Iris Johansen - Quinn

“Follow you.”

He turned back toward the door. “Grab a raincoat. It’s raining up in Gwinnett County.”

THE MEDICAL EXAMINER’S VAN was parked on the side of the road, and Joe drew in several yards behind it. “Stay here.”

Eve nodded. “You don’t have to remind me. I promised I wouldn’t get in your way. I just want to be here in case you find out anything.”

“Which will probably be nothing until we get the forensic reports.” He jumped out of the car and was immediately soaked by the pouring rain. He followed the glow of lanterns carried by shadowy figures that turned out to be officers moving behind the yellow tape several yards from the road.

“Quinn.”

He turned to see Slindak coming toward him. He was wearing a yellow slicker, but his head was bare, and his hair was as wet as Joe’s. “Where’s the cave, Slindak?”

Slindak nodded to the left. “Around that bend. It’s only a football field’s distance from the road. And it’s only two miles from a ritzy subdivision. The son of a bitch who killed her has balls of steel.”

“He thinks that he’s too smart to be caught. Not unusual.” But the degree of boldness was not common, Joe thought. “And he buried that other kid beside the freeway. How the hell could he be sure not to be seen by a driver while he was disposing of the body?”

Slindak shrugged. “Nuts.” He was sloshing through the mud toward the cave. “But he’d have to be crazy to do what he did to that little girl. She doesn’t have a head. At first, we thought an animal had taken it, but we found it on a shelf of the cave. He cut it off and put it on display.”

Joe felt the anger tear through him. “Bastard.”

“Did you and your lady find anything in those reports?”

Joe gave him an icy glance. “Ms. Duncan worked very hard, but didn’t come up with anything yet. And you will speak of her with respect, or you’ll find yourself facedown in this mud while I wash out your mouth.”

“Hold it,” Slindak said quickly. “No offense. I do respect her. I just called it the way I saw it.”

And Slindak hadn’t been really insulting. It had been Joe’s anger at the killing that had become mixed with his annoyance with Slindak. Joe couldn’t blame him for reading sexual overtones into his connection with Eve. On Joe’s part, those overtones were definitely there, and it wouldn’t take a psychic to see them. He just hoped they weren’t as clear to Eve. “You saw wrong,” he said curtly. “There’s no payoff. No matter what I’m feeling, I’m not that much of an asshole.”

Slindak shook his head. “You poor bastard,” he murmured. “I’ll be damned. I never thought I’d live to see it.”

“You may not if you keep on talking,” Joe said grimly.

“My lips are sealed.” They had come close to the cave, and Slindak gestured to the opening. “I think they’re ready to bring out the body. Do you want to go inside?”

Joe nodded and moved carefully to enter the cave. Two techs were carefully transferring the body parts to the tarp on the stretcher. The parts were mostly skeleton. The little girl was hardly recognizable as a human being. The anger was searing again, and he took a moment to overcome it before he glanced around the cave. It was a small area, and evidently the child hadn’t been buried or hidden in any way. It was a wonder that the body hadn’t been discovered sooner.

Again, the killer’s boundless arrogance was staring Joe in the face.

“We’re ready to go.” A young forensic tech kneeling beside the body was looking up at Joe. “Do you need anything else, sir?”

“The skull was on that ledge?” he asked.

“Yep, it nearly scared those hunters shitless,” Slindak said. “The field rats had gotten to it.”

“Can we zip her up?” the tech asked again.

“Yeah, go ahead.” Joe turned away as they zipped up the body bag. “Did we get any footprints besides those of the hunters?”

“A possible near the ledge, but it’s badly eroded,” Slindak said. “He didn’t even try to erase his footprint. It’s like the other case. If we could catch the bastard, we could nail him in court.”

“He doesn’t think we’re going to catch him. That couldn’t be more obvious.” Joe watched the techs pick up the stretcher and carry it out into the rain. They were going to take it to the M.E. van.

And Eve was going to see them put that pitiful sack of bones into the van.

“Is there anything else I should see?” he asked Slindak.

Slindak shook his head. “I just thought you’d want to be here.”

“You were right.” He turned toward the cave entrance. “Let me know when we get a definite ID.”

“That may not be easy. I can’t bring in the parents to ID that skeleton. No prints. I can only try to get dental records.”

“Damn,” Joe said in frustration. “We just had a lecture at the Bureau about the potential for using DNA in identifying victims. But that’s still down the road a bit. I want it now. ”

“I’m satisfied with the old tried-and-true methods,” Slindak said. “We get along just fine without your fancy scientific bullshit.”

“Except when all you have to work with is a skeleton.” Joe walked out of the cave. The rain felt good on his face after the stench and closeness of death inside the cave. He moved quickly through the stand of trees toward the road.

The techs were closing the back doors of the M.E. van as he came out of the woods.

And Eve was standing beside the car, watching them.

“Shit.” His pace quickened. He reached her in seconds. “Dammit, why did you get out of the car?” He opened the passenger door and gently pushed her onto the seat. “You’re wet as a drowned rat.”

“I had to see her,” she whispered. “But there was nothing to see, was there? It looked like a bag full of… nothing.”

Joe ran around the car and got into the driver’s seat. “It wasn’t nothing. It was a skeleton, but the bones were… not together.” He started the car and drove past the M.E. van as quickly as he could.

“Animals?”

“Partly.”

Her hands clenched together on her lap. “And what’s the other part? Tell me.”

“So you can hurt more?”

“So I can know what he is.”

She wasn’t going to give up. He said curtly, “He cut off her head and put it on a ledge over her body.”

She inhaled as if he’d struck her.

“And now you know what the bastard is. Does it make you any happier?”

“No. Poor little girl… It’s Janey Bristol?”

“We’re not sure. There’s not much to ID.”

“It’s going to kill her parents. I want to help them.”

“You can’t do anything.”

“I guess not. I’ll think about it. Is there any evidence?”

“A possible footprint. He didn’t try to hide what he’d done. He’s bold as brass.”

“You said that before. Then we should be able to find him.”

“We’ll find him. Stop thinking about him for a while.”

“We may find other bodies. He’s being careless.”

“That’s a possibility.”

She was silent for a long time, watching the rain hit the windshield. “I’m glad she was found. She was alone so long in that cave. When we find out who she is, she’ll be able to go home to people who love her.”

She was identifying the child with her Bonnie, Joe knew. His heart was aching for her, but there was nothing he could do. “I’m glad she was found, too.”

“I keep thinking that… it might have been Bonnie. I have a chance that she’s still alive. But if he did take her, then I have to find him to be sure either way.”

And she was beginning to accept that her daughter could be dead, a victim of the monster who had killed the little girl in the cave.