“Because it happened on my watch. And before you say it, Gin, I will—this place has gotten under my skin, okay? This is our home now, mine and Cherie’s. She’s finally settled in here. And the day’s going to come, sooner than I’d like, probably, when I’m not always going to be able to be there to make sure she’s making the right choices. She’s growing up, just like every other kid. I don’t need to tell you she’s vulnerable. And so when somebody—even a goddamn kid—starts handing out this shit like lollipops, I take it pretty fucking personally.”
“I understand,” Gin said quietly.
“Anyway … this is our turn, according to the directions Jonah gave me,” Tuck said, veering onto a rutted road that led past farms on either side into a gentle, wooded valley. After a moment he added, “Sorry if I got a little heated there. It’s not you, believe me.”
“I know,” Gin said. “I’d probably feel the same way. I actually, um, admire you. As a parent, I mean.”
“Okay.” He stared straight ahead, but the atmosphere in the car seemed suddenly charged. Complimenting a man’s relationship with his child hardly constituted flirting … but it did highlight the differences between Tuck and Jake, who answered to no one but himself. Tuck was singularly focused on making Trumbull safe for his daughter, as well as the rest of its citizens; Jake traveled an orbit around his own past hurts and grudges and losses. He wasn’t a selfish man, but his focus sometimes didn’t leave room for anyone else. And while he’d endured a great deal, Gin was starting to wonder if he would ever find what he was looking for—if there would ever be room in his life for more.
For her.
“Hey, can you check the route?” Tuck asked, breaking into her reverie. “I can’t read my goddamn notes and drive at the same time, and the phone’s GPS is completely worthless out here.”
“Sure,” Gin said, glad for the distraction. She scanned the page of notes on yellow legal paper that was stained with a coffee ring. “Tuck … is this even in English?”
He scowled. “Very funny. Penmanship has never been my strong suit.”
“I’ll say. Okay, according to this you either turn past the gray storage shed … or maybe it’s the gray stargaze ship.”
It took twenty minutes, and several false leads and treacherous U-turns on the narrow dirt road, but finally they pulled up to a rustic cabin nearly hidden by the overhanging branches of a stand of tall evergreens. This was the densest part of the forest that hugged the creek on either side; further up the valley, the rich bottom land was farmed for grain.
“Our neighbor used to hunt somewhere near here,” Gin said, as Tuck pulled the SUV up in front of the cabin and killed the engine. “Judge Viafore. He’s elderly now, but I think he hunted pheasant.”
“Yeah, that would make sense,” Tuck said. “That and deer. Over there—see that rope up in that tree? With the rusty metal thing with the hooks? That’s somebody’s hoist and gambrel system for skinning and dressing deer. But given its condition, it’s been a while.”
“Oh.” Despite the nature of Gin’s work, in which she was accustomed to seeing human bodies with clinical detachment, she didn’t like imagining the beautiful animals hung from the tree and was not a fan of the hunting of animals for sport. She changed the subject. “Do you still want me to try to interpret your chicken scratch? If there’s any hope of us finding the spot, maybe it’s better if you look at your notes.”
Tuck merely grunted in response, taking the sheet of notes back from her. Gin followed him around the back of the cabin, down a gentle slope to the banks of the creek. There was a slow, lazy flow of water from the recent rains; rushes and water weeds grew abundantly along the banks. Unfortunately, the storms had also washed trash into the creek, and as the waters receded, it ended up on the banks. The soda bottles, food wrappers, and bits of plastic marred the otherwise pristine natural beauty. The buzz of insects filled the air as they waded through the dense undergrowth. Gin’s shoe caught on a root and she nearly stumbled. Tuck grabbed her arm to prevent her from falling.
“Steady there. No sense having you out for the season with an injury.” He grabbed her hand. “Just hang on. It should be up ahead past that sand bar.”
