Caught. Part 29

THE CLOUDS HAD DARKENED over Ringwood State Park. Marcia McWaid trudged through the thick woods, her husband, Ted, a few steps in the lead. Marcia hoped rain was not on the way, but the cloud cover was an improvement over the morning's pounding sun.

Neither Ted nor Marcia was much for hiking or camping or pretty much anything that one might categorize as "outdoors." Before--there was always a "before" now, a shattered world of wonderful naivete from a dead age--the McWaids enjoyed museums and bookstores and dinners out at trendy restaurants.

When Ted looked to his right, Marcia could see his profile--and what she saw surprised her. There was, despite the fact that they were performing the grimmest task imaginable, a small smile on his handsome face.

"What are you thinking about?" Marcia asked her husband.

He kept walking. The small, wistful smile stayed in place. His eyes brimmed with tears, but that was pretty much how they had been for the past three months. "Do you remember Haley's dance recital?"

There had been only one. Haley had been six years old. Marcia said, "I think it's the last time I saw her in pink."

"Do you remember that getup?"

"Sure," Marcia said. "They were supposed to be cotton candy. Strange memory. I mean, it was so not her."

"Very true."

"So?"

Ted stopped in front of an incline. "Do you remember the actual recital?"

"It was in the middle school auditorium."

"Right. We parents sit there and the show is like three hours long and it's so d.a.m.n boring and you're just waiting for the two minutes your own kid is onstage. And I remember Haley's cotton-candy dance was maybe the eighth or ninth act out of, what, twenty-five, maybe thirty, and she comes on and we start nudging each other. I remember smiling then, you know, and I'm looking at my daughter and for a few moments you feel such a pure joy. It's like there's this light in my chest and I'm looking at Haley and her little face is all scrunched up because you know her--even then Haley was Haley. She didn't want to get anything wrong. Every step is exact and precise. I mean, there is no rhythm or expression, but Haley makes no mistakes. And I'm looking at this little wonder and I'm almost bursting."

Ted looked at her as though to confirm the memory. Marcia nodded and maybe now, despite the grimmest of tasks, there was a small smile on her face too.

"And," he continued, "you're sitting there and you have tears in your eyes and you think about the wonder of this moment, and then--and this is the amazing thing--you look around the auditorium, at the other parents, and you realize that every one of them feels exactly the same away about their own kid. I mean, that's so obvious and simple and yet something about it overwhelms me. I can't believe this tremendous feeling, this wave of love, doesn't belong to us alone, that what we're experiencing isn't unique--and that just made it somehow greater. I remember watching the other parents in the audience. You see the wet eyes and the smiles. You see the wives reach for their husband's hand, no words exchanged. And I remember being just awed. Like, I don't know, like I couldn't believe one room, this school auditorium, could be so full of pure love and not just take off from the ground."

Marcia wanted to say something, but no words came to her. Ted shrugged, turned, and started up the incline. He dug his foot into the ground, took hold of a thin tree, and powered his way up. Finally Marcia said, "I'm so scared, Ted."

"We'll be okay," he said.

The smiles were gone now. The clouds continued to darken. A helicopter flew overhead. Ted reached his hand back. Marcia took it. He pulled her up. And the two of them resumed their search for their daughter.

TWO DAYS LATER, in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Ringwood State Park, the canine unit found the body of Haley McWaid.

PART TWO.

CHAPTER 25.

FUNERAL SERVICES are always pretty much the same. The same prayers, the customary biblical readings, the words of supposed comfort that, especially in situations like this, sound to an outsider's ear like either the most ridiculous rationalizations or obscene justifications. What occurs on the pulpit is pretty much a constant; only the reaction of the mourners alters the mood.

The funeral of Haley McWaid had been a dark, leaden blanket thrown over the entire community. Grief weighed you down, made your limbs heavy, put gla.s.s shards in your lungs so that even breathing was agony. Everyone in the community hurt right now, but Wendy knew that would not last. She had seen it with John's premature death. Grief is devastating, all-consuming. But grief merely visits friends, even the closest. It stays much longer, probably forever, with the family, but that was probably how it should be.

