by Vella Day
Don’t do this to yourself, Hunter. Stay detached, stay focused. These aren’t Denise’s bones.
Hunter took a deep breath but couldn’t smell a damn thing other than the damp soil and the scent of mild algae bloom coming off the river. He prayed he wasn’t growing desensitized to the smell of death after ten years on the force, but then again the body was skeletonized.
Hunter was almost positive the skull was human, but he still needed confirmation. Department rules.
Hunter studied Bill Ebsary. Poor guy looked pretty green around the gills. “Hey, Mr. Ebsary. Mind stepping back a bit?”
Hunter didn’t need him puking on the grave. Not a chance in hell the investigative gurus would find much evidence after all this time, but he owed it to this person to be thorough. Someone had to look out for the dead.
When Hunter stood, prickly plants stuck to his pants legs, but there was no use pulling them off. They were everywhere.
A rustling in the brushes caught his attention. He whipped around and reached for his gun, but he didn’t draw. A second later, a squirrel dashed through the leaves and stilled, no doubt as jittery as he was. Christ. He’d thought the sound might have come from another drug dealer. Get a grip.
Hunter stood. “We’ll need to call in our crime scene unit.”
Ebsary nodded.
Once they arrived, Hunter and Phil worked with the CSU for a good two hours doing a complete grid search of the area. The prickly vines tore holes in five pairs of his gloves, and the knees of his jeans were stained brownish red from the clay soil. They’d found nothing except beer bottles, cigarette butts, a couple of needles, condoms, and Styrofoam cups. Good thing someone bought this parcel. It might cut down on future crime.
His cell rang. It was John Ahern, the deputy Medical Examiner. Hunter spoke to him for a moment, and then disconnected before finding Phil. “M.E.’s finally on his way.”
“Better late than never.”
Hunter clasped Phil on the shoulder. “Make sure the CSU team doesn’t muck anything up. I’m going to meet the M.E. by the cruiser.”
“You got it.”
Ten minutes later, Hunter pushed off from the hot hood of his Ford Taurus. A white van bumped down the winding, pot-holed dirt road. He’d worked with Dr. John Ahern many times before. He was a good man and an even better forensic pathologist. Too bad promptness wasn’t on his list of credentials.
John pulled to a stop behind Hunter’s car, his tires kicking up enough dust to nearly choke him. The deputy M.E. stepped out.
“Hey, John.” Hunter extended his hand.
John winced and straightened slowly. “Hunter. Sorry for the delay. It’s been a long day. I was tied up handling a real stickler of a case.”
“Figured.”
“Heard you got something interesting out here.”
“You could say that.”
The passenger side door opened and a tall, long-legged brunette eased out, and Hunter couldn’t help but stare at the enticing vision in chocolate brown.
“I thought you always worked alone.”
The pathologist chuckled. “Dr. Herlihy’s a forensic anthropologist who’ll be teaching at Brahman University in the fall, but she’ll be working with me this summer on a case-by-case basis.” He wagged his index finger. “Now before you start griping about how I get help when the sheriff’s department is on a hiring freeze, I say you talk to the mayor, not me.”
“Got it.” Wasn’t Ahern’s fault he was lucky.
“Kerry Herlihy.” She extended her hand.
The doctor had a strong, firm grasp, and her hands were cool to the touch. No surprise. The M.E. always set the van’s air conditioner high enough to keep a body chilled.
Dr. Herlihy looked him straight in the eye. He liked that in a person, not to mention she had to be close to six feet, a few inches shorter than him.
Hunter slid a look to her left ring finger. Bare. Then again, who would wear a diamond ring to a crime scene?
He cleared his throat. “Hunter. Hunter Markum.” He inclined his head in the direction of the dirt road. “The body’s this way—or rather the head. The CSU team arrived a couple of hours ago.”
As both doctors spun in the direction of the scene, Dr. Herlihy’s eyes widened.
“Don’t worry, they know not to touch anything without your permission,” Hunter said.
