Hunting Eve (8 page)

“That’s Margaret’s racket, not mine. Can’t you smell it?”

“Smell something that has only been dead for a day or two and submerged in fifty-five-degree water? Even if you’re right, there wouldn’t be much to smell here.”

“The corpse will be bloated.” She took a moment to prepare herself for what was inside the trunk. Detach. Focus on the irritation she was feeling toward the skepticism that she sensed in Venable. She didn’t need to deal with that right now. “Eyes bulging, cheeks swollen, the whole nine yards. It won’t be a pretty sight.”

Venable shrugged. “I doubt if it will be that bad already. I’ve seen water corpses before.”

“So have I.”

“It’s open.” The locksmith with the picklock stepped back as the trunk swung open.

A black tarp.

Kendra inhaled sharply.

The scent of death was immediately in her nostrils.

It wasn’t really shock. It was the confirmation that an innocent man’s life had been taken and his body thrown away like this. It never ceased to bring her sadness as well as anger.

“Move the tarp,” Venable said to the forensic tech next to him. “Carefully.”

Kendra watched as the tech gripped the edge of the tarp and peeled it back. Half a dozen flashlight beams darted toward the open compartment.

“Holy shit.” Venable instinctively stepped back.

Kendra’s first instinct was to close her eyes, but she made herself look at the puffy and grotesque face inside. The eyes bulged from their sockets like something from an old cartoon. His lips and cheeks had puffed to five or six times that of any normal human dimensions.

A few minutes later, the sodden gray hair of the dead man was exposed.

“Okay, it appears Margaret Douglas was right on the money,” Venable murmured. “The body was in the trunk. Though it could have been a guess.”

She didn’t like the idea of Margaret’s being right, but she didn’t know whether it was because the ridiculous concept of animal communication offended her or that she didn’t want Margaret to be criminally involved with Doane. The girl was so appealing that Kendra liked her in spite of her suspicions. Get a grip. Think logically. “And the location of where the car went into the water?” Kendra asked. “How did the man die, Venable?”

“Let’s see…” He took a step closer to the body. “It can only be a preliminary guess.” He grimaced as he looked closer. “Maybe not so much of a guess. He has a bullet hole in his temple.”

Margaret’s prediction, again.

“You need to talk to her,” Kendra said. “It’s too … you need to talk to her, Venable.” She took a step back away from the car. “And I need to stop thinking about Margaret Douglas and start doing what Quinn brought me here to do.” She watched as Venable motioned for the forensic team to come forward. The car was instantly surrounded by a swarm of techs.

Venable turned toward her. “And you were right, too … How in the hell did you know the corpse would look this way?”

“The odor. It wasn’t just normal decomposition. It’s called tissue gas. An anaerobic organism enters the body and runs amok because the immune system is no longer functioning. It results in a specific smell, accelerates decomposition, and causes the body to swell and discolor.” She pointed back to the corpse. “The marbling on his face and neck is pretty common.”

Venable nodded. “So now you’re a forensics expert, too?”

“No, I’ve seen—and smelled—this on a case once before, and I asked the medical examiner to explain it to me. Force of habit. I grew up asking people to explain what I was smelling, feeling, and hearing. I guess I never stopped.” Kendra backed away from the car. “I’ll stay out of everyone’s way, but I want to monitor what they’re finding and doing. Then after they finish, I want time to do my own investigation before you take the car, okay?”

“Okay. Do you know what you’re looking for?”

“No, how could I? I’ll just use observation, logic, hope for luck, and try to put everything I find together.” She added grimly, “But I guarantee that my findings will be a lot more solid than some feral cat’s.”

CHAPTER

4

Gwinnett Hospital

“HOW IS SHE,
Joe?”

Joe turned to see Margaret hurrying down the corridor toward him, her thongs slapping against the pristine tiles. “I don’t know. She’s still in the emergency room. I believe she’ll be okay. She’s not dying, but she’s not good. She had a 104 fever when she got here.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly,” he said grimly. “This must have been coming on all day, and she hid it from me. I should have noticed the signs, dammit.”

