“No,” Galloway said. “Sorry, it seems stupid, but there’s evidence that some coma patients are aware of what’s going on around them. I doubt it in Ms. Morrow’s case, but… she’s had a bad enough weekend.”
“What do you mean?” Cloister asked. “I doubt she’d be disappointed to hear she wasn’t assaulted.”
“She probably would be to hear the status of her body discussed,” she said. “There’s no evidence of rape, but there is significant evidence of extensive surgical intervention in the area. Based on my examination, I suspect Ms. Morrow has had gender reassignment surgery. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the assault, but it could explain why it’s been so difficult to get in touch with her family. I’ve got blood samples and fingerprints here, so I can run them once I get back to the lab. See if she’s in the system.”
“Do that,” Javi said. “Let me know if anything comes up?”
Galloway sniffed at him. “You still owe me for last time, Agent Merlo, but I’ll keep you in the loop, at least until I’m told not to. Deputy Witte, you should go home and get some rest. We don’t need you to find anyone today.”
She nodded a brisk goodbye and strode away down the hall.
“Dr. Galloway is right,” Javi said. He put his hand on Cloister’s shoulder. “You found her. She’s safe. Maybe you don’t need to be responsible for this one.”
Cloister shrugged under the weight of Javi’s hand. “Except she’s still lost, isn’t she?” he said. “We know where she is, but nobody she cares about does. If you asked her, do you think she’d feel like we got her home?”
Javi tightened his hand on Cloister’s shoulder. “If you asked her, maybe home isn’t where she’d want to be.”
He didn’t get it. Javi had a family. From what little he’d said, they weren’t perfect—a bit demanding, a bit cold—but they were enough for his needs. Home was where he went at Christmas, where he escaped with relief in the New Year. When you hadn’t grown up with that… you still wanted your home, but you found it for yourself.
“I don’t think here is where she wants to be either, though,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CRIME-SCENEcleanup crew was already at Delacourt when they got there. The two men had the upper half of their boiler suits tied around their waists and grubby mops in hand, and the older of the two frowned at Javi when he rolled his car up to the loose strip of police tape that closed off the road. He tossed his mop to his companion and loped over to grab a clipboard from the van while Javi got out of the car.
“Road’s closed. Orders of the Sheriff’s Department,” he said as he ducked under the sagging yellow-and-black ribbon. He thrust the clipboard into Javi’s hands, and, out of habit, Javi checked it. Frome’s signature was right there at the bottom. The lieutenant really was doing his best to avoid this case. The cleaner crossed his arms and rocked on the balls of his steel-toed boots as he waited for Javi to read the authorization. “If you need to get into any of these buildings, you’ll have to wait until we’ve finished the cleanup. It shouldn’t be more than an hour.”
“Actually I need access to the scene,” Javi said. “Before you—”
Javi stopped midsentence as Cloister’s car, caked with dust from tires to side mirror, turned onto the road and pulled up next to them. Apparently when he told Cloister to “go home and rest,” Cloister heard “follow me to the crime scene.” Or, since Javi hadn’t seen the car in his rearview mirror, Cloister just decided to swing by on his own.
The flash of irritation at being ignored came and went. It was pointless to pretend Javi expected Cloister to ever make the smart choice when he could do something stupid and selfless instead. Besides, he was glad to see him.
That sharp, uncompromising thought hung in Javi’s head for a second, until he found a modifier to soften it. Cloister was good with people, and he obviously knew the cleanup crew. The stubborn expression on the cleaner’s narrow face turned into a smirk as he saw Cloister climb out of his car. “Deputy Witte,” the cleaner said as he slow-clapped his gloved hands. “You look like shit.”
The rhyme made the cleaner cackle and slap his thigh. Cloister rolled his eyes and held the door open for Bourneville to jump out after him.
“First time I’ve heard that today,” he said dryly as he walked over to them. “Hewitt, can you give us ten minutes on the scene?”
Hewitt scratched the end of his nose and looked dubious. “What for?” he asked. “Forensics have already gone over this, tagged and bagged every bit of crap they found. We wouldn’t have come if the Sheriff’s Department wasn’t through with the spot.”
Javi handed the clipboard back to him and flashed his badge. “Five minutes. I just want Deputy Witte to walk me through what happened last night.”
It was almost audible as Hewitt put the pieces together. His eyes flicked from the bright gold of Javi’s badge to Cloister’s wrist and then back down to the work order in his hands. It was sparse on detail—the cleanup crews weren’t part of the Sheriff’s Department—but it had the bare-bones details of the hit-and-run they had been sent to clean up. It wasn’t hard for Hewitt to put two and two together.
“Oh, right,” he said. His face creased up with confusion. “Sorry. I didn’t realize that was you, Witte. Give me a minute to lock the van up, and we’ll get out of your way for a bit.” Hewitt turned to go, hesitated, and turned back. “Glad you’re okay. I swear, some people shouldn’t be on the roads, right?”
He didn’t wait for them to agree. While he herded up his coworker and lugged the big jugs of chemicals back into the van, Javi took a look up and down the street. He’d never had reason to come down there before. From the looks of it, not many people did. There were cars parked on the street, so he assumed some of the buildings were still in use, but not in any functional sense of the word—boarded-up shopfronts, broken windows, and doors replaced with plywood sheets and secured with heavy-duty padlocks. The walls were smeared with graffiti that didn’t even pretend to be art, just crudely painted accusations that scrawledslutanddickin clumsy black letters.
“What business did Janet Morrow have around here?” he asked.
“Tancredi thought she was trying to cut around, back to the gas station on the main road where she was supposed to meet the AAA guy, and just got lost,” Cloister said. “What about you?”
Javi frowned as he mapped it out in his head. There were blank spots in his mental navigation, areas he’d never driven through or google-mapped, but it seemed a lot of lost to get. It had been raining and dark, but still….
“A smart girl from New York walks into this neighborhood?” he said. “She’s going to go back to her car and call AAA again, not keep going.”
“I meant you,” Cloister said. He leaned back against the hood of Javi’s car, long legs stretched out in front of him and battered old boots braced on the ground. Bourneville sat neatly next to him and watched the cleaners bustle like rabbits. She grumbled low in her chest, not quite a growl, until Cloister scruffed her. “Frome wants to brush this case under the rug, so he’s not going to want your help. And I told you already, I was collateral damage, not the target. This isn’t a federal case.”
