“I think you’re right,” Kat said slowly. “Cathy wasn’t immediately missed because she was so new to the city and had no close friends or family to watch out for her on a daily basis. Our second victim isn’t going to be a homeless drug addict living on the street. But again, she’ll be someone who doesn’t have family nearby. And she’s someone who probably didn’t have a boyfriend.” Meg was silent. That description didn’t fit Lara Mayhew. Lara had an aunt not far away, an aunt who loved her. She had any number of friends.
She’d had Meg, a close friend about to graduate from the FBI.
Meg realized she’d been holding her breath when she was forced to inhale. Despite the cold in which the body had been kept, the smell of decomposition and antibacterial chemicals suddenly seemed overwhelming. She fought hard not to let her near-nausea show.
Matt stepped forward, making a pretense, she thought, of studying the bloated, patchy face. He set a hand on the corpse and looked at her. “Meg, what is this? On her eyes?”
She came closer and touched the corpse and studied the unknown woman’s face. The body was so cold and stiff she didn’t feel she’d touched a human being at all. She looked at Matt and then over at the others. “Permanent makeup,” she said. “It’s like tattoo art. She has lip liner and eyeliner.”
“Yes, we’ve noted it,” Kat agreed. Wong nodded solemnly.
“Possibly done in the area. We can check into that,” Matt said.
Angela stood quietly toward the rear of their group. “I’ll get some of our people on it right away. There’ll be a number of facilities around here doing that kind of work. We’ll also get a good likeness of her on the media. When we ask for help, we’re often surprised by where we get it.”
“Anything else here?” Kat asked.
“No,” Matt said. He gestured at Kat and Angela and then Meg. “Nothing, right?” They shook their heads in unison.
Meg couldn’t have been happier to leave. Outside, the DC sun seemed especially brilliant and the sky was a fresh, bright blue.
The air smelled so clean...
“Are you okay?” Matt asked.
“Of course,” she said. “I did just go—”
“Through the academy. Yes, we all know,” he told her. “I’ll see you at the office. We’ll be driving to Richmond tonight. I’m sure you have places for us to go?”
“Yes,” Meg said, staring back at him. She did have places for them to go, based on her history with Lara and the trail of information detailed in Lara’s journal.
They’d go to the kind of places they used to love visiting. And, of course, if they found nothing, it would be embarrassing—and she was afraid it could be the end for her with the Krewe of Hunters.
Adam believed in her. Was that going to be enough? Was she really ready to find her friend in the same condition as Cathy Crighton and their Jane Doe?
She’d accepted that Lara was dead. She’d seen her.
And yet, despite that, she was living on hope. Maybe, as Matt had suggested, their connection was strong enough that Lara might have somehow reached out to her for help. One mind connecting with another...
She didn’t think that Matt Bosworth, unlike Adam, believed in her. He didn’t say so, and certainly wouldn’t be vocal with his opinion. He’d been skeptical when she’d said she knew Lara was dead. But he was the consummate professional; he’d been told to go with her and he would.
That was all right. She’d do whatever was needed, if she could only find out the truth about Lara.
*
Jackson would be attending the main task force meeting later on. That meeting was intended to keep local law enforcement up to date on the information they’d obtained thus far.
They held a small meeting of Krewe agents before Matt and Meg were due to go on the road in pursuit of Lara Mayhew.
They were in one of the two large meeting rooms at Krewe headquarters. She wondered when Angela Hawkins had time to manage everything she did; she was the one who tied all the threads together. She already had a board with pictures—Cathy Crighton was pictured as she’d been alive, via photographs from her friend Sue, and as she was now, dead. Their second victim, still unidentified, also had her place on the board—with only one picture, the way she was now, on the gurney at the ME’s office.
The time patterns they knew regarding the deaths had been noted; pertinent facts about the victims had been noted as well, down to the fact that Cathy had last dined on meat loaf and potatoes, one of the specialties at the Big Fish—and their Jane Doe had consumed sushi, made with high-grade tuna.
While the tuna itself might have been available at the Big Fish, there was an unusual seasoning in it that was only used by specialty sushi restaurants in the city. Angela stated that she and Kat would be tracking those down, along with facilities that offered permanent makeup.