Wendy had stood in the back of the church. She came in late and left early. She never looked at Marcia or Ted. Her mind would not let her--would not "go there" as Charlie, who was alive and breathing, liked to say. It was a defense mechanism, pure and simple. That was okay too.

The sun shone bright. It always seemed to be that way on funeral days. Her mind again wanted to go to John, to the closed casket, but again she fought it off. She walked down the street. She stopped at the corner, closed her eyes, and tilted her face toward the sun. Her watch read eleven AM. It was time to meet Sheriff Walker at the medical examiner's office.

Located on a depressing stretch of Norfolk Street in Newark, the medical examiner's office handled Ess.e.x, Hudson, Pa.s.saic, and Somerset counties. Newark had indeed enjoyed some revitalization of late, but that was a few blocks east of here. Then again, what would be the point of putting an ME office in a trendy spot? Sheriff Walker met her on the street. He always looked a little uneasy with his size, slouching his big shoulders. She half expected him to crouch down and speak to her, the way you would to put a small child at ease, and this somehow made him more endearing.

"Been a busy few days for us both, I guess," Walker said.

The death of Haley McWaid had exonerated Wendy and then some. Vic rehired her and promoted her to the weekend anchor spot. Other news agencies wanted to interview her, to talk about Dan Mercer and how she, the heroic reporter, had brought down not only a pedophile but a killer.

"Where is Investigator Tremont?" she asked.

"Retired."

"He's not finishing up the case?"

"What's there to finish up? Haley McWaid was murdered by Dan Mercer. Mercer is dead. That pretty much ends the case, don't you think? We will continue to look for Mercer's body, but I have other cases too--and who wants to try Ed Grayson for stamping out that sc.u.mbag anyway?"

"You're certain Dan Mercer did it?"

Walker frowned. "You're not?"

"I'm just asking."

"First off, it's not my case. It's Frank Tremont's. He seems pretty sure. But it's not totally over. We're digging into Dan Mercer's life. We're looking at any other missing-girl cases. I mean, if it wasn't for Haley's phone found in the room, we'd probably have never tied her to Dan. He could have been doing it for years, with many girls. Maybe other missing kids crossed his path, we just don't know. Still, I'm a county sheriff--and the crimes weren't even committed in my jurisdiction. The feds are on this."

They entered the rather pedestrian office of Tara O'Neill, the medical examiner. Wendy was grateful that they were in a room that looked more like a vice princ.i.p.al's office than anything having to do with human corpses. The two women had met before when Wendy covered local murders. Tara O'Neill was dressed in a sleek black dress--much better than scrubs--but what always surprised her about Tara was that she was shockingly gorgeous, albeit with a Morticia Addams vibe. Tara was tall with long, straight, too-black hair and a pale, calm, luminous face--a look that could be described as sort of ethereal goth.

"h.e.l.lo, Wendy."

She reached from behind her desk to shake hands. Her grip was stiff and formal.

"Hi, Tara."

"I'm not exactly sure why we need to talk privately like this," Tara said.

"Consider it a favor," Walker said.

"But, Sheriff, you don't even have jurisdiction here."

Walker spread his hands. "Do I really need to go through those channels?"

"No," Tara said. She sat down and invited them to do likewise. "What can I do for you?"

The chair was wood and designed for anything other than comfort. Tara sat with her back straight and waited, ever the consummate professional with a bedside manner that clearly worked best on the dead. The room could use a paint job, but as the old joke goes, Tara's patients never complained.

"Like I said on the phone," Walker said. "We want to hear all you have on Haley McWaid."

"Of course." Tara looked at Wendy. "Should we start with the identification process?"

"That would be great," Wendy said.

"First off, there is no doubt that the body found in Ringwood State Park belonged to the missing girl Haley McWaid. There was serious decay, but the skeleton was intact, as was the hair. In short, she looked very much like herself but with the skin gone. Would you like to see a photograph of the remains?"

Wendy flicked a glance at Walker. Walker looked like he might be sick.

"Yes," Wendy said.

