Twisted (28 page)

“Then don’t.”

“Okay.” She paused. “I understand. I’ll downplay it with Ric. But are you sure—just between you and me—are you sure you’re really all right?”

“Fine.”

“And Mark? Is he fine, too?”

“I don’t know. He was fine this morning when he left here.”

It was a risk, putting it out there like that. But Allison hoped confiding in her friend at least a little would keep her from worrying too much. And anyway, Mia was good at reading her. She knew there was something going on in Allison’s love life.

Love life.
Yeah, right. As if a one-night hookup constituted a love life. It was ridiculous. But considering the hookup had been with Mark, it somehow wasn’t. He was a serious person—possibly the most serious person Allison had ever known. And she doubted he took anything lightly, including sex. Maybe the intensity of it was what had freaked him out. It sure as hell was freaking
her
out. She’d been thinking about it all day.

And she’d been thinking about him, too. Not just the sex, but the man—the one who’d fixed her truck and helped her make spaghetti and lifted a two-hundred-pound assailant off her and heaved him against the wall as if he weighed nothing. When she’d first met Mark in that convenience store, he’d seemed larger than life, like a superhero, and she’d expected him to shrink to normal size as she got to know him. But if anything, the opposite had happened. The more she knew him, the bigger impression he made. And glimpsing his humanity—such as when he interviewed Jordan or when he lost his temper yesterday—only made her like him more.

Allison bit her lip, disgusted with herself. She knew better than to do this. If she wasn’t careful here, she was going to get her heart pulverized. A relationship with Mark Wolfe was not an option. He’d made that abundantly clear.

And crap, now Mia was staring at her, more concerned than ever.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. “I mean, really. That bruise looks awful.”

“I’m fine.” Allison stood up and looked at her watch. “But I’m actually leaving soon to follow up on some things.”

Mia took the hint and stood to go. “You’re still working on the Stephanie Snow case?”

“Absolutely.” Allison walked her to the door. “I’ve got an appointment up in Waynesboro in an hour.”

Mia looked at her over her shoulder. “Are you meeting Kelsey?”

“Meeting her where?”

“In Waynesboro. Your appointment.”

“Why is Kelsey in Waynesboro?”

“I just got off the phone with her,” Mia said. “She’s been up there all morning digging up bones.”

Kelsey hunched over the grave site in the biting cold, using a small bamboo spatula to free a bone from the earth.

“You try the plastic trowel?”

She glanced up into the face of her assistant. As her most experienced graduate student, Aaron made a habit of not only helping out on her digs, but offering advice when he disagreed with her methods. Kelsey didn’t care much for criticism, but she’d learned to listen to him because he had good ideas.

She swapped the bamboo tool for the plastic one. When unearthing a possible homicide victim, it was critical to use non-metal tools that wouldn’t leave marks on the bone that could later be misinterpreted as coming from a murder weapon.

“How’s the sifting going?” she asked.

“Wet.”

Which meant that instead of simply sifting the debris through their screens—which would have been time-consuming enough—they had to run water over each batch to rinse away mud. If they had had access to a
hose, that would have been one thing, but out here in the sticks, the water supply consisted of five-gallon buckets that had been transported by pickup truck from a nearby creek. Grad students with frozen fingers poured pitchers over each and every screen in the hopes of finding bits of bone or pieces of evidence.

Kelsey glanced over at the huddle of students.

“There any coffee left?” she asked.

“That was gone hours ago.”

Kelsey would have to drum up some more, even if it meant taking a break from digging to go inside the trailer and brew a pot herself. Her team had been at it for hours in the miserable chill, and she was worried about morale. Low morale led to distraction and distraction led to missed evidence. Missed evidence was unacceptable when an entire murder trial might hinge on a lump of chewing gum or a scrap of clothing.

Kelsey bent back over her work. She’d get to the coffee later, as soon as she finished this ulna. She was almost to the hand, where she hoped to find something that would help with an ID, such as a class ring or a wedding band. Engraved jewelry was a forensic anthropologist’s buried treasure.

A chorus of barks went up from the base camp, where the cadaver dogs were resting. She glanced over her shoulder and saw an unmarked police unit bumping over the field. Allison was in the passenger seat and it looked like Jonah Macon behind the wheel.

“SMPD,” she told Aaron.

Kelsey got to her feet, wincing as she straightened her abused knees for the first time in hours. Even the volleyball knee pads she always wore did little to combat
the soreness. Human patellas weren’t designed to bear weight for hours at a time.

A sheriff’s deputy met the two detectives at the car, and Kelsey watched them flash a pair of badges.

Aaron looked at her. “Not good news, I’m guessing?”

“No.”

There was only one reason for these two to show up at a burial site nearly fifty miles outside their jurisdiction.

The deputy nodded in Kelsey’s direction and they tromped over. Kelsey glanced at Aaron, who as a grad student wasn’t supposed to be privy to all the investigative details. “You mind getting another pot of coffee going?” she asked him.

Aaron gave her a sour look and headed off to the RV. Kelsey stepped over the yellow twine that cordoned off the grave site.

“What do we have?” Jonah got straight to the point.

“Some hunters were cutting across that clearing and came across a femur.” Kelsey pulled out her mittens. Her fingers felt like icicles, and the woolen gloves she wore for digging had the tips snipped off for better dexterity. “About eight-thirty this morning, I confirmed it was human. The sheriff got the cadaver dogs out here and zeroed in on this grave.”

“Hunters again.” Allison glanced at Jonah. “You think there’s any significance to that? It’s the second victim found near a deer lease.”

“Practically this whole county is a deer lease,” Jonah said.

