Waking the Dead (13 page)
Then she took her pack into the next room and started to withdraw the soil samples. “I have a present for you.”
Kristy glanced up from her work. And immediately groaned theatrically. “No fucking way. I just got caught up on the other ones!”
“These are special.” She shied away from the memory of the scene earlier that day with Sharper. “But they can wait until you finish the plates and treat the long bones in each set of remains with Acryloid B-72.” The preservative would give the bones an artificially glossy nonporous surface suitable for dusting for latents.
Cait looked through the contents of the shelves on the other side of the room until she found a pair of magnifying goggles, which she set on the nearby cart holding the stereomicroscope and scanning digital camera. “You owe me a buck, by the way. Two if you don’t want me to tell Michaels Steve about your lapse.” Carefully she began pulling the cart across the room. That was the pain of temporary lab quarters. Nothing was ever where she needed it.
Though her back was to the other woman, she heard the smirk in her voice. “Turns out he has a love-hate relationship with my language. When it’s dirty talk, accompanied by a little soft bondage . . .”
Cait hurried her pace a bit. “I’m not listening.”
“. . . he has a surprisingly high tolerance for it. As a matter of fact, he asked me to say . . .”
“La-la-la-la-la . . . can’t hear you.” She escaped with the cart into the other room while Kristy was still laughing.
She manipulated the cart over to the first gurney, which held the remains of female A. Adjusting the goggles over her eyes, she switched on the lights on either side of them and then picked up the camera to scan in digital pictures. When she was finished, she’d hook the camera to the stereomicroscope and use it to display the pictures with maximum resolution on the monitor.
At least her time spent with the victim would elicit nothing more risqué than the secrets behind the saw marks on the severed vertebrae.
That was infinitely preferable to hearing the details of Kristy’s love life.
At five minutes to eight, Cait followed the hostess through the restaurant to the table for two in the corner. Marin Andrews lowered her menu as Cait approached. “I’m glad you could make it. Hope you like Thai food.” She paused, did a quick once-over of Cait’s figure. “And that you eat.”
Stifling the quick flare of irritation, Cait picked up a menu. “My starving-model days have been behind me for a decade.”
The sheriff grunted. “You won’t be sorry. The chef here is excellent.”
Several minutes passed before Andrews put down her menu, signaled the waiter. Cait held off until after he’d scribbled down their orders and hurried away before asking the question that had been plaguing her since Andrews’s call a couple hours ago. “Your call sounded urgent.”
The sheriff raised her brows over the rim of her water glass as she drank. “Didn’t mean for it to. I wanted to talk to you before tomorrow morning and thought dinner would give us the time and privacy we need.” It was obvious she’d come from the office herself. She was still in uniform.
“What’s going on tomorrow morning?”
“Press conference.”
Of course. Cait sat back in her chair, a measure of cynicism rising. Sharper had said something a couple days ago about how little information had been released to the media. She’d been surprised at the time that Andrews had restrained from regular press updates.
It was another reminder that the woman was no fool. And that she had a plan that reached far beyond this case.
Whatever her reasons, the sheriff’s restraint so far pleased Cait. There was nothing worse than a press-hungry law enforcement officer spilling details that she’d prefer not being made public.
When Andrews began speaking, her words mirrored Cait’s thoughts closely. “I’ve been talking to the press regularly, but putting them off with any real details until we could be certain what we were dealing with.” The expression in her eyes was shrewd. “I don’t want to make something public that will later be proven untrue. But media speculation can be just as damaging, so I want to be careful. I’ll share some of the facts, and your expert opinion. So we need to separate out the information we have so I can decide what’s safe to go public with.”
Cait leaned back as the waiter returned with their soft drinks. When he’d moved away, she said, “I assume Deputy Barnes updated you about the discovery he delivered to the lab today.” At the woman’s nod, she went on. “The species identification results won’t be available until tomorrow, but I can tell you unequivocally that the saw your officer found isn’t the instrument used to decapitate these victims, although the instrument used was a bone saw.”
If the sheriff was disappointed at the news, it didn’t show. “You’re sure of that?”
“Absolutely. I conducted saw mark analysis on the serrated areas of the bones. When I examine the characteristics of the kerf walls and floors in the bones, I’m able to get a fairly accurate estimation of the size, shape, set, power, and direction of a saw.” The sheriff was leaning forward, listening intently. “The tool used is hand powered. Ten TPI—teeth per inch. A rectangular blade. The perp is right-handed. And here’s the good news.” Cait paused, reliving the satisfaction she’d experienced when she’d made the discovery. “The same blade was used on all of the victims. There’s a slight imperfection on one of the teeth.”
“So if the UNSUB has the saw in his possession, it links him to the murders.”
She nodded. “But that isn’t information you want to release to the public.”
“Of course not.” The sheriff broke off as their food was delivered. Then she picked up her fork and started in on her seafood curry. “Neither are the beetles. So let’s talk about what we can safely release.”
“The cave’s a secondary scene.” Cait tried her stir fry, found it delicious. “The newest set of remains was probably put there sometime in the last several months. The manner of disposal has your department treating the deaths as suspicious.” She’d had plenty of experience over the years putting together case information for press releases. Unfortunately, her advice was often ignored. Law enforcement officials had to deal with local politics, which sometimes edged out caution when it came to releasing facts to the public. “The deaths are connected, and you’re following up on that link as vigorously as possible. You don’t feel the residents are in immediate danger, but they should remain cautious and report any suspicious activity to your office, yada yada yada.”
Andrews chewed thoughtfully. “That isn’t going to be enough to satisfy them.”
