Blind Sight: A Novel (2 page)

“Me neither.”

They came up on a roadside yard littered with miniature windmills and a homemade billboard:
WINDMILLS AND WINDMILL PARTS WANTED
. “It’s almost like someone timed it with the weather,” she said as she looked out at the windmills’ blades, frantic arms reaching up from the drifts. “The body, possible evidence, all of it harder to get to because of the storm.”

“More likely, they lucked out.”

“Question: What’s worse, a lucky homicidal maniac or a smart one?”

“I’d rather come up against a smart maniac,” he said. “Good luck can be harder to beat than brains. You can’t outthink good luck.”

“But sooner or later luck always runs out.”

In the tiny town of Motley, Garcia turned in to a gas station to feed the beast. “Here’s your chance to stock up on munchies,” he said, hopping out of the truck.

“Grab me some candy.”

Garcia went inside to pay and came out with a fistful of bars. “Emergency provisions,” he said, handing her one and dropping the rest into the storage compartment between them.

As Bernadette unwrapped her chocolate dinner, she glanced across the street at a small grocery store. “Shouldn’t we buy some real food?”

“Ed’s got stuff in the freezer,” he said, getting back on the road.

“I feel funny about sponging off him.” Garcia’s cousin was a homicide detective with the St. Paul Police Department, and although Bernadette didn’t know him well, she was certain that he disapproved of her and her unique talent. Most cops wrote her off as a freak.

“Don’t worry about it, Cat,” said Garcia. “I do plenty of work around his cabin. He owes me big-time.”

Garcia hung a right onto Minnesota 210 and steered the truck over the Crow Wing River. A block later, he hung a left onto Minnesota 64 heading north. They plowed past a logging company, its lot loaded with trucks carrying logs. This was a big lumber area.

The snow was coming faster and thicker, and even the beams of the monster truck couldn’t completely punch through the curtain. There were no other cars behind or ahead of them. The forest came up on both sides of the highway. “I didn’t realize Paul Bunyan was so big,” she said.

“More than seventy thousand acres. There’s a north section and a south section. Highway 200 cuts between them horizontally. North is kind of flat and has more pine trees. South—where the Dunton girl was found—is hilly. Aspen trees. Ponds.”

He slowed and took a right down a rough, narrow road. Trees scraped against the sides of the truck. Garcia activated the truck’s high beams. They came to a T in the road, and Garcia hung a left. He drove with confidence until they came to a fork. The truck lurched to a halt. “Hmm.”

“Anthony?”

“Let’s take a chance,” he said, and steered the truck to the right.

CHAPTER THREE

T
he Titan came up over a hill and Bernadette saw deputies milling on the road ahead of them. “Hallelujah,” she said.

“It wasn’t that scary.” Garcia pulled the truck to the right and put it in park. “I knew where I was going the whole time.”

“Sure you did.” Her side of the truck was buried in the brush. To extricate herself, she had to force the door open and drop onto some bushes.

A trio of deputies stepped into the middle of the road as Garcia and Bernadette approached. The middle guy examined the agents’ ID wallets, handed them back, and thumbed over his shoulder.

“You’ll come to a large clearing with a metal stand mounted to a tree. Behind that is a deer path. Follow it. You’ll come to a smaller clearing and then … well… You’ll know you’re in the right place. At the edge of the water there’s a big canopy thing.”

Bernadette didn’t think a north-woods sheriff’s office would have its own tent. “Did the BCA boys leave it behind?”

The deputy dragged a gloved hand across his dripping nose.

“We borrowed it from one of the bars. They use it for wedding receptions.”

“I take it our other folks haven’t arrived,” said Garcia. They were going to be joined up north by the Evidence Response Team, experts in crime-scene processing, and some agents from the Minneapolis office.

“Not yet,” said the deputy, wiping his nose again.

As she and Garcia hiked, Bernadette looked up into the sky and blinked through the snow. The sun would be down soon, and a difficult crime scene would become next to impossible.

