“That’s the same security people we heard monitor the area for the new owner. Tomorrow, I’ll likely be following up with them, or I’ll put Alex on it.”
He found it a little odd that there was no‘and Corbin’involved in that.
“Anything else?” Elizabeth asked Alex.
He continued.
“The homeless group cared about him. They gave me this,” he said, reaching into his messenger bag and passing the box to her.
When she opened it, they all saw the medals. That immediately made her heart hurt.
“Jesus Christ,” she said softly. “He was a hero.”
That pissed her off that he’d died this way, and that he was left there like trash in an abandoned building.
Alex agreed there.
“I told them we’d make sure he got the burial he deserved. They think it was whoever stole his kidney, since he woke up without it one day. He went to the ER, and I called there to get the paperwork. They sent it over to me, and nothing looks out of place. He came in, was stitched up, and when they did an ultrasound on the fresh wound, he had one less kidney.”
Elizabeth closed the box and passed it off to Ivan, who would make sure it was kept safe until she could get Jonathan Miller’s body released for burial.
She was to the point.
“It’s not in his VA records,” she admitted. “We assumed he went to a local facility. As for his medals, I’ll get him buried in Arlington, and have his body shipped there, after doing a family notify personally,” she said. “I’m working on finding them.”
Alex wasn’t shocked.
He knew Elizabeth loved her some soldiers.
“Do we think that the kidney thing is tied to it?” he asked. “If it is, that explains the eyeballs in a jar. This whole thing is wild, but if that is a collector, and Jonathan got a little too close to his trinkets, it would explain why he was killed.”
She contemplated it, as their food was put in front of them, and they all began eating.
“It might be,” she said. “That’s how it’s tracking for me. I think it’s a case of wrong place and wrong time. Only, we’re early into this. I’ll need more time to see if it’s that, or something more. We’re hoping there’s some DNA on him that will help us.”
That was what they were all hoping for, too.
Elizabeth wasn’t done.
“I can tell you what we came across,” she said.
They all listened.
Elizabeth pointed at her partner in this, and he went first, updating them.
“We interviewed the new owner, Devon Slater. He’s on the up and up. The president vouched for him. He inherited this mess when his father died mid-real-estate deal. He’s been trying to get it torn down, or to build apartments, but the city council is making it a nightmare.”
Well, that matched up to what Alex said.
“He’s frustrated and had no idea there was a locked room, so we’re no further with that,” Gene said. “We confirmed with Tony that the skulls are between two and three years out of the grave, with newer ones tossed in. So this person has been doingthis a while,” he stated. “That’s our timeline we’re looking at, so if anything key pops up in that time frame, be wary.”
Alex got it.
From where she sat, Tora chimed in, hoping that was allowed.
“How long has the new owner had the building?” she asked.
Callen answered because Gene was chewing.
