Hannah bristled. The cop hadn’t liked her handgun back in March. Obviously his opinion hadn’t changed since then. “I have a permit, and if I’d had my gun in Vegas, the situation would have had an entirely different outcome.”
“I wasn’t commenting on the legality of your weapon.” Brody’s gaze bore into hers. “I want to know why you think you need it in Scarlet Falls.”
Hannah flushed and blinked away. “The dog wouldn’t stop barking last night. Turned out to be a deer in the yard.”
Brody’s head tilted, as if her statement didn’t compute. “It’s not like you to be easily spooked.”
“I wasn’t spooked. I was being careful. There’s a difference.”
“So the dog barked, and you armed yourself and went out to investigate?” His voice rose.
Irritation warmed her. “What are you talking about? Why on earth would I go outside if I thought there was a possible threat out there? I would never leave a secure location to chase an unknown danger in the dark. That would be stupid. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Um. No.” He leaned back, confusion creasing his features. “I’m sorry. I misunderstood.”
“No, you assumed,” Hannah shot back.
“You’re right. I did. But I learned from experience that you Barretts have a habit of taking matters into your own hands. Like that night in Vegas.”
“Only when absolutely necessary.” It was Hannah’s turn to look away. “What was I supposed to do, ignore her? I called for the police. There wasn’t any help handy.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Empathy softened his eyes. “Now tell me why you slept with your gun.” He covered her hand with his. For a few seconds, the contact was good, solid, and grounding. Royce’s similar touch had spurred her to snatch her hand away, but this she welcomed. Brody’s touch felt right and tempted her to return the intimate gesture. Then the weight of his hand grew heavier and heavier until she felt trapped. Brody was a good man, but she was not staying in Scarlet Falls.
She pulled her hand out from under his, got up, and moved across the floor to refill her mug. Distance. She needed a larger personal boundary. Ten feet of kitchen wasn’t enough. Brody waited, his features steady with patient determination.
“I received another e-mail.”
Brody’s body went rigid. “When?”
“Late yesterday. Same message.”
“And you’re just telling me now?”
“I forwarded it to the detective in Vegas. Untraceable, just like the first one.” Hannah’s control slipped. “I can’t get that girl’s face out of my head. She needed help, and I failed her.”
Brody was on his feet and in front of her in two strides. He took her by the arms. “You can’t take responsibility. You tried to help her, at great risk to your own safety. Most people would have run the other way.”
“Maybe if I’d have run away, I could have gotten help.”
“No.” He gave her a light shake. “You can’t go back and second-guess your decisi
on. At the time, you made the call based on the information you had in front of you. That’s all anyone can be expected to do. It’s too easy to question your actions with the benefit of hindsight.” His face went grim. Clearly, Brody had his own demons. “Besides, you just said it two minutes ago. You had no options. You couldn’t toss her to her assailant and run for it.”
“I didn’t have time to think. I just reacted.” Hannah met his eyes. “The end result is the same. He dragged that poor girl away, and I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.”
“Hannah, you did your best.”
“It wasn’t good enough.” Hannah pulled out of his grip and turned away. She went to the window and stared out into the yard. Two robins hopped across the back lawn. One shoved its beak into the damp grass and ripped a worm from the turf. Its body flailed until the bird ate it in two gulps. A shudder rippled from Hannah’s torso to her bare feet. The pretty scene faded, and she pictured Jewel being yanked from the rental car, her arms pinwheeling, small fists landing useless blows on her attacker’s shoulders, the girl’s terror palpable even to a stunned Hannah.
She rubbed her arms. “Do you think those e-mails are really from her? That she’s reaching out for help?” If she was, her time was running out.
“Why would she contact you and not the police?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.” Hannah covered her mouth with a fist. “But it feels like I’m letting her down all over again.”
“Do you do this all the time?”
“Do what?” She glanced over her shoulder.
Brody’s arms were crossed over his chest, and his gaze had sharpened. “Not allow yourself to be human. Try to shoulder the weight of things that aren’t your fault.”
