The Girl Who Was Taken

by Charlie Donlea

  At the back of the folder were pictures that Livia flipped through. They were of Nicole’s car, which was found abandoned on a frontage road near the beach where the end-of-summer party took place and from where Megan had established her abduction took place. Jessica Tanner and Rachel Ryan had confirmed having been in the car that night with Nicole when they all drove to the party together. The photos of the car made Livia’s heart ache. It sat parked on the side of the road, pitched slightly to the right as the passenger-side tires rested on the gravel shoulder. The car looked ominous and lonely, and Livia fought hard to block the images her mind tried to produce about what her sister had gone through on this isolated frontage road. How soon after she placed her call to Livia, a call Livia overtly ignored, had Nicole’s car become a crime scene?

  The photos were of the outside of the car from every angle. Then, with the doors and trunk open, every inch was documented, inside and out. The tread of Nicole’s tires was captured in the photos and imprints were taken. Prints were lifted from both inside the vehicle and from the door handle, but matched no one in particular besides Nicole. Fibers were taken from the floorboards, seats, and trunk. From the area around the car, items had been seized and included a can of Diet Coke and a Red Bull, cigarette butts, and the cap to a canister of lipstick. Shoe prints were found in the parking lot and captured with the use of a gelatin lifter. A random item was discovered from under the vehicle—a torn piece of green cloth had been recovered from the carriage of the car, just under the right front bumper.

  Looking in the box, Livia located the sealed bag containing the green cloth lifted from the bottom side of Nicole’s car. She removed it from the box and held it with her fingers. She studied it for several seconds as her mind worked.

  “How much trouble would there be if we took this?” she asked Megan.

  “Lots. What is it?”

  “Something they pulled from Nicole’s car. What if we get it back before anyone knows it’s gone?”

  “You’re the medical examiner. But it breaks the evidence chain of custody,” she said, spoken like the sheriff’s daughter she was.

  Megan looked down the fluorescent-lit row of shelves to the closed door where Greg was keeping watch for her. They’d been at it for close to the allotted thirty minutes and she expected him to pop his head in any minute to tell them to wrap it up. She pointed to Livia’s purse. “Take it. Just get it back to me soon.”

  Livia slipped the clear plastic bag into her purse.

  “Anything else?” Megan said. “Greg’s gonna be pressing us soon.”

  Livia took a minute to look through the evidence log, reading through the other items confiscated from her sister’s car. Nicole’s sweatshirt and purse were in the front passenger seat. The rest of the car was empty besides the trunk. Livia stopped when she read the items found there.

  Megan stirred next to her, walking closer when she sensed that Livia was interested in something else. “Find something?” she asked.

  Dropping the evidence log onto the table, Livia reached back into the box to retrieve the photos again. She flipped quickly through them until she found it. Documented on the log, and captured in the photos, was a rectangular wooden box of barbecue tools. She looked at Megan.

  “Where do they keep this stuff? The bigger pieces of evidence? Like this.” Livia showed Megan the picture of the wooden barbecue set.

  “In the property section.” She pointed to the other side the room.

  “Take me there.”

  Greg stuck his head in. “Wrap it up. One more minute. It’s my ass on the line.”

  They stuffed Nicole’s box back onto the shelf and walked quickly to the other side of the evidence room, where large items were stored in plastic bags and meticulously logged.

  It took them a long minute to find the C section and another few seconds before Livia found, wrapped and sealed in a clear plastic bag, the barbecue set taken from Nicole’s trunk. She unzipped the bag and pulled out the worn wooden box.

  She opened it and stared at the contents. Cased inside, seated within the contoured velvet mold, were a spatula, tongs, and an empty outline where a long, two-pronged barbecue fork once rested.

  “Son of a bitch,” Livia whispered to herself.

