Jayne and Steelie - 01 - Freezing (7 page)

‘Even that's just an indication.'

There was silence as the anthropologists looked at the leg, tilting their heads this way and that.

Tony cleared his throat. ‘The thigh's not shaved. Would that indicate male?'

‘Possible, but not reliable,' replied Jayne, her eyes still on the leg. ‘Not all women shave their thighs and plenty of men do, like swimmers and cyclists. If you can take photos of each cut and from above, we can move on to the fluoro.'

‘No problem.' He went into action, the recharge of the camera's flash whining as he took two shots from each vantage point, the latter requiring a stepladder that he wheeled over from the corner. Before turning on the fluoroscope, Tony brought over three lead vests and they all slipped the heavy material over their heads, adjusting them by the shoulder sections until the vests could rest there without too much discomfort.

Tony turned two switches on the fluoroscope and began pushing and pulling the lens head over the severed leg on the gurney. An X-ray image of everything in the lens' path beamed out of a monitor on an adjoining trolley.

Jayne asked, ‘Can you bring it in a slow sweep from one end to the other?'

The anthropologists' eyes flicked between the partial leg and the fluoroscope screen, trying to orient the gradations of grey that represented bone and tissue.

They all noticed that the cut at the top of the femur didn't reveal any shards of metal or metallic fragments, as might have been expected from forceful cutting action. Steelie asked Tony about the apparent absence of trace evidence.

‘Yeah,' he replied. ‘There are indications that the perp washed the body parts after he'd done the cutting.'

As the fluoroscope traveled down the thigh, faint, lighter marks were visible at the distal end of the femur.

‘Hold it there, just above the knee,' said Steelie. ‘Lines of fusion?' She looked questioningly at Jayne, who was staring at the screen.

‘Looks like it. Move it down a fraction, Tony . . . and back up?'

He pushed the lens to where it had been a moment before.

Steelie said, ‘Lines of fusion.'

‘I'll be damned,' breathed Jayne.

‘Talk to me, Thirty-two One,' said Tony, glancing back and forth at each woman.

Steelie pointed at the monitor. ‘See those lines at the top of the knee? That's where the epiphysis, or growth plate, is in the process of fusing to the shaft of the femur. Fusion happens at standard ages across populations and sexes. So, because we can see that line, we know you've got a teenager or someone in their early twenties, regardless of sex.'

He made a low whistle.

‘Make a print of what you've got on the screen now,' Jayne said. ‘Then can you flip the leg over so we can see the same region from the posterior?'

‘What label do you want?'

‘Distal left femoral epiphysis.'

‘Can you spell that?'

‘Left femur will be fine,' Steelie clarified.

Jayne looked at the fluoroscope screen and felt a surge of excitement to see that pale jagged line. An identifying marker to narrow the search. A start.

Tony tapped buttons at a keyboard beneath the screen, then raised the fluoroscope's neck to make space to turn over the leg.

He handled the leg carefully, supporting it at each end, barely raising it off of the gurney before laying it back down. He put it on a section of body bag that wasn't bloody, then removed one of his two layers of gloves and returned to maneuver the fluoroscope towards the back side of the knee.

Similar pale lines were again visible on the fluoroscope screen, this time clearer without the patella in the foreground.

‘I think it's either close to fully fused or it finished fusing not long before death, and that's why we can still see the line,' said Steelie. ‘Another shot, Tony.'

He worked with the machine, then asked, ‘Want to take it from the top again?'

‘Yep,' said Steelie, ‘then let's move on to the next bag.'

Nothing remarkable came up on this second pass. Tony re-bagged the leg and Steelie and Jayne watched him discard his dirty gloves and double-glove again with clean ones. Tony then switched that gurney for the next one. Jayne was no longer apprehensive about how the contents of the next body bag would affect her. She had moved on to thinking about the person who made the cuts and did the killing. She was thinking about bringing them down.

