Into the Light (6 page)

CHAPTER 6

Stella

Standing outside the door to the Wayne County Morgue, I gave Dylan a strained smile.

“Really?” I asked, shaking my head.

“Really. I haven’t been in. If they knew for sure it was her, they wouldn’t need you. After last time I thought it might help if you weren’t alone.”

I feigned a smile. I appreciated his help; however, having him here, holding my hand, set fire to my emotions, causing them to bubble to the top instead of remaining hidden behind a mask of indifference.

“Thank you, Dylan. But I need to walk in there as a journalist, not a friend. I’m not sure I can take seeing my friend laid out on a large stainless table.”

He tilted his head. “But Stella Montgomery, sleuth investigator, can?”

“No, not really, but
sleuth investigator
”—I couldn’t help but smile, releasing a bit of the tension at his description—“can keep it together until she’s alone.”

“How about you don’t have to be alone?” Holding my hand and stepping back, Dylan looked deep into my eyes, and his gaze narrowed. I knew that look. His police wheels were spinning. “You know,” he said curiously, “I raced down here as soon as Barney told me you’d left. WCJB is closer than the precinct. How did I get here before you?”

I shrugged. “My mind’s a blur. I missed my exit and . . .” I let my voice fade to a whisper. “I found myself headed north.”

“Tell me you didn’t go to Highland Heights.”

I straightened my neck and set my shoulders back defensively. “Don’t. Don’t play macho policeman. If that’s Mindy in there, then they found her in that neighborhood in an abandoned house. If it’s her, I needed to see it. I need to find out who did this. That’s what I do.”

“
If
, Stella.
If
is the imperative word. You’re putting the cart before the horse.” His mussed, dark-blond hair failed to hide his furrowed brow as he repeated his question, slower this time. “Did you go to Highland Heights alone, without telling anyone?”

I knew that telling someone where you’re going—leaving a trail—was rule number one, but rules were meant to be broken. Sometimes moving on instinct didn’t allow for time to check in. Not appreciating his interrogation, I shook off his grip. “I just drove around, all right? I didn’t get out.”

“Christ, are you trying to turn up missing too?”

I’d never, in all my adult life, answered to anyone. This relationship—or whatever it was—with Dylan was still in its infancy. We were still working on our boundaries, and he’d just crossed one of mine. With heat rising to my face and my jaw clenched, I replied, “I’m not having this conversation with you in the hallway outside of the morgue. Why are you here, anyway? To lecture me on safety? Because right now I’m safe, but whoever the hell is on that table isn’t.”

Dylan’s gaze softened. “No, I didn’t come here to lecture you. I came because last time you did this alone. I didn’t want you to do that again. I know how upsetting it was for you. I hope to God this isn’t Mindy, but if it is . . .”

I sighed. “I appreciate that, I do. I just don’t need lectures right now.” I let out another long breath. “Seeing dead bodies never gets easier, at least not to me.”

“No, it doesn’t. Each one, no matter what they did or what happened to them, was a person, someone’s kid.”

Or sister, or brother, or best friend
.

Dylan once again grasped my hand. “Let’s get this over with. They’re ready for us.”

I held back my tears, steeled my resolve, and nodded. Together we walked through the doors and entered the cold room, cold both in temperature and personality. The buzz of the lights combined with the offending odor threw my nerves into overdrive. Dylan’s hand became a vise as I took in the surroundings. It was the same as it’d been a week earlier, with cement walls, tile floors, and tables and countertops made of a shiny, disinfected metal.

A young, thin woman entered from the other side of the room at the same time that we came in. I barely noticed her as I concentrated on the body, lying on a table near the far end of the room, a silhouette covered with a white sheet.

“Thank you for coming. I’ll skip all the formalities and make this as quick as possible,” the young technician said.

Biting my lip, I nodded.

“We only need for you to give us your impression. You don’t need to look any longer than necessary.”

I nodded again, fearful that if I spoke I’d taste the strange aroma hanging in the air.

“It’s not too late,” she continued. “If you’d like to go to another room, we can do this via closed-circuit cameras. You don’t have to be in here.”

