The Truth Seeker (19 page)

It had been months since she had last held the bones; they were dry, and over the passage of years had lost their ivory smoothness. She carefully positioned the left hand for the first X-ray, then stepped into the adjoining room and gave Janice the all clear. The X-ray machine began to hum. Lisa watched the first X-ray film print roll from the developing machine fourteen minutes later. She had the clarity she needed. “Exposure time looks good,” she confirmed.

Janice helped her set up for the left wrist picture.

An hour and forty minutes later Lisa had the images she needed.

“Thanks, Janice.”

In a living bone the edges of the break would have curls recorded Marla’s wrist bones were undamaged, but her palm—there were

“Anytime.”

Lisa rolled the table with Marla’s remains to the service elevator and took them to the task force room where she had set up an exam table.

She slid the X-rays onto the light table.

Was there a way to prove without the duct tape being recovered that Marla’s hands had been bound the same way as Rita’s? Duct tape around the wrists and also around the palms pressing the back of her hands together? It was a signature Lisa had never seen before. Finding it would be enough to link the cases.

Lisa started with the obvious break in Marla’s left arm.

The radius bone had been broken by the shovel long after her death: The bone break was brittle, sharp-edged enough to leave splinters, grayish white in color after the dirt had been carefully removed.

in the bone layers as the pressure built and it finally snapped; the edges of the break would also have deepened in color over the years as the rest of the bones had to match the surrounding soil.

two breaks in the fourth and fifth metacarpal bones, the outer two bones of her palm. Even under the powerful microscope they showed no sign of healing; she’d died within hours of the breaks.

Lisa moved over to look at Marla’s right hand and found a break in the outmost bone of the palm.

She leaned back in her chair, thought for a moment, then held her own hands out in front of her, considering the bones Marla had broken.

When someone put her hands out to break a fall, normally one or two of the finger bones broke because they were bent back, or one or two of the wrist bones broke if she landed on the base of her palms.

And if Marla had struck someone with her fist, she would have probably broken the long bones of her fingers.

To break the edge bones in her palms but not her fingers

Lisa leaned forward and put her hands behind her back, pressing

the backs of her hands together, and slowly leaned her weight back against the chair but found it impossible to shift her hands around with the backs of her hands pressed together. If Marla had been bound, thrown down to land on her back, she would have broken the small finger bones in her hands just as Rita had done.

This didn’t make sense.

Lisa looked at her hands again, turning them palms up. Maybe someone had stepped on her hands? She turned to look at the X-rays only to stop midway in the turn, her thoughts taking a tangent.

She slowly nodded. Maybe.

She stood up, crossed over to the desk and put her hands behind her back as she suspected Marla’s had been bound. She turned and let herself fall back against the desk, and felt the sharp sting of contact as her hands hit. It was the outer palm bones and not the finger bones, not even the wrist bones.

Rita had been pushed back and fallen to the ground. Marla had been pushed back and hit something but had been able to stay on her feet.

Lisa sighed, facing another dilemma. How did she prove that?

“Now that is a deep scowl.”

Quinn turned away from the screen and the report he was trying to write, relieved to have the interruption. “Kate. Thanks for coming.”

“I see you still hate paperwork.”

“That’s an understatement.”

She entered the small room he had borrowed at the regional marshal’s office and cleared a chair so she could sit down. “You called. Here I am.”

He grinned; she was clearly having a good Friday off work. His call had woken her this morning, still curled up in bed at A.M. While he’d been fighting paperwork all afternoon, she’d been out having fun.

“Unfortunately, yes. And checking out Plymouths is impossible.”

“It was probably stolen anyway,” she replied cheerfully.

“Thanks for pointing that fact out.” Quinn knew she was probably

He offered her the glass jar of jelly beans she was studying. “Orange still your favorites?”

She rolled the jar to keep stirring the mix as she selected a handful one at a time. “I never could figure out why they would make green.

Who wants to eat green candy? They remind me of mold.”

