They both nodded.
“For now, the SAR team keeps going.” She held up a hand to stave off Doyle, who had opened his mouth in protest. “At least for a few more days—we’ll see where we are then. I’ve also called in a K-9 unit to go over the sites where most of the remains were found. And I think we should post warning signs at the trailheads recommending that hikers travel in pairs, and listing a number they can call to report suspicious behavior. Any questions?”
“Yeah, what the hell are we supposed to do?” Doyle said.
“Lieutenant Doyle, please contact your lab and tell them I’d like those DNA results back ASAP. Then head back to the boneyard, keep an eye on the search, and assemble that list of all active outdoor groups in this area. Lieutenant Lauer, I need your list as well. And why don’t you check the ViCAP database for young males found in remote areas.”
Doyle scoffed. “ViCAP is a waste of time. Do you Feds really expect us to fill out forms with a couple hundred questions every time a body falls into our laps? We put our ViCAP forms in a round file.” He jerked his head toward the trash can.
Kelly’s eyes narrowed, but before she could respond Monica said, “I gotta say, Doyle, I’m shocked. I figured someone with your work ethic would welcome the chance to sit on his ass all day filling out forms.” She turned back to Kelly, “Don’t worry, Agent Jones, I’m on it.”
Doyle stormed out, slamming the door shut behind him. Kelly felt her temples starting to throb and yearned for an aspirin. She knew from experience that a lot of cops didn’t bother filling out their ViCAP forms, but it was still disheartening to hear of a whole department throwing them away. The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was a national database used to track MOs, so if a similar crime had been committed in another jurisdiction or state, a match would pop up. It was one of the only ways to track active killers who crossed state borders to commit crimes. Especially in a case like this one, that information could prove crucial. But since the creation of ViCAP in the 1980s, few police departments bothered to take the time to fill out the lengthy questionnaires detailing every aspect of a crime. Which just helped the bad guys get away with more murders, Kelly thought despondently, and made her job a lot harder.
As they were leaving, Monica grabbed her elbow and held her back. “Can I talk to you for a second?” she said in a low voice.
Doyle had already stormed off down the corridor, no doubt to bitch about them to the other detectives in his unit. He was on his home turf here, a situation Kelly hadn’t wanted to encourage, but the Berkshire cops were the first on site and were due some privileges because of it. Kelly stepped back into the room and closed the door.
Monica faced her, gnawing a fingernail. She had a guilty expression on her face. “Listen, I don’t usually hold back, but Doyle is such a piece of work….”
Kelly waited, arms crossed.
“There was another thing, about the body in Vermont. Stuff we found around it.”
“Like what?”
“Like a pile of change. Pennies, ten of them, stacked neat as can be right by the head. And the marks on the skull, by the eyes…” She paused.
“Yes?” Kelly pressed after a minute.
“Well, it looks like the eyes might’ve been gouged out. Tough to say, maybe your guy will be able to tell us more, but that’s how it looked to our M.E.”
“What about the animals? The skull could’ve been dragged, the pennies might have not have been near it when it was dumped.”
Monica shrugged. “Yep, that’s all true. But I gotta say, my gut tells me that body was dumped right there. It was too weird, finding a pile of change out there in the middle of nowhere. And the eyes—well, your guy will be able to tell us for sure, but I got a feeling about this, you know?”
Kelly nodded. Sometimes you had to go by your gut. “Thanks for filling me in. But in the future…”
Monica waved an arm. “Yeah, I know, gotta keep Lieutenant Unpleasant in the loop. I’ll work on it.”
“I don’t like it.”
Doyle shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter if you like it or not—she’s here. Not much we can do about it now.” He leaned forward and spit in the sand at the base of the picnic table, then glanced over his shoulder to make sure their conversation wasn’t overheard. In the distance, he could hear one of the K-9 dogs yapping as the search for body parts continued.
“Does she know anything?”
Doyle squinted at the other officer. They’d shared a desk in the Homicide unit for almost a decade now. Doyle had never really liked Kaplan, he’d always been a little squirrelly. Couldn’t trust someone like that to watch your back when the chips were down, Doyle thought as he scrutinized him. The guy’s bug eyes were jumping around, beads of sweat creeping out from the sides of his Berkshire State P.D. cap. “Just keep your mouth shut, Kaplan. I’m handling it.”