Though bile bubbled in my throat, I released Dylan’s hand and straightened my stance. “I assure you, if this is Mindy, I do need to be here. Please continue.”

The young woman grabbed the edge of the sheet with her blue-gloved hands and slowly lowered it. Panic ran through me when I saw blonde hair, blonde like Mindy’s, like mine. Next I saw eyes, their lids partially closed, hiding their color. Did this body have the same pale eyes that Mindy and I shared? The cheeks were bruised in various shades. And then the tech lowered the sheet past the nose and mouth and I knew. I knew.

“It’s not her. It’s not her.” Relief crashed down as I leaned against Dylan’s tall frame, grasping his bicep to keep myself from falling. The worry that had propelled me toward the body had evaporated, leaving me physically weak.

The body before us was now uncovered to just above her breasts, with her arms visible, giving us a full view of the plethora of injuries marking her skin. Whoever she was, she’d lived through hell and died there. The relief that washed through me left a sickening trail of remorse. I was thrilled that this wasn’t Mindy, but, as Dylan had said, it was still a person, someone who might or might not have had a family. Someone who might or might not be missed.

How did she get to this table, to the house where she was found? What is her story?

And what about Mindy?

The theory that my friend’s disappearance was voluntary was ridiculous. An intelligent, successful twenty-nine-year-old woman didn’t decide one day to disappear. Even if she had, with GPS, traffic cameras, surveillance, it wouldn’t be easy, not without help. Mindy had no reason to walk away from her life. She wouldn’t have. She had every reason to stay.

Standing beside the table, I found myself back to more questions than answers, back to imagining scenarios that made my stomach turn. I’d researched the number of female disappearances nationwide. The numbers were staggering and, looking at the woman before me, I knew that numbers were only a part of the story. Each report was a life.

What I saw in this woman’s injuries took my imagination to dark places. Her bruises were an array of colors, indicating a pattern of abuse. Yellow and green peppered her exposed arms and cheekbone. I knew enough from my time in the crime lab to determine that she’d gotten those over a week ago. There was also a purple crescent under her left eye and a dark bluish-purple band surrounding her throat. Something besides hands had made the mark around her neck. The first finger and thumb were the strongest and usually left definitive marks. The customary differentiation of fingers was missing. This bruise on this body’s throat was a consistent dark color, indicating that whatever had been around her neck, had been in place for a long time. She also had lacerations. There was a partially healed wound visible on her chest above the edge of the sheet.

Now that I knew this wasn’t Mindy, my investigative side took over. I longed to remove the sheet and meet this woman, understand her, and learn her story. However, it was more than that. The vile taste in my mouth, the way the tiny hairs on my arms rose, told me that part of me feared that Mindy could be experiencing, at this very moment, the same terror that this woman had known.

I needed answers, for Mindy, for this woman, and for any other women who had disappeared from their lives to awaken in a nightmare.

“Miss Montgomery?”

The technician’s voice pulled me back to the cold room.

“Yes?”

“If you need to sit down, you may go into one of our rooms for a few minutes before you leave. We realize this is difficult. I’m sorry we’ve brought you in here twice. I hope you know that we wouldn’t do that if we didn’t think there was a possibility . . .”

I straightened my shoulders. “No, I don’t need to sit down, and I want you to call me. If there’s even a chance that you have Mindy, call me again. I’ll be here.” I looked up toward Dylan, then back to the young lady. “Thank you. What about this woman?”

“We’ll run some more tests to see if we can find any markers. Since the tips of her fingers have been burned, our only means of identification are DNA and dental records. Those are both long shots unless she matches a missing-persons list or a national registry.”

My gaze dropped to the woman’s hands. The way they lay next to her still body, I hadn’t noticed anything about them, but now I saw that the skin on the tips of her fingers was ghostly white.

“Burned?” I asked. “With what?”

“We’re not exactly sure. As you can see, it wasn’t fire. We’re assuming acid.”

“When?” My voice came out softer than I liked.

Dylan reached for my wrist, pulling me gently toward the door. I didn’t move. I steadied my feet and turned back to the technician. I couldn’t help it. The questions came fast and furious. “What the hell happened to this woman? Do you think someone put her fingers in acid before she died?”