“I wouldn’t read too much into that,” Kelsey said. “It’s not uncommon for hunters to find bones this time
of year. They often travel with dogs and tromp around in areas that don’t otherwise get a lot of traffic.”

“Who owns this land?” Allison asked.

“Some rancher. He’s got a couple thousand acres transected by a highway, from what I understand.”

“Full skeleton?” Jonah asked.

“Looks like.”

“Recent?”

“In my world, that’s a relative term. The rotted bits of clothing we’re finding are probably from the past few years.” She looked at Allison. “Women’s clothing,” she said, anticipating her friend’s question.

“How’d the femur get way over there?” Jonah asked.

“The grave’s about two feet deep. A heavy rain could have removed some of the topsoil, then scavengers got to it. There are teeth marks on the bone. The canine team also recovered a few foot bones.”

Jonah stepped closer and examined the excavation area. “Isn’t that pretty shallow?”

“You’re the detectives, but I’m guessing someone was in a rush.”

Another chorus of barks as a second sedan pulled up—a blue Taurus. Special Agent Wolfe climbed out and flashed his creds at the deputy.

Allison cut a glance at Jonah. “You call him?”

“Nope.”

Everyone watched as the agent trekked across the muddy field. He wore a trench coat and a stern expression, and he couldn’t have looked more out of place on a Texas prairie. Kelsey sighed. She didn’t like a lot of cops at her recovery scenes. They weren’t qualified to dig,
so all they really added were more pairs of feet possibly trampling evidence.

“Who called you?” Allison asked when he reached them.

“Ben Lawson.” Mark nodded at Kelsey. “Another female?”

“Looks like. Is the
entire
task force planning to come? I think we’re fresh out of doughnuts.”

Mark ignored Kelsey’s sarcasm. “How long to get her out of there?”

“Five, maybe six more hours,” Kelsey said. “Anyway, how do you know this is connected to your case?”

“We have reason to believe our killer has ties to Waynesboro, that he may be living there,” Mark said. “In fact, Ben tells me this is right in his sweet spot.”

“What the hell does Ben know about it?” Allison asked.

“He’s creating a geoprofile,” Mark replied without looking at her. He glanced at Jonah instead. “It’s a computer-based map showing where the killer is likely to live or work.”

“But I thought your other victims were merely dumped, not buried,” Kelsey said.

“It’s an important change in MO,” Mark said. “He spent a lot of time hiding this victim, which leads me to think he knows this one. There could be some personal connection that would point us to him. How soon can we get an ID?”

“Well, first I need to get the remains unearthed, and this weather is not exactly ideal. Then I’ll get a bone sample to Mia for comparison with samples of known missing persons—of which there are none currently on record in this county, according to the sheriff.”

“None at all?” Jonah asked.

“No females. Looks like you guys have some work ahead of you.”

“How much longer on the digging part?” Mark asked, and Kelsey was starting to get annoyed. Typical fed, he showed up with his fancy badge and suit and expected everything done yesterday.

“Well, it’d be a lot quicker if I had a backhoe. Thing is, heavy machinery tends to destroy evidence. We use this instead.” She held up a bamboo tool the size of a teaspoon.

Three faces frowned at her.

“The excavation process is slow and tedious,” Kelsey said. “But it has to be done right or critical items get missed. You’d be surprised how many people take a smoke break after they dig a grave, then toss the butt inside right before the body. Or sometimes they toss in condom wrappers that they opened with their teeth while they were holding down a struggling victim. Those things tend to be sources of DNA, which we try to hang on to whenever we can.”

Kelsey knew she sounded bitchy, but she was cold, sore, and hungry, and she had about eight hours’ worth of work to cram into a five-hour window of daylight.

“Our guy’s too smart for that,” Allison said. “He wouldn’t leave condom wrappers.”

“Really? Because most of the trials I’ve testified at involve guys who
think
they’re smart, but actually they’re careless and in a hurry.”

“You already have the femur,” Mark said. “What if you take a break from your digging to get a bone sample to the DNA lab?”

Kelsey looked at him. Everyone’s gaze settled on her, and she felt the combined tension of three tightly wound detectives. She was used to dealing with tightly wound detectives, but there was something particularly tense about these three.

“We have less than forty-eight hours left to locate this perpetrator before he makes his next kill,” Mark said. “I think he personally knew this victim, or he wouldn’t have bothered to bury her. If we get her identity, it will likely point us to a location.”

Kelsey nodded, feeling guilty now for giving them a hard time. “I can get you the Big Four by this evening—race, sex, age, stature. The rest is up to Mia. If I get her a bone sample within the hour—”

A whistle went up near the RV camp. Kelsey glanced over and saw Aaron waving at her.

“Excuse me.” She hurried across the grass, knowing from his body language that he’d discovered something important.

Aaron stood beside the screen setup, where grad students had been rinsing debris for the past two hours. He looked excited, but the students huddled around him with their water pitchers appeared baffled.

“Check it out.” He pointed at the screen.

Kelsey immediately spotted what had caught his attention. She crouched down and picked up a small silver object from amid the leaves and twigs.

“What is it?”

She turned around to see Allison peering over her shoulder. Mark and Jonah were right behind her.

“A prosthetic patella.”

Blank looks.

She turned the object over and pointed to the tiny, barely visible serial number that had been stamped on it by the manufacturer. It would link to a database, which would link to a specific doctor and a specific procedure.

“She had a knee replacement.” Kelsey held up the piece of titanium. “Run down this serial number and you’ll find the name of the victim.”

They gathered in the war room, where yet another young woman’s picture had been added to their wall of photographs. Meredith Devins, thirty-eight, of San Antonio, who had been reported missing by her husband last fall.

She’d gone missing one day after Jordan Wheatley’s attack.