Scott and Eric barely talked until they were at the base of Jeffdale Avenue in Woodland Hills. The street didn't extend far up the slope before making a sharp turn but the matching pastel split-level houses gave it a sense of suburban uniformity. 3180 Jeffdale was on the left side of the street. The double garage door was closed but there was an oil mark in the driveway concrete as though a vehicle that leaked fluids usually sat there.

‘OK,' said Scott, his eyes on the oil stain. ‘It's either in the garage or it's on the road right now. Let's get a look in the garage first.'

‘Then you're on the front and I'm on back duty?'

Scott nodded and jutted his chin at the glove box in front of Eric. Eric unlocked it and removed two guns in their holsters and two pieces of small electronic equipment. They strapped the gear on to their waistbands. Before they got out of the car, they put on FBI-marked windbreakers that covered their waistlines.

They approached the side of the garage and looked in the window. The glass was dusty and had cobwebs in the corners but the van inside was clearly visible. It was white with a blue stripe down the side and sported a roof rack.

Eric nodded to Scott and they put in the single earpieces that would allow them to communicate with each other through transmitters once they were separated. Eric started moving quietly down the side of the house. Scott waited until Eric said he was in position by a rear entrance, then he stepped out from the side of the house and rang the front doorbell.

The woman who eventually answered the door looked like she'd been sleeping. Her strawberry-blonde hair was pushed up at the crown and the cut-off denim shorts she wore were creased. Scott waited for her to stop yawning in his face before he opened up his badge wallet.

‘Ma'am, Special Agent Houston, FBI. Are you Tracey Ellen Redding?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Does anyone besides you reside at this address, ma'am?'

‘No . . . I've got a friend here visiting, though.'

‘Is he or she at home with you right now?'

‘No. Why?'

‘Ma'am, could I step inside and speak with you, please?'

She shrugged, apparently uninterested. ‘Sure.'

The woman turned, leaving the door open behind her, and walked through the house, her flip-flops slapping against the floor tiles.

Scott followed her to the kitchen, noting the rear entrance to the house, which was a sliding glass door from a patio. The sliding door was also visible from the kitchen counter where the woman was pouring herself a glass of flat Coca-Cola out of a two-liter bottle.

Lighting a cigarette, she asked, ‘What's this about?'

‘Is the van parked in the garage yours, Ms Redding?'

‘Yeah. I own it. It's paid off.'

‘And have you been fully cognizant of its whereabouts for the past several days?'

She squinted at him through a haze of smoke. ‘You asking if I know where it was?'

Scott nodded.

‘Sure I know. I mean, I let Sky use it the other day, but I know where he was.'

‘Who is Sky?'

‘My friend who's visiting.'

‘Were you aware that the van was recently involved in an accident that required repair work, Ms Redding?'

For the first time, the woman looked more alert and exhaled the smoke faster than she had been up to that point. ‘No . . .'

She looked at the kitchen cabinets as though she could see through them into the garage, then shook her head. ‘I think you're wrong about that. Sky would have told me.'

‘Where is Sky at the moment?'

She hesitated, then took a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘Actually, I don't know where he is. I was taking a nap before you rang the doorbell and woke me up.'

She stubbed the cigarette out in a small plate that held some toast crumbs. ‘He could be anywhere. He takes walks in the hills.' She gestured with her hand as though waving away flies.

Just then Scott's earpiece reverberated and he heard Eric say, ‘FBI. Identify yourself, Sir,' then a grunt followed by, ‘Code four!'

This meant Eric was OK but Scott didn't like what he'd heard. He ran to the sliding door while pulling his gun from its holster. He opened the door, quickly put his head out, pulled it back in and then stepped out fully, holding the gun at the ready by his shoulder.

Eric was between a rangy evergreen bush and the stucco wall of the house, his knee squarely in the center of the back of a man who was facedown in the dirt, struggling and cursing. Eric was already handcuffing him so Scott holstered his own gun. He turned to locate the woman. She was coming to the door, eyes wide.

‘Sky?' She looked at the man Eric was pulling to his feet. ‘Why didn't you tell me you were in an accident in my van? Huh?'

