Tattooed (6 page)

All eyes were fixed on the spade as she pushed it into the section, tipped the edge under and lifted the edge of the hummock up. It appeared about two feet deep. A mass of torn roots thatched the underside. A fresh, piney scent filled Ethan’s nose, undercut with a damp, mossy smell.

Dr. Guthro held open the bag horizontally. The forensic anthropologist slid the hummock section into the bag, her movement quick and precise, avoiding the disturbance of any potential evidence caught in the tangle. Ethan studied the cross-section of the hummock. There were no obvious bones sticking out, which boded well for the prospects of finding an intact skeleton. It would make identification much easier. And if they could find some clothing or jewelry…or even a murder weapon…
If
the decedent had been murdered, he reminded
himself.

He bit down his impatience.

The removal of the first section of the hummock left a perfectly square hole. Dr. Hughes gazed into it. “It’s definitely a rubber mask… .”

“Do you see anything else?” asked Sergeant Deb Ferguson, head of the Major Crimes Unit, craning forward with a scowl of concentration on her milkmaid features as she peered into the hole.

Dr. Hughes adjusted the camera lens. “No. I can only see a bit of the mask. It’s covered in soil.”

“May I look?” Ethan asked.

Dr. Hughes stepped back, handing him the flashlight. He directed the beam into the hole.

Despite the many dead faces he had seen over the years, this one caused him to gasp. He realized, with a start, that he had been visualizing Heather’s face, postmortem, possibly decayed, most likely a skull.

But not a witch’s face.

It glared at him. The mask had lost its paint years ago, but it was almost creepier in monochromatic shades of brown. A few strands of hair were visible.

Dr. Hughes caught his eye. “Did your missing girl have a rubber mask as part of her costume?”

He shook his head. “No one reported it. But it doesn’t mean she didn’t.”

“Looks like she was strangled,” Dr. Hughes pointed to the lower right quadrant of the exposed square. “See the rope?”

It was covered in dirt, with roots growing around it. Good catch by the forensic anthropologist, Ethan thought. He stood. “Definitely looks like foul play.”

He was itching to have a closer look at the mask, but there were still several hours of meticulous dusting and sifting of loose soil to be completed. There could be key evidence in the strata soil above and below the remains.

He glanced at his watch—6:53 p.m. The light was changing, the landscape subtly hazed by twilight’s first encroachment.

The next section of the grid came out a little more easily than the first. Dr. Hughes and Dr. Guthro followed the same procedure, bagging the section and placing it in a large plastic container. The forensic anthropologist peered into the hole. She threw Dr. Guthro a look of astonishment. “There’s a body.”

“You mean a skeleton, right?” Ethan asked.

Dr. Hughes shook her head, the expression of wonder in her eyes quickly replaced by excitement. “No, an actual body. I can see a corpse.”

“So this is recent?” Ethan frowned.

Dr. Hughes shook her head. “No. The body is mummified.” She flashed a grin at Dr. Guthro. “We have found ourselves, sir, a genuine bog body.”

Dr. Guthro slowly shook his head. “Are you sure, Darcie?”

“I can definitely see a mummified shoulder.”

“How can you have mummified remains in water?” Ethan asked, trying to peer over Dr. Hughes’ head into the hole.

Dr. Hughes still had a slightly dazed look on her face. “Bacteria cause decomposition in a body. But when there is a lack of oxygen in the environment—such as bogs, which are highly anaerobic—there is no bacteria. So the body will mummify, instead. I knew this was a possibility when I heard about the location, but I still didn’t really believe that we’d actually find a mummified corpse. I thought we’d just find skeletonized remains, since the high school student had discovered a bone.”

“But what about the fact the body was exposed to water? Why isn’t it rotten?” It seemed kind of bizarre.

“The tissue actually dries up from the acids in the water,” Dr. Guthro said, rubbing his hands, a clear sign he was dying to embark into a pathology lecture. “And the tannins in the bog environment help preserve it.”

