The theory that my friend’s disappearance was voluntary was ridiculous. An intelligent, successful twenty-nine-year-old woman didn’t decide one day to disappear. Even if she had, with GPS, traffic cameras, surveillance, it wouldn’t be easy, not without help. Mindy had no reason to walk away from her life. She wouldn’t have. She had every reason to stay.
Standing beside the table, I found myself back to more questions than answers, back to imagining scenarios that made my stomach turn. I’d researched the number of female disappearances nationwide. The numbers were staggering and, looking at the woman before me, I knew that numbers were only a part of the story. Each report was a life.
What I saw in this woman’s injuries took my imagination to dark places. Her bruises were an array of colors, indicating a pattern of abuse. Yellow and green peppered her exposed arms and cheekbone. I knew enough from my time in the crime lab to determine that she’d gotten those over a week ago. There was also a purple crescent under her left eye and a dark bluish-purple band surrounding her throat. Something besides hands had made the mark around her neck. The first finger and thumb were the strongest and usually left definitive marks. The customary differentiation of fingers was missing. This bruise on this body’s throat was a consistent dark color, indicating that whatever had been around her neck, had been in place for a long time. She also had lacerations. There was a partially healed wound visible on her chest above the edge of the sheet.
Now that I knew this wasn’t Mindy, my investigative side took over. I longed to remove the sheet and meet this woman, understand her, and learn her story. However, it was more than that. The vile taste in my mouth, the way the tiny hairs on my arms rose, told me that part of me feared that Mindy could be experiencing, at this very moment, the same terror that this woman had known.
I needed answers, for Mindy, for this woman, and for any other women who had disappeared from their lives to awaken in a nightmare.
“Miss Montgomery?”
The technician’s voice pulled me back to the cold room.
“Yes?”
“If you need to sit down, you may go into one of our rooms for a few minutes before you leave. We realize this is difficult. I’m sorry we’ve brought you in here twice. I hope you know that we wouldn’t do that if we didn’t think there was a possibility . . .”
I straightened my shoulders. “No, I don’t need to sit down, and I want you to call me. If there’s even a chance that you have Mindy, call me again. I’ll be here.” I looked up toward Dylan, then back to the young lady. “Thank you. What about this woman?”
“We’ll run some more tests to see if we can find any markers. Since the tips of her fingers have been burned, our only means of identification are DNA and dental records. Those are both long shots unless she matches a missing-persons list or a national registry.”
My gaze dropped to the woman’s hands. The way they lay next to her still body, I hadn’t noticed anything about them, but now I saw that the skin on the tips of her fingers was ghostly white.
“Burned?” I asked. “With what?”
“We’re not exactly sure. As you can see, it wasn’t fire. We’re assuming acid.”
“When?” My voice came out softer than I liked.
Dylan reached for my wrist, pulling me gently toward the door. I didn’t move. I steadied my feet and turned back to the technician. I couldn’t help it. The questions came fast and furious. “What the hell happened to this woman? Do you think someone put her fingers in acid before she died?”
“I really can’t—”
“Stella, let’s go,” Dylan said. “This isn’t your story.”
I turned to face him. “Whose story or case will it be? Who’ll give a shit about her or what she suffered?”
“It’s an open investigation,” the technician volunteered. “The police are working on it.”
“If someone were to use an acid strong enough to take away her fingerprints, wouldn’t there be more damage to her skin?” I asked.
The young woman nodded. “If it were done all at once. However, if it’s done over time, each application takes away a little more. Then it scars, making the final result more effective. Some terrorist groups willingly do this to lose their previous identities.” She looked down. “I really shouldn’t say any more.”
“Stella, we need to go.” Dylan placed his hand on my shoulder.
I nodded as I scanned the features of the woman on the table. Briefly I wondered what she had looked like before she was hurt, killed, and left for rat food in an abandoned house. That was what some asshole had done. If drugged-out kids hadn’t gone into the house to shoot up or hook up in the middle of a Detroit summer, this woman would’ve been consumed by rodents, greatly reducing any hope of identification.
Shaking my head, I looked back at the technician. That’s when I saw it, a look in her eyes that seemed to plead for my help, asking me to use the resources at my discretion to do something.
I tested the waters. “Thank you for your help. What’s your name? I apologize for not asking sooner.”
“Tracy, Dr. Tracy Howell, assistant forensic pathologist.”