“I really can’t—”

“Stella, let’s go,” Dylan said. “This isn’t your story.”

I turned to face him. “Whose story or case will it be? Who’ll give a shit about her or what she suffered?”

“It’s an open investigation,” the technician volunteered. “The police are working on it.”

“If someone were to use an acid strong enough to take away her fingerprints, wouldn’t there be more damage to her skin?” I asked.

The young woman nodded. “If it were done all at once. However, if it’s done over time, each application takes away a little more. Then it scars, making the final result more effective. Some terrorist groups willingly do this to lose their previous identities.” She looked down. “I really shouldn’t say any more.”

“Stella, we need to go.” Dylan placed his hand on my shoulder.

I nodded as I scanned the features of the woman on the table. Briefly I wondered what she had looked like before she was hurt, killed, and left for rat food in an abandoned house. That was what some asshole had done. If drugged-out kids hadn’t gone into the house to shoot up or hook up in the middle of a Detroit summer, this woman would’ve been consumed by rodents, greatly reducing any hope of identification.

Shaking my head, I looked back at the technician. That’s when I saw it, a look in her eyes that seemed to plead for my help, asking me to use the resources at my discretion to do something.

I tested the waters. “Thank you for your help. What’s your name? I apologize for not asking sooner.”

“Tracy, Dr. Tracy Howell, assistant forensic pathologist.”

I stood straighter. “Doctor. Again, I apologize. I just assumed you were a technician.”

Dr. Howell smiled. “I’m used to it. It’s all right. When people enter our labs, they aren’t in the best place. I’m sorry, Miss Montgomery, that your friend is still missing. Thank you for stopping by.” Her eyes shifted to Dylan, then back to me. I got the feeling that Dr. Howell didn’t want to talk with others around.

“Call me Stella, please. Thank you again, Doctor.”

As Dylan and I walked through the door to the hallway, I took one last look over my shoulder and saw Dr. Howell cover the blonde woman’s head with the sheet. The vision of the woman settled into the back of my mind: her yellow hair combed away from her battered face; her eyes partially opened, irises hidden by the veiled lids; her fingers curved slightly, their distinguishing marks burned away.

And something else
.

One of the earlobes, the one on the right, was split, as if an earring had been ripped from the ear. My feet stopped. We’d made it to the security gate but I’d suddenly forgotten how to move.

“What is it?” Dylan asked in a low voice.

I barely heard his question as I tried to make sense of the injury.
Should I go back and confirm what I saw?

Mindy’s ears weren’t pierced. That was one of the things I’d specifically told the medical examiner.

Why did Dr. Howell call me down here if she knew it wasn’t Mindy?

Perhaps there was a simple explanation. With all the injuries the woman had, her ear could have gone unnoticed.

“You’re scaring me. Are you going into shock? What’s the matter?”

I shook my head. “I was just thinking about Mindy.”

Mindy and I used to joke about getting tattoos. Neither of us had actually wanted one, but we were curious. We’d wondered what the fascination was, why people continued to get them. The subject didn’t come up every day, usually only when we’d had a little too much to drink. Regardless, it always ended the same way, with Mindy biting her lip and recounting her fear of needles, telling how she’d reacted when her mom took her to a store in the mall to have her ears pierced.

She’d begged and pleaded with her mother for weeks. All her friends had pierced ears and she’d wanted them too, until she was there, sitting on the stool, watching the clerk pick up the silver gun. She’d usually start to laugh as she recalled how she’d been struck by an overwhelming wave of panic. How she’d screamed at the top of her lungs, completely out of control. She’d even fallen from the stool. Needless to say, she never had her ears pierced, and after we saw
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
, we never again even joked about getting a tattoo.

Dylan’s warm hand rubbed a circle on the small of my back. “Why don’t I take you home? I’m sure if you call Barney he’ll understand. This is too hard on you. I don’t like that they keep calling. I think they should call me. If I’m not sure, then I’ll have you come down and confirm. That woman obviously wasn’t Mindy.”

I shook my head. “Thank you, but I want to be the one they call, and I can’t go home. I still have work that needs to be done at the station. Besides, I don’t think sitting in my apartment with only memories and a vivid imagination is a good idea.”