“If we have actually found a preserved body, Clarence, this is a huge scientific find,” Dr. Hughes said. “As far as I’m aware, there has never been a bog body found in Canada—”

“—until now,” he interjected with a smile.

“And there are very few cases of contemporary bog bodies. Anywhere.” The implications of what she was kneeling on seemed to be hitting her. “We could really do some fascinating research—”

This could be Heather. Who had never come home.

The haze of daylight had dramatically dimmed in the past few minutes. Rain appeared to be imminent. And night would soon follow. Ethan shifted impatiently, his foot squelching on the hummock. Time to break up the bog body love fest. “Doctors, it will be dark in about an hour,” Ethan said. “It also looks like it is going to rain. What is your plan?”

“I think we should continue excavating. Let’s bring in the floodlights,” Dr. Hughes said. “And we should set up the tent over this.”

Ethan could tell there was no way on earth the forensic anthropologist would leave her find. This was what academics lived for. She probably foresaw years of funding for her lab with the research she could conduct with this one body. There was just one problem: it was not hers to keep. There was a family out there. Waiting for a phone call.

Ferguson called over the team. Within minutes, they had fashioned a tentlike structure over the gridded area. “If the wind picks up, this will be down in a flash,” Lamond said. “There is nothing to anchor the stakes.”

“Hopefully, we’ll get the body out by then.”

If not, Ethan foresaw a long, wet night ahead for Dr. Hughes.

6

A
s it was wont to do in Halifax, the weather had turned. Gray clouds—thick and voluminous—canopied the blue sky that had been so promising earlier in the day. Kate ran through the stone gates marking the boundaries of Point Pleasant Park’s upper parking lot, hugging the perimeter so she wouldn’t have to stop for the traffic.

It had been a good run. A necessary run. Kate’s mind had been cleared of all the emotions that Frances Sloane’s visit had brought to the surface.

But despite the tangy sea air, her chest felt heavy.

She knew she had made the right decision. Assisted suicide was a huge policy issue, a public touch point. Trying to convince a member of Parliament to strike down a provision of the Criminal Code—especially this one—required the finesse of a professional lobbyist. It was clearly in her client’s interests that she initiate her fight with the right team. Otherwise, the door could be slammed before her client even got her wheelchair past the threshold.

Alaska, Kate’s white rescue husky, and Charlie, Randall Barrett’s chocolate Labrador, trotted at her heels. Charlie’s tongue lolled with the happy abandon of her breed, although her gait was not as smooth as it once had been. Her pelvis had been injured last year. But despite the limp, she kept up.

A year ago, Kate would have continued to run straight ahead, all the way down Tower Road toward the universities and back home. Instead, she turned left toward Randall Barrett’s show-stopping residence. Charlie gave a little whine, her tail wagging, and began to pull on the leash.

“Whoa, girl.” Kate slowed to a walk. Her thigh had never been the same after the Body Butcher’s attack a year ago, and she needed to stretch it after her run. Charlie—ever obedient—
you could learn from her, Alaska
—settled back at Kate’s heels.

She’s a good dog.
Kate had grown used to Charlie’s lumbering body, her sloppy kisses, her tail-with-a-mind-of-its-own that had cleared Kate’s coffee table of any breakable objects within a week of living at her house. But most of all, she had grown used to Charlie’s unconditional love. Charlie was, in fact, Randall Barrett’s pet. But Kate had earned Charlie’s trust when she took care of the Lab during the dark period of Randall’s arrest last August.

A small whine erupted from Charlie’s throat. She had spotted Eddie Bent sitting on the front porch of Randall’s house.

“Nice job on the garden, Eddie,” Kate called as she walked toward him. “Looks like Randall won’t kick you out, after all.”

“Gracias,”
Eddie replied from the deep confines of the Adirondack chair he had dragged onto the front porch of Randall’s house. Eddie was Randall’s oldest, most trusted friend from law school. Randall had asked him to house-sit while he was in New York City. “I managed to rake the leaves without killing any of the new buds, too.”

“Obviously this place is rubbing off on you,” Kate said, giving the porch a furtive scan for drag marks from the wooden chair legs. She grinned. Looked as if Eddie was in the clear with Randall. The porch remained unmarked.

