuals so they can eventually be returned to their families.”
Reaching for her glass, the sheriff nodded. “That should do it. Now why don’t you tell me about your progress along those lines.”
Cait filled her in on the phone calls she’d made that day, adding, “I’ve talked to three detectives so far. All have promised to get me identifier information that might help me match the missing person to one of our remains. When I get to the point where I think we’re close to doing so, I’ll ask for DNA samples to compare with the ones I took.”
The other woman paused in the act of bringing her fork to her mouth. “You can get DNA from bones?”
“If they aren’t too degraded.” One corner of her mouth pulled up wryly. “One thing we have to thank our offender for. He left us specimens in excellent condition.”
“And went to a lot of trouble to do so,” Andrews said, chewing slowly. “The question is, why? Why not bury them? Or chop them in smaller pieces and drop them in a lake or river somewhere? This process you described, the one where he has the beetles cleaning the bones . . . why bother? There have to be quicker ways. Easier ways. He goes to a lot of trouble.”
“Burial is a lot of trouble if you’re digging a hole deep enough to keep animals from getting at them,” Cait pointed out. “The process he follows may be due to easy access or experience. Or it may be part of a ritual that only makes sense to him. It does go a long way in helping me establish the basis of a profile for him.”
Andrews wiped her mouth with her napkin, the action surprisingly dainty. “I could write the basis of a profile myself. If everything you say is true, we already know that this UNSUB is one sick son of a bitch.”
The next morning, while Kristy put in a call to Deputy Barnes with the results of the Ouchterlony and the saw-mark analysis tests, Cait began to dust the preserved bones of each set of remains with black magnetic fluorescent powder, using a magnetic wand. She fitted her protective goggles into place before picking up the handheld ultraviolet lamp and flicking off the lights.
She’d just snapped on the lamp when she heard her assistant call, “Don’t you dare start without me.”
“Bring in some black backing cards,” Cait called back. She began to shine the alternate light source over the dusted bones.
Kristy all but skidded into the room, slapping the cards on the counter with one hand as she pulled up her set of goggles. “Didn’t I tell you not to start without me? You don’t listen very well.”
The words were eerily similar to ones she’d heard a few days earlier.
You don’t follow orders very well.
The stray thought brought Sharper to the forefront of her mind, after she’d done a decent job for the last several hours of not considering him at all. “You never said . . .” Slowly she examined the ulna. “What’d you discover with those soil samples I brought you yesterday?”
“Well, a couple were certainly the closest matches you’ve brought so far.”
Her hand holding the lamp jerked slightly. Drawing in a deep breath, Cait steadied her grasp and strove for a level tone. “Is it within the statistically significant range?”
“No, they were still higher in sulfur than the element percentage in the sediment found in some of the bags. Just not nearly as high as the first ones I tested. Sample one was the closest of them.”
Sample one. Cait searched her memory. That would have been taken from the southeast corner of Sharper’s property. Nowhere close to the spot she’d found the springs, right before Sharper had discovered her. It was looking more likely that her first deduction was a bust. The match for the soil sample in the bags was acidic, but wouldn’t be found in the immediate vicinity of a hot springs.
“What’s that?” The woman crowded closer, pointing with one gloved finger.
“Just a smudge, probably from our latex gloves. Without the skull vaults, our chances of finding latents reduce dramatically,” Cait cautioned her assistant. The long smooth surface of the craniums was a perfect deposit for fingerprints. But it remained to be seen just how clever this UNSUB was. His hiding spot had, after all, been discovered. He would have needed to get those bones out of the beetles’ enclosure. To deposit them in the bag. Common sense would have him using gloves, but anything could have happened. A bone could have been nearly overlooked. Picked up and slipped in the bag when he wasn’t thinking.
Seven victims. Chances were he’d made a mistake with at least one of them.
But the first set of preserved bones was minus even the smallest partial latent. So was the sec
ond.
By the time they’d moved to the third gurney, Kristy’s enthusiasm had visibly dampened. “If we don’t find anything on these bones, we could try others, right?”
“Yes. But the smaller the bone the less surface area for a full print. Or even a useable partial. Better cross your fingers.”
Hours later Cait straightened for a moment working her shoulders wearily. It’d be tough to choose whether her back or her feet ached more, and they still had two sets of remains left.
