Waking the Dead Part 7

The finger extended only halfway before the woman caught herself, tucking her hand chastely back at her side. "Since my first response is both unprofessional and unladylike, I'm going to forget you said that."

Cait gaped. She couldn't help it. If the ME was helping Kristy break a bad habit where-let's face it-she herself had failed, more power to him. But the fact that he'd managed to do so only because he possessed a Y chromosome and her a.s.sistant had the hots for him was a bit hard to swallow.

Shaking off the reaction, she indicated the saw and towel on the counter Barnes had brought with him. "Deputy Barnes needs the blood tested for species identification."

"Sure." She strolled into the room to survey the instrument before looking up at Cait. "Do you want me to run the Ouchterlony or crossover electroph.o.r.esis?"

"Run the Ouchterlony test. If I'm not here in the morning, call me first thing to let me know whether you have results yet."

"You got it." The tech picked up the materials with her gloved hands and headed back into the adjoining room.

Barnes's gaze followed the woman until she disappeared. Cait didn't blame him. Few people knew what to make of Kristy.

"So what else do you have so far?" Mentally she was calculating how long it would take her to examine the saw marks on each set of remains. All day, she realized with a sense of resignation. Which would push her latent exam back until at least tomorrow or later. But this was probably a better use of her time. Whatever tool had been used to decapitate the victims would have left certain evidence. The same couldn't be said about whoever had handled the bones prior to their being found in those bags. Finding a latent on the skeletal remains was going to be a long shot.

The deputy's attention returned to her. "It's been slow going with the ranger stations. Most of their help is on the other side of the state, fighting that forest fire."

She nodded grimly. Whenever the TV was on, local news was providing updates. "So the stations are short-staffed."

"I've got officers at various stations helping with the file review. And I've been following up on the offenders myself." He itched his upper lip as if the newly grown mustache was bothering him. "Been concentrating on locals or those who live in the state for now."

"It's a starting point. Let me know if you want help."

"Will do." He pushed away from the counter.

As the deputy headed toward the door, she stashed her purse, then dug out her cell phone and put it on the desk in the corner of the room. If the detectives she'd contacted today started to return her messages, she didn't want to miss their calls.

Then she took her pack into the next room and started to withdraw the soil samples. "I have a present for you."

Kristy glanced up from her work. And immediately groaned theatrically. "No f.u.c.king way. I just got caught up on the other ones!"

"These are special." She shied away from the memory of the scene earlier that day with Sharper. "But they can wait until you finish the plates and treat the long bones in each set of remains with Acryloid B-72." The preservative would give the bones an artificially glossy nonporous surface suitable for dusting for latents.

Cait looked through the contents of the shelves on the other side of the room until she found a pair of magnifying goggles, which she set on the nearby cart holding the stereomicroscope and scanning digital camera. "You owe me a buck, by the way. Two if you don't want me to tell Michaels Steve about your lapse." Carefully she began pulling the cart across the room. That was the pain of temporary lab quarters. Nothing was ever where she needed it.

Though her back was to the other woman, she heard the smirk in her voice. "Turns out he has a love-hate relationship with my language. When it's dirty talk, accompanied by a little soft bondage . . ."

Cait hurried her pace a bit. "I'm not listening."

". . . he has a surprisingly high tolerance for it. As a matter of fact, he asked me to say . . ."

"La-la-la-la-la . . . can't hear you." She escaped with the cart into the other room while Kristy was still laughing.

She manipulated the cart over to the first gurney, which held the remains of female A. Adjusting the goggles over her eyes, she switched on the lights on either side of them and then picked up the camera to scan in digital pictures. When she was finished, she'd hook the camera to the stereomicroscope and use it to display the pictures with maximum resolution on the monitor.

At least her time spent with the victim would elicit nothing more risque than the secrets behind the saw marks on the severed vertebrae.

That was infinitely preferable to hearing the details of Kristy's love life.

At five minutes to eight, Cait followed the hostess through the restaurant to the table for two in the corner. Marin Andrews lowered her menu as Cait approached. "I'm glad you could make it. Hope you like Thai food." She paused, did a quick once-over of Cait's figure. "And that you eat."

