Skin and Bone

by TA Moore

  Javi raised his eyebrows. “And she had the money for that?”

  Ruth pursed her lips. “No. She didn’t. That was the thing that made it stick out, because I knew she’d been down on her luck recently. She’d lost her job, and the friends she was staying with threw her out over… something, I don’t know what exactly, and she’d been sleeping in her car. That’s why we hadn’t spoken in a while. I wanted to help, but she told me that I didn’t get to do that anymore. Janet could be prickly like that, not about money, exactly, but about help?”

  “And?” Javi pressed delicately. “What changed?”

  Ruth finally unlaced her hands so she could shrug with them. “I don’t know. I thought, at first, that she was going to try and blackmail me for the money—not that I had it. That wasn’t what she wanted, though. She said that she could get the money if she could get to California. There was someone there who owed her money or would give her the money.”

  “A debt?”

  “I don’t know. She was cagey about it, tight-lipped, but confident that she’d come back with enough. I loaned her the money for the flight and a car. I hoped that would be the last I heard of it. Maybe I hoped she wouldn’t come back, that she’d stay out here. That was the last time I spoke to her, and I don’t know anything else. I’m sorry. Can I go to the hospital now? I’d like to see Janet.”

  Ruth looked at him hopefully, unburdened of her secrets. Javi considered it for a second, but he believed she’d told him what she knew… or at least what she knew that she knew.

  “Of course,” he said. “I’m sure Lieutenant Frome will arrange for someone to take you up to spend time with her. If you plan to leave town, let me know? Just in case we have any other questions.”

  Ruth nodded with relief. “Of course.” She stood up and tugged at her clothes to smooth the lines. Then she extended her hands to Javi. He stood up and accepted the clasp of her fingers around his. “I hope you find who did this to her.”

  “I will.”

  She squeezed his hand one last time and let go. There were tears in her eyes, and she wiped them away with her knuckles before they could go anywhere. With one last awkward, snotty nod for him, she went to leave. He leaned over to pick up his phone, the counter still at work as it totted up the minutes of terse conversation. At this point Javi didn’t see how it would do any damage if Ruth got defensive.

  “Did your partner know?”

  She turned abruptly to give him a sharp look. It would have been angry if she weren’t still clearly uncomfortable about being interviewed by the FBI. “Bonnie knows I… I messed up,” she said. “And she knows I picked her—her and our son, our life. But if you’re implying she was involved in this in some way—”

  “The doctors don’t know when, or if, Janet will regain consciousness,” Javi interrupted. He saw the flash of grief behind Ruth’s eyes as she looked away… and the guilt. In Javi’s experience, lies died hard, but guilt died harder. It was also an excellent lever. “Janet can’t help me find who did this to her. So I have to ask you these questions. There’s no one else.”

  “You want to know who did this?” Ruth snapped. “That’s your question? I don’t know. I don’t know why anyone would hurt Janet. Whatever she wanted to be, right now she’s a janitor who had to sleep in her car because she ran out of friends and couches to crash on. Maybe it was a bigot. There’s enough of them around. I can tell you that it wasn’t Bonnie. She’s not like that.”

  “People can surprise you.”

  A bitter smile twisted Ruth’s mouth. “If Bonnie still surprised me, I wouldn’t have slept with someone else,” she said. “Bonnie was the one who met Janet first. She liked her. She felt sorry for her. She….”

  Ruth stopped abruptly. Javi saw a thought flutter across her face—a shadow of suspicion—and then vanish as she dismissed it.

  “You thought of something,” Javi said. “What?”

  Ruth pinched her lips together. “It’s… nothing,” she said. “Something Bonnie said once, but she makes up these dramas from nothing. Someone doesn’t have a Facebook account, and suddenly they’re in witness protection, oh, and they visited Japan once, so it’s probably from the Yakuza.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Javi said. “But the doctors don’t know if Janet will regain consciousness. So she can’t tell me anything about who’d want to do this to her. Your wife had to have based this ‘story’ she told you on something. It might help.”