Kristy spoke around a yawn. “You were sloppy with that magnetic powder on this one. There’s some clear up on the upper tip of the scapula. See?”
“I see it.” Automatically, Cait moved the UV lamp to the area her assistant had indicated. “But there’s no powder there.” There was, however, definitely fluorescence. Clicking off the UV lamp, she strode over to the cart holding the digital scanning camera and spectrometer. “Turn on the overhead lights, will you?”
She brought up the pictures she’d taken yesterday, and found the set of remains in question. Exchanging her UV goggles for the magnifiers, she flipped through the images until she found the spot in question. Magnified it as much as she could without losing resolution.
The two women studied the monitor silently. “I don’t see anything,” Kristy finally admitted.
“Me, either.” Adrenaline spiked as she reached for her UV goggles and lamp again. “Get the lights.”
Once Kristy had switched them off, Cait retrained the lamp onto the spot they’d found. “Might be brush marks on the surface.” What the hell? She crouched down and looked at the smudge from different angles. With gloved fingers on either side of the scapula, she turned the bone over. And froze.
“Holy shit.”
“Fuck a duck,” Kristy breathed. The two of them stared, nonplussed. “What the hell is that?”
“Some kind of picture. Drawings,” Cait corrected herself. “You brought the UV lens for the digital scanning camera?”
“Yeah.” But the other woman didn’t move right away. Both of them were rooted in place, peering at the miniature scene in green and blue that they’d uncovered. “Is that some sort of new fad, a bone tattoo?” Kristy sounded only half kidding. “I mean, I’ve got a tat on my left ass cheek, product of a misspent youth, but this . . .”
“It’d be sort of a bitch getting it.” Cait didn’t know what exactly this was. Had never run across it before. But it ripped wide open the tiny window she’d previously had of the perp’s mindset.
She couldn’t stem the flood of excitement at the thought. “Get that UV lens.” Without waiting for her assistant’s return, she turned to the next gurney. Gingerly flipped the scapula over and aimed the lamp at it.
The pink and yellow images on the bone sprang into relief. Similar technique but different pictures this time. A feeling of urgency had her moving to the next gurney. And the one after that.
“I’ve got it.” Several minutes later, Kristy hurried back in the room, words tumbling from her lips. “Was afraid for a few minutes there that I’d forgotten it, but I found it behind the . . . What’d you find? Did you check them all?”
Cait rose, still slightly dazed. “Yes.” Her mind was still reeling with possibilities. “And each set of remains has a different scene painted on the posterior of the scapula. Except near the inferior angle of each, there’s the same image.”
Kristy crowded closer for a better look. And Cait found it difficult to tear her own gaze away from the tiny skull painted at the base of the bone.
Chapter 7
“Okay.” Barnes was the first to speak in the darkened lab. “What is it exactly we’re looking at?”
The deputy, Andrews, and Cait were grouped around the computer monitor. It was past nine o’clock. Cait had shooed Kristy from the lab hours earlier. There was no reason the woman should have to hang around until the sheriff could get there.
Using the remote, Cait clicked to the next set of images on the screen. “We found these when we were testing the remains for latents.”
“You found them?” Andrews glanced at her. “Where?”
“These are scanned pictures of the painted images located on the back of the right scapula—shoulder blade—on each victim.” She stopped, waited for the reactions of her audience.
But both stared at her in stunned silence. Barnes found his voice first. “What the hell—you just turned the bone over and found a little mural on it?”
“It was a bit more involved,” Cait said dryly, “but yeah, something like that. Wait. I’ll show you.” Swiftly she handed out two pair of UV goggles, turned on the lamp, and demonstrated for them with the scapula from male D. “I’d done a thorough visual examination prior to beginning the latent testing. Nothing could be seen with the naked eye, not even with the help of an ALS. We wouldn’t have caught this at all, but I prefer working with the fluorescent magnetic powder in latent exams.”
“Fluorescent . . .” The sheriff still seemed to be searching for words even as she stared at the scapula with rapt attention. “You’re saying these pictures only show up under a black light?”
