Under duress. She laid a possessive hand on Gabriella’s shoulder.
“I am not intimidated by difficult truth.” Joel raised an eyebrow, his gaze burrowing deeper into hers, blazing with conviction that implied he had the right to defend not only his position in the room but also his past actions.
Dr. Thorpe cleared his throat. The connection between Ivy and Joel evaporated as Ivy shifted her attention to her father, whose sharp expression communicated he’d missed none of the underlying messages tossed between the two of them.
“It is very clear the woman died from asphyxiation.” Ivy’s father’s white walrus mustache wobbled as he sniffed. His spectacles slid down his nose when he looked down at Gabriella and pointed toward her eyes. “The burst blood vessels in the eyes, the bruising around the neck—both imply strangulation.” He traced the bruising while Joel leaned over the body to examine it. Ivy edged aside as her father pushed his way in. Frowning, she repositioned herself at the head of the table and allowed the two men to go about their discussion, effectively excusing her from it.
“The killer’s fingers left their mark, to be sure.” Dr. Thorpe ran his finger along the distinct edge of a bruise. “And it is evident she fought back,” he concluded.
“How so?” Joel was so focused, so intent on the body before them, that it allowed Ivy a moment to study his face. His jawline was clean-shaven, his dark hair trimmed with a slight wave around the ears, his starched collar touched his Adam’s apple, and his blue eyes were bordered by thick lashes. Everything about Joel Cunningham was straightforward. Except where he had been for the last twelve years.
Her father’s voice brought Ivy back to the explanation of his postmortem examination results. “We found skin particles underneath her fingernails, mixed with some mud that would be consistent with the earth near where she was found.”
“Was there a scent?” Joel inquired.
“A what?” Dr. Thorpe drew back with a perplexed frown.
“A scent on the skin or even to the mud,” Joel clarified, and Ivy had to begrudgingly admit Joel was sharp. “Of soap, or perhaps a cleaning solution? Manure or pond algae? I’m looking for something that may help us identify the killer and perhaps the exact location of death.”
Ivy shook her head and answered before her father could. “The skin beneath her nails was too tiny to tell a scent. The mud smelled like earth after the snow melts. Her body has no distinctive smell.” Other than death itself.
Her father gave her a quick glance. Yes, Daddy, I smelled it. She loved her father, but he often questioned her sensibilities, if not her own sanity.
“What else?” Joel brushed past her explanation.
Dr. Thorpe lifted Gabriella’s hand and turned it so Joel could see. “This strikes me as odd. The bruising around her wrists is older but not consistent with a struggle. It’s almost as if she had been bound once, not terribly long ago, but also not within the past few weeks. She has some scrapes and cuts that are scabbed.”
“She was held against her will, then. Are there other wounds?”
Dr. Thorpe scratched a spot above his ear and cleared his throat, looking at Ivy. She raised an eyebrow. She had already been through the examination, but she assumed her father thought it terribly improper to discuss it with another man present. Considering they’d already far breached the boundaries of propriety, Ivy tried to muster an encouraging smile for her father and realized it probably came out more like a grimace. He coughed again, then proceeded with a final nervous glance in her direction.
“There was a child.”
Joel raised his head from his inspection of Gabriella’s wrists. “Excuse me?”
“A baby,” Ivy said, drawing Joel’s icy-blue attention to herself. “She gave birth no more than two or three weeks ago.” Urgency filtered into her voice and Ivy didn’t try to disguise it. “Somewhere out there”—she waved toward the window—“is Gabriella’s baby.”
Joel followed the wave of her hand to the black-and-white, snow-melting landscape outside. Ivy could read his thoughts. Cold. Ice. Dark nights. Little warmth.
“How long has she been dead?”
Ivy hoped Joel was doing the math in his mind. A baby left alone for more than eighteen to twenty-four hours would have little chance of survival.
Her father did not waltz around the horrid truth. “She has been gone at least thirty to thirty-six hours. Doubtful any longer.”
“There isn’t any way, if the infant was left to fend for itself, that it would survive that.”
Joel’s conclusion, coupled with the cold tone of his voice and the unapologetic delivery of fact, incensed Ivy. She stared at him, curling her fingers into the sheet that covered the examination table. She tipped her head.
“You cannot draw such a blatant conclusion.” Ivy drew in a shaky breath, not from tears but from a frustration enhanced by their past, by Andrew’s death, and by the lack of empathy Joel had a history of displaying.
He matched her sigh, only his was stable and unemotional. “If the infant was abandoned, then I can conclude little else, outside of a miracle by the hand of God.”
Ivy opened her mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. He was right, of course, but he didn’t seem convinced that God would choose to work miraculously. She had seen enough in her life to know He usually erred on the side of tragedy. But until she knew God’s decision, there was a little life that needed to be accounted for—and she was determined to see it was done.
Chapter 4
Nighttime crept upon them with its frigid clutches, sending Gabriella’s body on its way to the mortician’s table and leaving Sheriff Dunst and Joel behind in the examination room to deliberate their next move. Ivy shouldn’t have eavesdropped, but when the words “wait until morning” passed across Sheriff Dunst’s lips and Joel did nothing to protest, she knew she had to listen on behalf of Gabriella and her child. She pressed her ear to the door, her hand gripping the knob under debate of whether to barge in or remain silent.
“There’s nothing we can do tonight. We don’t even have a solid point of reference as to where the murder took place. Foggerty has trapped all over that land and he said he’s seen nothing.” Sheriff Dunst’s words brought no comfort to Ivy as she rested her ear against the door. “We won’t be able to find any evidence in the dark.”
“She was by Foster Hill House—start there maybe—baby out there alone.” Joel’s words were broken, his voice less booming than the lawman’s.