  The struggle between Ruth’s desire to help and her need to keep her wife out of it played over her face. Help won by a hair. She sighed resentfully and crossed her arms across her stomach, her fingers tight around her elbows.

  “Janet never talked about her past, so I don’t know where Bonnie got this idea,” Ruth said. “But she was convinced Janet’s family had been abusive, that they’d tried to send her to one of those Bible camps to be ‘fixed.’ She thought that was why Janet wouldn’t accept any help, why she couldn’t trust anyone.”

  “Did she mention any names or—”

  “No,” Ruth snapped. Her voice cracked. “It was just a story, all right? Bonnie tells stories about people. The only thing that Janet ever said about her past was that someone out here owed her money. Find them. Maybe they’ll have your answers.” She stormed out and slammed the door behind her.

  Javi turned the recorder on his phone off with a tap. “Easier said than done,” he murmured. “How do you find out who owes a ghost?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THERE WAS always an odd quality to the calls Galloway took while she was at work in the morgue. The background noise was disconcertingly banal, interrupted by only the squeak of a wheel that needed oil and the muted squeal of a saw. It could have been a kitchen remodel going on around her instead of human bodies being taken apart and put back together.

  At least until you heard the crack of bones and the squelch of organs being moved.

  “I ran the DNA profile against some of the open missing person cases,” Galloway said. From the faintly muffled sound of her voice, Javi assumed she had the phone tucked against her shoulder as she worked. “Any that matched Ms. Morrow’s age and general description. Nothing popped. If you want to know who she is, you have to wait and see if there’s a match in CODIS.”

  “How long will that take?” Javi asked.

  Someone had left a tray of donuts in the break room. Javi wasn’t the first to discover them. Half of the box was gone, only a greasy print left on the paper, and the others had been picked over. He grabbed a cinnamon-glazed one with a napkin and then put it back down when he saw a distinct finger scoop gouged out of the icing.

  “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Galloway fired back. When he just waited her out, she sighed and set something wet down. “Cross your fingers that no one newsworthy gets kidnapped or murdered. If the search doesn’t get bumped by a higher-priority case, two weeks. Maybe. Anything else?”

  “One thing,” Javi said. He poured himself a cup of coffee. Instead of the usual tar-black liquid, it came out of the carafe the color of tea. He tasted it carefully and grimaced at the bitter, oily tang of it. Someone had run out of coffee and decided to run another pot through the already-squeezed grounds. “When Janet transitioned, it looks like she paid for the surgery herself, probably for all of it, because I doubt she had any insurance. Is there any way that makes it easier to find out where it was done?”

  Galloway hmmmed. “Definitively? No. Surgeons don’t actually sign their work, idiots notwithstanding. However, if she didn’t have insurance, I doubt she’s rich?”

  “She lived in her car before she came here. Apparently she had a small inheritance when her mother died.”

  “Tijuana.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “It’s a guess, but it’s an educated one. Unless Janet was prone to understatement, a small inheritance wouldn’t pay for her to get the procedure done in the US. Besides, if she did get it done stateside, that won’t exactly narrow it
down for you. More likely she went abroad. Thailand is more popular, but Tijuana would be cheaper for her to get to and less daunting if she was on her own.” Galloway paused, and Javi imagined the shrug. “Or she did something else entirely. I have no evidence. It’s up to you.”

  “Thanks,” Javi said. “If anything else does come up, let me know.”

  “Of course,” Galloway said. Before Javi could lower the phone from his ear, Galloway blurted out, “If you could do the same with Ms. Morrow? I’ll find out if she dies, but if she recovers, I’d like to know that too. It’d be a first for me.”

  She chuckled self-deprecatingly. Javi promised he would and hung up. As he tucked his phone away, he made a mental note to send Galloway some good coffee. He still didn’t plan to stay in Plenty long enough to need friends, but a well-disposed pathologist was a different matter.