The man she was addressing was spitting dirt out of his mouth, his face red with anger and exertion. His hair was pale next to the red of his forehead and the veins of his neck were twitching above the collar of his NASCAR logo T-shirt. ‘Shut up! For once, woman, shut your trap.' He spat once more, directing the spittle to the wall of the house but some of it flew toward the woman.

She ran to him, got on tiptoe, and slapped him hard across the face. He reared back into Eric, who instinctively shoved him forward.

‘Bitch!' The man tried to kick out with his legs but she was too quick for him and was running inside the house, shouting that he would find his things on the front lawn.

‘Enough!' Scott's voice was authoritative and the man stopped struggling in Eric's hold but he still looked angry. ‘What's your name?' Scott demanded.

The man focused on Scott. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot and when he spoke, the ripe smell of alcohol wafted into the air. ‘Sky Horton.'

‘You got any aliases, Mr Horton?'

The man shook his head.

‘What about time inside? We're going to check on that, so you may as well speak up instead of looking like you're trying to hide something.'

This set the man off but now his tone was aggrieved. ‘Listen, I know I should have reported it but I don't have the money to pay the damages and it isn't even my van. It's not like I hurt anyone for Chrissakes!'

Eric spoke. ‘Should have reported what?'

‘The accident.' The man tried to twist to see Eric's face. ‘That's why you're here, right? Did the City call you?'

‘Tell us what happened.'

‘I backed into the traffic light, OK?' He looked at Scott. ‘It was a tight turn and I was in a hurry. I didn't even realize the thing was there until I hit it and the light came down with a God-awful crash. I almost swore it moved while I was turning!' He tried to twist again.

The agents locked eyes, then Scott spoke. ‘Mr Horton, we're going to need you to accompany us to our office for questioning.'

‘I'm owning up to it, man! I'll pay the City! Can we work something out?'

‘Right now,' replied Eric, ‘you're looking at a charge of assaulting an identified Federal Agent and that's just for starters. We'll cover the rest of this at our office once we've examined the van. Move forward.'

SEVEN

T
ony Lee had brought out the torso and Jayne was finding it more frustrating than the leg. Whoever had made the cuts had aimed just below the ribcage but just above the pelvis, avoiding cutting through bone even on the spine, where the cuts had been squeezed in between vertebrae. The flesh didn't yield any clues; no scars, no tattoos, no perimortem bruising. When Tony turned it over, there were some moles and beauty marks on the back, along with some hair towards the base, but not enough secondary sex characteristics to even start a sex determination. Tony photographed everything before turning on the fluoroscope.

On X-ray, the epiphyses of the vertebrae were clearly fused.

‘OK, fusion puts this one easily over seventeen and more likely over twenty-five,' said Steelie. ‘So we're still at an MNI of one.'

‘MNI,' Tony repeated. ‘Minimum number of individuals?'

‘Yeah,' Jayne answered. ‘So far, you can't say you have more than one person here but I suspect that the leg's a youngster, while the torso's over twenty-five. But let's move on to the next bag before we make grand pronouncements.'

Jayne caught Steelie's look and knew what it meant: there wasn't enough information yet for them to reliably compare these body parts with any 32/1 profiles.

Tony was switching over the gurneys and unzipping the third body bag. It was the left arm and hand. Here, the cut was above the humeral head, allowing a careful disarticulation of the shoulder joint.

‘If the person who cut this nicked anything, it would have been the scapula. The humerus itself looks unscathed,' commented Steelie.

Jayne asked, ‘You notice how much cleaner these cuts are than the other parts we've seen so far?'

‘Want a photo of that?' asked Tony.

‘You read my mind.' Jayne stepped back to give him room at the gurney's edge.

Next was the fluoroscopy. The humeral head looked small on the screen, female. But Steelie and Jayne wanted a better estimate and asked Tony for a shot of it so they could measure it with calipers.

In pulling the fluoroscope down the length of the arm, they had to stop twice to take shots of old, healed fractures. One mid-shaft on the humerus, the other close to the wrist on the ulna.

‘Defense wounds?' asked Tony, as he typed in a label for the second shot.

‘Looks like it,' replied Jayne.