‘And the other two?’
“The other two are going to be damn difficult to identify, and it’s not like we can just start digging up coffins for the hell of it.’
The elevator arrives and the doors open. I don’t move.
‘We could have made a difference,’ I tell him.
‘What?’
‘Two years ago. Remember?’
He stares at me for a few seconds, no expression at all, no movement of his head, then slowly he starts to nod. “I know,’ he says.
‘You’re going to find more girls.’
He says nothing. He already knows.
‘We could have made a difference,’ I repeat.
As the doors of the elevator close, Schroder keeps standing where he is, staring at me.
Instead of driving to my office, I take a detour to the morgue.
I figure if Tracey had noticed I’d stolen the ring she’d have called by now.
She’s a little rushed off her feet and doesn’t seem real glad to see me. Nor does Sheldon West, the ME I spoke to at the cemetery. But Tracey decides to accommodate me after I tell her things will be quicker for her if she helps me out rather than having me hanging around for the next two hours asking her the same questions over and over.
‘You’re a real pain in the arse,’ she tells me.
‘You just need to spend more time with me, that’s all. Get to know me a little better.’
‘Less time, Theo. That’s why I’m agreeing to show you. Oh, and by the way, that was a nice job you did last night. You should try to get a job on TV
‘That’s real funny’
She rolls Rachel Tyler out of a huge metal drawer and starts pointing things out as if she were Death showing a prospective client a neat way to die.
‘It’s hard to pinpoint a time of death, but it’s around two years ago,’ she says, ‘which falls in with when Henry Martins was buried. I would have guessed that she was buried in his place, but the shovel marks on the coffin suggest he was in the ground first.
However, I’d say she went into the coffin not long after he went into the ground. We’re close to ID-ing her. Landry has a name; we’re just waiting to confirm with dental records.’
There’s no point in telling Tracey I already know who it is.
It’ll only lead to awkward questions, and I’m going to be getting them as soon as Schroder makes a positive ID on the girl and speaks to her family. Yesterday Rachel Tyler’s mother opened the door to hope. Today she’ll be closing it.
‘You know something, don’t you,’ she says, her lips forming a thin scar as she stares at me.
‘How did she die?’
‘Who is she, Theo?’
‘Somebody who was too young to die.’
‘Aren’t they always?’
“I don’t know. Maybe.’ I glance over at another table where a guy who looks as though he was around when those buildings started getting built a hundred years ago is lying. I wonder if he thought he was too young to die, or if he couldn’t wait to get it over with. ‘But I’m going to help her. Can you tell me how she died?’
“‘Badly But I’m guessing you knew that from the moment we opened up the coffin. Her hyoid bone was broken. She was strangled.’
‘Sexual assault?’
‘Impossible to tell after this time.’
‘She was re-dressed after she died, right? What does that tell you?’
‘It doesn’t tell me anything. It only suggests.’
‘Dignity’
‘What?’
‘Something Bruce Alderman said to me last night. I’m still trying to figure it out.’
Tracey shrugs. ‘That’s beyond my scope, Theo.’
I look down at Rachel Tyler with the huge Y incision cut across her mummified body. She hasn’t been stitched back together because what is left is mostly skeletal. She doesn’t even look like a person any more. Just a shell. A husk. Something you’d kick to the kerb and throw out with the trash. If Bruce did this to her, then he got off lightly last night. I’d have done more than put a bullet in his head.
‘Nothing else?’ I ask.
‘What else are you expecting?’
“I don’t know. Something helpful, I guess.’
Tracey offers a small laugh and covers Rachel up.
‘Maybe we’d have had more luck if she had been found with something. I don’t know — a piece of jewellery maybe. Perhaps even a ring.’
‘What about the other girl? Schroder said you’ve got another one.’
‘I’m not at liberty to say’
‘She was strangled too, right?’
‘Good luck, Theo. Part of me hopes you find who did this to her before the police do. Part of me wishes you wouldn’t even try’
I pass the body of Bruce Alderman on the way out. It’s lying naked on a slab of steel. There’s a hole in the bottom of his chin and another in the top of his head. For the first time it occurs to me to wonder where he got the gun from.