Tara slid the photographs across her desk as if they were dinner menus. Wendy braced herself. She did not have a strong stomach when it came to gore. Even R-rated movies made her queasy. She risked one quick glance and turned away, but even in that second, horrible as it was, she could still see Haley McWaid's features in the horror of decay.

"Both parents, Ted and Marcia McWaid, insisted on seeing their daughter's body," O'Neill continued in a perfect monotone. "They both recognized their daughter and gave us positive identifications. We took it several steps further. The height and size of the skeleton matched. Haley McWaid had broken her hand when she was twelve--the metacarpal bone below what we commonly call the ring finger. The injury had healed but we could still see signs of it on an X-ray. And of course, we ran a DNA test from a sample provided by her sister, Patricia. The match was made. In short, there is no doubt about identification."

"How about a cause of death?"

Tara O'Neill folded her hands and put them on her desk. "Undetermined at this juncture."

"When do you think you'll know?"

Tara O'Neill reached across the desk and took back the photographs. "In truth," she said, "probably never."

She carefully slid the pictures back into the folder, closed it, put it to her right.

"Wait, you don't think that you'll ever determine a cause of death?"

"That's correct."

"Isn't that unusual?"

Tara O'Neill finally smiled. It was radiant and sobering at the same time. "Not really, no. Our society unfortunately is being raised on television shows where a medical examiner can work miracles. They look through a microscope and find all the answers. Sadly, that's not reality. For example, let's ask the question, was Haley McWaid shot? First--and this comes more from the crime scene technicians--no bullets were found at the scene. No bullets were found in the body either. I also ran X-rays and visuals to see if there were any unusual nicks or marks on the bones that might indicate a bullet wound. There were none. If that isn't complicated enough, I still can't definitely rule out a shooting. The bullet might not have struck bone. Since most of the body had decomposed, we wouldn't necessarily see any sign if it just pa.s.sed through tissue. So the most I can say is that there is no evidence of a shooting and that a shooting is unlikely. Are you following me?"

"Yes."

"Good. I would also conclude the same about a knife stabbing, but we just don't know for sure. If, for example, the perpetrator pierced an artery--"

"Yeah, I think I get that.

"And of course there are many more possibilities. The victim may have been suffocated--the cla.s.sic pillow over the face. Even in cases where the body is found after a few days rather than a few months it can be hard to determine suffocation for certain. But in this case, after spending most likely three months buried, it is virtually impossible. I am also running some specific drug tests to see if there is anything in her system, but when a body breaks down like this, the blood enzymes get released. It throws many tests out of whack. In lay terms, the body almost turns into something like alcohol as it breaks down. So even those drug tests on remaining tissue may prove unreliable. Haley's vitreous humor--that's the gel between the retina and the lens of the eye--had disintegrated, so we couldn't use that to look for drug traces either."

"So you can't even say for sure it's a murder?"

"I, as medical examiner, can't, no."

Wendy looked at Walker. He nodded. "We can. I mean, think about it. We don't even have a body on Dan Mercer. I've seen cases go to court where no body was found, and like Tara said, this is hardly uncommon with bodies found after this much time."

O'Neill rose, clearly indicating their dismissal. "Anything else?"

"Was she s.e.xually a.s.saulted?"

"Same answer: We just don't know."

Wendy stood. "I appreciate your time, Tara."

After another stiff, formal handshake, Wendy found herself back on Norfolk Street with Sheriff Walker.

"Did any of that help?" Walker asked her.

"No."

"I told you there was nothing here."

"So that's it? It's over?"

"Officially for this sheriff? Yeah."

Wendy looked down the street. "I keep hearing Newark is coming back."

"Just not here," Walker said.

"Yeah."

"How about you, Wendy?"

"What about me?"

"Is this case over for you?"

She shook her head. "Not quite yet."

"You want to tell me about it?"

She shook her head again. "Not quite yet."

"Fair enough." The big man shuffled his feet, his eyes on the pavement. "Can I ask you something else?"

"Sure."

"I feel like an a.s.s. I mean, the timing and all."

She waited.

"When this is over, when this all pa.s.ses in a few weeks"--Walker tried to raise his eyes to meet hers--"do you mind if I call you?"

The road suddenly seemed even more deserted. "You weren't kidding about timing."