Her shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.” Dr. Herlihy turned to John. “I need my bag from the back.”
Ahern clicked a button on his remote and the back door popped open. She grabbed a brown leather carryall with a hand shovel and a red-handled brush poking out of the top. She nodded and stepped back onto the path.
“Here, let me carry that for you,” Hunter offered.
“Sorry, no. I never let anyone else handle my tools.”
Hunter held up his hands. “Suit yourself.”
Ahern’s temporary hire kept her gaze straight ahead as they walked the five hundred feet to the crime scene, her attention riveted on the path. Twigs cracked under their feet and birds warbled out their mating calls. Given Dr. Herlihy didn’t ask a single question on the way, he guessed she didn’t want any information to prejudice her investigation.
Once the three of them reached the site, Hunter hung back and watched the experts at work. A young, female CSU, with a camera dangling around her neck, spoke to the crime scene lead, while a middle-aged man he’d just met today, mapped the area and triangulated the region to the crossroads. Two others, identical twins, Maggie and Molly something, joined the medical examiner’s team.
The forensic anthropologist knelt and pulled an everyday garden shovel from her bag. Her clean, unpainted nails were clipped short. She seemed to be a practical woman. Nice.
The good doctor tapped the ground with the bottom of the trowel, stabbed the earth with an orange flag and tapped again. Every so often, she’d plant another flag.
Hunter was fascinated. “What are you doing?”
She looked up and blinked. “I’m outlining the gravesite.”
Okay. “Unless you have X-ray vision, how do you know exactly where the body is?” Especially since no bones were showing, other than the skull.
Her face lit up as she smiled. “I listen and feel. Once someone disturbs the ground, it remains soft for years. I tap the ground until I reach an area that’s hard-packed. I then know the body is inside that perimeter.”
She was good.
Kerry Herlihy moved around the perimeter of the site with the grace of a dancer. Her long brown, curly hair was tied back in a neat braid, a few loose strands lifting in the slight breeze. She pushed the wisps behind her ear with her left hand as she brushed away the dirt from around the body with her right.
After the technicians helped clear away some of the soil, she crooked a finger in a come here motion to the photographer. “Could you take a shot of this shovel mark?” She pointed to some striations about a foot deep along the inside of the grave.
Hunter stepped forward. “Hard to believe a shovel mark would be present after all this time.”
“I worked a case in which the police were able to find the exact shovel used to dig the grave by markings such as these.”
“Interesting.”
“Grave’s too shallow for this to be premeditated,” Phil said.
Hunter looked over his shoulder. “Don’t sneak up behind me like that.”
“Since when did you become Mr. Jumpy? You always had nerves of steel.”
He shouldn’t have snapped at Phil, but he was enjoying his conversation with the new doc. “Maybe the guy didn’t read the How to Bury a Victim manual.”
Phil laughed.
Kerry Herlihy looked up, her lips nearly lifting in a smile.
Phil planted his hands on his hips and looked around. “I’m going to recheck the area to see if we missed anything.”
“I can’t imagine we missed much, but go for it,” Hunter said. “Too bad there aren’t any neighbors to interview. Standing aroun
d is not my thing either.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Dr. Herlihy hadn’t unearthed enough of the body to give Hunter any details of the victim, so he did what he dreaded most—continued to fill out the report. Hunter reread Bill’s statement. He checked his watch and scribbled the departure time of the informant.
Half-hour later, Phil returned. He wiped his brow and peered down at the gravesite. Kerry Herlihy had exposed about half of a human body.
“Looks like whoever buried this person took his clothes.”
“Yeah, naked of everything, including jewelry.” Sweat trickled down Hunter’s back, and he fanned himself with his notebook.
Dr. Herlihy had a healthy pink glow. No clinging fabric on the curve of her slim back.
Phil nodded toward Kerry, breaking Hunter’s attention. “She figure anything out yet?”
“Just that we have a dead person.”
Phil laughed.
