“Susan. Stop it.” God. “Phil, please sit.” Kerry needed to regroup. “As you can see, we’re perfectly fine.” Could this get any more embarrassing?
“I had to come. Hunter would have chewed out my ass if I hadn’t checked up you two. Besides, he wanted me to tell you he found out that Tameka Dorsey was pregnant—something like a few weeks along.”
Her heart broke. “Damn.” Another baby dead. “Why couldn’t Hunter have called to tell me?”
“He wanted me to make sure you were safe.”
“Oh.”
Phil gulped down half the bottle. “I think some good can come out of this. We now have a motive.”
“What? The killer believes in zero population growth?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her tone.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
Kerry made a mental list. Jane Does #1, #2, #4, plus Nancy Donello-Sanchez were all pregnant. Kerry had found no evidence that #3 was pregnant, but if she were only a few weeks along, there wouldn’t have been any evidence of a fetus.
Kerry’s cell rang, and her heart nearly stopped. “Excuse me.”
She retrieved her phone, checked the caller ID, and answered. “John?”
“Kerry, I’m sorry to disturb you. I know you only do bones, but we found another woman tonight. She was about four months pregnant. I thought you might want to take a look at her.”
How much more could she handle? “You think there’s a connection to my case?”
“You’ll have to tell me.”
Her mind raced. “Ah, yeah, sure.” She jotted down the directions. “I’ll be right there.” Kerry hung up.
Before she had a chance to explain her circumstance to Phil, his phone rang.
“Sorry.” He answered it. “Where?... Just a sec.” He glanced up at Kerry. “Where are you going?”
She told him.
He returned his attention to his caller. “I’ll be right there. Tell the medical examiner I’ll be bringing Dr. Herlihy with me.” He disconnected. “Looks like we will be spending some time together.”
Susan stood. “That means I get to lose another game of Scrabble to Grandpa.”
“I’m sorry, Susan. Duty calls.”
“No problem.”
Kerry wanted to lay a hand on Susan’s shoulder to say all was forgiven, but she didn’t feel comfortable with her emotions yet. “I’ll remind Hunter about helping with Brad.”
Susan’s lip trembled. “That would be great.” Susan leaned over and hugged Kerry.
“Let me pack up your chicken dinner.” Kerry pulled away. “I don’t want you to starve.” Kerry’s upbeat tone came out fake even to her ears.
Police lights swirled on the side of the road as a stream of cars slowed. Damn rubberneckers. They didn’t need any more accidents on the road.
Now that Phil and she were at the crime scene, Kerry almost wished she hadn’t eaten dinner. Bones. She liked bones. Not decaying flesh. The female’s brain matter had oozed out of her skull, and coagulated blood had pooled on the victim’s distended abdomen. She hoped both the baby and mother had died quickly. Kerry covered her nose with one hand and wiggled her fingers with the other. “Mask.” The rancid odor made her gag. Some anthropologist she was.
“Here,” one of the technicians said.
Flies buzzed the body as the crime scene unit processed the scene. She still didn’t understand why John Ahern had asked her to come.
“Kerry, tell me what you see.”
She peered into the half-rolled down passenger side window and swatted away the flies. The woman had toppled over onto the seat. “The contusions and bruising on her face look a few weeks old. Unless she was strangled, she died from either the gunshot wound to her head or bled out from her abdomen.”
“My money’s on the head wound. You see any evidence of plastic surgery?”
Kerry hadn’t wanted to check, but she knew she had to. With gloved hands, she reached through the window and touched the woman’s face. “Same as the ambient temp. What was her time of death?”
“Rigor’s come and gone. I’d say she’s been dead about twenty-four hours.”
She checked for sutures around the hairline and behind the ears. “Nothing here, but she could have had surgery on her arms or legs. An X-ray would confirm.”
“I can do that.”
She pointed to the scars around the female’s eye. The ones on her forehead had a pinkish cast to them. “These scars look to be a few months old from the amount of scar tissue, but these ones nearer the scalp are fresh. Someone beat this woman about the face not long before she died.” Her stomach did a somersault. This woman had been abused, pregnant, and possibly in need of plastic surgery.
Dear God. What had happened here?
She stepped away from the vehicle, in part to get away from the flies, and in part to distance herself from the grief that surrounded this woman. Kerry swallowed to find her voice. “Who found her?”
This woman had bled to death in her car, and it had taken hours before anyone bothered to stop and check why a car with blood spattered windows sat abandoned on the side of the road.
John nodded toward a kid, no more than fourteen, standing next to his bike.
“Did he see anyone leave the scene?” she asked.
“No.”
Phil stepped next to her. “Any identification on our vic?”
Again John shook his head. “Just the clothes on her body. No purse.”
A petite woman, whose nametag read, Sanders, strode up to Phil. “We ran her tags. Car belonged to a Gabe Carlitta. I’m guessing that’s her husband.”
“Did you notify him?”
“I called but was unable to reach him. Dispatch said the husband called the station to report his wife missing around midnight last night.”
Kerry couldn’t believe someone hadn’t found her sooner. “No one went looking for her?”
“The department’s hands were tied. They had to wait until she was gone at least forty-eight hours before investigating.”
The poor husband. He would be so distraught when he learned of their deaths, unless he was the one who killed her. She turned back to John. “Do you think there’s a connection to my case?”
“At first, no, but considering she was pregnant, perhaps.”
Kerry forced herself to remain calm. To kill a woman was bad enough, but to kill a pregnant woman was lower than scum.
A young male officer came over and held out a small device to Phil. “We found this under the back bumper.”
Phil lifted the piece of metal from the officer’s hand. “A tracking device.” He handed it back to the man. “Process it.”
“Will do.”
Someone tapped Kerry on the shoulder. She jumped. From the spicy scent, it was Hunter. She turned around and smiled. “Hi. How did you find me?” Having him at the scene lifted much of the tension.
“Phil called and told me.” He turned to John Ahern. “You need Kerry much longer?”
“She can help me with the autopsy tomorrow. Take her home.”
She grabbed her boss’s arm. “Can you tell by looking if the caliber of the bullet that killed the victim was the same as the one in Nancy Donello-Sanchez?” Please say yes.
“I won’t know until after I open this one up, and the crime lab makes the comparison.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’d sleep with one eye open if I were you.”
Before his comment sunk in, Hunter wrapped a possessive arm around her waist. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the car and blood streaked window.
“You shouldn’t look at the body too long. It’ll give you nightmares,” he said.
“And bones don’t?”
“Caught me. I wanted to get you away from here. It’s not safe. Our killer could be hiding in those trees.” He leaned a head toward a line of trees about one hundred feet ahead on the right.
Kerry snuggled closer to Hunter, her protector. She squinted into the wooden area, but couldn’t see anything.
For the first time in a long time, she was glad she wasn’t pregnant.
24
“You’ve barely said a word since we left the scene,” Kerry said. “Were you thinking about the crime? Or your wife?” The anniversary of Hunter’s wife’s death must be an agonizing time for him. She hadn’t planned to broach the topic, but she believed if he could discuss his grief, he might start to heal.
“Amy? Yes and no.”