Quinn chuckled and took back the jar after she was finished; he had to agree.

“What are you working on?”

“Do you have any idea how many dark green Plymouths there are in this city, let alone the surrounding counties?”

“One at every used car lot at least. Do they still even make that color?”

right even though there hadn’t been a stolen car report. “I don’t remember you being this perky back in the days we used to date.”

“Dave took me shopping.”

Quinn didn’t react for a moment; he couldn’t. “He took you shopping, and you liked it?”

His voice was so disbelieving she laughed. “We bought Jennifer’s wedding present. She’s going to love it.”

“Did you?”

“It’s this really great plush chair, at least a thousand colors, the most predominant one bright orange, very retro. It had to come straight out of the sixties.”

“You didn’t.”

“She’s wanted one for years. She always was a rebel under that perfect decorum.”

“Kate—”

“Relax. After Dave about had a conniption fit we bought her a really nice and perfectly acceptable car. Well, we picked it out, at least.

It will be delivered from a dealer in Baltimore if she’s still in the hospital, or a dealer in Houston if she’s home.”

“You bought her a car.”

“A spitfire-red Corvette. She’s always wanted one of those too.”

“And you’ll be paying on it for the next century.”

“It’s on plastic. And Dave owes my debts when we get married. He can afford it.”

He broke out laughing. She was serious. “Kate, you’re terrible.”

“I know.” She ate another two of the jellybeans. “Actually, everybody but Lisa is in on it. She can’t keep a secret worth squat. So we’ll tell her about it five minutes before we hand Jennifer the keys.”

Quinn knew better than that about the secrets but kept his own counsel. “Let me guess, you’re prowling for donations.”

“Always accepted.”

“In that case, Lisa’s broke. Put me down for both of us.”

“I knew I could count on you.” She stretched out in the chair, her voice turning serious. “I know it’s extravagant, and most people won’t understand—”

“I do. Some people talk about a trip to Hawaii for their fiftieth birthday, a cruise when they retire. Jennifer has always talked about her someday-dream of having a red convertible.”

“She doesn’t have a lot of somedays left.”

Six months, a year

It wasn’t long if the cancer couldn’t be stopped. “Kate—she’ll love the car. Give her a chance to enjoy her dream. She’ll understand.”

“I hope so.” Kate slouched in the chair and crossed her ankles.

“So

back to the start of this conversation. You called. What’s up?”

“Your shoelaces are untied.”

“What?”

He snagged her left foot and lifted it to rest against his knee so he could take care of the problem. “You need new tennis shoes.” These were so beat up this one about had a hole in the sole.

“The first sprained ankle is going to change that.”

“Not likely. They’re too loose. I’d just slip out of them.” She looked He hated the way she could read people. He had been hoping Lisa was going to kill him. He had wrestled over what it meant to If she knew something and was going to cover that truth, deny it, He would have told Marcus first, but he knew the two of them. His

“Dave’s already bought me at least half a dozen different styles and colors. He just doesn’t get the fact these are my lucky pair. I haven’t lost a handball match against him yet while wearing these shoes.”

at the very neat knot he had tied. “Perfectionist.” She crossed her feet again, then looked back at him. “Now that you tried that subtle redirect that didn’t do you any good—why did you call?”

against hope that he would hear back from someone with the details he was looking for before Kate got here, but his last outstanding query had come back an hour ago. He was out of options and he needed answers.

“Has Lisa ever mentioned much about when she lived in Knolls Park?” He got straight to the point, knowing that with Kate it was best to be direct.

go to her family for help—to protect Lisa’s right to privacy or to break her implied trust and share her secret. He didn’t have a choice. What he needed to know, not many people could deliver; he’d found that out this afternoon. But Kate could.

he’d see it as a slight distance entered her gaze and she shifted subtly into work mode, concealing her thoughts. But her expression stayed open and only turned puzzled.