  Sugar and cream turned the coffee a paler shade than Javi usually took it but did nothing for the taste. He resisted the urge to spit the mouthful back out like a child and headed over to the sink to empty the rest of the cup instead.

  The door opened a crack, and Tancredi looked in as he rinsed the cup. Her hair had escaped its braid in a straggle of humidity-set curls, and there was a long line of grease smudged over her jaw. She saw Javi, and a mixture of resentment and worry tucked into the crease of her eyebrows.

  “Agent Merlo,” she said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was looking for Collins.”

  “He took the professor to the hospital,” he said. “She wanted to see Janet.”

  The irritation that furrowed Tancredi’s forehead turned into a real frown. “I wanted him to run the hard drive from the car to the lab,” she said.

  “Cloister identified it?” Javi asked. “Whose was it?”

  “Middle-aged wealthy widow,” Tancredi said. A wry smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she propped the door open with her foot. “We don’t think she was driving.”

  “Because she’s wealthy, middle-aged, or a widow?” Javi asked as he cocked his head to the side.

  The smile disappeared from Tancredi’s face. “She was on a yacht the night of the accident. We’ve got pictures from her and her friend’s Instagram accounts. Hashtag life begins at forty.”

  “Quite the merry widow, then.”

  Tancredi shrugged. “Drunk, anyhow,” she said. “Maybe whoever took the car knew they’d have a few days before anyone reported it was gone.”

  “You’re sure this was the car?” Javi asked.

  “Pickup,” Tancredi corrected him and then rolled her eyes at herself. “Witte identified some marks that his dog had left on the doors. Bourneville also found blood trace in the car and some items that may have belonged to Janet. We sent them down to forensics. There was blood on them, so we should be able to tell if it was hers or not.”

  Javi nodded. A direct comparison with an existing sample would be quicker than having to run it through every sample in CODIS while they hoped for the best.

  “What were the items?” he asked.

  “Business cards,” Tancredi said. She wrinkled her nose and shrugged. “We never found a wallet. Whoever did it probably took it and didn’t notice they dropped the cards when they emptied it out. Oh. The hotel called back.”

  For a second, Javi drew a blank. Then he recalled the email he sent before Cloister knocked on his door. Other events had made it slip his mind.

  “The suitcase?” he said.

  Tancredi nodded as she pushed herself off the door. “Check-in wasn’t open when she arrived at the hotel. She left it behind the desk to pick up later. Some idiot put it in Lost and Found. It’s waiting for someone to pick it up. I’ll go after I report to the lieutenant about seizing Ms. Lopez’s car.”

  She looked worried. Either Frome’s new willingness to look at the case hadn’t filtered down to his deputies, or his foul mood had.

  “I’ll do that,” Javi offered. “Cloister can fill me in, and Frome will want to talk to him about Bourneville’s search.”

  Tancredi tilted her head to the side and gave him a measuring look. There were times she reminded him of his grandmother. The ends they put it to were different—a career in law enforcement versus genially despotic rule of her social circle—but the sharpness behind their eyes was the same.

  Neither woman would likely appreciate the comparison.

  “Are you sure?” Tancredi asked.

  Javi nodded. “I need to fill Frome in on what we’ve found out about Janet’s background anyhow. It makes sense to do it all at once.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Tancredi patted her hair down and tried to tuck the stray ends back into her braid. “I’ll head to the hotel, then, grab the suitcase. Hopefully there’s more than clothes in it.”

  Before she could leave, Javi handed her a napkin. “Here.” He rubbed his thumb along his jaw. “You’ve got something on your face.”

  Tancredi flushed, spat on the napkin, and scrubbed her face. She looked at Javi expectantly as she finished. The smear was now a blotch that looked like the worst bruise in the world.

  “Better,” he lied. “And I did care, the other night.”

  She wiped the napkin along her jaw again and gave him a small smile. “I know it wasn’t my business, but Witte would never have called you. He didn’t even tell us it was his birthday last month. Like it would be too much bother for us to get a card and a cake? We get to eat the cake too.”