Stifling the quick flare of irritation, Cait picked up a menu. "My starving-model days have been behind me for a decade."

The sheriff grunted. "You won't be sorry. The chef here is excellent."

Several minutes pa.s.sed before Andrews put down her menu, signaled the waiter. Cait held off until after he'd scribbled down their orders and hurried away before asking the question that had been plaguing her since Andrews's call a couple hours ago. "Your call sounded urgent."

The sheriff raised her brows over the rim of her water gla.s.s as she drank. "Didn't mean for it to. I wanted to talk to you before tomorrow morning and thought dinner would give us the time and privacy we need." It was obvious she'd come from the office herself. She was still in uniform.

"What's going on tomorrow morning?"

"Press conference."

Of course. Cait sat back in her chair, a measure of cynicism rising. Sharper had said something a couple days ago about how little information had been released to the media. She'd been surprised at the time that Andrews had restrained from regular press updates.

It was another reminder that the woman was no fool. And that she had a plan that reached far beyond this case.

Whatever her reasons, the sheriff's restraint so far pleased Cait. There was nothing worse than a press-hungry law enforcement officer spilling details that she'd prefer not being made public.

When Andrews began speaking, her words mirrored Cait's thoughts closely. "I've been talking to the press regularly, but putting them off with any real details until we could be certain what we were dealing with." The expression in her eyes was shrewd. "I don't want to make something public that will later be proven untrue. But media speculation can be just as damaging, so I want to be careful. I'll share some of the facts, and your expert opinion. So we need to separate out the information we have so I can decide what's safe to go public with."

Cait leaned back as the waiter returned with their soft drinks. When he'd moved away, she said, "I a.s.sume Deputy Barnes updated you about the discovery he delivered to the lab today." At the woman's nod, she went on. "The species identification results won't be available until tomorrow, but I can tell you unequivocally that the saw your officer found isn't the instrument used to decapitate these victims, although the instrument used was a bone saw."

If the sheriff was disappointed at the news, it didn't show. "You're sure of that?"

"Absolutely. I conducted saw mark a.n.a.lysis on the serrated areas of the bones. When I examine the characteristics of the kerf walls and floors in the bones, I'm able to get a fairly accurate estimation of the size, shape, set, power, and direction of a saw." The sheriff was leaning forward, listening intently. "The tool used is hand powered. Ten TPI-teeth per inch. A rectangular blade. The perp is right-handed. And here's the good news." Cait paused, reliving the satisfaction she'd experienced when she'd made the discovery. "The same blade was used on all of the victims. There's a slight imperfection on one of the teeth."

"So if the UNSUB has the saw in his possession, it links him to the murders."

She nodded. "But that isn't information you want to release to the public."

"Of course not." The sheriff broke off as their food was delivered. Then she picked up her fork and started in on her seafood curry. "Neither are the beetles. So let's talk about what we can safely release."

"The cave's a secondary scene." Cait tried her stir fry, found it delicious. "The newest set of remains was probably put there sometime in the last several months. The manner of disposal has your department treating the deaths as suspicious." She'd had plenty of experience over the years putting together case information for press releases. Unfortunately, her advice was often ignored. Law enforcement officials had to deal with local politics, which sometimes edged out caution when it came to releasing facts to the public. "The deaths are connected, and you're following up on that link as vigorously as possible. You don't feel the residents are in immediate danger, but they should remain cautious and report any suspicious activity to your office, yada yada yada."

Andrews chewed thoughtfully. "That isn't going to be enough to satisfy them."

She was right. But then, nothing would be enough to satisfy a press corps hungry for details about the most sensational case to hit the area in decades. The trick was to keep them from realizing just how sensational it was before the investigators knew themselves. "If pushed, I suppose you could tell them we're matching the remains with persons reported missing, and every attempt is being made to identify the individuals so they can eventually be returned to their families."

Reaching for her gla.s.s, the sheriff nodded. "That should do it. Now why don't you tell me about your progress along those lines."

Cait filled her in on the phone calls she'd made that day, adding, "I've talked to three detectives so far. All have promised to get me identifier information that might help me match the missing person to one of our remains. When I get to the point where I think we're close to doing so, I'll ask for DNA samples to compare with the ones I took."