“She hid it well. She was probably afraid that this would happen. She didn’t want anything to get in the way of her finding Eve.” She added, “And she didn’t want to get in your way and take your focus away from her.”

“That didn’t happen. I wouldn’t have paid enough attention to Jane to get her to the hospital if Kendra hadn’t pulled me up and told me to do it.”

“That’s right. You blew it. You can’t see anything right now but what could happen to Eve Duncan.”

“No argument?” His lips twisted. “No soothing words?”

“Why?” She shrugged. “It wouldn’t help anything if I lied to you. What you did was natural according to your priorities. I have to accept you as you are. Besides, I should have been the one to keep an eye on Jane. She was wounded because of me. I guess I was too busy finding out the lay of the land.”

“Jane would say that no one is responsible for her,” Joe said. “And we’re family, and that means that I’m the one who—”

“Kendra…” Margaret was no longer listening to him. “I can see that she’d notice anything wrong in her world. You were right about her, Quinn. She’s like a mountain lion on the hunt, aware of everything, tracks, spoor, sounds … Interesting.”

“I don’t believe Kendra would appreciate your comparing her to a mountain lion. She’s very civilized.”

“On the surface. But underneath she has a few rebel qualities.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Yes, but Kendra is different.” She smiled. “I think. What do I know? I was only with her for a few minutes before she told me about Jane. I’ll have to make a judgment later. I do know that she and I are very different, and I can see a little friction erupting.”

“That’s not surprising,” Joe said dryly. “She’d have a hard time accepting anything but what her senses tell her. You’re a little hard to swallow, Margaret.”

“I know. I’ll try to stay away from her. It shouldn’t be difficult. I’ve got to—Here comes the doctor.” Margaret took a step back away from him as the ER doctor came out of the emergency room. “I’ll let you deal with him. Please get permission for me to see Jane. I have a call to make.”

“Right,” Joe said absently as he walked toward the doctor.

Quinn was clearly focused on Jane for the moment, but how long would that last? Jane was still ill, and she would need someone to protect and care for her until she was better.

Margaret couldn’t count on that being Joe Quinn no matter how much he cared for Jane. Eve was the center, and everyone else revolved around her. And if Margaret was going to do what she’d promised Jane to find Eve, then she couldn’t be at hand to care for her either. She’d have to call in someone else whom she could trust.

Trust?

Trust might not come into the picture with the man she was going to call. He was one of the wild ones.

What the hell, he would at least be sure to keep Jane alive.

It was the best she could do.

Lake Cottage

“IT’S ALL YOURS.” VENABLE
turned toward Kendra and motioned back to the blue car. He handed her a pair of latex evidence gloves. “Go to it.”

“So soon? I thought it would take the forensics team hours to finish going over it.”

“More like days. They just needed to give it a quick once-over before we transport it to the FBI garage in Atlanta.”

Kendra pulled on the gloves. “FBI? I’m surprised you’re letting them take possession of such a key piece of evidence.”

“They have the facilities to handle it here. The CIA doesn’t.” Venable shrugged. “We’re not above a little interagency cooperation.”

Kendra moved toward the car, watching as the body bag holding the corpse of Hallet was carried up the embankment to the waiting van. “I hoped I’d be looking at this in daylight, but these work lights should do.”

Venable handed her his brighter-than-bright tactical flashlight. “This should help, too.”

Kendra turned it on and stood over the trunk again. She glanced over the entire compartment, trying to catch anything that had escaped her attention when the farmer’s body was inside.

“Two days underwater doesn’t make it easy,” Venable said.

“Definitely not. But it did wash enough grime to see that the driver of this recently transported something.”

“Something other than a dead body, you mean?”

“Yes.” Kendra pointed to several indentations in the metal bottom and side panels of the trunk. “These are fresh. Probably made in the past couple weeks. See how shiny and reflective the marks are.” She gestured up to the trunk lid’s interior. “It was big enough that the owner had to drive with the trunk open.”

Venable pointed to a frayed piece of nylon rope attached to the truck latch. “And tied down.”

