Darkness Of Truth (An FBI/Romance Thriller~ Book 6) (51 page)

Both bosses stared at her.

“The girl made it three seconds before puking and the guy is just about there. I plan on making him help me handle the last skin.”

Callen dropped his voice
, so only they’d hear the conversation. “That bad huh?”

Christina smiled. “
He’s sexy on the outside but cranky and FBI hater on the inside.”

“Good to know,” stated Elizabeth. She liked
to be aware of what was happening around her with the locals. “Has the scene been photographed yet?”

She nodded. “We’re waiting on Chris to pull the skins down. I almost wanted to knock the bugs off the poor bastard, but I know Doc likes the body undisturbed and in situ.”

Elizabeth patted her on the shoulder. “Go torment the newbies, and we’ll scope it out.”

“I love my job!” She walked directly towards the man
with the intent to show him the meaning of FBI tech.

Callen and Elizabeth
headed towards the body. Crouching down, they inspected it without any contact. There was indeed a feather, and the killer had shoved the end into the chest wound.

“The cuts aren’t as clean,” she said, looking at a piece of skin he’d missed.

“Maybe he was in a hurry?” Callen suggested. “I have to say, the ants are creepy.”

She had to agree. “Christina!” she yelled across the scene. “Will ants eat flesh?”
Elizabeth hoped they didn’t decide to have a snack and destroy any evidence.

She thought about it. “
If they’re fire ants and hungry enough they will. I wouldn’t let them bite you Director! You’re pregnant and enough stings can kill you or the baby.”

Immediately, Callen panicked, sweeping
her up into his arms to carry her away from the ants and the body.

“Are you insane!” she hissed, staring at him like he completely lost
his mind. “No kissy-face on the scene! No touchy-feely and sure as hell no toting me around like I’m an invalid!”

He didn’t care how mad she was at him. Gently lowering her to her feet
, he crossed his arms. “You don’t need to be bit by an army of fire ants.”

She pointed down at her feet. “I’m wearing cowboy boots
, and I need to check out the body.”

Callen blocked her way. “No.”

“Excuse me?” Elizabeth honestly believed he’d had a lapse of sanity.

“You’re not risking you or my child
!” He didn’t lower his voice and had everyone’s attention at his words.

Elizabeth stared at him open mouthed
at what he’d just inadvertently done.

Christina started giggling. “I am so winning this baby pool
now!” The other two techs also began laughing, giving each other’s high fives at the information they’d just scored.

Callen realized what he just did. “Oh shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about what I was saying,” he whispered
, apologetically.

She simply shook her head. “Well the cat’s out of the bag now, Darlin’.
Nothing we can do about it. In an hour it’s going to be texted back to the hive and spread around.”

“Are you mad at me?” Callen heard the ATV’s coming and turned his head.

At that moment, she side stepped him and headed back over to the body. This time standing back from the remains and being aware of the ants crawling up the dead man’s frame. “Yeah, I’m damn pissed that you picked me up.” But then Elizabeth lowered her voice as he crouched beside her. “I don’t care who knows you’re the baby’s father, Callen. You can wear a damn shirt announcing it for all I care.”

Callen relaxed as his brother strode onto the scene the ME and Anthropologist behind him.

“Holy shit,” muttered Blackhawk pointing at the skins moving in the breeze.
“That’s a statement if I ever saw one.”

Both doctors stared
, looking excited.

“Yeah, you aren’t kidding,” replied Elizabeth. “Doc, we have another male stripped down
to less than his birthday suit.”

Chris dropped to his knees besides the body
, risking the ants to get close enough to the corpse. “Has the scene been documented?” he inquired, as he began his normal process. Sticking the probe into his liver, he checked his watch.

“Yeah, tech team had at it already. Watch the fire ants, Doc,” Elizabeth said, knocking one from his shirt that was crawling towards his neck.

Chris stood and brushed them from his pants. “Okay, we need to quickly and carefully carry this body from the ants. They might eat our evidence.”

The men gloved up.
“Where do you want the corpse, Chris?”

As if on cue, their
anthropologist began unrolling a bag.

“Over there by Tony. You both lift
, and I’m going to brush as many off as possible.  Lyzee, get away from them. If you get bit you can have detrimental effects on the pregnancy.”

Ethan gave her the look.