She was right. But then, nothing would be enough to satisfy a press corps hungry for details about the most sensational case to hit the area in decades. The trick was to keep them from realizing just how sensational it was before the investigators knew themselves. “If pushed, I suppose you could tell them we’re matching the remains with persons reported missing, and every attempt is being made to identify the individuals so they can eventually be returned to their families.”
Reaching for her glass, the sheriff nodded. “That should do it. Now why don’t you tell me about your progress along those lines.”
Cait filled her in on the phone calls she’d made that day, adding, “I’ve talked to three detectives so far. All have promised to get me identifier information that might help me match the missing person to one of our remains. When I get to the point where I think we’re close to doing so, I’ll ask for DNA samples to compare with the ones I took.”
The other woman paused in the act of bringing her fork to her mouth. “You can get DNA from bones?”
“If they aren’t too degraded.” One corner of her mouth pulled up wryly. “One thing we have to thank our offender for. He left us specimens in excellent condition.”
“And went to a lot of trouble to do so,” Andrews said, chewing slowly. “The question is, why? Why not bury them? Or chop them in smaller pieces and drop them in a lake or river somewhere? This process you described, the one where he has the beetles cleaning the bones . . . why bother? There have to be quicker ways. Easier ways. He goes to a lot of trouble.”
“Burial is a lot of trouble if you’re digging a hole deep enough to keep animals from getting at them,” Cait pointed out. “The process he follows may be due to easy access or experience. Or it may be part of a ritual that only makes sense to him. It does go a long way in helping me establish the basis of a profile for him.”
Andrews wiped her mouth with her napkin, the action surprisingly dainty. “I could write the basis of a profile myself. If everything you say is true, we already know that this UNSUB is one sick son of a bitch.”
The next morning, while Kristy put in a call to Deputy Barnes with the results of the Ouchterlony and the saw-mark analysis tests, Cait began to dust the preserved bones of each set of remains with black magnetic fluorescent powder, using a magnetic wand. She fitted her protective goggles into place before picking up the handheld ultraviolet lamp and flicking off the lights.
She’d just snapped on the lamp when she heard her assistant call, “Don’t you dare start without me.”
“Bring in some black backing cards,” Cait called back. She began to shine the alternate light source over the dusted bones.
Kristy all but skidded into the room, slapping the cards on the counter with one hand as she pulled up her set of goggles. “Didn’t I tell you not to start without me? You don’t listen very well.”
The words were eerily similar to ones she’d heard a few days earlier.
You don’t follow orders very well.
The stray thought brought Sharper to the forefront of her mind, after she’d done a decent job for the last several hours of not considering him at all. “You never said . . .” Slowly she examined the ulna. “What’d you discover with those soil samples I brought you yesterday?”
“Well, a couple were certainly the closest matches you’ve brought so far.”
Her hand holding the lamp jerked slightly. Drawing in a deep breath, Cait steadied her grasp and strove for a level tone. “Is it within the statistically significant range?”
“No, they were still higher in sulfur than the element percentage in the sediment found in some of the bags. Just not nearly as high as the first ones I tested. Sample one was the closest of them.”
Sample one. Cait searched her memory. That would have been taken from the southeast corner of Sharper’s property. Nowhere close to the spot she’d found the springs, right before Sharper had discovered her. It was looking more likely that her first deduction was a bust. The match for the soil sample in the bags was acidic, but wouldn’t be found in the immediate vicinity of a hot springs.
“What’s that?” The woman crowded closer, pointing with one gloved finger.
“Just a smudge, probably from our latex gloves. Without the skull vaults, our chances of finding latents reduce dramatically,” Cait cautioned her assistant. The long smooth surface of the craniums was a perfect deposit for fingerprints. But it remained to be seen just how clever this UNSUB was. His hiding spot had, after all, been discovered. He would have needed to get those bones out of the beetles’ enclosure. To deposit them in the bag. Common sense would have him using gloves, but anything could have happened. A bone could have been nearly overlooked. Picked up and slipped in the bag when he wasn’t thinking.
Seven victims. Chances were he’d made a mistake with at least one of them.
But the first set of preserved bones was minus even the smallest partial latent. So was the second.
By the time they’d moved to the third gurney, Kristy’s enthusiasm had visibly dampened. “If we don’t find anything on these bones, we could try others, right?”
“Yes. But the smaller the bone the less surface area for a full print. Or even a useable partial. Better cross your fingers.”
Hours later Cait straightened for a moment working her shoulders wearily. It’d be tough to choose whether her back or her feet ached more, and they still had two sets of remains left.
Kristy spoke around a yawn. “You were sloppy with that magnetic powder on this one. There’s some clear up on the upper tip of the scapula. See?”
“I see it.” Automatically, Cait moved the UV lamp to the area her assistant had indicated. “But there’s no powder there.” There was, however, definitely fluorescence. Clicking off the UV lamp, she strode over to the cart holding the digital scanning camera and spectrometer. “Turn on the overhead lights, will you?”
She brought up the pictures she’d taken yesterday, and found the set of remains in question. Exchanging her UV goggles for the magnifiers, she flipped through the images until she found the spot in question. Magnified it as much as she could without losing resolution.
The two women studied the monitor silently. “I don’t see anything,” Kristy finally admitted.
“Me, either.” Adrenaline spiked as she reached for her UV goggles and lamp again. “Get the lights.”
Once Kristy had switched them off, Cait retrained the lamp onto the spot they’d found. “Might be brush marks on the surface.” What the hell? She crouched down and looked at the smudge from different angles. With gloved fingers on either side of the scapula, she turned the bone over. And froze.
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