She turned back to the yard. The robin moved on, its hunger not sated by one slender earthworm. Predators never stopped hunting.
“Some things are out of your control.” The harsh edge to Brody’s voice made her want to ask him what terrible event from his past had been out of his control. Who or what had put the pain in his eyes?
“I know that. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” There would be more girls at risk, Hannah knew, all because she hadn’t seen that SUV coming.
“I’m glad you’re all right.”
“You’re not going to lecture me on putting myself at risk?”
“Maybe later.” Brody smiled. “You are what you are. Sometimes all that ferocity is a little scary. But I wouldn’t change anything about you.”
A different kind of spark heated Hannah from the inside as she registered the respect—and interest—in Brody’s eyes.
“But you could dial down the impulsiveness just a little. Your family doesn’t deserve to bury another member.” A grim frown dimmed his expression.
“True.” A sad sigh slipped from Hannah’s lips. “But I wish I could have helped her.”
“I know,” he said. “Would you like me to call the Las Vegas police and see if they’ve made any progress on the case?”
Hannah hesitated. “What’s the point?”
“They might tell me more than they’d tell you.”
“Maybe.” She considered his offer.
What could it hurt?
“OK. Thank you.” She opened her phone and read the detective’s name and number from her contacts list.
Brody checked his watch. “I have to go. Please, if something freaks out the dog—or you—call me.”
“Thanks, Brody.”
“I’ll stop back tonight and let you know what I find out.”
“You don’t need to go to any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. I’ll bring dinner.”
She walked him to the door. “I don’t need—”
“Stop. I didn’t say you
needed
me to bring you dinner, but I’d
like
to.” Brody put a finger under her chin and studied her face.
“Thank you.” Hannah’s pulse scurried. He wasn’t going to kiss her. Was he?
Before she could contemplate how she felt about that idea, he lowered his hand and backed away. “Get some rest, Hannah. You look tired.” He went out the door into the chilly morning air.
That’s it?
Hannah stared after him for a minute. Nudging the dog out of the way, she closed the door. “What do
you
think about Brody?”
AnnaBelle wagged her tail.
“You like everybody.” Hannah patted the dog’s golden head. “I have to admit, Brody’s different. Obviously, the man has never heard of flattery.”
But somehow, Brody’s concern had more of an effect on her than all the empty compliments she’d been given by other men trying to slip past her professional defenses and into her bed. He was honest. He didn’t just
look
at her; he
saw
her.
And she liked it. Most of the time.
“I don’t want to deal with this right now,” she said to the dog. “I have nothing to do today. I’m going back to bed. No barking.”
The dog wagged its tail but made no promises.
“Maybe if I get some sleep, Brody won’t tell me I look awful when he comes back tonight.” Hannah’s steps quickened. He was coming back.
“Don’t get excited,” she said to the dog. “Nothing is going to happen with him. I’m not staying in Scarlet Falls.”
Chapter Twelve
The medical examiner’s office was located in a concrete building in the county municipal complex. In the antechamber to the autopsy suite, Brody suited up in a gown, booties, and cap. He pulled the clear plastic shield over his face and went inside. The smell of disinfectant didn’t come close to masking the odor of a decomposing corpse.
Frank peeled off his gloves.
“You started early.” As much as Brody felt the need to attend the autopsies of his cases, he was relieved to have missed this one.
“I have a full plate today. But I didn’t want her to wait, in case . . .” Aw. Frank did have a heart. Nice to know. “So far nothing’s come back on the fingerprints. Too bad Chet doesn’t have a set for his daughter. That would have made it easy to rule her out. Waiting must be tough.” Frank paused. “Anyway, I’ll send the DNA in for analysis. The lab promised to expedite the testing. Results should be back in two to three days at the latest.”
“Did you compare her dental records?” Brody asked.
“I did. I can’t comment. Her teeth and jaw are too damaged, and some of her teeth are missing.” Frank shook his head. “I requested a consultation with the state police forensic odontologist.” The New York State Police made forensic dental specialists available through the Medicolegal Investigation Unit. “He’s at a conference and won’t be available until Thursday.”