  CHAPTER 31

  Monday morning, Livia retrieved her case from the cooler with the help of two autopsy technicians who positioned the body on her table—a middle-aged woman who had died during a routine esophageal procedure when the doctor had accidentally lacerated the distal end of the esophagus and severed it from the stomach. As the doctor was unable to stop the bleeding, the woman died from blood loss. Livia and the fellows had been forewarned by Dr. Colt that when such accidental deaths—termed therapeutic complications—present themselves, the utmost diligence should be practiced since there was a very good chance the autopsy findings would be utilized in court when the family sued the physician.

  This morning, Livia was thorough and patient as she performed her internal exam, not worrying about her autopsy time, only making sure she did everything that was required of her, and did it well.

  Twenty minutes into the exam, she was carefully dissecting the strap muscles of the neck to obtain a view of the esophagus when Ted Kane from the ballistics lab walked into the autopsy suite. It was a typical Monday morning, with every autopsy table filled by the weekend’s carnage. Tim Schultz and Jen Tilly were busy with cases, as were the other medical examiners who made up the staff at the OCME. The only thing missing was Dr. Colt, who’d taken a long weekend to spend time with his daughter, who was home from college. Livia took advantage of her boss’s absence, arriving early and visiting Ted Kane in ballistics to ask for his help.

  “Hey, Doc,” Ted said as he approached the opposite side of Livia’s table.

  Livia looked up through her face shield. She stopped working briefly and raised her eyebrows. “Anything?”

  “I’ve got a match.”

  “On which one?”

  “Both. How long will you be?”

  “A while,” Livia said. “I’ll come to the lab when I’m done. No doubt?” she asked.

  “Not a shred. Come see me when you’re finished.”

  Livia watched Ted leave the suite, and then went back to work. Her mind wandered with possibilities, but she refused to pay them any attention, refocusing her thoughts instead on the case in front of her. She took just over an hour to complete the exam before she handed her table over to the tech who would close and return the body to the cooler for transport to the funeral home. She spent another hour completing notes on the case, confirming that the patient had indeed bled to death due to a large esophageal laceration with blood deposition into the lungs and peritoneum. Cause of death: exsanguination. Manner of death: therapeutic complication. In layman’s terms: The doctor killed her.

  Livia typed the last of her notes, signed the death certificate, and hurried to the ballistics lab.

  * * *

  The ballistics lab was located on the second floor of the OCME. It was where techs analyzed everything from shoe imprints to glass shards, determining who walked through a crime scene in which type and size of shoe, to which direction a bullet penetrated a window. Ted Kane ran the ballistics department and Livia had delivered to him earlier in the morning the scrap of green cloth she had taken from Nicole’s evidence box on Friday.

  Livia walked into the lab and found Ted Kane in front of his computer.

  “Ah, good,” he said when Livia entered. He swiveled his chair and wheeled to a cluttered desk to his right. He handed Livia a piece of paper containing the fiber analysis completed on Casey Delevan’s clothing from weeks before. Ted poked his eye into the microscope.

  “Here’s what we know. Spectral analysis tells us it’s the same material. Same twine of cotton. Same fiber thickness. Same grade. The only difference is that the analysis on the clothing that came from your body was caked in clay.” He looked up from his microscope. “This sample you gave me here is clean. N
ot a speck of clay on it.”

  “Otherwise?” Livia asked.

  “They came from the same shirt. Exact match.”

  Livia had no time to contemplate the implications of this discovery. She thought briefly about the fact that a torn scrap of Casey Delevan’s shirt was found under Nicole’s car. But only fleetingly. Ted Kane was literally on a roll. He pushed himself away from the cluttered desk and his wheeled chair skated back to the glowing computer monitor.

  “But this is better. Check it out,” he said as he settled in front of the computer, which depicted the three-dimensional scan of Casey Delevan’s skull that Dr. Larson—the neuropathologist—had obtained during her examination.

  The image, taken by a scanning electron microscope, was one of the most impressive things Livia had witnessed during her training. Since the machine imaged the skull from both the outside and inside, it was able to extrapolate points to offer a “virtual tour” of the skull and the inner casings of the bone. Specifically, Ted Kane was interested in the twelve tunnels in Casey Delevan’s skull.