As he helped her over the uneven creek bank, she was acutely aware of his touch, her hand enveloped in his large one. When he helped her over a fallen tree blocking the path, her hand rested briefly on his shoulder before she leapt down, and she could feel the warmth of his skin under his shirt. When she turned to make sure he’d made it over the tree, she caught him staring and blushed, regretting her choice to wear the form-fitting athletic tights.
Or … perhaps the emotion she was feeling wasn’t regret, exactly. But dwelling on it probably wasn’t a wise idea, especially given the nature of their errand.
“Are we close?”
“Yeah. Matter of fact…” Tuck went past her, picking his way through a stand of alder trees up a gentle slope to a small clearing where there was a depression in the earth. Behind a rock outcropping there was a patch that, unlike the ground around it, was bare of weeds and shrubs, a muddy area of about five feet across was partially covered with branches and fallen limbs. As Gin examined it more carefully, it was evident that the brush and branches could easily have been dragged there on purpose.
Tuck started clearing the branches, tossing them to the side. “Here, give me a hand with this big one.”
Together they lifted several of the larger branches, and it was obvious that the soil underneath had been disturbed. The dirt was raw and muddy; dead leaves and withered roots were the only evidence of the plants that had grown there. Gin lifted an especially leafy branch, and gasped: underneath, obscured by the mud and foliage, was part of a large black plastic trash bag.
And protruding from a long gash in the side … a human arm. At least, Gin thought it was an arm, though it was difficult to be certain because the hand had been hacked off, leaving a ragged stump with dirt and debris clotting the ragged and torn tissues.
Tuck whistled. “Guess our boy wasn’t bullshitting us after all.”
Gin froze, taking a deep breath to compose herself. It wasn’t the presence of the corpse that had unsettled her; she’d been around the dead nearly every day of her life for decades. But encountering a body away from the bright lights of the morgue, tossed haphazardly like garbage, took her back to the difficult days when she’d helped exhume the mass graves.
There had been no plastic bags then, no order to the remains, which were piled as many as four deep. Many of the bodies had been moved at some point after their initial burial, and as the excavating crew had done their heartbreaking, painstaking work, she’d stood shoulder to shoulder with her colleagues and had attempted to make sense of the nearly unrecognizable pieces of the decomposed bodies that had been torn apart.
Even now, her mind was adjusting to the scene in front of her, adjusting to what she was seeing, switching into analytical mode. The edges of the torn flesh of the exposed wrist had dried and stiffened, curling away from the muscle and splintered end of the bone. The tissue ranged from pale and waxy with yellow and purple undertones to grayish shades.
Gin pushed the remnants of her memories away and focused on what was in front of her. “So what happens now?”
“I’ll call County. Get the CSI team out here.” Tuck’s picked up a stick and lifted a corner of the black plastic. “It’ll take them at least an hour to get here. We’ll take a look in a second.”
Tuck pulled out his phone and dialed. As he was waiting to be connected, he bent down and picked up a stone and tossed it into the creek. While he gave the dispatcher directions, he watched the surface of the water where the stone had gone under.
As if he were deep in concentration. Or … prayer.
Where had that thought come from? Gin shook her head in an effort to clear her thoughts as he walked back toward her.
“Okay, they’re on their way. And yes, we drew the lucky card, as usual—Bruce and Liam are coming too.”
He scowled. “They’ll probably get here first, just so Bruce can have the satisfaction of taking the case off my hands in person.”
Gin didn’t relish the encounter any more than Tuck did. “Won’t they question why I’m here?”
“Hell, he questions everything I do, so I don’t know if it matters. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll just tell him the truth—that I had a questionable lead from a suspect in another case. These interview-room ‘confessions’ often don’t lead to squat, and Bruce knows that. No way he can fault me for not calling them in and wasting resources before we knew if there was anything to get excited about. And as for you—I don’t have a single person on staff who grew up in this area, so I was forced to rely on you to help me find the location.”
“Even though you found it yourself, with hardly any trouble.”
Tuck shrugged. “We don’t need to share that fact. Besides, why wouldn’t I bring along the departmental expert, since we had lunch plans anyway?”