  Javi wanted to ask. He wasn’t going to. It probably wasn’t that bad that he didn’t know Cloister’s birthday—birthdays weren’t part of whatever they were doing, and Cloister obviously didn’t make a big deal of it—but the idea of having to ask Tancredi for the information made him bristle. Besides, he could guess the date. He’d felt awkward about it for the last few weeks.

  “Next time make it fried chicken,” he said dryly. “I think he lives on that.”

  Tancredi laughed and headed off.

  The door swung shut behind her, and Javi finally let himself scowl. Of course Cloister wouldn’t tell anyone it was his birthday, Javi thought sourly. He pulled out his phone and ordered a coffee from the app with angry, impatient swipes of his fingers. No, he’d just set you up to let him down instead. So he could still play the martyr, even if he was the only one who knew about it.

  Anger tasted like bad coffee and pennies in the back of Javi’s throat. He didn’t know what irritated him more, that Cloister had tried to trick him into a real—sort of—date, or that Javi had—sort of—apologized for it all.

  Javi didn’t like games, especially when he thought Cloister and he had already agreed on the rules. Kincaid liked to do that, to move the goalposts when you weren’t looking and see what happened.

  Javier. Trust me, Javier.

  But a small clear voice noted through Javi’s temper that Cloister was so straightforward you could use him as a ruler. Even his emotional issues were out in the world for anyone to see, along with a battered Airstream trailer and a pile of missing person cases. As for the martyr bit? That wasn’t like him either. Cloister ate his pain. It was gone before you could even apologize.

  He’d still been an asshole, but it wasn’t a game.

  That didn’t help Javi shake off his sour mood. It just made him realize he might know who he was angry at, but he wasn’t sure why.

  Javi pulled a sour face and paid for his coffee with a swipe of his thumb. Once the transaction was done, he shoved his phone into his pocket and his temper into the back of his mind. Cloister could wait. Javi had—at least until Joel got there—a job to do.

  THE LAB had punched a hole of the corner of the business card. It made it look like an old-fashioned loyalty card—ten court trials, and you got a free billable hour. A bargain if you asked anyone who ever had to retain a lawyer.

  “Andrew Macintosh,” Javi said as he finished his coffee. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “You’ve never heard of Mac the Knife?” Frome sounded almost giddy.

  “The song?” Cl
oister asked.

  Javi gave him a sharp look. “I doubt the lieutenant is planning a sing-along,” he said.

  Frome snorted and leaned back in his chair. The door to the office was shut, and once Frome saw the card, he closed the curtains as well. “No, but Mac was a shark, all right,” he said. “If someone hired Andrew Macintosh to represent him, then you knew they were probably guilty as sin.”

  Javi flipped the evidence bag over and squinted at the back of the card. The contact details had been scrawled out, but he could make out the shape of the letters below.

  “Yet he was based in Plenty?” he asked skeptically. “In Delacourt.”

  Frome snorted and held up two fingers. “Delacourt was a lot nicer back then, and Mac owned half of it,” he said as he folded down one finger. “And Plenty was a lot worse. I only met him once. I was a rookie deputy, and my partner and I had pulled over this driver who, it turned out, had a dead body in the trunk of his car. My partner got shot during the arrest, got put on desk duty after that until he quit. He just couldn’t hack it on the streets. Trial comes around, and Mac takes the legs out from under us. His client had just borrowed the car, had PTSD from an unreported carjacking that his therapist backed up with some very freshly printed files, and this little guy with a wife in the hospital came forward to admit he committed the murder. The driver got off with careless discharge of a firearm, the little guy got jail time, and some generous soul paid off the wife’s bills. Back then Plenty suited Mac.”

  “So what happened?” Cloister asked. “Did he get scooped up when the police department got cleaned out?”

  “No.” Frome frowned for the first time. He stretched over the desk to pick up the card and pursed his lips as he studied the folded edges and the fade pattern. It had obviously been in someone’s wallet for a while. After a pause he laid it down on the table. “He murdered his family.”