They heard the tent before they saw it. Its sides and roof were vibrating furiously in the wind, and the whole thing looked ready to launch into the sky with the next gust. The white walls were lined with arched clear plastic windows. In a noble attempt to establish a secure perimeter, police tape had been tied to the half circle of trees surrounding the shelter. The yellow ribbons whipped around and flapped like kite tails. A deputy was trying to tie an errant end to a tree when the other end came undone. Three other deputies were standing at a corner of the tent, talking and moving their feet around, undoubtedly trying to keep from losing feeling in their lower extremities.

Garcia and Bernadette stood along one side of a stretch of yellow with their identification wallets open. The police-tape deputy came up to them and reached over to untie the ribbon. The thing came undone by itself and flapped in the wind. “God bless it,” sputtered the frustrated deputy, a young guy with red ears and cheeks. He chased the wild end.

An older deputy—a heavyset man with gray hair poking out from his hat and a frosty gray mustache—came up behind th young man and put his hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Give it up, Billy No one’s in the woods tonight except for us idiots.”

“Is the sheriff around?” asked Garcia, extending his hand.

“You must be Antonia,” said the guy, shaking Garcia’s hand and grinning broadly through the frozen facial hair. “Everyone speaks highly of your angling skills. I’m Marty Martin.”

Antonia
. Bernadette liked that, and suppressed a chuckle.

“Where is Seth?” asked Garcia.

“He was here a minute ago. Probably left to take a—” Martin stopped himself as he noticed Bernadette. “To use the facilities.”

Bernadette extended her hand and Martin took it. “Bernadette Saint Clare.”

“Oh,” he said flatly. “Heard about you, too.”

Bernadette didn’t want to know what he’d heard. She looked past him at the tent. “Can we get a gander before it goes dark?”

Martin moved to one side. “It’s your show.”

The two agents stepped up to the shaking walls. Since the frozen ground didn’t allow staking the shelter, it had been anchored with a series of weights. Bernadette used the tip of her boot to kick the snow off one of the lumps. Ice-cream bucket filled with concrete. “This seems—I don’t know—extreme.”

“Desperate might be a better word,” said Garcia.

They each took a window. The interior was well lit, but there wasn’t much to see since the body had been removed. Evidence-eradication gremlins—the nickname fondly given to first responders—had done their job. There were boot prints everywhere, the indentations muffled by a layer of snow before the tent could be erected. Garcia had said there had never been any perpetrator footprints. Still, the crime-scene guys were going to get their DNA shorts in a bundle. As it was, they weren’t going to like dropping into a case after the BCA. She saw a concave area, where the body must have rested before it was lifted out of the snow. Splotches of red against the white. She’d expected more blood, but maybe the bulk of it had been buried by the time the shelter was put up.

Bernadette could often tell at first glance if a crime scene would surrender anything useful, and her gut told her this snowy mess was going to produce little. In fact, the entire spectacle—the tent and the police tape and the shivering deputies planted in the middle of a blizzard in the middle of a forest called Paul Bunyan—seemed absurd. Ludicrous.

She stepped away from the window, and Garcia did the same. He apparently shared her thoughts but expressed them more succinctly than she could have. “Not feeling it.”

“Neither am I,” she said.

“Let’s go to the hospital.”

“You don’t want to wait and meet our CSI stars?”

“They’re big boys,” said Garcia. “They don’t need me watching them play in the snow.”

CHAPTER FOUR

C
row Wing Lakes Memorial, a one-story, U-shaped brick building, was halfway between the tiny towns of Nevis and Akeley Garcia turned in to the hospital parking lot, which was already plowed and sanded. There were a handful of other vehicles. Before jumping out, Bernadette took Lydia’s photo from the file and tucked it inside her jacket.

A gust of wind slammed their backs. Hunching their shoulders, they hurried to the double glass doors of the front entrance. As soon as they stepped through, a thirty-something man greeted them with a stethoscope draped around his neck. He had short sandy hair and blue eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses. Tall and thin, he wore a lab coat that was too short at the sleeves and too roomy in the shoulders. When he spoke, he folded his hands in front of him, giving the appearance of a giant praying mantis. “Dr. Sven Hessler,” he said with a nod.

