She was the first to clear her throat. “I’m glad you decided against Port Jude today...yesterday,” she corrected as the new day had started over an hour ago.
“I’m not too sure.” He frowned and watched as Amber bent to unzip the black body bag.
He crouched opposite and got his first glimpse of the victim. His stomach rolled.
No matter how many years he’d been a cop, he’d never gotten used to seeing death. Now was no different as he looked down at the young woman.
“What do you have?” he asked, feeling his forty-eight years.
Amber quickly glanced at him, concern etched on her features.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled.
“Debatable, but I’ll accept that for now.” Amber pointed at the woman’s neck. “I was going with ligature strangulation as the cause of death, until we got her ready to go in the bag. But”—Amber pointed to the front of the girl’s neck—“he nearly decapitated her.”
“Fuck,” Coulter cursed, feeling sick to his stomach. He closed his eyes and was about to take a deep inhale…
“Don’t,” Amber snapped. “Trust me. You do not want to inhale right now.”
“These fuckers make me sick.”
“I know.” She rested her hands on her knees. “He used some sort of garrote, and my guess would be something like a fishing line, which is thin and strong.”
“Why are you guessing a fishing line?”
She offered a wry smile and held up her left hand, wiggling her ring finger. “Years ago I got a fishing line stuck around my finger. Very nearly lost half of it, which is how I became an ME instead of a surgeon…Fishing lines are dangerous, and cause more than just superficial damage…they can be lethal. Obviously, I’ll know more once I’ve done the autopsy, but that’s my guess.”
He nodded, tempted to wrap his hand around her delicate wrist to bring her finger to his mouth. Closing his eyes, he tried to get his mind back on the case. The victim needed his attention not his distraction.
“Was she raped?” he asked, knowing that would clear his mind and lust from the woman in front of him, for now at any rate.
“She’s had sex within twenty-four hours of death, and that includes anal intercourse.” Amber wouldn’t meet his gaze as she continued, “I don’t think she was raped though. There would have been more damage to her pubic area if she had been. My guess is that the sex was consensual.”
“Any identification?”
“She was found naked, and so far no belongings have been recovered. Nothing. You can see where she was found, and there’s nothing. Whoever did this made sure the area was clean.” Amber stood and stretched out the kinks. “We may get lucky, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Standing, Coulter watched Amber as she rubbed at her back, and he longed to be the one to rub out the knots for her.
Amber caught him staring and for a minute, held his gaze, her longing clear to see. He started to reach for her when she stepped back and cleared her throat.
Claire, her assistant, appeared and cast a glance between the two of them. She grinned and grabbed a bag from the ground. “I’ll load this up, and come back.”
Amber rolled her eyes and grinned. “I’ll have a quick look at her when we get her back to the morgue to see if I can give you a definitive answer about what was used around her neck.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
He watched as Amber bent and zipped the body bag closed, and he felt a sharp pain in his chest at the loss of a young woman, and in such a violent way.
Not only was he weary with the early mornings and late nights, but he was also tired of seeing death. For years, his job had fulfilled him. He was good at following a trail to get the answers he needed, and that was why the case up in Port Jude had always bothered him. He’d always felt that some of his questions hadn’t been answered to his satisfaction.
It pissed him off that he was only now discovering the relationship between Saige and Quinten. It would have thrown more light on to Quinten’s actions, even though he didn’t think the jurors would have looked at the evidence any differently. DNA didn’t lie, but Quinten had always admitted to bleeding all over the shack. When he was found, his arm had required a lot of stitches. The unidentified DNA sat on his mind during the case and trial, but he finally put that to rest years ago.
He rubbed his forehead and let his eyes roam over an equally tired Amber. She stepped close to him and looked up so that she could meet his gaze. The top of her head only came up to his chin, but the way she looked at him made him feel a lot of things he shouldn’t.
Without a thought, he curved his hand behind her neck and lowered his head. His lips caressed along the seam of hers, and although he was tempted to deepen the kiss at the sound of the small whimper from her, he kept it light, remembering where they were.
Smiling, he dropped his forehead to hers. “Have coffee with me later.”
The sight of her tongue slipping between her lips to moisten them drew his gaze, and a groan from him.