CHAPTER TWENTY
BELLA
Bella poked her head into the autopsy room, which was NiYah’s domain.
“You rang?”
NiYah looked up with a smile despite the fact that she was holding a human brain.
“Yeah, come on in.”
Bella frowned. I don’t want to. I hate it in here. It smells like old death and emptiness.
“Old death and emptiness?” Bella chuckled. “Da fuck does emptiness smell like?”
“It has a smell,” Bella quipped.
“I got work to do here.”
Bella was used to dead bodies. But, watching NiYah carve them open, she could do without.
NiYah placed the brain on a scale and returned to the body that she was working on. She was face deep in guts. Without looking up, she said, “I have something for you.”
Bella took one last breath of unscented air and walked into the autopsy room. She stood over the open cadaver, one of her female victims.
“Can’t you just call me?” Bella complained.
“Oh, my God, Bella. You see dead bodies all the time.”
“Yeah, but not their spleens!” Bella exclaimed. “What do you have for me?”
NiYah looked up at Bella and rolled her eyes. She covered the decedent with a sheet and pulled off her gloves.
“Well, for starters, that barcode was linked to a human trafficking ring from a few years back. It was run by some Russians.” NiYah washed her hands and walked over to a work table.
“How do you know this?” Bella asked.
“There were several women found in a van a few years ago. They were all logged with the same type of barcode. These women were mostly Eastern European.”
“Logged by whom?”
NiYah flipped through a couple of pages in the file. “It says here, Officer Natasha Walker and Officer Steven Shaw.”
It had all come together for Bella. Natasha, Victoria, Robert, and her three dead girls were connected to the same criminal enterprise. Shamefully, Bella had avoided launching a real investigation into Robert’s death. She knew that her cousin was into some shady things. And, for the sake of her aunt, Bella didn’t want to drag Robert’s skeletons out of the closet. Truthfully, it was just easier to blame Victoria and her associations.
“There’s more,” NiYah added, interrupting Bella’s thoughts.
“Okay?”
“Well, that beauty over there,” NiYah said, pointing to the dead girl. “She fought back. We pulled DNA from her fingernails and teeth.”
Bella instantly became excited. “Did you—”
“Send it to the lab? I did,” NiYah interrupted with a wide smile. “I rushed it.AndI got a hit!”
Bella felt like dancing. She would have hugged NiYah if she wasn’t covered in dead juice.
“NiYah, NiYah, NiYah, you are the shit!” Bella squealed.
“I tried to tell ya,” NiYah joshed. She pulled a file from a cabinet and handed it to Bella.
“Happy hunting, Detective.”
If Bella could prove that the three dead girls were somehow linked to Rosemary, she could close both cases. The DNA profile couldn’t have come at a better time.
