Field of Graves

by J. T. Ellison

  Dr. Peterson was humming, marking his coded chart, and clucking to himself occasionally. He finally looked up.

  “Someone is missing this girl. She’s had a lot of work done, and someone had to pay for it. As young as she is, I’d bet anything on parents.”

  “Care to hazard a guess at her age?”

  “You really should talk to your anthropologist to be completely accurate, but the lack of wear, the condition of her bone, I’d give it a guess at twenty to twenty-five years old.”

  “Yeah, she put it there, too.”

  He handed her the dental chart he had completed. “I know it’s a long shot, but eventually that damn NCIC database is gonna make a match. Give this to Taylor, and let’s see how lucky we are.”

  “I’ll fax it up there right now. Are you going to be available if I need to get in touch?”

  “Of course. I’m always available for your calls.” He gave her a winsome smile, nose twitching, and they walked back to the lobby together.

  “Thanks so much for your help, Gerald. I really hope we can find out who this girl is.”

  Sam walked him out, then swiped her card and went back inside, stopping in the reception area.

  “Kris, could you fax this over to Lincoln Ross in Homicide? Tell him it needs to go in the dental database right away. If by the grace of God something matches, tell him to call me on my cell.”

  “Certainly, Dr. Owens. I’ll do it right now.” As she spoke, she was already out of her chair.

  “Thank you,” Sam said then headed to her office, saying a prayer as she went.

  62

  “Forensic Medical, can I help you?”

  “Can I speak to Dr. Owens, please? This is Lincoln Ross with Homicide.”

  “I’m not sure exactly where she is, but if you would hold on, I’ll forward you to her cell.” There was a brief moment of silence, then a click as the phone was transferred.

  “Yes?”

  “Sam? It’s Lincoln. I just finished talking to Taylor. She asked me to give you a call. You are never in a million years going to guess what happened when I ran the dental records.”

  “Yeah, sure, Lincoln. You got a match. Now tell me what’s really going on.”

  “No, Sam, seriously, we got a match.”

  “You’re full of crap.” Sam spun in her chair, watching her office walls fly by.

  “I swear by all that’s holy that I have your girl. Her name is Mary Margaret de Rossi.”

  “Are you sure it’s her? I mean really, that frickin’ database hasn’t ever made a match. How can we be sure it’s correct?”

  “I’m sure. Can you come on over here? Taylor wants to call her parents, but she needs you to make a positive on the records.”

  “Hell yeah, I’m on my way.”

  63

  An hour later, Sam was staring at Mary Margaret de Rossi’s antemortem radiographs on the computer screen. Her mind was crowded with a future image of the poor girl’s parents, bravely sitting in the family waiting room at her office, waiting to fill out the paperwork. There was no reason to show them the body; it was burned beyond recognition, and Sam didn’t want them to have that image of their daughter.

  Mary Margaret’s parents had told Taylor the sad story of their runaway daughter. They had only recently found out that she was alive and living in Nashville. They were so proud she’d gotten her life together, kicked her demons, was in college, and had found her own way back to the real world. They’d forgiven her, and she’d forgiven them.

  When she first went missing, several years earlier, they didn’t know she had simply run away from home. They had filed a missing person report with the Atlanta police. The police investigation turned up nothing. Because of her age and background, they chalked it up to a runaway situation and dropped the case. But a year or so ago, a young detective had contacted them. He was looking at all the missing person cases for the past ten years, and asked if they were still looking for their daughter. When they admitted they still didn’t know where she was or if she were alive or dead, the young cop suggested they provide her dental records for him to put in his new database. He had warned them that finding a match was unlikely, but wanted to give it a shot.

  He was excited to learn about all the work that had been done on her teeth. Braces in her youth hadn’t fully corrected a large frontal gap, so her parents had spent even more money, ten thousand dollars, to have veneers put on, which even they agreed took their daughter from ugly duckling status to elegant swan. The detective was certain the work done on her teeth would differentiate her radiographs, and give them a better shot at finding a match should her body ever be found.

  When Mary Margaret finally contacted her family, they had forgotten to let the detective know she’d been found. The records languished in the system until Lincoln made his triumphant match.

  Sam used the slides from the database to make her final confirmation. The veneers were a dead giveaway. The antemortem records showed the gap in the girl’s teeth. The records were a 100 percent match.

  Based on Mary Margaret’s distraught parents’ information, Lincoln had called over to Aquinas and found one of the nuns who had been close to her.

  Sister Agatha sounded a hundred years old, but despite her quavering voice, she seemed sharp as a tack. Lincoln told her the nature of his call, and the old nun broke down. Lincoln heard her saying a rosary in the background. She finally pulled it together and apologized.

  “I am so sorry for that poor girl. I think she’d had a hard life. I didn’t know much about her. She had the look of a young girl who’s seen too much of the world. But she was lovely and studied so hard.”

  “You say you don’t know much about her past. Can you tell me what you do know? Her parents are trying to fill in the gaps.”

