“We don’t know that. Not yet,” Javi said. He tapped Cloister’s ankle with his foot and stepped back as he called the discovery in. “Don’t touch anything. We need to get the forensic teams in here… see if there’s anything useful left. How the hell did they miss this the first time? I thought the Plenty police force were corrupt, not incompetent.”
He stalked out of the dusty box of a room to bark orders down the phone.
Cloister folded the knife back in and stuffed it into his back pocket. His hands shook as adrenaline worked its way down into the tendons. He already knew he’d have the nightmare tonight, but at least one family would have an answer.
“Time to go home, Birdie,” he said.
Chapter Fourteen
THE DEADgirl looked very small as they carried her out of the building on a stretcher. Under the white sheet, her dried-out corpse looked more like a child or an animal. Nothing but bones and weathered skin.
“I can’t tell you anything until I’ve finished the autopsy,” the coroner said. She wiped her glasses with her thumb, pushed them back up her nose, and squinted through the greasy smears until her eyes adjusted. “In my opinion the corpse was moved here after she’d already been dead for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
Galloway sighed. She was a colorless woman with dishwater-blonde hair and washed-out blue eyes. Even her skin had that oddly sallow effect that came from spending most of her life under florescent lights. She was good at her job, though.
“I prefer not to give my opinion until I’ve opened them up,” she said. Her blanched-out eyebrows lifted. “Do you really think I’m going to do guesses?”
“Is there anything you can tell me?”
She pursed her lips and picked distractedly at a bit of dried skin. “No obvious cause of death,” she said. “It looks like she was held somewhere before she died. Her fingertips show signs of damage.” She hooked her fingers and scratched at the air to make her point. “Thatcouldhave been predation, though. I will know more when—”
“You finish the autopsy,” he finished for her.
Galloway gave him a dry smile and turned to go. Before she could, Javi tapped his finger against her elbow to reclaim her attention.
“Can you put a rush on it?” he asked. “Front of the line?”
“I could,” she said, but she moved her arm away from him. “Why should I?”
Javi hesitated. The evidence of a connection between the two cases was reaching a tipping point, but Javi wasn’t sure he wanted to commit his name to it yet. Haring off on wild-goose chases, even ones that proved fruitful, didn’t look good on an agent’s record or when they got to court. Let J.J. Diggs at a case based on gut feelings instead of evidence and investigative procedure, and he’d have a field day.
“It could be connected to another case,” he said. “Maybe.”
Galloway grimaced. “Lara’s little boy?” she asked. Of course she knew the family, Javi realized. There weren’t that many doctors in Plenty, and the county coroner’s office dealt with deaths at the hospital too.
“It’s not confirmed,” Javi said. “And I do not want it getting back to the Hartley family. Not yet.”
That got him a scathing look. “She’s a professional acquaintance, not my ‘bestie,’” Galloway said dryly. “But I’ll make sure I examine this body as soon as I can.”
Javi let her leave. As she oversaw loading the body into the back of the coroner’s van, Javi pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and squeezed as though the pressure might help make the current situation simpler.
If the two caseswereconnected, how? If the Utkin family finally worked out that Kelly Hartley had put pressure on the investigation, they might have snatched Billy as payback. But despite Utkin’s reputed connections, that seemed a severe jump in antisocial behavior for a SoCal builder with no criminal record.
Except they still didn’tknowthe corpse they’d found was Birdie Utkin, he reminded himself. Until they did he might as well put a pin in the question of how and deal with the situation at hand.
Cloister was off playing fetch with the dog, and the news crews had joined the crowd of rubberneckers gathered outside the wire fencing. The deputies on duty were trying to keep them back, but a mixture of nosiness and concern made them press closer.
He walked to the perimeter and into a battery of questions.
“Is this connected to the Hartley case?” a vaguely familiar woman asked as she tucked her hair behind her ear. It took a second, but Javi put a name to her—Harriet Green of the local television station.
“Have you found Drew Hartley’s body?” a more direct man asked. He had hipster black glasses and a laptop bag. Newspaper or blog. “Do you have a suspect?”
“This is a separate case,” Javi said. “At the moment we have no reason to connect this to the missing local boy, Drew Hartley. We have every hope that we’ll be able to return Drew home happy and well.”
It had beenconfidencein the first hours after Drew walked out of the Retreat and didn’t come back. The more time passed, the more he had to manage expectations. There was no kindness in keeping hope alive after a certain point.