The other woman paused in the act of bringing her fork to her mouth. "You can get DNA from bones?"

"If they aren't too degraded." One corner of her mouth pulled up wryly. "One thing we have to thank our offender for. He left us specimens in excellent condition."

"And went to a lot of trouble to do so," Andrews said, chewing slowly. "The question is, why? Why not bury them? Or chop them in smaller pieces and drop them in a lake or river somewhere? This process you described, the one where he has the beetles cleaning the bones . . . why bother? There have to be quicker ways. Easier ways. He goes to a lot of trouble."

"Burial is a lot of trouble if you're digging a hole deep enough to keep animals from getting at them," Cait pointed out. "The process he follows may be due to easy access or experience. Or it may be part of a ritual that only makes sense to him. It does go a long way in helping me establish the basis of a profile for him."

Andrews wiped her mouth with her napkin, the action surprisingly dainty. "I could write the basis of a profile myself. If everything you say is true, we already know that this UNSUB is one sick son of a b.i.t.c.h."

The next morning, while Kristy put in a call to Deputy Barnes with the results of the Ouchterlony and the saw-mark a.n.a.lysis tests, Cait began to dust the preserved bones of each set of remains with black magnetic fluorescent powder, using a magnetic wand. She fitted her protective goggles into place before picking up the handheld ultraviolet lamp and flicking off the lights.

She'd just snapped on the lamp when she heard her a.s.sistant call, "Don't you dare start without me."

"Bring in some black backing cards," Cait called back. She began to shine the alternate light source over the dusted bones.

Kristy all but skidded into the room, slapping the cards on the counter with one hand as she pulled up her set of goggles. "Didn't I tell you not to start without me? You don't listen very well."

The words were eerily similar to ones she'd heard a few days earlier.

You don't follow orders very well.

The stray thought brought Sharper to the forefront of her mind, after she'd done a decent job for the last several hours of not considering him at all. "You never said . . ." Slowly she examined the ulna. "What'd you discover with those soil samples I brought you yesterday?"

"Well, a couple were certainly the closest matches you've brought so far."

Her hand holding the lamp jerked slightly. Drawing in a deep breath, Cait steadied her grasp and strove for a level tone. "Is it within the statistically significant range?"

"No, they were still higher in sulfur than the element percentage in the sediment found in some of the bags. Just not nearly as high as the first ones I tested. Sample one was the closest of them."

Sample one. Cait searched her memory. That would have been taken from the southeast corner of Sharper's property. Nowhere close to the spot she'd found the springs, right before Sharper had discovered her. It was looking more likely that her first deduction was a bust. The match for the soil sample in the bags was acidic, but wouldn't be found in the immediate vicinity of a hot springs.

"What's that?" The woman crowded closer, pointing with one gloved finger.

"Just a smudge, probably from our latex gloves. Without the skull vaults, our chances of finding latents reduce dramatically," Cait cautioned her a.s.sistant. The long smooth surface of the craniums was a perfect deposit for fingerprints. But it remained to be seen just how clever this UNSUB was. His hiding spot had, after all, been discovered. He would have needed to get those bones out of the beetles' enclosure. To deposit them in the bag. Common sense would have him using gloves, but anything could have happened. A bone could have been nearly overlooked. Picked up and slipped in the bag when he wasn't thinking.

Seven victims. Chances were he'd made a mistake with at least one of them.

But the first set of preserved bones was minus even the smallest partial latent. So was the second.

By the time they'd moved to the third gurney, Kristy's enthusiasm had visibly dampened. "If we don't find anything on these bones, we could try others, right?"

"Yes. But the smaller the bone the less surface area for a full print. Or even a useable partial. Better cross your fingers."

Hours later Cait straightened for a moment working her shoulders wearily. It'd be tough to choose whether her back or her feet ached more, and they still had two sets of remains left.

Kristy spoke around a yawn. "You were sloppy with that magnetic powder on this one. There's some clear up on the upper tip of the scapula. See?"

"I see it." Automatically, Cait moved the UV lamp to the area her a.s.sistant had indicated. "But there's no powder there." There was, however, definitely fluorescence. Clicking off the UV lamp, she strode over to the cart holding the digital scanning camera and spectrometer. "Turn on the overhead lights, will you?"

