“Am I getting paid to do this?”
“Nah, you’re just risking it all for nothing,” I inform him.
“Not for nothing,” Jesse counters.
Matthew looks hopeful that Jesse is going to say something like, “You’re doing it because you love me.”
Instead, Jesse says something along the lines of, “To save the lives of anyone else this asshole might go after. Liam, the medical records?”
I open the folder and pull them out before handing them over.
Jesse takes a brief look at them before going, “Well… the easiest to examine will be the leg he broke when he was seventeen.”
“Hopefully the right leg because the left doesn’t seem to have joined the casket party,” Matthew says as he uses a stick he must have found on the ground to poke at the missing leg. “How did this guy die again?”
We all look at the mangled corpse. It’sveryclear that someone didn’t want anyone identifying this body. The face has been caved in and the leg with the break is missing.
My bet is that the teeth are missing as well.
“That’s the only broken bone, isn’t it? The only surgery?” Jesse asks. “But you got the dental records?”
I hand them over and Jesse carefully examines them before he drops into the hole to do the dirty work for me. It’s not like he’s afraid to do any of this. This is what his job entails. It’s definitely not the first body that’s been exhumed which he’s examined, and he knows just how to get to what he needs.
“Make sure you leave some hairs in there for when I have this grave dug up tomorrow,” I say.
“Matthew, shut that man up,” Jesse demands.
“I’m scared of him.”
“I find it hot when someone beats up Liam,” Jesse says.
Matthew immediately looks over at me. “Sorry, brother… you heard the man,” he says as he comes at me.
I slip an arm around his neck and put him in a choke hold before I hold him over the open casket. “Jesse, when you’re done, I’ll just drop him in on top and you close the lid.”
“What are you seeing?” Gabriel asks Jesse, ignoring the brawl.
“I’m seeing a whole lot of shattered teeth, making it extremely hard to find anything we can use. Can you hold this flashlight for me?”
I release Matthew and drop down to see what Jesse is looking at. He’s right, almost all of the teeth have been destroyed, and piecing anything together to get a match would be quite difficult out here in the dark.
“Isn’t there a tooth completely missing?” Gabriel asks. “I mean, it might be in that shattered mess somewhere, but the rest have fragments. That one’s completely missing.”
“See if it got lodged somewhere during the ‘crash,’” I say. “Knowing the situation, I doubt the mom paid a good mortician to prepare the body. Or any at all.”
Jesse is quick while he inspects the head and uses a tool to pull a tooth out from where it’d been embedded in the man’s lower jaw. “We’re lucky too. A cuspid,” he says as he examines it and grabs the chart. “No match. Honestly, I know without even looking at the chart. He had a chipped cuspid on this side. There’s no way this is the same tooth. Things can be taken away but never naturally added to when it comes to teeth. There’s nothing showing that the tooth was repaired.” He puts the tooth back where he found it. “I honestly don’t need to see anything more. This isn’t him.”
Matthew reaches down and Jesse takes his hand, allowing him to pull him out. We close the casket and start to bury the body in silence while we think.
Gabriel glances over at me, probably taking note that because of him, when Jesse asked for the records, I gave him the real ones. The darkness inside of me is still not pleased over the fact that I’ve let my lead on this case slip, but it doesn’t mean that I’ve given up the hunt. I just have to be significantly more careful when I go for the kill.
“What’s our plan now?” Jesse asks as snow falls faster than we can bury the grave. We need to finish up fast, or this will be the only site with no snow.
“I’m still contemplating that,” I respond, so the three of us work hard to make it look like the grave was never touched. Of course it’s not perfect; anyone would see that the moment the snow melts. But I simply need to get them to use some equipment to dig the grave up before the snow melts and no one will ever know. If they figure it out, I’ll twist it into some theory that the killer dug the grave up to either plant fake evidence in it or to take away evidence.
“I need to think,” I say. “Unless someone else has some foolproof theory on why we assume it’s a man who’s been dead for years?”
No one volunteers so I nod, deciding that I’ll have to think of a way to deliver this so that Jesse’s name will never come up.