  When Livia found the evidence collected from Nicole’s car, and the barbecue tool set in particular, it clicked immediately. When she saw the empty spot where a fork had once rested, her mind connected the tines of that missing fork to the mysterious holes in Casey Delevan’s skull.

  She spent the weekend perusing barbecue tools at various home improvement stores and learned the set found in Nicole’s car had been discontinued. But Weber produced it, and with help from a nice young man at Burke Brothers Hardware, Livia obtained a model number for the out-of-date product. She brought it to Ted Kane earlier in the morning for tool analysis.

  “So I went back to the original autopsy photos of the skull and the piercings,” Ted said. “Then took some measurements based on extrapolated data. At first, we all thought these were twelve random holes through the skull. Now, as I examine them with your theory in mind, I see they’re actually a group of six twin piercings. Look here.” Ted moved his mouse and circled each pair of holes on the screen. Then he superimposed a computer-generated measuring protractor over the skull. “Each pair of piercings is exactly the same distance apart—one and a half inches. One point five four, to be exact. No variability. The pattern of distribution of each pair is random, but the pairs themselves are identical.”

  He pointed to the screen. “So check it out. I’m going to take you for a ride through one of the piercings.” He moved the mouse and the image on the screen responded by shifting so that Livia’s view was straight through one of the holes in the skull. Then the 3-D view shifted and Livia watched as though a small camera were moving through the channel in the bone. It reminded her of the hundreds of endoscopies she witnessed in medical school, as the probe’s camera moved down the trachea.

  “So a few things we can ascertain,” Ted said. “Every channel is the exact same width, so we suspect they were all produced by the same instrument. But once we look beyond the width and analyze the actual walls of these channels, here’s what we find.” He pointed to the screen. “See this?”

  Livia squinted her eyes at the monitor. “What am I looking at?”

  “A small groove in the wall of the canal. It tells me the instrument used had a defect on it. It wasn’t smooth. So probably during the lifespan of the fork, it was dropped or otherwise abused—wear and tear. It’s significant because every pair of holes has a single channel—the left-side channel—with the exact same aberration. So beyond a doubt, all the piercings came from the same tool. This is important to the Homicide guys in case we recover that fork. We could match it beyond a reasonable doubt. But here’s the money shot. This is what you’ll be interested in.”

  Ted clicked through some other screens until the animated view of Casey Delevan’s skull was again visible. “There were twelve piercings. Six sets of two, right? Each pair was exactly 1.54 inches apart. So we have the width of the tine, and the distance they are apart from each other. I did some research through our tool analysis database. We have a comprehensive list, and we have measurements on the fork you’re interested in—based on the serial number you provided.”

  Ted clicked the mouse and again the 3-D image spun and then entered the burrow of one of the piercings.

  “Every single channel pierced the full thickness of the skull. So, every one went from the outside of the skull, all the way through to the dura mater.” He looked at Livia. “Except one.”

  He pointed to the screen where the image brought them into a channel and then to a dead end.

  “There is one piecing that did not fully penetrate the skull. It simply lanced the bone and was then removed. This single channel gives us a great deal of information. Specifically, it shows the exact contour of the fork’s prong. The contour, width, shape, angle of the tine’s point, and the exact length of the tip of the tine. The angle of the point is key, because it is unique to the brand, design, and line of the product. It matches the fork you’re interested in identically. So,” Ted said, tapping the keyboard to produce a new image on his screen, “the missing fork from that barbecue set is what killed your floater.”

  * * *

  Livia fumbled with her keys minutes later in the parking lot, started her car, and began the long drive east toward Emerson Bay. It consisted of two hours of solitude where her mind ran wild with speculation. It was past eight p.m. when she pulled into her parents’ driveway. Livia walked to the garage and pushed through the side door, flicking the light switch as she entered. The car was parked in shadows. Livia’s mind flashed back to Friday afternoon when she looked at pictures of this car from Nicole’s case, doors and trunk open wide for the photographer to capture every detail from every angle. Now, it sat quietly in her parents’ garage, seldom used since Nicole went missing.