“Assistant Special Agent in Charge Anthony Garcia.” He extended his hand and Hessler accepted it. “This is Agent Bernadette Saint Clare.”

Bernadette shook the doctor’s hand.

“Cold out there,” Hessler said.

“Sure is.” Bernadette pulled her gloves tighter over her fingers. She kept them on to avoid surprise sights while on the job.

“I could have someone make a fresh pot of coffee,” Hessler offered. “We’ve got some cake back in ER. One of the nurses had a birthday.”

“Not this time of night,” said Garcia. “Thanks anyway.”

“Let’s use the stairs,” Hessler said, leading them down a hall past the elevators, his lab coat billowing behind him.

“Thank you for taking the time,” Garcia said.

“You expect this stuff in the cities,” said Hessler, using the term rural Minnesotans used for the Twin Cities area. “I never thought I’d see anything like this up here.”

“You from this neck of the woods?” Garcia asked.

“You betcha. Happy to come back and serve my people.”

The trio jogged down a flight of stairs, and the doctor pushed open the door to the hospital’s lower level. Hessler led the way past a dark laundry room and a couple of janitorial closets. The hallway was long, narrow, and poorly lit. It smelled of mildew and pine-scented floor cleaner. The floor was covered in gray linoleum and nothing decorated the white walls, but hanging from the ceiling tiles were paper snowflakes suspended by nearly invisible string. As they fluttered from some random draft, they resembled little ghosts dancing in the dimness.

“We’ve got pretty much everything,” said the physician, sounding like a salesman. “State-of-the-art diagnostics, including an eight-slice CT scan, MRI, and mammography Top-notch surgical suite. Besides the usual bowel resection and hernia repair, we can do cancer surgery and ortho surgery. C-sections and hysterectomies. Our radiology department—”

“You have obstetrics services?” interrupted Bernadette.

He stopped in front of a door. “Certainly.”

“Did one of your doctors have this girl as a patient?” she asked.

“I’m not… I don’t know. There are a couple of women’s clinics in the area, and their physicians have privileges here. Whether any of them saw this young woman …” His voice trailed off, and he buried his hands in his lab coat. “I don’t think I should be talking with you about it. We have a legal department.”

“You
do
have everything,” Garcia said dryly.

“I’m not trying to be evasive.” Hessler dug into his coat pockets and produced a key attached to a yellow rabbit’s foot. “I don’t know anything. I wouldn’t have even brought you down here, except Sheriff Wharten called and told me to.”

“Appreciate the cooperation,” Bernadette said.

“Not much of a morgue,” Hessler warned, as he shoved the key into the door’s lock and turned the knob. “Two drawers. Don’t use it much. Usually the funeral home comes by and takes the remains. These circumstances were highly unusual. Unfortunate.”

Hessler pushed the door open and flicked on a light. “Watch your step.”

“What’s with the boxes?” Garcia asked. Cardboard cubes were stacked along the walls to the right and left of the door. Most of the cases contained cafeteria supplies: Styrofoam cups, paper napkins, drinking straws. There were also giant cans of food: peas, pudding, beans.

“Space is at a premium,” Hessler explained. “We usually use this room for storage.”

Bernadette frowned. “Can anyone stroll down here and let themselves in?”

“No,” Hessler said quickly. “When the room is in use as a morgue, the door is locked and the key is kept by the nursing supervisor.”

“Let’s get comfortable,” said Garcia, pulling off his jacket and tossing it over a case of toilet paper.

“Good idea,” said Bernadette, throwing her jacket over Garcia’s. She yanked off her leather gloves and snapped on the latex.

“Which drawer?” asked Garcia as he slipped on a pair of work gloves.

“Uh … I don’t know,” Hessler said sheepishly. “I haven’t actually seen the body.”

