“I don’t know. It’s without precedent, ain’t it?” Gerry says. “In either case, I’m more concerned with that girl. Who was she? How did she get there?”
Harper sighs. “That’s what we’re going to determine, believe me.”
After an hour, Harper has asked all the questions she can think of. Gerry Fischer shows her out, and by now the sun is riding high. Away to the left, one of the fields is bare, save for the most crows Harper has ever seen in her life. There must be fifty of them, all picking over the dirt, some flapping their wings intermittently, a few cawing.
“I’ve never seen so many in one place,” Harper tells Gerry, slipping her shades on. The sight of so many crows has sent a shiver up her spine. It’s as if they have flocked to the Fischer land because there’s been a death.
“Yeah, they get like that. That field will be planted next season. Crows peck at all the old seed.”
Harper gestures toward the other fields, all lush green with life. “Obviously, we had heavy rainfall last night, but how do you get water to all these? Especially when it’s hot like it is now. You’ve gotta have a steady supply, am I right?”
“Yeah and no,” Gerry says, walking her to her car. “Ya see, what most people don’t know is how to look at it. It ain’t about how much water you can get to the field . . . it’s about how much excess you can get rid of. Drainage is the biggest challenge we face out here sometimes.”
“Right,” Harper says, knowing what he means. Where does the water have to go when the land is so flat and featureless? “Well, thank you for your time, Gerry. As I said, any more questions, someone will be in touch.”
“Got it.”
“Please refrain from talking to the press for the time being. Though we can’t tell you not to, we’d really appreciate it if you didn’t just yet.”
Gerry shoos her off. “Get away, girl. Any of them reporter types turn up here, I just might introduce ’em to Mary Sue.”
Harper opens the car door, frowning. “Who’s Mary Sue?”
“My shotgun,” Gerry says with a grin.
One hand on the wheel, Harper swipes her phone and dials Stu’s number.
“Hey,” he says.
“I’ve finished up with the farmer. It was a bit of a dead end. I don’t believe he knows any more than what he’s told me already. I’ll meet up with Albie at the ME’s office. Mike’s doing the girl’s autopsy.”
“You want me to come along?”
“I think I’ve got it covered.”
“I might as well carry on with these files, then,” Stu says. “CSU found a cell phone tucked into her pocket. It was waterlogged, but I’m hoping Albie might be able to do something with it. Otherwise we can pull her records from the network, but that’ll take time.”
“Okay.” She drives with the fields on either side of her, crops towering nearly six feet in height, barely moving because of the lack of breeze. Deep green, the thick stems are rooted into the richest soil the United States has to offer. It feels as though she has parted the sea, headed for salvation on the other side.
If only that were the case.
“How’s the file work going?” Harper asks Stu.
“I’m keeping a list of the major differences between the official and unofficial records. It’ll help in prosecuting the men who covered this up for so long, but so far I haven’t picked up on anything substantial. Nothing that’s a case breaker.”
“Okay. Well, keep digging at it.”
“Listen. About last night at the bar—”
Harper shakes her head. “Not yet, Stu. We’ll talk about it later, I promise. You have my word. But not right now. I can’t deal with that as well as watching a young girl get cut open.”
His voice is quieter. Distant. “Sure. I understand. We’ll take a rain check. Talk to you later, kiddo.”
The line goes dead before Harper can say anything else.
When Harper walks into the medical examiner’s with Albie, Mike has already set about meticulously going over the victim’s body. Captain Morelli has decided to attend. He glowers in the corner, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t usually attend these, but for this one, I want to see his handiwork for myself,” Morelli says.
Not much to see, Harper thinks. Apart from jizz and hair strands, the killer’s a relatively tidy trooper.
Mike works alongside Kara to determine for certain the young woman’s cause of death, though it’s brutally clear. Strangled. The purple blossoms on her neck are proof of that. Mike examines the girl’s fingernails. He looks at Harper. “No skin this time. Just wet dirt. Her nails are clogged with it.”
The awful tragedy of the girl on the slab, her body icy cold and dull, is something Harper can’t get out of her head. When you see a cadaver, you still expect them to breathe. It doesn’t make sense that their chest doesn’t rise and fall as it should—that when you touch them there is no heat at all. Just the coolness of flesh that no longer convulses and has become heavy as marble. A room is just a room until there is the unthinkable presence of a dead body within it. Then it assumes the quiet stillness of an empty church, as if the very air around the body regards its existence there—what it was, what it is, and what it will become.
Samples of the soil will go to CSU to see if it matches the soil at the crime scene. Harper knows it will. It doesn’t fit the killer’s MO to move a body postmortem. He does what he needs to do, kills them, and leaves them. That’s it. The killer does not concern himself with moving a body from one location to another—for what point?
“Any ID on the body?” Morelli asks.
Mike shakes his head. “Dental records drew a blank, as did DNA. At the moment, she’s plain old Jane Doe.”
“Great,” Morelli says. “Let’s just hope there’s a missing person’s on file or we’re gonna end up canvassing the area. That could take time we don’t have.”
Mike starts cutting, the scalpel slipping through the girl’s brown skin as though it were delicate as jelly. Dark blood pools in the scalpel’s wake. Albie turns around, face suddenly green with nausea. “I’m stepping out.”
“Okay,” Harper says, privately amused.
The captain waits for Albie to clear the room before letting loose a big growly sigh. “How can you let yourself get sickened by a little blood and guts? Pussy.”
“I think it’s that the victim’s a young girl, sir,” Harper suggests.
“Can’t argue with you there,” the captain says. “Damn, this is going to cause a major shit storm.”
Harper stands next to him and lowers her voice. “The killer’s gaining momentum, for whatever reason. What used to be a dead girl turning up every three or four years has turned into three in only a handful of months,” Harper says. “This is the third victim on my watch.”
“The press is after our asses. And they’ll get them, too, if we can’t deliver a culprit,” Morelli says.