Exposed (23 page)

“Your
behavior
?” He snorted. “Listen to you. Why don’t you just admit what this is about? You finally let your guard down with me, and you’re embarrassed.”

Heat flooded her cheeks. Her thoughts flashed to that damn table, and she had to look away.

“Brian . . . let’s be realistic about this, all right?”

She glanced at him, and he had his arms folded over his chest, glaring at her.

“Last night happened,” she said. “I don’t want to make this complicated.”

“Well, I do.”

She stared at him.

“You’re older than me. So what? We live in different towns. So what? We work crappy hours. So what? I know it’s complicated, but I like you.”

She watched him, at a loss for words. “I like you, too.” Her heart squeezed as she forced the words out. “As a friend.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink, but something in his eyes hardened.

“Anything else is just . . .” She searched for a word. “Unrealistic.”

He shook his head, and she hated the look of disgust on his face.

“I know the age difference means nothing to you, but you’re a guy. It’s different. People would talk about me. And our professional circles overlap. God, do you realize how many people we both know? The gossip would be a nightmare.”

He looked at her, and she could feel his disapproval. He probably thought she was shallow for caring what people said. But she’d been the subject of gossip during her divorce, thanks to Mitch, and she’d resolved never to put herself in that position again. She kept her private life private.

He shook his head again and looked at his feet. The muscle in his jaw twitched, and she knew he was suppressing things he wanted to say.

Across the house, her phone chimed. She rushed through the living room to dig it from her purse.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Kelsey. You need to get down here.”

She looked at Brian. “Where? The lab?”

“The Bones Unit,” Kelsey said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

“I’m on my way.”

“And give your fed a call,” she added. “He needs to see this, too.”

Maddie arrived last, not because of traffic but because she spent ten minutes in the Delphi Center parking lot with her makeup in her lap, trying to disguise the evidence of her hangover. But of course, it didn’t work, and the moment she set foot in Kelsey’s office, she could tell that she looked every bit as horrible as she felt.

“Bracewell with you?” Kelsey asked, hanging up the phone at her desk.

“I didn’t know he was coming.” Maddie followed her into the autopsy room, where Brian and Sam stood waiting by the row of stainless-steel sinks.

“He said he wanted to observe.” Kelsey handed her a jar of orange oil, and Maddie rubbed some under her nose, but still, the odor of burned flesh and gasoline was impossible to ignore.

Maddie eyed the lump on the stainless-steel table. The blue sheet did little to obscure the stark reality of what lay underneath. A wave of nausea hit her. She had to force her feet to move. Normally, she wasn’t squeamish, but nothing about this morning had been normal. This case was personal. She felt connected to Jolene
Murphy, probably because she’d unwittingly witnessed the incident that set this chain of events in motion. She stared at the sheet, and her thoughts inevitably went to the girl’s parents.

“Well, I hate to do this,” Kelsey said, “but I’m going to have to get started without him. I need to be in Williamson County by ten o’clock. You mind getting him up to speed?”

Maddie glanced at Kelsey and realized she was talking to her. “What?”

“You mind filling Bracewell in? We need to get going.”

“I’ll fill him in,” Sam said from across the room.

Maddie looked at him over the table. She knew what he was doing. His strategy was to make nice with the locals instead of turning everything into a big pissing contest. It was a refreshing change from what she usually saw when a hodgepodge of agencies was forced to work together.

Maddie eased forward. She glanced at Brian. His expression was unreadable. In fact, it was completely blank. He stood leaning against the counter, and only the tense set of his shoulders conveyed his unhappiness at being here.

“I spent yesterday evening determining the four basic identifiers.” Kelsey pulled back the fabric, and Maddie took a slight step back. “Race, sex, age, stature. You may recall that the victim was found at the crime scene in the pugilistic position, also known as the fetal position.” Kelsey glanced at Brian and Sam. “That’s the result of what intense heat does to muscles and connective tissue. When I got the remains back here, I was able
to mitigate those effects and examine the bones more closely. The first thing I noticed was the femur.” She pointed at the charred leg bone, which still had bits of flesh clinging to it. “It’s about fifty-three centimeters, which is indicative of a tall male.”

Sam stepped forward. “It’s a guy?”

Maddie glanced at Brian. He looked as surprised as she was.

“Are you sure?” she asked Kelsey, even though she knew the answer. Kelsey wouldn’t make a mistake of that magnitude.

“My original conclusion was confirmed through further analysis.”

Relief washed over her. She looked at Brian, but he wasn’t smiling. He was frowning down at the burned bones.

“So who is this?” He looked at Kelsey.

The door swung open, and everyone turned as Sheriff Bracewell stepped into the room.

“Sorry, but we had to start without you,” Kelsey said. “Help yourself to some orange oil over there by the sink.”

The sheriff took off his hat and set it brim-up on the counter. He ran a hand through his hair and nodded at everyone.

“ ‘Morning.” Ignoring the orange oil, Bracewell stepped right up to the table. He was known to have an iron stomach. Nothing fazed him, not even the most grisly traffic fatality.

“I was getting started with my initial findings,” Kelsey said. “To begin with, the victim is a male, about six feet, two inches tall.”

The sheriff whistled. “How’d we mistake him for a girl?”

“The pugilistic position of the body was a contributing factor, and also the shrinking of tissue. Plus, the victim was naked when he was killed, so we didn’t have clothing or jewelry to guide our initial assumptions.”