“Yeah, so I’ve been told and shown by Callen.” Elizabeth took two steps back and cleared the way for the men.

“Are either of you allergic to ant bites?”
inquired Chris, digging around for thicker gloves, just in case.

Both men shook their heads.

Callen dropped his voice low to warn his brother. “I accidentally called the baby mine, and Christina and the tech team heard it. I’m sorry.”

Blackhawk patted his brother on the shoulder. “
Don’t stress it, Cal. We have other things to distract them with. Trust me.” He referred to their daughter that was at the rental house. “Half the team at FBI West already bet the baby was yours, even when I laid down cash it was mine.”

“You’re just as bad as she is,” answered Callen.

“Yeah, I know. I even told the person running it I wanted to put my bet down with an alias.”

Callen started laughing.

Elizabeth stepped in and spoke. “Next time I screw with the team, Cowboy, you can’t bitch and moan. You’re worse than me!”

The brothers lifted the dead man
and Chris swatted off the ants onto a tarp beneath him. “Collect as many as possible,” he directed Tony. “We can see if they ate any part of victim four.”

Julian waited beside the black body bag with Tori. As the man was
being lowered into it, the flash of metal caught his attention. “There’s something in his mouth. I just caught a glint in the sun.”

Chris dropped down to the body and stared into the mouth. “Our dead dude had dental work. It looks like we have a way to trace him.” He pulled out the bridge with the fake tooth attached.

“Oh holy shit,” muttered Elizabeth, glancing at Callen then Julian. “Who do we know that has a missing front tooth?”

Whitefox shook his head. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

Tori was confused. “You know who this is?”

Julian stood and stared down at the man. “Last time Elizabeth and Callen ran into this man, he put his hands on
her.”

She continued.
“I knocked him into a snow bank,” Elizabeth answered.

“I punched him in the face
, knocking his tooth out,” added Whitefox.

Tori still didn’t get it.

Julian dropped his arm around her shoulders and kept his voice low. “That might be Jimmy Duffy.”

“Oh
crap! I didn't see that one coming!”

Elizabeth had to agree. “
I’m guessing the killer was betting on that.”

~ Chapter Fourteen ~

  Saturday Afternoon

The tech team moved quickly
processing the crime scene. Carefully, Christina pulled down the dermis layers and sprayed them with water to rehydrate the dried out ones. Then she used plastic to fold them up into one by one foot packages. At her side assisting was Kane Redwolf, and he didn’t look happy in the least.

“This is disgusting.”

She shrugged, not even looking at him. One tear in the flesh and there’d be hell to pay. “I work for the FBI homicide and serial killer division, so we get a great deal of gross. After a while, you stop thinking about it and work on autopilot.”

He watched her fold the skin into perfect bundles. It was meticulously done. “Yeah, I guess.”

Finally she looked up, needing to know why. “You don’t like us do you?”

Kane shrugged
, nonchalantly. “You’re outsiders. Why does it matter what I think about you. We’re just Indians, right?”

Christina leaned back on her heels and stared at him. “If my boss even heard you whip out the ‘I’ word, she’d
beat you into a bloody pulp. I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re pretty Native friendly. Directors Blackhawk and Whitefox are pretty awesome, and they’re ‘Indians’, so, if you’re looking for any bias on our team, you’re out of luck. So peddle your outsider hate somewhere else. We look at the person, not the ethnicity.”

He didn’t have an answer for her.
All his life he’d grown up with bias based on his ethnicity. It was just his instinctual response to build up a wall first. “How long have you been doing this?” Kane had to have respect for a woman that played with death all day and still smiled.

Christina glanced up. “
It’s been almost eight years, and all of them with Director Blackhawk. When he came out here from Quantico, I followed him. The tech team loves him, and I’d move to Tibet to work with him.”

“Is the female
director really as hard to handle?” he asked, liking to know the players in the game.

Shrugging, she glanced across the clearing at her boss. “Elizabeth doesn’t take anyone’s crap, but she’s super sweet and kind.”

“I guess she’s Native friendly,” he replied, keeping the conversation going.

She laughed. “Who isn’t when you get to stare at Director Blackhawk and Whitefox all
day?” Then she realized what she said. “I mean…never mind.”

Kane found the blush across her cheeks endearing. Apparently, the woman was more than okay with working alongside
Indian men. It was good to know.