“Exactly. And you see fresh marks on the inside trunk lid that matched the ones on the bottom. Two symmetrical rails, maybe chair arms or some other furniture piece. Hard to say.” She pulled out her phone and clicked off several photos of the trunk.

She glanced at the last shot on her photo screen. A shallow indentation of the trunk was filled with sediment and lake water, but something else was throwing back a reflection from her phone’s camera flash.

She leaned inside, trying to ignore the still-pungent odor stinging her nasal passages. She slowly waved her flashlight back and forth over the bottom of the trunk.

There!

A metallic glint punched through the sediment.

Venable leaned over her shoulder. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. It looks like…” She used the end of her sleeve to scrape up a tiny bit of the sediment, then turned her wrist against the large work light.

“Gold?” Venable said.

Kendra nodded. “Maybe. It’s a little more granular than gold dust and a bit dull, almost unprocessed. Do you have an evidence bag?”

“Actually, no. Not my department.” Venable stepped over to one of the FBI forensic techs and came back with a small envelope. He scraped the sediment from Kendra’s sleeve into it. “I’ll also make sure they take a close look at this stuff left in the truck.”

“Good.” Kendra moved around to the driver’s side door and pulled it open. She’d noticed when she’d watched the forensic team at work that the interior was empty of ATM or cash-register receipts that would help point the way home. Damn, that would have been too lucky. Oh well, the water might have destroyed them anyway.

She shined her flashlight beam onto the dashboard. The vehicle ID number had been crudely removed, as if pried off by a screwdriver.

“The VIN has also been removed from the inner wheel arch and the radiator support bracket,” Venable said. “They knew right where to go. It’ll slow us down, but if the car has ever been serviced in a garage, there’s still a good chance we’ll be able to track it down.”

“There isn’t much of anything here.” Kendra pointed to the backseat. “Except that those rear seatbacks were folded forward to transport whatever it was in the trunk. The fabric was split by something heavy, something that also crossed the rear passenger compartment and pressed against the back of these front seats.” She bit her lip. “I wish I knew what the hell it was. Not a bicycle. Not bookshelves. Not shipping cartons. I just can’t tell.”

Venable smiled.

Kendra glared at him. “Am I amusing you?”

“I’m amused that you could get so angry at yourself for being unable to immediately ascertain any great meaning from a few stray scuffs. It’s obviously a feeling you’re not accustomed to.”

“I’m very accustomed to it. I see things every day I don’t totally understand. When it happens, I immediately get on the Web or talk to someone until I
do
understand. But now I’m frustrated because there’s nothing I can do to immediately figure out what those marks mean. And it’s even more frustrating to think that they could somehow help me to find Eve.”

“Odds are that they wouldn’t,” Venable said. “You said yourself they could have been left a couple weeks ago.”

“But if they’re irrelevant, I’d like to know.”

“I just remembered something that one of the FBI guys who was familiar with your work told me. Is it true you cracked a case based on the amount of starch you noticed on a man’s shirt collar?”

She nodded. “Santa Monica last year. But a malfunctioning treadmill actually had a larger role in cracking the case.”

“A malfunctioning treadmill? Okay, now I may have to requisition that case file.”

“Enjoy.” Kendra shined her flashlight across the car’s instrument panel. “Can someone get me power to this console?”

“I’m sure they’ll be doing that back in the garage. I can give you the address if you want to go over there later today and—”

“I don’t want to wait that long. Surely someone here has a jump starter.”

Venable motioned up the embankment where two police cars’ flashers were playing against the rapidly encroaching fog. “I’m sure one of those cops can help you out.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep looking here while you go ask them.”

His brows rose. “I wasn’t volunteering.”

“I’ll keep looking here,” she repeated pointedly.

“That FBI agent also told me you had a reputation for being a pain in the ass.” He smiled and started up the embankment. “It so happens I’m known to have the same reputation.”

“It just shows you have initiative.”

“If you say so.”

*   *   *

LESS THAN THIRTY MINUTES
later, Kendra watched the car’s illuminated instrument panel flicker to life. The hood was open, and despite initial doubts that the car’s recently submerged electrical system would respond, the operation was a success.