Poor kid. He’d told Melissa he’d take her to Busch Gardens last weekend and then had to cancel when another case came up.
Hunter turned his back to the burial pit and dug out his phone to call his sister. A pack of love bugs flew in his face, and he swatted them away. He punched in the memorized number.
“Hi, Hunter.” Gotta love caller I.D.
“Jen, I wondered if—”
“Let me guess. You want me to keep Melissa for dinner. You got tied up.”
Even to him, his refrain was becoming tiresome. “Yeah. Something like that. You know I hate to trouble you—”
“Hunter. Don’t worry about it. You know I love having Melissa around, and so do Emily and Jake. She’s like a younger sister to them.”
Melissa had probably spent more time with her cousins than she had at home. “Make me feel guiltier.” He kicked a stick and watched it skitter along the ground.
Jen didn’t answer for a second. “I’m sorry. I know you can’t help it. It’s your job to catch the bad guys and make us feel safe.”
“Thanks for trying to boost my spirits.” Hunter wasn’t used to spewing sentimental stuff. He cleared his throat. “Tell Melissa I’ll be by after I finish here. Okay?”
“Sure. I love you.”
“Love you too,” he mumbled, forcing the emotion from his voice. The sheriff’s department had dubbed him Mr. Spock because of his inability to express his softer side. They’d mock him for sure if they’d heard him say those three little words.
He stashed his phone. He didn’t deserve such a wonderful sister. Without Jen, he never would have survived his wife’s death. It was his Melissa who had been his inspiration to keep going when he’d had serious thoughts about eating his gun.
Hunter turned back to the gravesite and caught Kerry looking at him with an odd expression. Before he could react, she looked away.
He rolled up his sleeves. Sunburn be damned.
Kerry placed a femur on the cold, stainless steel lab table, and smothered a yawn. She took another gulp of her coffee, hoping the drink would give her a jolt of energy.
It had taken all day to separate Jane Doe #1 bones from those of #3’s. The other two bodies, found closer to the river, still had some soft tissue on them, and John Ahern was attempting to autopsy them in the hope of determining their cause of death.
All through the night and into the early morning hours, Kerry couldn’t rid her mind from the four bodies they’d found in the field. Four women. Four lost souls. Each discovery had taken another small piece from her heart.
She wasn’t the only one affected. Kerry was sure the pinched lines around Detective Markum’s handsome mouth during the exhaustive search had mirrored her own.
When she’d drifted off to sleep last night, all she could see were the cadaver dogs sniffing the ground, finding the bodies. Kerry had worked with them before on other cases, but she’d never seen them race about so frenetically. She’d spent all night fighting the disturbing images that invaded her imagination, and now she was paying for it.
One of the detectives had found a belt loop several feet from the first gravesite. Even if the loop belonged to the killer, she doubted the police could trace such a small piece of evidence to anyone, especially months after the deaths.
She shook her head to clear her vision and a sharp, stabbing pain crossed her forehead, but she refused to allow a migraine to delay her. Grabbing her purse from across the room, she located her much-needed prescription bottle and swallowed two without water. Yuk.
Ignoring the rush of goose bumps that rippled up her arm from the air conditioner’s cold blast, Kerry returned to the table and studied #3’s skull. Her heart tore. She ran her hand tenderly over the dry, bony surface. “I hope you didn’t suffer.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to imagine the dead woman. She must have had a family who loved her. Had anyone reported her missing? Had some special man loved her? Was he grieving her loss? Or had he been the one who’d killed her?
Kerry opened her eyes and fought to push away her tangled emotions. Science would solve this crime, not her heart.
Her fingers touched the rather apparent sutures in the skull. What a shame. The woman was probably about thirty, not much younger than Kerry. She swallowed the biting ache that always came when she handled a victim’s remains.
The only good news was all four females had intact dental work. Maybe when Detective Markum provided a list of possible victims, she might find a match.
A knock sounded on the lab door, and John Ahern sauntered in with a frown. “You okay? You’ve been closeted in here all day.”
A large African American, John had kind eyes and a wide, gentle mouth.
“I’m fine. I’ve had a lot to keep me busy.” Her smile faltered as fingers of fatigue crawled up her spine.
“I hear you.”
“Don’t tell me you’re done with your autopsies already?” Kerry wanted to get her hands on the other skeletons, needing to find a connection that would provide names to the victims, and provide their families with closure.
“Hardly. I’m taking a break between autopsying Jane Doe #2 and #4. It’s slow going.” He pointed to the display of bones on the table. “So what’ve you found?”
“The jaw on Jane Doe #3 had been broken at one time. From the size of the fissure, I’m speculating she’d been beaten about a year or so prior to her death.”
“Anything else?”
“The back of the woman’s cranium showed blunt force trauma strong enough to break her skull.”
“Good.”
“And #1?”
“Not much. I catalogued and photographed each bone and took dental molds of my two bodies, but I won’t know much more until after X-raying them.”
“Were you able to get any DNA?”
“I have a small sample from an extracted tooth from #1 and a little more from her femur. I asked Darla to take the DNA to the FDLE lab for analysis.”
“Good.”
A squeaky gurney rolled down the hallway, past her door. Another death. Kerry blew out a breath.
“Did that detective call with any names of missing persons?” she asked.
She crossed her fingers on both hands, hoping for the best. Stupid superstition, but her mom had been afraid of black cats, cracks in the sidewalk, and full moons, and had passed on that superstition.
If Hunter had a possible name for any of the victims, he might also find a photo of the victim. Then, she could superimpose the photograph over the skull’s X-ray to see if the two matched.
“Not yet.”
Too bad. It was agonizing to have a loved one missing and never know what happened to them—like her brother. Long ago she lost hope of ever finding him, and a band constricted around her heart. Don’t go down that dark tunnel again or this time I might not emerge.
Pushing back her nightmare, Kerry took a long sip of her now cooled coffee and stared at the next set of bones.
John picked up a femur from #3’s body, twirled it around in his fingers, and nodded to #1. “Looks like the time of death is roughly the same for these two. You agree?”
She retrieved the femur John was manhandling and replaced it on the stainless tabletop with care. “I need to do a few more tests, but from my preliminary observation, I believe they died within a few months of each other.”
“When I complete work on my two victims, I’ll send the results over,” John said. “Hopefully, I can figure out their cause of death.”
Kerry ran a hand along the smooth cold metal. “I did notice one thing. Jane Doe #1’s facial bones had only begun to heal from reconstructive surgery. Could her cause of death be an infection resulting from that operation?”
His brows rose. “If so, why not bury her in a coffin?”
“Good point. I’m so frustrated, I’m not thinking straight. I guess I’m desperate for some clues.”
Dr. Ahern chuckled softly and shook his head. “Not all deaths we investigate are the result of foul play.”
“They are when all four bodies are near each other in shallow graves.”