Placing the next packet of skin in an evidence bag, she pulled out more plastic to do the last one. “This might gross you out, so I can handle it alone.”

He wasn’t letting that happen. Kane could manage. “So, the rumor is that it’s a skinwalker that’s doing this.”

There was no such thing as far as she was concerned, but the man already disliked them
, so why dis his cultural beliefs. “I don’t know what or who it is. I simply process the evidence and run the tech lab for the bosses. I find the truth in the science of it all, and they solve it. I’m a lab geek and nothing more.”

He watched her work, and saw the telltale burn peek out from her shirt. “What happened to your
arm?” Kane touched her sleeve, and she recoiled as if stung.

“Nothing.
” Her eyes stayed adverted, as she worked on the skin. The burns were her biggest issue in life now, and as of yet, Christina was still trying to get over them.

“I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry.” Whatever it was, she was protective about it. It looked like it had been painful, either way.

She sighed, hating that it controlled her this much. “One of our assignments involved a car bombing. Elizabeth and I got too close, and I was burned across my arms and shoulders.” It wasn’t like she didn’t have to explain it over and over anyway. The minute anyone saw the vicious scars, they all had the same response.

It never changed.

“That had to hurt.”

“You can’t imagine.” She answered, talking about both the physical and emotional scars. They both played with her mind and wrecked her.

“Then you must be pretty tough.” Already he softened towards her. His sister had been burned badly as a child, and he knew how brutal it had been. This woman was an enigma. The pain she’d had to endure, the horrors she faced every day, and yet she still smiled. Maybe he’d been hasty in his judgment.

“You don’t know what you can handle until you have to
stare it down. I’m getting tattoos over the scars,” she said, finally looking up. Then she pulled up her tech lab coat sleeve and showed him her most recent one. “The Blackhawks are letting me break the rules.”

“So you like tattoos
, huh?”

Christina loved them on others, but in her case it was an attempt to distract the hideous burns. “I like them.”

Kane simply nodded. “What can I do to help you with the skin?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Nothing,” she answered, folding up the last one. “Doc, we’re all wrapped up here
!” she shouted, standing to carry the skin to the body bag.

“Let’s get ready to transport,” he answered, watching the office
r staring at Christina. “What’s up with him,” he whispered, nodding at the man behind her.

“Got me,” she answered.
“He isn’t big on the Feds, but he’s trying to play nice, I guess,” Christina said.

“Tell the bosses we’re heading in with the body and the skin,” he said, carrying the body board with the black bag attached to it towards the ATV.

“Sure thing, Doc,” she answered, bouncing away.

They stood off to the side of the clearing, keeping their voices low. Not because they didn’t trust their own team, but because there were officers walking around the scene too.  Staying ahead meant keeping their game plan to themselves at this point. They didn’t need to have one officer spreading it around and back to council.

“We need to start working
tonight out of the rental house,” stated Blackhawk, warily eyeing the man following Christina around. “I don’t like the symbolism of the skin hanging out to dry.”

Julian was still thinking about his father. “I’m assuming you have the file on
my dad’s murder.”

Blackhawk nodded. “It’s in my briefcase
to begin studying tonight.”

“I want to see it.”
Julian wasn’t taking no for an answer, and he hoped his friends wouldn’t stand in his way of working it.

Tori took his hand in hers and squeezed reassuringly
, unsure if the Blackhawks were going to be okay with that. The entire situation was pushing Julian closer to the edge.

Elizabeth had a suggestion. “Tonight at the house
we can go over it. I need a profile for this wack job. You bring the beer, we’ll supply the pizza.”

Julian
had been relatively sure they weren’t going to let him see the file, and the knot in his chest lessened. “Thank you for not trying to keep me from being a part of this. I really need to get answers for my family.”

Callen patted him on the back. “Hang in there Julian.
We’ll help you get everything you need.”

The man nodded. “What’s on the agenda until tonight? Where are we headed next?”

Leaning in, Elizabeth broke down her game plan. “We know the killer grabs these people on or close to the Rez. Right now we need to trace Duffy’s steps and find out what happened last night. He had to cross paths with the killer, if that is indeed the sheriff.”

“When will we have positive ID?” Julian asked.
He knew he could track the man’s night just from knowing him personally. It wouldn’t be difficult to help deduce a timeline.