  “Of course. She came to us from the Sisters of the Covenant out in Colorado. Wonderful women, they run a small hospital up there in the mountains. Let me see here, I’ve got her record right in front of me. She was getting straight A’s, the poor lamb. Taking a full load, too, and working in the Student Center. My goodness, it shows here she was also auditing classes over at Vanderbilt last semester. Working so hard. Oh, this is just too much.”

  Lincoln’s heart beat a little faster. He motioned to Taylor and wrote on his blotter MM audited at Vandy last sem.

  Taylor knocked her knuckles against the desk. There it was. There was the link between the girls.

  Lincoln dragged his attention back to the old nun. He had missed some of what she was talking about, but a name caught his ear.

  “I’m sorry, Sister, can you say that again?”

  “You need to pay more attention, young man.” Lincoln immediately had a vision of a stooped old nun smacking his palm with a ruler and nearly laughed aloud. “I was saying that I don’t think there is anyone else here that she was very close to, but she spent a lot of time with the priest who was killed. Such a good man, such a loss to the church. We have a hard time bringing in the younger people these days. Boys just don’t want to be priests anymore. I’m getting off the subject. She was friends with him. With Father Xavier. They spent quite a bit of time together. I believe he was tutoring her in Latin. She wanted to attend the Latin Mass, you know. Such a good girl.”

  “Sister, thank you so much for your time. I have to let you go now.”

  “God bless you and keep you.” She hung up before he could answer.

  He turned to Taylor, who was impatiently tapping her fingers on top of the filing cabinet.

  “Got another tidbit for you.”

  “Yeah? Well, if it’s as good as your last one I’m going to kiss you.”

  “Ooh, baby. Then get over here and pucker up. Guess who Mary Margaret spent all her time with?”

  “Who?”

  “Fat
her Xavier.”

  Taylor started grinning. “Damn good job, Lincoln. C’mere.” She grabbed him and laid one on him, then ran off down the hall, shouting for Baldwin.

  64

  Armed with her team’s hours of work, Taylor and Baldwin went to the Vanderbilt campus. The storm damage was extensive, but the cleanup had gone very well, and all the roads through downtown were back open, as was the campus itself.

  It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone on the quad, the grass had been freshly mowed, probably for the last time before the bitter cold of winter hit. There was just a hint of the smell of burning leaves wafting through the air; most had been blown off the trees during the heavy storms. The scent reminded Taylor that the nights would soon turn frigid and warm fires would be needed to chase away the fingers of winter.

  Students milled about, happy to be back to school, enjoying the unseasonably warm morning. Two boys played with a football, showing off for three girls in bikini tops and cutoff shorts on a blanket nearby.

  There were two professors they needed to talk to from the classics department: Edward Lear and Barry James. Fitz and Marcus had gone through Shelby’s, Jordan’s, and Jill’s records since their arrival at Vanderbilt. By intersecting their schedules, they had come up with the names of two professors all three had taken classes from. After the conversation with the nun in administration at Aquinas College revealed that Mary Margaret de Rossi sometimes audited classes at Vanderbilt in the classics—a program not offered at her school—they found she’d audited several classes, including one each from each professor.

  The net was closing.

  Baldwin had found the girl who had put together the flyer campaign to help find Jill. Her name was Susan Davidson, and he thought it would be smart to speak with her first, before the professors. If they knew a little more about Jill, they might be able to piece the rest of the story together.

  Taylor and Baldwin made their way to the Student Center, and Susan met them at the door, escorted them inside, and found them a table.

  Taylor started the interview with a few niceties, asking about the girl’s study and major. Then she started in.

  “So, Susan, tell us how you know Jill Gates.”

  “We met at a sorority rush party in the first week of school. She wasn’t thrilled to be there, which surprised me. I mean, she had the looks, the body, the whole package the sororities look for. I also heard she was a Tri-Delt legacy, so I figured she’d be snapped up quickly. I really wouldn’t have paid a lot of attention, you know, except she took off in the middle of rush. Just left. I thought it was strange, but I had my own stuff to deal with, you know?”

  “But you met her again, right? You said on the phone that you two had a class together.”

  “Yeah, last semester. I added it in the second week. I didn’t like my psychology class, so I transferred into this classics class, you know, mythology and all that? One of the girls in my dorm told me the prof was totally cool, and he was. Went off all the time on these weird tangents, but he was so into the gods and their roles shaping our lives that we couldn’t help but get interested. And he has the grooviest eyes, you know. Sort of this sea green, like yours, Agent Baldwin, though yours are much prettier.”

  Taylor smiled and shot Baldwin a look, but interrupted the girl’s daydream. “Susan, let’s get back to Jill Gates. You and she were in the class together?”

  Susan snapped back to reality. “Yeah, we sat next to each other. She knew so much about this stuff already, you know? She sat glued to his every word, and I always saw her go talk to him after class. It was weird, though. She’d ask him questions she already knew the answers to, ’cause I’d see her write them down before she went up to him. But whatever, you know? Everyone thought he was hot. She seemed really into him.”

  “Did you ever talk to her about it?”