“Killed?” Brian looked up. “You’re certain this was a murder?”

“Absolutely. Aside from the evidence of arson at the crime scene, we also have this.” With a gloved hand, she rotated the skull and pointed to a dent. “I haven’t had a chance to clean the bones yet, so it’s hard to see, but an X-ray reveals a circular depressed fracture made with a heavy instrument. Our tool marks examiner can confirm, but my preliminary conclusion is that this fatal blow to the skull was administered by a hammer.”

Brian and Sam traded looks. Maybe they were thinking about the hammer that had been used to break Heidi Beckles’s fingers.

“It would have to be someone pretty tall, wouldn’t it?” Brian asked. “If this guy’s six-two?”

“That depends,” Kelsey said. “Maybe the victim was on his knees with his hands bound when he took the hit. In a situation like that, someone Maddie’s height could have delivered the lethal blow.”

“What about hand damage?” Maddie asked, stepping to the side of the table for a closer look. “Any sign this person was hit anywhere else with that hammer?”

“I did a thorough examination,” Kelsey said. “There’s evidence of a fractured left tibia and fibula, but those injuries occurred in the past—within the last few years, I’d say.”

“So, if this isn’t Jolene Murphy, what were last night’s fires about?” Maddie looked at Sam. “Is this some other random murder committed by Mladovic?”

“How do we know this is Mladovic?” Bracewell asked. “Maybe it’s our firebug at it again.”

“Firebug?” Sam looked at the sheriff.

“We got an arsonist operating in Clarke County. He’s torched three properties, including a house the other night. Maddie even got a picture of him.”

“You took his
picture
?” Brian asked.

“He was in a crowd,” she said. “I always take pictures of crowds at fire scenes. Arsonists like to watch. Anyway, he’s only a suspect at this point. We don’t even have an ID on the man, last I heard.”

“Neighbors don’t know him,” Bracewell said, “which tells you something. What was he doing there at two in the morning? I think he’s our serial torcher.”

“Fine, but I don’t think he’s responsible for this, do you? Except for the fire element, these crimes seem unrelated.” Maddie looked at Sam. “I mean, the VIN on this vehicle traces back to one of Mladovic’s guys, right?”

“Anatoli Petrovik,” Brian said. “He’s one of his strongmen. But maybe this is him.”

“Whoever he is, looks like he got himself fired,” Sam quipped. “This is what happens when you piss off Mladovic or botch a job.”

Brian looked at Kelsey. “We need a positive ID.”

“Well, for that, I’ll have to have a DNA sample or some dental records. The ones you had for Jolene Murphy obviously won’t help us here.”

“We don’t have DNA. We don’t even have IDs on
everyone in the crew. Not yet, at least.” Brian looked at Maddie. “You make any more progress on those photographs?”

“Still working on it.”

“What photographs?” the sheriff asked.

“I have pictures of some of Mladovic’s men casing the bank two days before the kidnapping,” she said. “So far, the faces are obscured. We were able to get a license plate, at least, which led us to one of them.”

“Maybe this is Vlad, not Anatoli.” Sam nodded at the table. “And we
do
have DNA on him, right, Beck? We got the cigarette butt from that SUV we recovered. Plus, we got his prints.”

“Prints won’t help in this case,” Kelsey told him. “The epidermis is far too damaged. To get a definite ID, like I said, you’re going to need to get me DNA or dental records. Until then, there’s not much more I can do for you.”

She pulled the sheet up over the remains, and Maddie breathed a sigh of relief.

“One thing’s definite. This isn’t Jolene,” Sam said. “Which means there’s a chance she could be alive.”

“Slight,” Brian added.

“Yeah, but it’s a chance.” Maddie looked from Brian to Sam and back to Brian again. “Someone made that call, right? It could have been her, trying to escape. She could still be alive.”

“Maybe.” Brian looked at Sam. “Whether she is or not, we’re going to find her.”

The Murphys lived in a pink brick colonial in a golf-course neighborhood on the west side of town. Maddie had never been there, but it reminded her of the subdivision she and Mitch had moved into after he took his first job at the hospital.

The lots were big, the driveways long. Residents were out this evening, jogging and walking dogs. Maddie spotted the Murphys’ house with a handful of cars parked out front. She rolled to a stop across the street, where she had a line of sight to the driveway.

At times like these, the kitchen was the hub. People would sit around the table, drinking coffee and whispering platitudes. The occasional logistical question—roses or lilies? what time for the vigil?—would throw everyone into a flurry of action, until things settled down again and it was back to hushed voices.

Maddie had hated it. The relatives. The clergy. The well-meaning neighbors. Just a few days into it, and the mere sight of another chicken casserole had made her physically ill. She’d wanted every one of them out of her house, including her own parents. And when the funeral was over and she’d finally gotten her wish, she’d been left with the cloying scent of flowers and a freezer full of dishes that needed to be returned and an empty house and a deafening silence.

Then she’d wanted the people back, because the silence was so much worse than all of it.

She watched the Murphys’ house, and it all came back to her, like that first ache before the onset of the flu. She recognized the setup, the players. She recognized the moves. On duty at the Murphy house right
now was the A-team, with maybe a B-teamer or two thrown in there. She knew the players because she’d seen them, in all their hideous desperation, on TV the other day.