‘We don’t even know for sure that the woman was Jewish.’
‘Moxie is under the impression that a Star of David might have been carved nearby at about the same time she went into the ground.’
‘Moxie knows a lot more about this case than he should. Those details haven’t been released yet.’
‘Moxie has his ways.’
‘If I find out who’s been leaking to him, I’ll have them trawling truck stop washrooms for drunks and perverts.’
‘At least they’ll have Moxie to defend them. And this isn’t a murder investigation yet, is it?’
‘The woman didn’t bury herself.’
‘That’s true of most dead people. When do you go public with what you have?’
‘When we’re dealing in facts, not speculation. You might explain the distinction to Moxie, next time he decides to throw his weight around.’
Parker leaned back from the table. Lightning flashed over the ferry terminal across the street. He waited for the sound of thunder, but none came. He knew it was out there nonetheless, but too remote to hear, like a conversation in a distant room. He associated such storms with summer, not the start of spring. The strangeness of the weather was unsettling.
‘Why are you so sore?’ he asked.
‘Because no good ever comes of you involving yourself in an investigation,’ said Walsh. ‘Because I think you were close enough to Billy Ocean’s truck when it blew that your eyebrows got singed. Because I believe you colluded in drawing a man to his death on a beach in Boreas. Take your pick. You don’t like any of those reasons, I got plenty more.’
‘This isn’t about your problems with me. It’s about a buried woman and a missing child.’
‘Don’t get self-righteous. I know exactly what this is about.’
‘Then what harm can come from sharing information?’
‘Because you don’t share, you just take. You’ve hidden so much over the years, you should own a vault.’
‘I’m trying to be straight with you now.’
‘Straight like a snake.’
‘That’s just hurtful.’
‘You’re like a stone in my shoe, but no matter how hard I shake it, I can’t get the damn thing out.’
‘Is that your way of saying you wish you knew how to quit me?’
Walsh squinted at him.
‘What the fuck is that from?’
‘Brokeback Mountain.’
‘Jesus, just when I think it can’t get any worse.’
One of the baristas came over to inform them that the coffee shop was closing for the evening.
‘Good,’ said Walsh.
Parker followed Walsh to the door, and walked alongside him until they neared their respective cars, each parked within sight of the other, with Walsh’s closer to Arabica. Another fork of lightning fractured the sky, so bright and sudden that Parker could see Peaks Island silhouetted against it.
And still the rain fell.
‘It doesn’t feel like a killing,’ said Parker. ‘What kind of killer puts a woman in the ground, then takes the time to carve a marker?’
‘No kind of killer at all.’ Walsh got in his car and tried to close the door, but Parker’s body was in the way.
‘I’m good at this,’ Parker said. ‘Throw me a bone.’
‘Goddamn you and Moxie. I swear, the two of you could cover for vacations in hell itself.’ Parker thought Walsh might be about to cry from frustration, and he didn’t want to make a grown man cry. ‘Look, Moxie is right: the woman gave birth shortly before she died, the carved star may be contemporaneous, but the anthropological examiner may have picked up something the M.E. missed.’
When buried remains were discovered, it was routine to seek advice from the anthropologists at the University of Maine in Orono. They would also be brought in to assist with the search for the infant.
‘Which is?’
‘The anthropologist found damage to the placenta, and was just about able to detect corresponding trauma to what was left of the uterus.’
‘A consequence of the birth, or an inflicted injury?’
‘It’s called placental abruption, but I hadn’t heard of it until yesterday. It means that the placenta partially separated from Jane Doe’s uterus before the birth of her child. It probably happened suddenly, and it caused heavy bleeding. In a hospital situation, she’d have been given an emergency C-section, but she wasn’t in a hospital: she was probably out in the woods, and she may have bled to death because of it.’
‘Which makes it less likely that the child survived.’
‘Not impossible, but cuts the odds in its favor: if it was deprived of oxygen for long enough, it could have been stillborn. We’re going to start digging, see what we can find. Meanwhile, we’re running what we have on the mother through state missing persons, as well as NCIC, NamUs, and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, just in case.’
The National Crime Information Center’s Missing Person File had been in existence for over forty years, and contained FBI records for individuals reported missing under a variety of categories, but generally comprising those about whose safety there were reasonable concerns. But someone had to be sufficiently worried about a potential absentee to make a report to law enforcement, which didn’t always happen, and there was also no binding requirement on other agencies to forward details of missing adults to the FBI’s national systems, which was why some forty thousand bodies remained unidentified in the United States. NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, was designed to improve access to database information on missing persons, and to address the low rate of case reporting through the NCIC. Meanwhile, DNA samples from Jane Doe and the placental remains found with her would be forwarded to the Biometrics Team at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The team would ensure that the DNA was checked against reference samples in CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System, in the hope of a possible match.
Parker thanked Walsh. He had confirmed what had been offered up by Moxie’s source, and Parker now knew more about the circumstances of the birth. He might also have convinced Walsh of his bona fides where this case was concerned.
‘I hope Moxie isn’t paying you for progress,’ said Walsh. ‘It’s a Jane Doe in a forest grave. But if you discover anything we can’t, I may find it in my heart to be impressed.’
‘I’ll hold you to that.’
‘You know, I never saw Brokeback Mountain.’
‘Gay cowboys.’
‘So I heard. On that subject, you see Angel, you pass on my best wishes.’
‘And Louis?’
‘Tell him to take a Xanax.’
Walsh drove away. The dark was deepening, and the next flash of lightning arced like fingers of energy over land and sea, as though to pluck ships from the ocean, and the living and dead alike from their rest. This time, though, Parker heard it: the rumble of thunder, the approaching storm. He raised his collar against the rain, and willed the squall to seek some more distant landing.
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