The Dollmaker (Forgotten Files Book 2)

“You think this guy is planning to take someone else? Maybe someone like Elena?”


“I’d like to be wrong.” If Elena was in danger, that meant Tessa could be as well. Sharp kept his gaze on the cobblestones. “There was no blood at the spot where we found the kid’s body. His stab wound did maximum damage, and Kincaid thinks he bled out quickly.”

“So wherever he died, he bled.”

“Yes.”

“It hasn’t rained since Monday, so we have a good chance of finding it if it’s here.” Vargas cocked her head. “So this kid’s father might have been in touch with Diane’s killer?”

“He talked with a woman looking to sell prescription medications.”

She shook her head. “Does this lovely woman have a name?”

“Frances, he thinks.”

“That’s it?”

“Afraid so. But she most likely works out of one of the medical buildings off Route 360 near Mechanicsville. Based on what he told me, it won’t take long to find the building.”

Sharp was halfway into the alley when his light skimmed over a large dark patch. The air carried hints of a coppery scent. “Look.”

Vargas knelt and studied the stain. “I’ll be damned.”

Sharp fished a small blood-testing kit from his side pocket. It came with a cotton swab and a glass vial with chemicals that reacted to blood. He dabbed the stain and pushed the swab into the vial, breaking the seal and releasing a chemical. He shook the bottle. Within seconds the clear liquid changed to a bright blue. “The blood is human.”

She took the vial and held it up to the light. “So now we need to prove it belonged to Terrance and then find this mystery woman named Frances. She might have seen our killer.”

Sharp reached for his phone. “Let’s roll.”




Tessa relayed Sharp’s request to Dr. Kincaid, who ordered the tests on the blood samples taken from Terrance Dillon. After a brief discussion of the day’s pending cases, they moved to the autopsy suite. Their first case was a man in his fifties who’d suffered a massive heart attack last night while watching his favorite variety show on television. Next on deck was an autopsy of a sixty-five-year-old woman who’d consumed twice the legal limit of alcohol and stumbled down a flight of stairs. She’d hit her head at the bottom and broken her neck.

Dr. Kincaid shook her head. “Stay in shape, watch the booze and drugs, avoid dark alleys at night, and look both ways before you cross the street, and your chances of making it to a ripe old age increase exponentially.”

“The Diane Richardsons of the world are rare.”

“And thank God.”

When the cases had been cleared, Tessa stripped off her gown and grabbed her purse. She headed outside for some fresh air and a walk. As the sun warmed her face, she realized she was hungry. She’d not eaten much at Sharp’s last night, and now she was starving. She stopped at a taco truck parked on Main Street and ordered a burrito. As she moved back up toward her office and took a bite, her cell chimed with a text. Benson file on your desk.

Benson. Kara Benson. This morning she’d arrived early at work and, troubled by Holly’s mention of makeup on Kara’s body, requested the autopsy file. She’d asked the records clerk to text her when she found it, not expecting to see it for several days.

Her appetite for her burrito instantly vanished, and she hurried back to her office. A yellow interoffice envelope resting on her desk greeted her. Putting her purse in her bottom desk drawer, she opened the envelope to Kara’s old autopsy file. Her heart beat fast as she sat at her desk and pulled on her reading glasses. She slowly opened the file, wondering if she would ever be able to forget what was in it.

The first page was a diagram of the victim’s body. There were a couple of scrapes on the knees and palms, suggesting a fall, but other than those minor injuries, there were no other signs of trauma to the body. She flipped the page to her first look at Kara’s body lying on the autopsy table. Kara’s thick dark hair was brushed away from her freshly scrubbed pale face, which was splotched with decomposition stippling. Her jaw was slack and her eyes half-open. The image took her breath away.

She sat back in her chair and took off her glasses as she raised her hand to her mouth. She thought about the argument Holly had remembered Tessa having with Kara. “It had to have been so petty and stupid.”

Shaking herself mentally, she drew back her emotions and focused on the facts. The victim had been missing for five days but had only been dead thirty to forty hours when found. The temperatures had been unseasonably high, and decomposition had been rapid. By the time the body had been found, gasses from decomposition had bloated the corpse. When the crews moved her, she’d popped and deflated.

Tessa had seen this before and accepted this process as natural. But she’d also watched seasoned detectives when she’d been in Baltimore wilt and run to the nearest bathroom or bush to be sick. Death was inevitable, but it wasn’t pretty.

The inventory of the victim’s organs found them healthy. Her heart was of normal size, as was her liver. Stomach contents were minimal. There’d been traces of crackers and some broth. Wherever she’d been during those missing days, she’d been eating.

The medical examiner had conducted a vaginal examination and found traces of seminal fluid, but no signs of vaginal tearing or bruising, which suggested she’d not resisted intercourse. The fluids had been sent off for DNA, but when the results came back six months later, there’d been no match.

She flipped through the photos taken right after Kara’s body had been brought to the medical examiner’s office. In these images, her face hadn’t been scrubbed by the technician yet. Though at first glance the face was clean, as she looked closer, she could see definite traces of pale makeup around her hairline and ears. Shadows of bright-red lipstick colored her lips, and hints of a pale blue shaded her eyelids. Though it appeared her face had been wiped clean, she’d clearly been heavily made up.

Kara had never been a big fan of makeup, and the night of the Halloween party had been no exception. Whereas Diane, Elena, and Tessa had had fun exaggerating their doll features, Kara had not warmed to the garish look. “I’m a natural doll,” she’d quipped as she straightened her red dress. And yet there were traces of makeup on her face five days after she vanished.