“I didn’t know she ever had. Her foster homes were all to the south and west of Trevor House.” Her expression turned to a frown as she picked up on his shift in mood. “Why are you asking?”

partner would have absorbed the news and picked up the phone to call Kate; they were that tight on what was best to do for the family. In the end, he’d madars,e choice to go first to Kate. Marcus had the nation—

wide contacts, but when it came to Chicago, Kate knew the system, knew how to find facts buried deep.

“We were working a lead, a lady named Marla Sherrall who was found buried near the zoo at Knolls Park. Lisa said she once lived a block from where Marla was found.” He pushed his hand through his hair, knowing what he was about to do would have consequences.

“Lisa reacted,” he hesitated over how much to say, “badly to the situation.”

“Quinn

keep talking,” Kate said softly.

“She couldn’t wait to get out of the neighborhood, she didn’t want to stop and talk to people who might have known the victim, made an excuse not to enter the bakery where Marla had worked.”

“She shut down.”

“Hard. It took me three hours after we left the neighborhood to get her out of that quiet

despair, for want of a better word. I don’t like it.”

“She never lived at Knolls Park.”

Quinn looked at her.

And the silence stretched.

Kate’s eyes darkened. “I’ll check,” she agreed quietly. In her voice was the firsthand experience of knowing what secrets in a childhood often meant.

Quinn could only nod. If Kate found what he feared

Quinn hoped Lisa would be in a forgiving spirit when she learned what he had done.

Thirteen

want to accept it. Her supposition over how Marla might have broken ILisa tur t’

Quinn just waited it out. He was right, she knew it, but she didn’

s a reach.”

ned at his words, frustration written all over her face, and t

the bones in her hands was a very long reach. Even if true, it didn’t prove her hands had been bound that way. It only was a hypothesis that fit what they hoped to find.

“It’s not that far a reach.” She dropped into the chair by the desk, winced at the jarring impact of the movement, and stared with frustration at the whiteboard. “And we need something to fit.”

It was late Saturday, they had been debating the merits of the evidence in the four cases nonstop for the last few days. They were both tired enough it had come down to sniping at each other.

She was pushing herself too hard; he was pushing himself too hard. It wasn’t worth it. For the first time Quinn was ready to admit solving something twenty years old wasn’t worth what it was costing him in the present.

Lisa leaned her head against the back of her chair and looked at the map on the wall as she absently rolled her chair back and forth with her foot. “I can’t believe all these dead ends. We can prove Grant knew Rita when she was sixteen—but he’s already been convicted of killing

her. We can’t find any connection between Amy and Grant; we can’t find any connection between Grant and these victims. I know all these cases are related, I can feel it, but I can prove only Heather and Vera are linked.”

The map with red dots marking gravesites, blue dots marking victims’

homes, and green dots where they had worked showed no discernible pattern. They were all over the Chicagoland area. Yesterday morning Lisa had proposed that maybe it was like the I-cases in Texas, a common interstate running within a short distance of all the sites, but there was nothing obvious on the map. No cluster of dots, no common thoroughfare.

“Go home. Get some sleep. We’ll look at everything with a fresh perspective on Monday.”

She turned in her chair at his words. “You want to give up.”

There was accusation in her voice. She was a fierce little thing, and it pleased him, but at the same time one of them had to face reality. And in this case he appeared to be the one who had reached that conclusion first.

“I’m not saying these four cases might not be linked, I’m not even ready to rule out Grant as the guy who killed them. But I think we can rule out the idea of trying to match them to anything having to do with Amy.”

He sighed when he saw her expression.

“Lisa, we may well be chasing something that is not there. Yes, Rita and Amy knew each other. But it’s time to consider the reality that that may be the extent of it. They were friends when they were sixteen, kept in sporadic touch, and that is all that’s there. We’ve found no trace that Amy ever came back to Chicago.”

“Rita’s diary for that period of time is missing.”

“Lost, not missing,” Quinn corrected. “It’s frustrating because that is one thing that would rule in or out the hypothesis that Amy came here, but you have to admit, there would be other evidence too. Two