  From the workbench, Livia retrieved a tape measure. Crouching down, she ran the tape from the ground up to the bumper. Twenty-seven inches. The same height as Casey Delevan’s femur fracture.

  Livia let the tape measure snap back into place. She closed her eyes.

  “What the hell, Nicole?

  CHAPTER 32

  He sat in his car for a long while, uncertain about what the night would bring. The last time he was here, just a few days before, had been their worst moments together. It was when he had found her stuck in the window, some distance away from escape. Some distance away from ending it all. How exactly to measure that distance, he was unsure. A foot away? Twelve inches from the freedom she thought she wanted. An hour, maybe? If he had gotten a call or had been otherwise delayed, an hour was likely all she would have needed to work herself free. Or was that distance to escape measured by gumption? Some part of him wanted to believe she had failed because she hadn’t wanted to succeed. Success meant she would leave him, and he knew there was a connection between them she held on to. She did not always show it, but it was there. She displayed it occasionally, this one, when she allowed him to lie next to her and hold her afterward. He had felt that connection. It was real. But still, she had come close to leaving him. Close to freedom. It rattled him. It could not happen again. He had endured last year’s debacle. The bunker, the forest, and the heartache. But if this one escaped, if this one made it back to the world, his life would shatter down around him. Because of that, because she had been so immeasurably close to ruining it all for him, he had no choice but to be brutal last time when he served her punishment. He hated himself for it afterward.

  So tonight, as he sat in his car, he was uncertain how the night would go. It was possible things could go back to the way they had once been. It was possible to get back to that point in their relationship. Part of his hesitation tonight came from not only his worry over how she would receive him after her last reprimand, but what that reaction would mean. Defiance and rebellion, per the rules, would result in her final strike. His reluctance now came from knowing that tonight could mark the end of their time together. This worried him because, despite everything, he loved this one. He loved them all, b
ut with this one their relationship was so long in the making he was depressed that he hadn’t been able to convince her of his love. He felt inadequate, that perhaps she was too good for him, a nasty revelation that left a bitter taste in his throat.

  He took a deep breath and climbed from his car, surveying the area around him. It was dark and quiet and he wondered how long things would remain that way. He pushed through the front door, and his shoes clapped on the floor as he walked to the basement stairs. As soon as he opened the cellar door he smelled it. A sweet, pungent odor he knew all too well. Immediately, he knew he’d been too hard on her the other night, that he’d let his emotions overtake him. He’d spent the last few days worrying about her and debating if he should check on her. Now it was too late.

  The stairwell was dark, and he clicked on his flashlight as he went. The odor grew stronger as he descended. Finally, when he reached the bottom of the stairs, he played his flashlight across the bed. She was there, the beautiful creature he could not convince of his love, pale and bloated and stiff. He sat on the bottom stair and cried. Why, he wondered, did they all end like this? What more did they want than to be loved and cared for?

  He gave himself a full minute to wallow—moaning uncontrollably and rocking back and forth—before collecting himself. Then he went out to his car and retrieved what he needed from the trunk. He kept it under the floorboard with the spare tire. A half hour later, he carried up the cellar stairs the black vinyl bag that contained her body. Out into the night, he looked around again, but there was no one to disturb him. He loaded her into the trunk and slammed it shut in a violent motion that caused him to stumble backward. This single act of anger would be all he allowed himself for his failure. The moment called for efficiency and clear thinking. He sat in his car, leaving the door wide open as he ran his hands through his hair and closed his eyes. They welled again with tears but he would not allow himself to cry this time. Dead quiet, all he heard was his slightly labored breathing from hauling her body up the stairs. Between breaths, the still night was interrupted by a far-off noise. He listened for a moment. Somewhere in the distance, a train whistled through the night.