“Easy for you to say, you’re a year away from your pension and got no family,” Kaplan grumbled. “Me, I lose this job my wife’ll kill me.”
“You’re not going to lose your job.” Doyle rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Thanks to those two broads he’d been stuck with, he had a migraine coming on, which was making it hard to resist the urge to smack Kaplan. “I got a guy at the lab in Sudbury, he’s handling things. Another week, all this—” he waved toward the woods “—will die down, and the Feds will be out of our hair. So relax.”
“I hope you’re right, Doyle.”
Doyle snorted. “When the hell have I been wrong before?”
“I can think of a few times,” Kaplan said. “Matter of fact, I think that’s what got us in this mess in the first place.”
Doyle’s eyes narrowed. Kaplan shrank visibly under his gaze. “You better think long and hard before running that mouth off at me again,” he said after a lengthy moment.
“Or what?” Kaplan demanded, although the bravado had largely faded from his voice.
Doyle didn’t answer, but shifted his focus toward the tree line. Just past the police tape he could see Jan Waters, that hot blond reporter, leaning against her van. He raised a hand in greeting, and she smiled and wiggled her fingers in return. Kaplan followed his eyes and let out a low whistle. “Man, would I like to tap that.”
“That’s a surefire way to lose your wife,” Doyle said.
“Bet she’d be worth it, though.” Kaplan stared at her longingly. “She can probably crack nuts with those legs.”
Doyle guffawed at the image. “She can crack more than that.”
“Yeah?” Kaplan scrutinized him. “Sounds like you might know.”
Doyle smirked in response. A patrolman was coming down the trail with a Belgian Malinois panting on the end of a leash. Two other officers followed him. Doyle stood and smacked Kaplan on the arm. “C’mon, boy,” he said, grinning. “It’s your turn to get in there.”
Four
“Ready to go?”
Kelly glanced up from the stack of reports she’d been sifting through. Monica stood in the doorway, jiggling her car keys in one hand.
“Sure, I’ll be right there.” Kelly tapped the papers, straightening them into a pile, then rose to join her.
It was a short drive across the border to Bennington, a picturesque Vermont town complete with a village green. A strange obelisk dominated the landscape, stone sides sloping three-hundred feet up to a point at the top. Monica nodded to it as they drove past. “Commemorates the Battle of Bennington, when they drove the Brits back up to Canada during the revolution. Butt-ass ugly, isn’t it? Me and my friends call it the ‘mighty gray dildo.’”
Kelly laughed. Despite her brash nature, Monica exuded a warmth and spirit that was hard to resist. She was feeling better about the case today. After getting a good night’s sleep at a local bed-and-breakfast, she felt lighter, more able to handle a daunting stack of cold cases. The fact that it was a gorgeous day outside didn’t hurt, either.
They crossed a covered wooden bridge and passed rows of fields and rolling green meadows. It was almost unbelievably lush. After a few minutes they turned into the parking lot at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, a stately Georgian building of brick and marble that looked more like a college library than a hospital. Monica slid into one of the spaces reserved for emergency personnel.
As Kelly turned to get out of the car Monica stopped her with one hand. “Listen,” she said firmly, “I know that so far we’ve been making the Keystone Cops look like pros, and you must think we’re a bunch of Podunks dead set on bungling this case for you. But what you’ve seen so far today—well, let’s just say I didn’t put my best foot forward. You gotta understand, Doyle has been driving me bananas. I feel like he interferes every time I try to get something done.”
Kelly started to reply, but Monica waved a hand, cutting her off. “You don’t have to say anything. I know we all gotta get along, and I’m really going to try. Just wanted to apologize to you first.”
“Okay,” Kelly said, unsure how to respond. After a second she added, “Thanks.”
“No problem. Now, let’s go see what a forensic anthropologist from the Smithsonian looks like. I’m ready to be impressed,” Monica chirped, throwing her car door open.
Dr. Stuart barely looked up when they entered the room. He was bent over a laptop, tapping furiously. The morgue was located in the hospital basement. Clearly the casualty rate in Bennington was low, the room barely large enough to hold all three of them. Laid out on a stainless steel table behind him was a fragmented skeleton: a tibia and foot on one side, femur on the other, pelvic girdle above them. Then a few assorted ribs, vertebrae, a piece of sternum, sections of a right arm and hand, with a skull at the top that was missing the lower jawbone. Behind the table, three metal sliding drawers were set into the wall. The fluorescent bulb overhead needed to be changed; it buzzed intermittently.