  “She blew me off as soon as I brought it up. Said she wanted to go on and get her doctorate in the classics, and it would be really helpful if she had such an influential teacher to back her up. Yeah, whatever, like I bought that.”

  “Did you know Shelby and Jordan?”

  “Well, sure. They were in the same class with me and Jill that first semester.”

  Taylor felt a bump of adrenaline. “Who was the professor, Susan?”

  “You didn’t already know? Dr. Lucas, of course.”

  “Dr. Lucas?”

  “Yeah, Gabriel. Gabriel Lucas. He’s not a prof here anymore, though. I don’t know where he went.”

  Gabriel Lucas wasn’t one of the two professors they had come to speak with. She’d never even seen the name. Taylor made a mental note to call Fitz the second they finished and ask about him.

  “So you thought they may have been involved? Romantically?”

  Susan shook her head, staring over Taylor’s shoulder. A little frown started in her forehead. “I don’t know if she was sleeping with him, if that’s what you mean. It was almost like they had this strange link, like they had a secret that no one else knew. I always assumed there was something going on, but I never saw them together outside of his office, where there were always people around. They’d be in these deep conversations about Plato and stuff. We studied the Allegory of the Cave for two weeks, and she really got into it. That’s really all I know. I need to get to class, so is there anything else?”

  Baldwin finally spoke up. “Susan, we’ll handle your absence from class. I want to know more about Jill. What was she like?”

  Susan shrugged. “Well, she was totally gorgeous, but it was like she didn’t really know it. Never got dolled up for class and stuff. She was really natural. Not a granola, but pretty laid-back about her looks. I guess that’s what I noticed in the first place. It’s not like I’m some kind of beauty queen. Then when she gained some weight this year, I guess I felt even more at ease with her, you know? Some of us just aren’t meant to be perfect.”

  Susan wasn’t exaggerating. She was plain, with unfashionably large, pink-rimmed glasses and a slight overbite, making her look like an overeager chipmunk. When she smiled, her cheeks puffed out as if she were holding a large store of nuts in her mouth. Baldwin smiled gently, catching Taylor’s eye. The weight gain. That must have been the pregnancy.

  “So she was nice to you?”

  “Yeah, most of the time. I’d hang around some, asking her to get coffee and stuff. Most of the time she’d come, but sometimes she just blew me off with this look in her eye, like she found me disgusting. But then she’d smile and be really nice, bring me a muffin from Starbucks or something. Anyway, whatever. I liked her.”

  Both Baldwin and Taylor were starting to get the idea that Susan may have felt more than “like” for Jill Gates, but neither of them pushed the issue.

  Baldwin continued trying to draw a mental picture of Jill. “So what did you guys talk about when you hung out? Class? Professors? Anything you can think of would be helpful.”

  Susan teared up. “I don’t know anything else. Do you think Jill is dead? All of us were in class together with Dr. Lucas. And Shelby and Jordan are dead. Am I next?”

  65

  Taylor’s heart was galloping in her chest. They needed to wrap this up and go investigate who the hell Gabriel Lucas was.

  “Susan,” she said soothingly, setting a hand on the girl’s pudgy arm. “I’m sure you’re fine. But we need to get an idea of what Jill was like, to see if there’s anything we need to look into. Did she ever go off like this before, without telling anyone where she was headed?”

  “Well, sure, every weekend. She said she had a boyfriend down at Sewanee, and they met there every Friday afternoon, and she stayed until late Sunday night.”

  “Did anyone else know about this?”

  “No, she swore me to secrecy. She really didn’t talk to anyone else about her personal life, you know?” Su
san’s chest had puffed with a small sense of pride, and Taylor felt for the girl. The secret keeper always was made to feel like the most important person in a woman’s world, especially if the person was a shade too nerdy and harboring some more-than-friendly feelings toward her friend. Women could be used that way, and it was starting to look like Jill Gates had been taking advantage of Susan’s affections from the beginning. Taylor realized Susan was still talking.

  “...Jill was kind of intense, you know? Like when you’re talking to her, she like leans into you, like she really cares about what you’re saying. There was this time...” Susan reddened, and both of them could understand completely her embarrassment.

  “It’s okay, Susan. I think I’m starting to understand how you felt about Jill.” Taylor handed the girl a tissue. She accepted it gratefully and hid behind it for a moment.

  “Yeah, well, she wasn’t into me like that, but I didn’t mind. I think she knew, but she was good enough never to mention it, you know. Like she didn’t hold it against me or anything.” Susan’s voice had gotten bitter, but she smiled and went back to her story.

  “I don’t really know how to explain it. She was so intense, so interested, that sometimes it was a little creepy, you know? Like she wanted to turn my mind inside out. She just looks right into you. And I told her things I’d never admit to anyone. Dreams, feelings. Not about how I felt for her, but about dealing with life feeling different. And she understood so much. I know she’d never felt like she didn’t fit in, but she made me feel like she understood it completely. So I poured out my deepest darkest secrets, my biggest fears, like about my parents finding out I’m not their perfect little girl. And she understood, you know, she really understood. I know she really cared about me in her own way.”