“Wasn’t meant to be funny,” Hunter said, and Phil sobered.
Hunter crouched across from her and pointed to the skull. “I see the skeleton has a piece of metal in the cheek. I read in a journal it’s possible to get an ID from it.”
His stomach churned. His older sister’s pretty face flashed before him, not the cracked bones of her skeleton, causing Hunter to suck in a long breath. If his sister had survived her mugging and possible rape, she might have had a plate in her face too.
Kerry tapped the metal with the handle of a brush. “The titanium in the cheek is a result of a bad break. We can get the serial number off the moldable plate and run it, but don’t get your hopes up. That will only tell us where the plate was manufactured, not who received it or implanted the device.”
“Damn. I was hoping it would tell us which doctor performed the surgery.”
“Sorry. I know everyone believes that.” Kerry lifted a spongy looking piece of transparent rubber and twisted it around in her fingers. “This is a PTFE implant used to augment the contour of the chin. We might get lucky with this.” Her brows raised, and her pretty eyes sparkled.
“I hope you’re right.”
Twenty minutes later, she sat back and swiped her sleeve across her face, leaving a reddish brown path across her cheek. She leaned over again and brushed the dirt from the skull. Her tender administrations reminded him of a mother caring for a young child.
As Kerry continued to expose more bone, Hunter drummed his gnawed yellow pencil on the pad. After another few minutes, she exposed the victim’s hips. He studied the structure. This body’s hips had a wide pelvic inlet. “Looks female.”
She glanced up, her brows raised. “You’re right.”
Guess she didn’t expect him to be able to differentiate between sexes. She probably figured he was just another dumb cop. It was a good thing one of his forensic classes included remains identification.
When she ran a hand gently down the woman’s hips, something unfamiliar tackled his gut, but the sensation disappeared the moment she looked away.
Hunter wrote female on his report, and then peered down at the doctor again. “What about her age?” He dragged a handkerchief across his brow to mop up the sweat.
“I’d say she was in her late twenties, early thirties. Look here.” She pointed to where a shoulder should be. “The growth plate is located at the end of this bone.” She tapped one of the knobby ends. “This is called the epiphysis, which fuses around the age of thirty. This female’s is almost completely fused. That, and the pitting on her ribs, tells me my guess about her age is close.”
Hunter stood to stretch his legs. She looked up at him as though she were seeing him for the first time and held his gaze. Her eyes were a soft, leafy green.
“Thanks, that helps.”
She nodded, blinked, and dropped her gaze.
He ran the Missing Persons cases through his head for a young female who’d been missing for some time but came up empty. “Can you take a shot at her race?” Could Kerry Herlihy make it three for three?
She glanced at her temporary boss. “With so much racial mixing these days, race is a lot more complicated to figure out.”
“If I may,” Ahern said, pointing to the skull’s cheekbones. “The square eye orbits would indicate Negroid, but the fact she has a narrow interorbital breadth might imply classic white European. But then again, her nasal width and prognathic alveolar region push me more toward Negroid and—”
She lightly touched her boss’s arm. “So, what he’s trying to say, Detective, is we don’t know.”
“I see.”
“When I get her back to the lab, I’ll do a bone density scan on her. Those numbers should give me a clearer indication of race.”
“I’ll also need to know her height once you dig out the rest of her body.”
“I’ll have to measure the femur, along with a few other bones, to determine that.”
She knew her stuff all right. “That’s pretty impressive.”
“Thanks.”
Hunter was finished with the crime scene. He planned to run the numbers through Missing Persons when he returned to the station. If luck was on his side, he’d find a match.
“Any idea how long she’s been here?”
A frown creased her brow. “Not without more—”
“Tests?”
A small chuckle escaped. “Yes.”
He nodded to the CSU team leader. “If you guys don’t need me anymore, I’m going to head back to the station and get to work.”
“No problem. I think we have everything covered.”
“Call me if you unearth any personal effects,” Hunter said.
“You can count on it.”