The two agents walked up to the pair of waist-high metal squares planted in the middle of the wall opposite the door. The drawers had handles, and sat side by side. They could have been a set of built-in file cabinets. Bernadette opened the hinged door on her side, to their right. She grabbed the edge of the slab inside and pulled it out partway. Empty. “Try door number two,” she said, sliding the slab back inside and snapping the door closed.

Garcia opened the hatch on the left, hooked his hand under the slab, and pulled it out. The tray contained a black body bag. The bump at the top of the sack indicated that the corpse had been placed feetfirst. “You want to leave the room, Dr. Hessler, or are you okay with this?” Garcia asked.

“I’m a medical professional,” Hessler said indignantly. Still, he stayed behind Garcia and Bernadette.

Reaching down, Bernadette started unzipping. The bag fell open just past the girl’s chin. Bernadette inhaled sharply and withdrew her hand. “It’s gone.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Hessler, looking over their shoulders. “What’s gone?”

Bernadette shook her head slowly. “So that means—”

“Let me make sure,” said Garcia, gently picking strands of hair off the young woman’s forehead, to get a clear view of her flesh.

“What happened to it?” asked Bernadette.

Garcia leaned close to the girl’s forehead and sniffed. “Antiseptic or disinfectant. That’s what they used to take it off.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Hessler, coming up next to the slab and standing alongside it with a quizzical look. “Take
what
off?”

“A pentagram,” said Bernadette. “She had a pentagram on her forehead.”

Hessler took a step back and folded his arms in front of him. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t hear anything about a pentagram.”

“We were trying to keep it quiet,” said Garcia.

Bernadette stared at the corpse’s clean white forehead, almost luminescent under the fluorescent lights of the storage room/morgue. “Someone found out and took it off.”

“Why?” asked Garcia.

“Maybe it wasn’t drawn in
her
blood,” suggested Bernadette.

“The killer’s blood?” asked Garcia. “That’d be stupid—or brazen.”

“Or maybe he was worried that the
way
he drew it was telling. Regardless, he had second thoughts about his artwork and decided to erase it.”

“Morgue isn’t exactly on Main Street,” said Garcia. “He’d have to know the body was down here.”

Bernadette looked at the doctor. “Who knew about this room? Who had access?”

Hessler: “I told you, the door was kept locked.”

Bernadette: “Dr. Hessler, no one enters or leaves this hospital tonight.”

The doctor flew out the door, leaving the two agents alone with the corpse.

Garcia took out his cell and started calling. “We’ll need Seth’s men to help us do this.”

“We need someone outside this room.”

“Can’t get through. Probably have to wait until they get out of the woods.” Garcia started punching in another number. “Our Minneapolis guys. They’ve gotta be up here by now.”

“Where’d you tell them to meet us?”

Garcia held up his hand. He had someone on the line. “What’s the story? Where are you?”

While Garcia talked on the phone, Bernadette went to the door and scanned the hallway. Hessler wasn’t coming back for a while. She closed the door and returned to the slab. She had to do this quickly, before the army descended. As she pulled her gloves tighter over her fingers, she looked down at the dead teen.

The girl’s face was covered in acne and freckles, both of which had apparently been airbrushed from the studio photo. Upturned a bit at the end, the nose was the same as in the portrait. Like the portrait, her ears stuck out a bit too much. The lobes were dotted with gold earrings shaped like hearts, and a plastic heart barrette was caught in her straight, shoulder-length red hair. The blood-drenched nightgown was a long-sleeved flannel sprinkled with more hearts. This girl had been too young for motherhood, and too innocent to be a murder victim. She should be home with her parents—and where were
they
?

Garcia closed his phone. “Our Minneapolis crew is gassing up at a station in Akeley I gave them directions to the hospital. They should be here pretty quick.”

“Where are her folks?” Bernadette asked.

“Trying to get out of Dulles.” He saw what she was getting ready to do. “You want me to do anything?”

“I can handle it.” She reached down and walked the zipper to the bottom of the bag.

“Need a tool?”