“Blood type?”
“The corpse is O positive. So is Teresa Thatcher and about one-third of the general population.”
But it was one more factor that weighed in favor of the remains being Teresa.
Damn it.
Poor Chet.
Brody looked back at the body. An autopsy tech was sewing up the Y-incision with huge black stitches that railroad-tracked up the corpse’s abdomen. “What can you tell me? I’d like to clear this up for Chet faster than three days.”
Frank lifted the clear shield over his face, grabbed a paper towel from a wall dispenser, and mopped the sweat from his head. “The victim is female, Caucasian, approximately seventeen to twenty-five years old, brunette, brown eyes, five foot six inches tall, one hundred ten pounds. Internal organs show no evidence of drug or alcohol abuse, to be confirmed by toxicology reports.”
“Scars?”
“None. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry. Nothing in her pockets except the cigarette receipt we discussed at the scene. We found fibers in the wounds on her face and numerous hairs on her body and clothing,” Frank continued. “Facial trauma was inflicted both pre- and post-mortem, with fists and a blunt instrument, possibly a baseball bat. No tissue under her fingernails. She was raped, but we didn’t find any semen. So he likely used a condom. Cause of death was asphyxia by manual strangulation.”
Frank moved to the table and positioned both of his hands over the base of the victim’s bruise-ringed throat, just below her ruined face. Hovering two inches above the body, his thumbs lined up with two dark purple circles at the base of her neck. “The hyoid bone was fractured. The bruising pattern suggests she was strangled from the front.”
Frank stepped back. He moved to a nearby sink and turned on the water with a foot pedal. “This was a very violent death, but the greatest injuries to her face were inflicted post-mortem.”
“He beat her up, raped her, strangled her, then beat her again?”
“Yes.” Frank lowered the clipboard.
Rage. Pure rage
, thought Brody. “Can you tell me anything about the killer?”
“The deepest bruise on her neck is from his right thumb. He was likely right-handed. The span of his hands indicates an average to large adult male.”
Not much help. Ninety percent of humans were right-handed.
“I’ll let you know as soon as the rest of the lab tests come back.”
“Thanks.” On his way out of the suite, Brody glanced back at the corpse. A visual played in his head: a man sitting on top of this woman, punching her, wrapping his hands around her throat until she stopped breathing, then getting up and pounding her face with a bat. His gaze strayed to the photos fixed to a board next to the body, close-ups of her injuries, X-rays of her throat. Manual strangulation was a very intimate means of murder.
Did he know you?
Most murders were committed by someone who knew the victim. In this case, Brody hoped that was true. An intimate killing might be a one-time thing. If not, Scarlet Falls had a very violent and unpredictable killer on the loose.
Brody left the medical examiner and walked across the parking lot of the municipal complex to the neighboring building that housed the crime scene investigator’s offices. He paused to sniff the crisp air and clear his nose, mostly, of the foul stench that had accumulated in his nostrils in the autopsy suite. But the scent of death clung with stubborn determination. Two minutes in the morgue, and Brody swore his hair and clothes stank of decay.
The CSI unit occupied a suite of rooms on the first floor. Brody found Darcy Stevens, latent fingerprint examiner, at her desk.
He knocked on the door frame.
Darcy looked up. Though he knew her to be almost fifty, Darcy’s coffee-colored complexion was wrinkle free. She wore her hair pulled back in a painfully tight bun. Her suit and blouse were solid black to defy the dark powders intrinsic to her job. Sipping from an extra-large paper cup of coffee at her elbow, she waved him in.
“Hi, Brody.” Her voice was deep, the 900-number richness of it countered by her severe dress and hairstyle, no doubt as she intended.
Brody smiled at the picture of a wrinkled newborn tucked into the corner of her blotter. “Morning, Darcy. How’s the new grandbaby?”
Handing the photo over, she beamed. “He is eight pounds and four ounces of adorable perfection.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of hair.” Brody gave it back. “How does it feel to be a grandma?”