“We … did?”
“We did. We do. Unfortunately, I don’t think either of us is going to make it, given our little buried treasure. But at least we can take a look while we’re waiting.”
“I’m not sure I can tell you a whole lot until CSI gets here,” Gin said. She knew that the body would have to be photographed before it was disturbed in any way. The area around it would be considered part of the scene as well; samples would be taken from the soil, the foliage, and any dead insects or larvae.
Tuck cleared his throat. “Absolutely. Although, since according to Jonah, he already looked in the bag, and since I had to unearth it to determine that there was anything worth our time, I don’t see that it will harm anything to take a quick look—from a safe remove, of course.”
He picked up the stick again, and used it to gently prod the bag down and away from the body, uncovering the head and torso, down to the hips—and once again Gin slipped into her analytical mode.
In trying to describe the process to a group of students years earlier, she’d used the metaphor of a camera’s shutter clicking at a rapid speed, taking a series of impressions so quickly that she was barely aware of the whole being comprised of the parts. It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but she had no better way to describe her process of taking in the whole and then breaking down the details into smaller and smaller segments—sometimes, until she was literally examining tissues at the cellular level.
The body lying at her feet was naked, the skin pale and tight with patches of mold here and there. The eyes were shut and the gray hair was shorn close to the scalp. As Gin scanned the exposed flesh, her eye caught on a flash of orange, bright against the mottled gray skin.
“This body’s been embalmed, Tuck.”
“Yeah? How can you tell?”
“Well, the easiest way is this,” she picked up a stick of her own and used it to point at the orange plastic screw embedded about two inches from the navel.
“What is it?”
“Trocar screw. It seals the hole after the fluid is drained from the organs. Also, here—” She nudged the plastic bag away from the inner thigh, where there was a small suture—“this is where the blood was drained and replaced with embalming fluid. Also, those rosy cheeks are the result of makeup, which is part of the embalmer’s job.”
“Jesus. I never really thought about what happens in between an autopsy and the funeral. Anything else?”
“Well, there’s likely to be plastic caps between the eye and lid to help hold the eye’s shape. And there’ll either be a mouth form or sutures, or a combination, to keep the mouth looking natural. There’s other things, too, but…” Most people didn’t want to know about the steps taken to prevent leakage from the body’s orifices.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Tuck said quickly. “Even I have limits.”
“Well, you’re doing pretty well, given the body’s condition.”
“What else can you tell me?”
“Just from what I can see? The hands were most likely severed post-mortem. No embalmer would leave them like that.”
“If he was embalmed, why isn’t he better preserved?”
“Embalming doesn’t last forever,” Gin said. It was one of the most common misconceptions about the process. “It only delays decomposition, usually just for the few days needed for the viewing and burial. Judging from what I see, death occurred no more than a few months ago. Of course, it’s hard to be more precise without knowing how long it was here, and how much moisture it was exposed to.”
“So why would someone embalm a body, just to dump it?”
“Could it have been buried first, then removed and relocated?” Gin knew of cases where graves had been tampered with in an effort to steal jewelry and even tooth fillings, but she’d never heard of the body itself being stolen.
“I guess so. Can’t imagine why, though.” Tuck used his stick to move the plastic bag back as it had been before. “So, fingerprints are out, obviously. Maybe we can do something with dental impressions. What about DNA?”
“Might be able to get a usable sample from a follicle, though with decomp, the best bet is to use the long bones like the humerus or femur. But I hate to draw any conclusions before the official autopsy.”
“Okay. Might as well get comfortable.”
Tuck sat down with his back against the trunk of a large tree, and patted the ground next to him. “Here, I’ll share my backrest with you.”
She sat down next to him with her legs out in front of her, aware of their hips and shoulders touching. They sat without speaking, each of them lost in their own thoughts.