Charlie bounded up the steps and threw herself at Eddie’s legs. “Down, Charlie!” Kate called, anticipating imminent disaster. But somehow Charlie managed to avoid knocking over Eddie’s makeshift ashtray. It suspiciously resembled Randall’s white china sugar bowl, which he had served alongside Kate’s tea eight months ago.

“It’s all right.” Eddie tamped out his cigarette and rose from his chair. “I have to check on supper.” He opened the door. “You staying?”

“Depends what’s for supper.” Kate flashed him a grin.

Eddie shook his head. “All this cooking with Enid is going to your head, Miss Lange.” Enid Richardson, sister of Muriel, was Kate’s elderly neighbor. They had grown close over the past year, and Kate viewed them as family. “I can recall a time in the not-so-distant past when you were desperate for a home-cooked meal.”

Kate laughed, bending down to remove the dogs’ leashes. “Times they are a-changin’, Mr. Bent. Did you know I just bought a pasta maker?”

Eddie snorted. “But you actually have to take it out of the box, Kate.”

“Touché.” Kate rolled the leashes into her hand. “I
have
taken it out of the box. Then I put it back in again.”

Eddie wagged a finger. “Don’t tell me you are going to buy every useless cooking accessory in every high-priced kitchen store… .”

“You are just jealous,” Kate said, following Eddie into the kitchen. It was a study in sleek architectural efficiency, with endless white cupboards, gray granite countertops and gleaming stainless steel. Its monastic severity was relieved by a series of murals on the walls. But they were different from the ones Kate had admired the first time she had seen Randall’s kitchen. Those had been of the ocean, abstract, yet with enough form that the ocean’s moods could be felt twenty feet away.

Kate knew why Randall had removed the triad of ocean paintings by his mother, Penelope Barrett. The ocean had almost stolen someone he loved. It had revealed its terrible beauty—a reminder which he did not want to face every morning over his coffee.

The replacement set of paintings by his mother was equally compelling: inviting yet bleak, they depicted abandoned barns—weathered, and still standing the test of time.

“Take a look at this kitchen. How could I be jealous, Kate?” Eddie asked, waving a hand while stirring the pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove. Coordination was not one of his strengths, and a few drops of red sauce spattered the stainless steel oven door.

Blood dripping down the elevator wall.

Kate shook her head, trying to rid herself of an image that had imprinted itself on her brain a year ago.

“This kitchen already possesses every useless cooking accessory from every high-priced kitchen store in Halifax.” Eddie winked. “Don’t tell Randall I said that.”

Kate slid onto a white-leather bar stool next to the granite island. She tore her gaze from the spattered sauce and forced a lightness into her voice. “I think he already knows.” She crossed her legs, trying to appear casual. “How’s he doing, anyway?”

God. You are pathetic, Kate. You just spoke to him a few days ago.

But it wasn’t the same. It had been about Frances Sloane.

Not about them
.

Eight months ago, after Kate had successfully defended Randall Barrett on the charge of murdering his ex-wife, they had both recognized that their feelings had deepened beyond those of lawyer and client.

“I think the merger finally got the go-ahead. He’s pleased.” About a month after he had been vindicated from the charge of murdering his ex-wife, Randall had been contacted by an old law school classmate from Harvard. His classmate offered his condolences for all that Randall had been through—and offered him the opportunity to work on a complicated corporate merger of an international technology company.

That, of course, wasn’t what Kate wanted to know. She tried again, “How are the kids doing?”

“Good.” Eddie reached down and patted Charlie, who sat by his leg. “Lucy misses the dog, though.”

A Manhattan apartment was no place for a large chocolate Labrador, Randall had told Kate. She’d offered to take Charlie while the Barretts were gone, not realizing how hard it would be to have a constant reminder of Randall when there was no real commitment between them. And when he came back, who knew? Who knew what decisions he would have made about his children’s needs, about his own needs?

About his feelings for Kate?

Eddie scooped some sauce onto the wooden spoon and gave it a taste. “Mmm…just the right amount of salt.”