Cait switched off the UV lamp and nodded. “I spent a couple hours researching it. Didn’t know whether the substance was ink or paint at first, but I tested it, and it appears to be paint. There are several online sources for this kind of thing. It’s billed as invisible paint because you only see evidence of it under certain types of lighting. They use it for black light posters, haunted houses, that sort of thing. By mixing the paints, it’s possible to achieve any color desired. There are a slew of manufacturers, but the paints have varying degrees of transparency, which is the element that renders them impossible to detect without a UV light.”
She peeled off her gloves as she spoke. “The most common of the samples would allow you to see a black-and-white picture or design with a light source, or at least in sunlight, and the colors only become apparent under a UV lamp. But there are also several outfits that sell invisible paint that is impossible to detect with the naked eye.” Collecting the sets of goggles, she laid the equipment on the counter next to the computer cart. “We should be able to trace the manufacturer of the product after I run comparison samples. The problem will be in acquiring their customer order list. A couple of the sources are overseas.”
“Putting them outside the scope of any warrant we could get,” Andrews said grimly.
“We may get lucky. The perp could have bought the paint in a store here in the US,” Barnes interjected.
Nodding, Cait said, “Or he could have ordered online from a domestic company. At any rate, I placed orders with each place and should have samples of paint coming in a couple days.”
“Damn good work.” Andrews’s gaze had returned to the monitor. “And the pictures are different for each victim?”
“There are similarities, but the only identical image is the one at the bottom of each.” Rapidly she flipped through the images on the screen, pausing at the last one.
“A skull.” The sheriff gave a tight smile. “Coincidentally, the body part missing from each set of remains. The bastard is taunting us. Could it be a sequential scene of what led to each victim’s death? Maybe he stalked them first. Learned their habits. And each pic he painted represents a separate point in that process.”
“Maybe,” she returned slowly, studying the image again. She’d had the same thought. Especially given the gleaming skull that concluded each set of images. “Certainly there seems to be a sequence to the images. They’re magnified on screen. Much harder to make out on the bones themselves. It’s also possible that the progression doesn’t refer to the final days or weeks before their death, but to their life.” She felt both sets of eyes on her. “I can’t be certain until we identify some of the remains. But see here . . .” She pointed at the monitor. “This looks like the Golden Gate Bridge. And then there’s a ball and bat.” She traced the images on screen. “And this . . . I looked this symbol up. It’s the mascot for UCLA. And here�
�s a tiny wedding cake. See the bride and groom on top?”
“Christ.” Barnes sounded shaken. “It’s like he researched each victim. Knew everything about them.”
“Or the major points in their life.” Cait cocked her head, still puzzled by the next picture. “That book . . . it could represent anything. A hobby, a job . . . I’m not sure. But this one . . .” she tapped the screen. “I can’t quite make it out. Maybe it’s an animal? Or a monster?”
“Which could represent the perp,” the deputy said with dark humor.
“I still think this is more apt to depict the last few weeks of the victim’s life,” Andrews muttered. “But that would still allow for the perp being the monster.”
“Then I’d expect to see that image in each scene, but the only commonalities in the pictures are the skulls.” Cait traced the next image. “Here’s some sort of small boat. A kayak or canoe, looks like. Then a . . . what? Skyscraper? Condo? There are eight images in all, counting the skull on each set.”
“Maybe this means the offender and victim knew each other,” suggested the sheriff, kneading the back of her neck. That the woman kept long hours was apparent. Regardless of the hour, she was always still at work when Cait contacted her. For the first time Cait wondered if she had a family at home, or if her job—and the one she had her eye on after this—consumed her life.
“What I don’t get is, why bother?” Barnes moved away from the screen to pace. “This proves the bones were cleaned prior to dumping.” He sent a quick look toward Cait. “I know you’ve said that all along, but now we can be sure. He goes to a lot of trouble.” Unconsciously he repeated the same thread of conversation she and Andrews had had just the night before. “What’s the point? Because you can be damn sure it means something.”
“All you can be sure of right now is, whatever his reason, this is about him, not the victims. He’s not paying them tribute, he’s not acknowledging them as individuals. These images might describe things from the victims’ lives. We won’t know for sure until they’re ID’d. But even if they do, the motivation for the pictures ultimately lies with him.” She was as yet unsure what the action told her about the UNSUB, but she was far closer to establishing a profile now than she’d been prior to the discovery of the paintings.