“Got one,” she said, dipping her hands into her jacket pocket and producing her keys. On the keychain was a small pocketknife.

“Be discreet.”

“I’ve done this a few times before,” she said as she opened the knife.

“I know,” he said.

Indeed, he did. Unlike her previous supervisors and their ignorance-is-bliss approach, Garcia insisted on watching her use her sight.

She ran her eyes around the corpse. The butcher must have laid hands on the nightgown to cut out the fetus. If he wore surgical gloves, however, they could be screwed. No reading.

“Why would someone do this to a kid?” Garcia asked.

“A pregnant kid, no less.” She sighed, and reached for the flannel sleeve closest to her. It was free of blood. She turned up the cuff. “This should be safe.”

“Good spot,” said Garcia.

It had been a sloppy factory sew job, and a wide flap of fabric was hanging where the sleeve was attached to the cuff. Bernadette held the fabric away from the body with one hand and sawed off a patch of flannel with the other. “Not much to work with,” she said, holding the sliver between her thumb and index finger. She passed the fabric to him.

He cupped it in his palm and watched her take off her gloves. “A quickie?”

Garcia’s question was more skeptical than hopeful. He knew quickies rarely worked for her, but she had to try. If she determined that the killer was still in the hospital, it would make quick work of the case. She sat down on a box of computer paper that was pushed against the wall and propped her back against the concrete block. Rolled her head to the right and left. “Lights.”

Garcia flipped the switch and the room went black, save for a white band at the door’s threshold. She closed her eyes. Through the heating vents, she could hear the rumble of the hospital’s heating system struggling to keep up with winter. Then she heard her boss bump into a box as he made his way back to her. “Fuck.”

“Careful.”

“Thanks.”

She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. Thought about the girl a few feet away from her, on a slab. Wondered about the missing baby. The missing pentagram. She held out her right hand. “Let’s go.”

“Here it is.” Garcia set the sliver in her palm.

As she made a fist around the fabric, she said the short prayer she always offered: “Lord, help me see clearly.”

She closed her lids tighter, waited a few seconds, and slowly opened her eyes.

All she saw was the dark profile of her boss standing in front of her.

“Shit,” she said.

“Nothing?”

“Yup.”

“Ah, that’s what I figured. It’ll work later.”

“Later,” she repeated, and stood up.

Garcia flipped the lights on, went to his jacket, and foraged around its pockets until he found an evidence bag. He opened it and held it out to Bernadette. She dropped the fabric inside and he sealed it. She tucked the bag into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled her gloves back on.

Bernadette went over to the corpse’s feet, grabbed the zipper, and walked it back to the head of the bag, pausing to take one last look at Lydia’s face. Her brows came together. She went to her jacket and took out the girl’s photo. She held it up while tipping the corpse’s head to one side. “Thought this was a pimple at first, but—”

“My flashlight’s in the truck,” he said.

He left the room for a couple of minutes. Bernadette continued studying the right side of the girl’s face, focusing on the area just below the outside of her eye, along the cheekbone. She looked back at the photo. “Really liked your hearts, didn’t you, kid?”

Garcia came back in with a desk lamp and plugged it into a wall outlet close to the slab. He took off the shade and held the bare bulb over the corpse. “A tatt. Tiny, tiny heart tatt.”

“Didn’t have a tattoo in her school photo,” said Bernadette, holding the portrait up for Garcia to see.

“Got it while she was on the road?”

“Maybe.”

“There’s a shop in Walker.”

“We’ll check it out,” she said as she zipped the sack all the way to the top. “People empty their guts while sitting for a tatt. Sort of like going to the hairdresser.”

Garcia pushed the slab back into the cooler and snapped the compartment door closed. “Let’s get out of here before we get spanked by the CSI guys. We’ve compromised fibers and microbes and shit just by being in here.”

The two agents grabbed their jackets and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door after them. “Where do you want to start?” she asked.

“Maybe one of the nurses knows something, saw someone skulking around the main floor or heading down here.”