Kelly watched him for a moment, then said, “Dr. Stuart…”
He whipped a finger up, silencing her. She raised her eyebrows.
Monica nudged her, repressing a smile. “He’s kinda cute,” she muttered in Kelly’s ear. “Not what I was expecting.”
Kelly glanced at her, surprised. Honestly, she couldn’t see it. He wasn’t unattractive in any obvious way—he reminded her of Bill Gates’s younger, dorkier brother. He did appear to have regained his confidence, which helped. Dr. Stuart continued typing, unaware of being appraised. Clearly the man was now in his element, no trace of the bundle of nerves he’d been on the chopper. A lock of brown hair fell forward as he hunched over the keyboard. Finally straightening, he removed his wire-rimmed glasses and began urgently polishing them on a corner of his untucked shirt.
“So sorry, Agent Jones, but I really wanted to finish inputting the numbers before I lost my train of thought.” His eyes widened at the sight of Monica. “Oh, and you’ve brought someone else along….”
Kelly said, “Monica, this is Dr. Howard Stuart from the Smithsonian.”
Dr. Stuart carefully perched the glasses back across the bridge of his nose and smiled faintly. “Hello…”
Monica thrust out her hand, shaking his vigorously. Dr. Stuart winced. “Lieutenant Monica Lauer, Homicide Division, Vermont State Police. Wow, the Smithsonian. I took my kid there a few years back.”
“Oh, really?” Dr. Stuart had regained his expression of slight dismay tinged with fear.
“Yep. Love those ruby slippers, and Lincoln’s hat. Didn’t see any skeletons there, though.”
“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “We’re housed in a different building. The Smithsonian has a long and storied tradition of consulting with the FBI on forensic anthropology.”
“Haven’t had many cases dealing with bones myself, we usually find our victims before the critters get to them.” Monica gazed down at the bones splayed across the table and rapped her knuckle against the surface. “Any word on our guy here?”
“Word? Um, yes, I suppose there is. I just finished running the numbers, and I can say for certain that he’s Caucasian.”
“Yeah? Computer told you that, huh?” Monica peered at the laptop.
Dr. Stuart pointed at the upper jaw. “It was difficult without a complete set of dental features, but the program compared what we did have to measurements gleaned from known populations, Asian versus Caucasian, for example. And I can state with ninety-percent certainty that we’re dealing with a white male.”
He straightened again, looking pleased with himself. Monica cocked her head to the side. “Well, Professor, I’m afraid that in this neck of the woods, you’re looking at ninety-five percent.”
“Really? Based on what?”
“Based on that’s how many white people we got here, ninety-five percent of the region. You got anything else? ’Cause I went to a lot of trouble to get these bones back from the State Medical Examiner up in Burlington. They gave me a hell of a time over it, but I told them the FBI was bringing in some hotshot. You’re not going to make me a liar, are you, Professor?”
The doctor appeared miffed. “I’m not technically a professor….”
Kelly sighed. “I think what Lieutenant Lauer means to say, Doctor, is that you’ve had a day with the remains now—how long until you can tell us something?”
The doctor sniffed to illustrate his pique. “Well, I was just beginning my debriefing. I also have an approximate age, based on the stage of epiphyseal union in the vertebral centra—”
“The what?” Monica interrupted.
Dr. Stuart gestured toward the table. “The backbone. It takes much longer for a skeleton to reach maturity than some people realize. Until the epiphysis, or shaft of the bone, has completely united with the main body of it, a skeleton is not considered mature. And vertebrae fuse later in life than other bones, not until the late twenties in some cases. I’d estimate this young man’s age at twenty-three or twenty-four. He was also approximately five foot eight inches tall. Most likely an ectomorphic body type.”
“Ectomorph?” Monica asked, puzzled.
“Slight, thin, not a large person,” Dr. Stuart clarified. “And at some point he broke his right femur.”
“During the attack?” Kelly asked.
Stuart shook his head. “It’s an old break, at least five years. It doesn’t appear to have healed properly. So whatever medical attention he received was somewhat inadequate. There’s also something odd about his teeth.”