Blackhawk had the utmost trust in his team. “If we get the serial number off the dental work, we can pull it within the hour.
Christina has been known to pull off the impossibly in small time frames. For now, I think we need to head back to the office and be calm. We’ll wait on the confirmation, head to the sheriff’s department and break the news,” he stated, pausing when the Native officer strolled past them.

“We’re clear,” whispered Elizabeth, signaling to her husband.

“Then we’ll divide up and head to his house. With victims one and three, they were taken from their own property. Odds are that the killer was tracking the sheriff, catching him when his guard was down. We’ll need a timeline of his day. That should give us another direction to head in for answers.”

“Jimmy was a creature of habit,” stated Julian. “Friday nights he would
venture out and try to get laid. If he couldn’t pick up a woman, he’d head to Carly’s and hook up with her. She was his last chance at getting off.”

“Gee that’s shocking,” stated Callen, shaking his head.
He honestly wanted nothing to do with dealing with that woman, ever again.

Elizabeth grinned
, seeing the disgusted look on both of her men’s faces. “Oh, I am so doing that interview,” she stated, cracking her knuckles. “I don’t want to hear anyone volunteer for that one. She’s all mine.”

“Oh crap,” muttered Callen. “Our woman is going to get into a fist fight while pregnant.”

Blackhawk grinned. “Bob and weave, Baby,” he stated and then began laughing when his brother actually gasped. “What? You’ve seen her fight. She’s meaner while pregnant, and I actually have pity for Ms. Kester.”

“You realize you’re supposed to be on my side in an effort to get my child born.” Callen crossed his arms.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and snickered. “I love how you both think I’m a liability while pregnant.”

Julian started laughing. “I have zero comment
s on this topic, because I know better.”

Tori lifted an eyebrow. “Good idea, Jules.
Run with that, before you get hurt.”

Elizabeth snickered, offering Tori a fist bump
. “That was the girlfriend code at its finest.”

Two of the three men groaned, knowing what that meant. Now that the women had aligned against them, it was every man for himself.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Julian inquired, waiting for an answer.

“It means we’re s
crewed,” Callen said, laughing, “and I don’t mean in a good way. I mean where you end up sleeping on the damn couch for a week, only dreaming about sex.”

Julian shook his head. “Well then I
suggest a man code. I want to team up with some men to win a fight against my woman once in a while. That’s only fair!”

Elizabeth and Tori laughed uproariously.

“I’m sorry, Julian, but it’ll never happen,” stated Blackhawk. “They have this mystical ability to get what they want against the opposite sex.”

“
It’s never going to happen in this lifetime, my friend,” added Callen, grinning.

Julian stared back and forth, not sure he was buying it.
There had to be a way.

It didn't take long for Elizabeth to speak up
and offer him some real life examples. “Ethan, if I told you that only one of you could have all the sex you wanted for a month, would you toss your brother under the no sex bus?” she asked, hypothetically.

Ethan took a whole two seconds. “Yep.”

“HEY!” Callen objected and then considered it. “Me too!”

She turned towards Tori. “Would you toss a family member under the bus to get laid?”

It took no time to answer. “Nope.”

Elizabeth looked triumphant. “That’s why Girlfriend code only works for women. We can’t be lured away with prizes like sex, pizza, beer, sports, bowling…”

Everyone was laughing.

Before anyone could comment further, Doc Leonard wandered over to them.

They seemed a bit jovial for a crime scene, but who knew what was going on with the bosses. “We’re ready to go. We have the body loaded up, the evidence is intact, and we’re getting ready to transport.”

“We’re following you back to the police headquarters,” stated Elizabeth. “I want you to be very careful what information we release and to whom.”

He nodded. “We generally are, Lyzee. Is there something you’re thinking about?”

“Christina analyzed that blood drop Julian found and it wasn’t any of the victims. Then we come out here to find the killer purposely used this area to set his scene. He’s trying to tell us something. We’re
pass wording and not printing anything out to be left lying around.” Blackhawk wasn’t taking any chances. “We’re going to need to keep this quiet. We have three non-natives in the cooler. As soon as this gets out that the man helping us investigate, a non-native, was killed, we’re going to have the media, the mayor of Red River, and God only knows who else all over us.”

“I hate media,” mumbled Elizabeth. “I think Callen should have to handle them.”

“What?” He was caught off guard. “Why do I have to do it?” he asked, staring at his family.