“Hey, I’m living on borrowed time here. I’m nearly as old as Gus! But, yeah, give me a chance and I’ll be a pirate!”
Just then Abby came back down the steps, out of her pirate attire. She was now in a customary business suit, the kind worn by agents running all over Quantico and D.C. But there was no way to tone down her beauty or inner vitality. It might have been her coloring—or it might’ve been that she had a passion for life. She had dearly loved Gus; that was plain. But she loved her city, too. She’d made that clear when she’d told him so enthusiastically about the inn where he was staying.
She looked at him, then looked at the beer in front of him. He’d barely touched it. He raised his glass and saluted her, showing her that only a few sips were gone.
“Want me to drive?” she whispered, coming up beside him.
“I think I’m fine.”
“You shouldn’t think. You should know.”
“I swear—two sips.”
“I’ll drive,” she said. “Dirk, let’s do this, okay?”
They walked outside and Malachi headed for his SUV. She was headed to the parking lot. She frowned at him, and he grinned and lifted his hands. “Okay.”
Amused, he followed her and Dirk to the car, choosing to take the backseat.
“Hey, big man, you can take the front,” Dirk said.
“It’s all right. I fold well. And we’re not going that far.”
When they reached the coroner’s office, Malachi found that David was there, waiting for them.
“Dr. Tierney has the case,” he told them. “He wants someone to come in, rather than just viewing the remains on the screen. She’s really ripped up. An identification might take some time if we have to go through dental records or DNA.”
“You okay, Dirk? You can do this?” he asked the man.
“I can go in alone, Dirk,” Abby said.
Dirk shook his head and squared his shoulders. They were led down a hallway and into a pristine autopsy room. The smell of chemicals was strong, but as they approached the gurney, so was the smell of death.
Tierney was a man of about fifty, medium in height and weight, with brown eyes, huge spectacles that made them appear bigger and a mask over his mouth and nose.
“We’re ready,” David said.
Tierney lifted the sheet that covered the corpse.
Malachi found himself thinking that the poor girl now resembled something that might have been created for the final scene of a horror movie—a mermaid beaten and destroyed or some other creature brought low. He shivered, remembering what he’d felt when he’d turned her over in the water and realized that hope had been gone for some time. She’d hit a propeller somewhere in the river, it seemed, since chunks of her flesh were gone. Her face had been attacked by fish and crabs. Very little remained of her nose or lips.
He wondered if even the girl’s mother would recognize her.
“Oh, God!” Dirk exclaimed, and turned away.
David looked at Abby. Abby was white and pinched, but she didn’t turn away. “Can you tell?” David asked her.
To Malachi’s surprise, Abby nodded. “It’s not Helen,” she said.
“And you know that because...?”
She pointed to the corpse’s left breast—in relatively good condition. “Helen had a tiny clover tattooed right there. She told a bunch of the girls about it one day, as long as we swore not to say anything to the guys she worked with. She liked to tease them, telling them she had one somewhere, but they’d have to guess where, and when she had all their guesses, maybe she’d tell them. And the hair...I don’t think that’s the shade of Helen’s hair. She was almost platinum. This girl had a manicure and Helen didn’t manicure her nails. She always said wenches didn’t use polish.”
“Okay, then.” David let out a sigh. “We’re still looking for Helen. And we have to find out who this poor girl might be. I’ll get them started on missing-person reports back at the office. Thank you for coming in.”
Malachi didn’t want to leave yet. He walked closer to the table and stared at the dead woman. What he saw now might help him later when they were further along in the investigation. “Death was by drowning?” he asked.
“Her lungs were filled with water from the river,” Dr. Tierney said. “They’ve scraped her nails, searched for trace evidence...but I don’t know. She was in the river about a day and a half to two days, until she washed up near the dock.”
“So, she died around the time Helen Long disappeared,” Malachi said.
Tierney glanced at David.
David shrugged. “That timing sounds about right,” he said.
Malachi didn’t want to act like a ghoul but he wanted to touch the body. He moved closer and leaned over her, trying to study the remains of her face. He touched her arm; she was cold and he felt no sense of her. But he noticed something he hadn’t seen before. Perhaps it was a detail the medical examiner’s office and the police had wanted to keep quiet.