“Wonderful. I get to cuddle with him all I want, then go home and get a full night’s sleep.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“It is.” She slipped the picture into place. “I bet you’re here about the Jane Doe that came in yesterday?”
“I am. Have you had any luck?”
“Not yet. I scanned her prints into our regional fingerprint database, but none of the matches the computer generated were true.”
“You mean the computer isn’t going to spit her ID out as fast as on an episode of
Law & Order
?”
“I wish we could solve all our cases in forty-three minutes. Heck, I wish we could solve all our cases in forty-three
days
.” Darcy rolled her eyes. “When the regional AFIS was a bust, I moved on to the state of New York.” She stood and rounded her desk. “Let me see if the query came back with any hits.”
“You’ve been busy this morning.”
“I came in early. Frank called me last night. You know we’ll do whatever we can to determine if this woman is Chet’s daughter. Besides, whoever killed that woman needs to be locked up before he hurts someone else.”
Darcy would have taken the fingerprints herself, so she’d seen the body. With determined strides, she crossed the gray tiled floor to a row of computers on a long table pushed against the wall. Sliding into the seat, she moved the mouse. The blank screen came alive. She moved the blinking cursor to a row in a table. “We have eleven possible hits so far, and the query is still running.” She glanced up at him. “The visual comparisons will take some time. Depending on how many results that computer cranks out, I might be here all day. Want me to call you when I’m done?”
Unlike television crime dramas, where a mug shot of the suspect or a photo of the victim popped onto the screen in seconds, in real life, the ridge lines of each possible match had to be manually compared by a certified latent fingerprint examiner. The matching software erred on the side of caution and generated as many matches as possible, leaving the examiners to sift through the possibilities.
“I’d appreciate it,” he said.
“If none of these match up, I’ll try the neighboring states and the FBI.”
“Thanks, Darcy.”
“How’s Chet holding up?”
“As good as can be expected.” Brody started toward the door.
“I can’t imagine how he deals with it.”
“Me either.”
Because he doesn’t.
Brody exited the building. A gray and cloudy sky hovered over the parking lot, and the wind that whipped around his neck contained the first real bite of damp New York winter. Autumn had been unusually warm, a brief but welcome stay of pleasant temperatures, but now it seemed like Mother Nature was making up for lost time.
His cell rang. Brody answered with the hands-free device on his steering wheel.
“Hi, Brody, Stella here. Have you seen Chet?”
“No, isn’t he at the station?”
“He stopped in, then said he was going to interview a witness for the drug bust you two shared last week.” Stella dropped her voice. “But that was an hour ago, and he’s not answering the radio or his cell. The chief has been looking for him. I just thought you might like to know.”
“Thanks. The interview might be taking a long time.” But these follow-up interviews consisted mostly of quick clarifying questions. None of them should take over an hour, and Chet should have checked in with the station in between stops.
He slid behind the wheel of his sedan and turned toward the station. On the way, he cruised past Chet’s place. The former cop still lived in the same house in which he and his wife had raised their only daughter. Brody pulled into the narrow driveway in front of the small Cape Cod in the center of town. He walked up to the stoop and rang the bell. Chet didn’t answer. Brody listened but the house was silent. He cupped a hand over his eyes and peered through the sidelight. The house was dark. Worried, Brody circled to the back of the house.
Where could he be at ten in the morning? He didn’t have any hobbies. Back in his car, Brody called Chet’s home number and cell phone. No answer on either line. He left a message on Chet’s voice mail saying that he didn’t have any new information and was just checking in.
He drove to the station, his thoughts consumed by the dead woman, Chet’s absence, and Hannah’s predicament.
There was nothing he could do about Chet except work the case. But maybe he might be able to help Hannah. He left a message for the cop in Vegas. He did a new search in ViCAP, the FBI’s violent crimes database, with the information provided by the medical examiner. While he was searching for similar crimes and missing women, he’d check the National Crime Information Center to see if there were any missing persons reports in Nevada for a teenage girl named Jewel.
But Brody couldn’t get the violence of the attack on Jane Doe out of his head. Darcy had put it best: the assailant had to be found before he unleashed his rage on another innocent woman.