Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

“So there are no witnesses.”

“None. And now it’s twenty-five years later, and the detective who investigated her disappearance is dead. All we have is his report. Which is why Frost and I are flying out to New Mexico to talk to the archaeologist who was director of the dig. He was one of the last people who saw her alive.”

Zucker looked at the photos. “She appears to have been an athletic young woman.”

“She was. A hiker, a camper. A woman who spent a lot of time with a shovel. Not the kind of gal who’d give up without a fight.”

“But there was a bullet in her leg.”

“Which may have been the only way this perp could control his victims. The only way he could bring down Lorraine Edgerton.”

“Both of Bog Lady’s legs were broken,” Frost pointed out.

Zucker nodded. “Which certainly makes the case that the same unsub killed both women. What about the bog victim? The one found in the trunk?”

Jane slid him the folder for Bog Lady. “We have no ID on her yet,” she said. “So we don’t know if she’s linked in any way to Lorraine Edgerton. NCIC is running her through their database, and we’re just hoping that someone, somewhere reported her missing.”

Zucker scanned the autopsy report. “Adult female, age eighteen to thirty-five. Excellent dentition, orthodontic work.” He looked up. “I’d be surprised if her disappearance wasn’t reported. The method of preservation must tell you what part of the country she was killed in. How many states have peat bogs?”

“Actually,” Frost said, “a lot of them. So that doesn’t narrow it down a great deal.”

“Get ready,” Jane warned with a laugh. “Detective Frost is now Boston PD’s official bog expert.”

“I spoke to a Dr. Judith Welsh, a biologist over at University of Massachusetts,” said Frost. He pulled out his notebook and flipped it open to the relevant pages. “Here’s what she told me. You can find sphagnum wetlands in New England, Canada, the Great Lakes, and Alaska. Anywhere that’s both temperate and wet. You can even find peat bogs in Florida.” He glanced up. “In fact, they found bog bodies not far from Disney World.”

Detective Crowe laughed. “Seriously?”

“Over a hundred of them, and they’re probably eight thousand years old. It’s called the Windover Burial Site. But their bodies weren’t preserved. They’re just skeletons, really, not like our Bog Lady at all. It’s hot down there so they decomposed, even though they were soaking in peat.”

“That means we can eliminate any southern bogs?” said Zucker.

Frost nodded. “Our victim’s too well preserved. At the time of her immersion, the water had to be cold, four degrees Celsius or lower. That’s the only way she’d come out looking as good as she does.”

“Then we’re talking about the northern states. Or Canada.”

“Canada would present a problem for our perp,” Jane pointed out. “You’d have to bring a dead body over the border.”

“I think we can eliminate Alaska as well,” said Frost. “There’s another border crossing. Not to mention a long drive.”

“It still leaves a lot of territory,” Zucker said. “A lot of states with bogs where he could have stashed her body.”

“Actually,” said Frost, “we can narrow it down to ombrogenous bogs.”

Everyone in the room looked at him. “What?” said Detective Tripp.

“Bogs are really cool things,” said Frost, launching enthusiastically into the topic. “The more I find out about them, the more interesting they get. You start off with plant matter soaking in stagnant water. The water’s so cold and low in oxygen that the moss just sits there not decaying, piling up year after year till it’s at least a couple of feet deep. If the water’s stagnant, then the bog’s ombrogenous.”

Crowe looked at Tripp and said drily, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

“Is any of this really relevant?” asked Tripp.

Frost flushed. “Yeah. And if you’d just listen, maybe you’d learn something.”

Jane glanced at her partner in surprise. Rarely did Frost show irritation, and she hadn’t expected him to do so over the subject of sphagnum moss.

Zucker said, “Please continue, Detective Frost. I’d like to know exactly what makes a bog ombrogenous.”

Frost took a breath and straightened in his chair. “It refers to the source of water. Ombrogenous means it doesn’t get any water from streams or underground currents. Which means it gets no added oxygen or nutrients. It’s entirely rain-fed and stagnant, and that makes it superacidic. All the characteristics that make it a true bog.”

“So it isn’t just any wet place.”

“No. It has to be fed only by rainwater. Otherwise they’d call it a fen or a marsh.”

“How is this important?”

“Only real bogs have the conditions you need to preserve bodies. We’re talking about a specific kind of wetland.”

“And would that limit where this body was preserved?”

Frost nodded. “The Northeast has thousands of acres of wetland, but only a small fraction of them are true bogs. They’re found in the Adirondacks, in Vermont, and in northern and coastal Maine.”

Detective Tripp shook his head. “I went hunting once, way up in northern Maine. There’s nothing there except trees and deer. If our boy has a little hidey-hole up there, good luck finding it.”

Frost said, “The biologist, Dr. Welsh, said she might be able to narrow down the location if she had more information. So we sent her some bits of plant material that Dr. Isles picked out of the victim’s hair.”

“This all helps,” said Zucker. “It gives us another data point for our killer’s geographic profile. You know the saying among criminal profilers: You go where you know, and you know where you go. People tend to stick to areas where they’re comfortable, places they’re familiar with. Maybe our unsub went to summer camp in the Adirondacks. Or he’s a hunter like you, Detective Tripp, and he knows the back roads, the hidden camps of Maine. What he did to the bog victim required advance planning. How did he get familiar with the area? Does he own a cabin there? And is it accessible at just the right time of year, while the water’s cold but not frozen, so she could be deposited quickly into the bog?”

“There’s something else we know about him,” said Jane.

“What would that be?”

“He knew exactly how to preserve her. He knew the right conditions, the right water temperature. That’s specialized knowledge, not the kind of information that most people would have.”

“Unless you’re an archaeologist,” said Zucker.

Jane nodded. “We get back to the same theme again, don’t we?”

Zucker leaned back, eyes narrowing in thought. “A killer who’s familiar with ancient funerary practices. Whose victim in New Mexico was a young woman working on a dig site. Now he seems to be fixated on yet another young woman working in a museum. How does he find these women? How does he meet them?” He looked at Jane. “Have you a list of Ms. Pulcillo’s friends and associates?”

“It’s a pretty short list. Just the museum staff and the people in her apartment building.”

“No gentlemen friends? You said she’s quite an attractive young woman.”

“She says she hasn’t had a date since she moved to Boston five months ago.” Jane paused. “Actually, she’s kind of a strange bird.”

“What do you mean?”

Jane hesitated and glanced at Frost, who was steadfastly avoiding her gaze. “There’s something…off about her. I can’t explain it.”

“Did you have the same reaction, Detective Frost?”

“No,” Frost said, his mouth tightening. “I think Josephine’s scared, that’s all.”