She brought up the pictures she'd taken yesterday, and found the set of remains in question. Exchanging her UV goggles for the magnifiers, she flipped through the images until she found the spot in question. Magnified it as much as she could without losing resolution.

The two women studied the monitor silently. "I don't see anything," Kristy finally admitted.

"Me, either." Adrenaline spiked as she reached for her UV goggles and lamp again. "Get the lights."

Once Kristy had switched them off, Cait retrained the lamp onto the spot they'd found. "Might be brush marks on the surface." What the h.e.l.l? She crouched down and looked at the smudge from different angles. With gloved fingers on either side of the scapula, she turned the bone over. And froze.

"Holy s.h.i.t."

"f.u.c.k a duck," Kristy breathed. The two of them stared, nonplussed. "What the h.e.l.l is that?"

"Some kind of picture. Drawings," Cait corrected herself. "You brought the UV lens for the digital scanning camera?"

"Yeah." But the other woman didn't move right away. Both of them were rooted in place, peering at the miniature scene in green and blue that they'd uncovered. "Is that some sort of new fad, a bone tattoo?" Kristy sounded only half kidding. "I mean, I've got a tat on my left a.s.s cheek, product of a misspent youth, but this . . ."

"It'd be sort of a b.i.t.c.h getting it." Cait didn't know what exactly this was. Had never run across it before. But it ripped wide open the tiny window she'd previously had of the perp's mindset.

She couldn't stem the flood of excitement at the thought. "Get that UV lens." Without waiting for her a.s.sistant's return, she turned to the next gurney. Gingerly flipped the scapula over and aimed the lamp at it.

The pink and yellow images on the bone sprang into relief. Similar technique but different pictures this time. A feeling of urgency had her moving to the next gurney. And the one after that.

"I've got it." Several minutes later, Kristy hurried back in the room, words tumbling from her lips. "Was afraid for a few minutes there that I'd forgotten it, but I found it behind the . . . What'd you find? Did you check them all?"

Cait rose, still slightly dazed. "Yes." Her mind was still reeling with possibilities. "And each set of remains has a different scene painted on the posterior of the scapula. Except near the inferior angle of each, there's the same image."

Kristy crowded closer for a better look. And Cait found it difficult to tear her own gaze away from the tiny skull painted at the base of the bone.

Chapter 7.

"Okay." Barnes was the first to speak in the darkened lab. "What is it exactly we're looking at?"

The deputy, Andrews, and Cait were grouped around the computer monitor. It was past nine o'clock. Cait had shooed Kristy from the lab hours earlier. There was no reason the woman should have to hang around until the sheriff could get there.

Using the remote, Cait clicked to the next set of images on the screen. "We found these when we were testing the remains for latents."

"You found them?" Andrews glanced at her. "Where?"

"These are scanned pictures of the painted images located on the back of the right scapula-shoulder blade-on each victim." She stopped, waited for the reactions of her audience.

But both stared at her in stunned silence. Barnes found his voice first. "What the h.e.l.l-you just turned the bone over and found a little mural on it?"

"It was a bit more involved," Cait said dryly, "but yeah, something like that. Wait. I'll show you." Swiftly she handed out two pair of UV goggles, turned on the lamp, and demonstrated for them with the scapula from male D. "I'd done a thorough visual examination prior to beginning the latent testing. Nothing could be seen with the naked eye, not even with the help of an ALS. We wouldn't have caught this at all, but I prefer working with the fluorescent magnetic powder in latent exams."

"Fluorescent . . ." The sheriff still seemed to be searching for words even as she stared at the scapula with rapt attention. "You're saying these pictures only show up under a black light?"

Cait switched off the UV lamp and nodded. "I spent a couple hours researching it. Didn't know whether the substance was ink or paint at first, but I tested it, and it appears to be paint. There are several online sources for this kind of thing. It's billed as invisible paint because you only see evidence of it under certain types of lighting. They use it for black light posters, haunted houses, that sort of thing. By mixing the paints, it's possible to achieve any color desired. There are a slew of manufacturers, but the paints have varying degrees of transparency, which is the element that renders them impossible to detect without a UV light."