Jake had a feeling this one would be hard work for the crime scene investigators. When a murderer was careful and knew that minuscule clues could give his or her identity away, there was often little to go on.
There was still hope, of course. His associates might find a hair, a fiber, trace evidence. Doc Gannet might find a microscopic clue on the pathetic remains.
No chance of finding flesh beneath the fingernails, though. The fingernails were gone. For that matter, there would be no identification through fingerprints—no flesh remained on a single finger or on the thumbs.
“And no one will recognize her from her face,” he murmured.
“Dental records are usually our best bet anyway, often,” Gannet said. “We’re lucky here, I think. I’m willing to bet the flesh was cut from the fingers, before the animals and the environment had a chance to do their work.” He looked at Jake for a moment, and he knew they were both thinking along the same line.
In the previous murders, the ears had been slashed, and the flesh had been cut from the fingers. Why bother destroying fingerprints, then leaving the head and teeth so that an identity could be culled from dental records?
Were they back to where they had started?
Or was there a copycat killer out there?
“Could be a copycat,” Gannet said, as if Jake had actually voiced his thoughts.
“Yeah,” Jake said.
Gannet stared down at the remains, sorrow in his face. Real emotion, but under complete control. That was another thing Jake liked about Gannet. He did his work well. And though he didn’t take every single case to heart so that he couldn’t sleep at night, he had never, in all his years of work, lost compassion for the victims, whether of accident or violence. “We’ll find out who she is,” he assured Jake.
“I need your findings on this as fast as possible,” Jake said.
Gannet nodded. “Naturally,” he said, a slight touch of sarcasm in his voice. Unfortunately, untimely deaths occurred with a certain frequency in the county. He looked up at Jake again. “Don’t worry. I intend to get right on this one.” He stared at Jake a moment longer. Maybe he knew Gannet too well, Jake thought.
During the last spate of similar murders, Jake had worked the case aggressively on behalf of the victims. Even after the suicide of the “confessed” killer. And even after Bordon’s incarceration.
For the victims.
And because he’d suspected that Bordon had been involved in another death, as well.
Another death…Nothing like this. But far too close to home. Nancy’s death.
Not too many others on the force had agreed with him on that one. They’d thought he was creating scenarios of Bordon’s guilt because he had to find a guilty party and couldn’t accept a verdict of accidental death in the case of a fellow cop.
Or even suicide, as some had suggested.
Suicide. Never. It was a theory to be rejected entirely. No one who’d known her could ever even begin to accept such a possibility.
“Are you going to be all right with this?” Gannet asked softly.
“You bet. I’m a professional, Gannet. And if we do need to make comparisons to past cases, there’s no one out there who knows both the facts and the theories better than I do.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Gannet said. Gloves on, he looked over the remains. Two assistants from the morgue had arrived to take the body when Gannet and the scene-of-crime investigators had finished their site inspection. Gannet nodded an acknowledgment to the others and quietly asked them to make sure they included the dirt and scrub around the body when they removed it from the site.
“Any idea on the actual cause of death?” Jake asked.
“Not natural,” Gannet said.
“Wow. I don’t have a medical degree, and I knew that.”
Gannet grimaced at him. “Knife…big knife. Maybe a machete.”
Jake looked at him in surprise. “There’s not enough flesh—”
“A few courses in forensics and you’d see this just fine.”
“I’ve had a few forensics courses,” Jake reminded him dryly.
“Maybe. But the condition of the corpse makes it hard to see the forest for the trees. Almost literally. Shift this foliage and filth around a little and you get a good look at the bone. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s covered with dirt. But see? If you look really closely…the scratch there? I have to do a full autopsy, but I’d bet we’re talking a very large blade. And you’d need a blade to do that to the ears…and the features. The animals have been at her, but still…those aren’t teeth marks. Definitely made by a blade. And, as we’ve both seen, the flesh was removed from the fingers. You’ve been at this a while, and you seem to know more than you let on most of the time, because you want me to make what you’re already pretty damned sure you do know, official. Yeah, animals have been at her. But the flesh from her fingers was cut off, not gnawed away, or simply decomposed.”
“Hell. This is more than déjà vu. We could definitely be talking the same—” Jake began.
“From what I see so far, yes, but don’t go taking anything as absolute yet. Let me get her down to the morgue. And don’t forget, Jake, what we both already know, as well. There can be copycats out there. There have been cases where murders have been researched and studied and duplicated almost perfectly. There are victims assumed to have been murdered by one serial killer who in reality were killed by someone else entirely.”
Jake arched a brow to him.
“Hey,” Gannet said with a grin. “You learn more about autopsies every year, and I learn about cop work.” He was quiet again for a moment, eyes on the victim. When he spoke again, his tone was serious and flat. “Like I said, I’ll get right on it. You can meet me at the morgue. Hey, I heard you’re moving your houseboat.”
“I moved it. Yesterday.”
Gannet was watching him carefully. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. A change of scenery is always good.”
“It’s still the same old boat,” Jake said dryly.
“Still…a new marina. You wake up to a different view.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t say more. He had the feeling that Gannet—like others around him—believed he’d shared more than a patrol car with Nancy, so, a change of pace now was a good thing. Even if it had been almost five years since Nancy’s death.
He could have said something, he supposed, could have come to his own defense, though he wasn’t being attacked, he knew.
And he had no need to excuse or defend himself to anyone. The inquest had cleared him—as far as that night went, anyway. The general and even logical consensus had been that Nancy, feeling desperate over the disintegration of her marriage and the pressures of her job, had just gone wild for a night. She’d met someone, done some drinking, popped a few pills…and found her way into the canal. But there was one factor he and Brian had in common—they’d both known Nancy well. The year after her death, even with the breakup of Bordon’s cult, had been a bitch for Jake. He’d been like a dog with a bone, determined to connect the two. He’d come close to crossing the line between investigation and harassment, and he’d been called on it. He’d resented his time with the police psychiatrist, though it was common practice for cops to receive such counseling after the death of a partner. He’d realized after a while that he would have to take a step back. Outwardly, he’d become a practical and methodical cop again, following the rules as closely as he could.
But he’d never changed his mind about the truth of the situation. Or his determination to see it come out one day.