A slight breeze provided temporary relief as he jogged down the uneven path to the cruiser. Phil sat perched on the cruiser’s hood filling out his report.
“Let’s get out of here.” Hunter placed his hand on the door handle.
“Hey, Hunter,” the CSU team leader called. “Hold up a sec.” The man waved him back.
What the hell? How could they have found something in a minute flat?
“Be back in a sec,” Hunter said.
He hurried up the path, his shirt so wet with sweat, the cotton stuck to his back. “What do you have?”
“She found another bone. And not one that belongs to the first skeleton.”
2
Muscles knotting his thighs, Hunter squatted opposite Dr. Herlihy, anxious to view her discovery. “Tell me.”
Back rounded, she ran a hand over a large bone. Some of those green sand spurs that had previously attacked him had found their way into the doc’s curly hair.
She dusted the remaining dirt from the bone’s surface. Once she’d freed the object, she held up what looked like a femur. Angling the bone so that a shaft of sunlight speared her find, she rolled the bone between her fingers. The expression on her face transformed from one of intrigue to acceptance. He said nothing, taking in her intense expression.
She finally placed the bone on a brown paper bag beside her, and then locked her gaze with his. Her green eyes appeared saddened by her find.
“It’s a third femur.”
His gut clenched. Shit. “Female? Or male?” He grabbed a handful of dirt, squeezed the daylight out of it and tossed the sandy heap back on the ground.
“I can’t tell yet.”
The desperation in her voice tore at his protective instincts. The discovery seemed to sicken her as much as it did him. Had the anthropologist who’d found his sister’s body died a little too that day?
Shrouded in hushed silence, she went back to work uncovering more bones. The CSU team, who had crowded around to watch the new find, wordlessly scattered to continue documenting the evidence.
Mud streaked his pants where he’d wiped his hands, and for once, he didn’t care.
Fifteen minutes later, she unearthed a second pelvis and stopped brushing. “It’s a female.” She drew in a long breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and exhaled slowly.
“So we’re looking at two bodies,” he mumbled to himself. Christ. A sharp jab raced up his spine at the thought.
“Yes and we’re not finished digging either.”
An ugly, sludgy sensation grabbed his insides and yanked hard. More digging. Two horrible words he’d heard many times. “We could be looking at a mass grave then.”
Dear Lord. His ribs tightened around his lungs, squeezing the air from them. His chest hurt as he recalled another tragedy.
She lowered her head. “It’s possible.”
Hunter stood and moved away from the mound of pine needle laden dirt and away from the bone doctor, not wanting to take his frustration out on her or any of the other workers. He wanted to strangle the jerk who’d dumped the bodies. Wanted to lock the killer up and make the bastard spend the rest of his goddamn pathetic life digging graves or making coffins to honor the dead. And he really wanted to find the man who’d killed his sister—but that would never happen.
Christ. Right now, he’d be content pummeling anything into a million pieces. He picked up a rock and chucked it a couple hundred feet away from the river. It smashed against a tree and thudded to the ground. Squirrels scurried away.
Phil was already making his way up the path.
“What’s wrong?”
Hunter told him about the second body. “We need cadaver dogs.”
“Good idea. Otherwise, we could be here for days.”
Hunter scanned the large wooded area. Had to be a good thirty acres, but only about four or five of them were free enough of large trees and scrub for someone to bury a body. “Too bad there’s no way to tell if the psycho spread the bodies out or piled more victims on top of each other. Call the captain and see if he can send over a team. Ask him to find Jimmy what’s-his-name.” Hunter snapped his fingers. “The captain will know him. He’s the best technician for leveling the ground.”
“I’m on it like maggots on shit.” Ah, a new and better twist to Phil’s usual spiel.
Once Phil walked away to make his call, Hunter stepped back to the gravesite. Dr. Herlihy carefully removed the bones of the other skeleton and set them aside.
He glanced at his watch. Oh, crap. He’d promised to take his daughter to Burger King, and it was already past five. He’d never make it in time.