After a while Gin heard people coming toward them through the woods before she saw them. She shielded her eyes from the sun filtering through the branches overhead and peered through the trees, which created a natural screen between the creek and the land further uphill where the cabin was situated.
“So much for our little party,” Tuck said, getting to his feet. He offered his hand to help Gin up. “Guess word got out that it’s the hottest ticket in town.”
Three people came single file through the trees. Gin recognized Katie Kennedy’s long dark hair and trim figure. Right behind her, in shirtsleeves and shoes that weren’t meant for hiking, were Bruce and Liam.
“Thanks for making time in your busy day,” Tuck deadpanned. Gin cut him a look, wondering why he couldn’t resist taunting the detective. “Traveling solo today, Katie?”
“Paula will be along in a minute,” Katie said. “She’s, um, not feeling well.”
“That’s what happens when you let women into the field during your childbearing years,” Bruce said. “Whose idea was it to let the two of you partner up, anyway? Next thing you know, you’ll get knocked up too. And then what are we going to do, give your camera and kit to the janitor and let him take over for you?”
“Wow,” Katie said cheerfully. “That was incredibly insensitive even for you, Bruce. Ever hear of affirmative action?”
“Don’t let him get under your skin,” Liam said apologetically, with a look of genuine chagrin.
A woman with close-cropped blonde hair and stylish red glasses came through the clearing, her complexion pale. Her windbreaker hid any indication that she was expecting, but Gin had spoken to her last week and knew she was nearing the end of her fourth month of pregnancy. With any luck, the nausea would abate soon.
“What did I miss?”
“Not much,” Bruce said. “I guess they asked us here to shoot the shit.”
“Damn,” Paula said. “I was afraid you might have started without me.”
She unzipped the bag slung around her neck, while Katie knelt on the ground to open her own kit.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Liam said. “I’ve thrown up twice in the field, but I don’t have the excuse of being pregnant.”
“This doesn’t bother me,” Paula said. “The smell of Jenkins heating up his breakfast burrito in the microwave—that’s what did it this morning. It was a relief to
get called out.”
Tuck went over what they knew so far, including an abbreviated account of Jonah’s offer. “Kid says he stumbled on this while he was out running. Didn’t disturb the branches covering the body, but as you can see, we moved a few to get access. If we hadn’t come out here, some dog or day hiker was bound to find this before long.”
“You’re a runner, aren’t you, Gin?” Liam asked. “Do you ever come out this way?”
She shook her head. “I prefer more established paths—I’m always worried I’ll twist my ankle, or worse. But I’m considerably older than Jonah Krischer. When I was his age I probably would have.”
“The two of you can stick around if you want,” Bruce said. “But we’ve got this from here. Mind staying outside the perimeter?”
Gin simmered with irritation. Bruce was obviously pulling rank, but she and Tuck were well versed in evidence-preservation procedures and didn’t pose a threat to the scene.
“It seems likely I’ll be asked to consult on this one,” she snapped, even though she had gotten all she needed from the scene until the CSI team’s report came back. “I don’t see how it can hurt for me to participate.”
“I’d welcome that,” Katie chimed in mildly, not looking up from setting out the various supplies she’d use to bag and label the evidence she would collect. “Paula’s got her hands full, and I could use a little help.”
“That works for me,” Liam said.
“That’s just great,” Bruce fumed. “Do any of you remember who’s in charge here? Oh, yeah, that would be me, the senior officer on scene. I’ll let it slide that you’re all ganging up on me, but don’t think I won’t remember this at review time.”
Tuck’s cell phone rang, preventing him from adding fuel to the fire. He squinted at the screen, then answered tersely.
“Baxter. Hey. Fine.” As he listened, his expression hardened. “Yeah … no shit. Had a feeling we hadn’t seen the last of that guy. Okay, put him in three. Tell him I’m on my way. Owens? You mean his attorney? Uh-uh. He can wait out in the lobby, unless he’s got new information directly related to the case … I understand. Remember, though, you’re the one with the badge, right?”
In the Darkest Hour Page 7