Kate raised a brow. “When are you going to give me your meat sauce recipe?”

“It’s a Bent family secret, Kate.” Eddie hummed under his breath as he tossed a bag of garlic bread into the oven to warm. “My mother would roll in her grave if I gave it to you.” He closed the oven door, leaning his large bulk against its warmth. “And besides, why do you need my recipe? You’re going to get the real deal when you’re in Italy.”

“True, but that’s a few months away. And I’m starving!” Kate grinned.

Eddie’s gaze softened. In that instant, Kate saw Eddie the father—the father who yearned for the daughter who had moved to Montreal with her mother and who had thrown her alcoholic father out of her life for good.

“Oh, look,” Kate said, “Nat’s on the news.” She hopped off the stool, glad for something to relieve the melancholy that had descended on her friend, and turned up the volume.

Nat Pitts, Kate’s old friend from university, had landed a job on the local news show after her work on Randall Barrett’s murder case eight months ago. She had made the transition from print to air more successfully than some reporters. Today, she was covering a news story somewhere on the coast, the wind ruffling her no-longer-bleached-blond-but-viewer-friendly light brown hair, a microphone clutched in her hand, a trench coat tightly belted to show her trim figure to advantage. Behind her, mist blurred the shot of a crime scene investigation. “…Police have brought in a forensic anthropologist to investigate what appears to be human remains discovered by a local high school student in a peat bog.”

A shot of the taped-off peat bog filled the screen. A team of people laid out a grid of rope over scrubby plants. It appeared pretty mundane, but the police gazed at a hole in the scrub with apparent fascination.

A pang—a tiny pang—darted through Kate. A familiar dark-haired figure stood in the middle.

Ethan.

Detective Ethan Drake, former-homicide-turned-cold-case detective. Former fiancé whom Kate had believed would be with her in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, for better or worse.

Only the last part had proven true. Ethan had been part of some of the worst moments of her life. Not in a good way.

She had tried to put him out of her mind over the past year. Mostly, she had been successful. Once in a while, usually late at night, when she had had a glass of wine and lay in bed, unable to sleep, she would wonder if he was with someone else. Would he bring that other someone a café latte in the morning, with perfectly foamed milk and fresh shavings of chocolate?

That’s what Starbucks is for, Kate. A marriage is not built on espresso coffee.

Now he was just a three-inch figure on the TV screen, his head bent, his gaze absorbed. The wind ruffled his hair.

The news camera cut back to Nat. A tall, ball-capped woman stood next to her, wearing a vest with multiple bulging pockets. “Joining me is Dr. Darcie Hughes—”

“Darcie?” Kate exclaimed.

“You know her?” Eddie asked, grating a small block of parmigiano.

“Law school,” Kate said. She fell silent, concentrating on Nat’s interview, but her brain was still processing the fact that her old law schoolmate was now a forensic anthropologist.

“—peat bogs are known for their preservative qualities, correct, Dr. Hughes?” Nat said.

Darcie Hughes nodded, a few wisps of ginger-colored hair escaping from her ponytail. “Yes, they are. This is an exciting find. It is the first of its kind in Canada.”

“How long do you think the body has been there?” Nat asked.

The camera tightened a shot on Darcie Hughes’ face. Her eyes, a light gold-green, stood out amongst the blur of freckles on her skin. She gave a rueful smile. “We aren’t talking about finding an Iron Age mummy, such as the Tollund Man of Denmark. The body is from modern times. Within this century, for sure.”

“Why do you say that, Dr. Hughes?” Nat’s eyes had narrowed in a way that meant she knew something—and was trying to lead her wary prey into revealing it. Kate held her breath. She rooted for Nat to score a coup, yet didn’t want Darcie Hughes to stumble into a trap.

But Darcie Hughes had picked up a few things in law school. She gave a small laugh. “Sorry, I cannot reveal any more details at this time. The police will provide an update when information is confirmed.” She yanked the rim of her ball cap farther down on her forehead. “I’ve got to return to the dig. Before the rain comes.”