Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Black Rock Falls
“Mornin’.” Wolfe greeted Jenna and Kane as they entered the morgue. “How are the cases out at the ranch going?”
Jenna grimaced and shook her head. “Slowly. I hope you and Norrell have found something interesting at the Larkins’ piggery.”
“We’re making progress and there’s a few things I know you’ll want to see.” Wolfe led the way to Norrell’s part of the building. The men’s boots clattered as they walked on the white tiled floor.
Norrell had her own team and hadn’t changed anyone since her arrival from Helena.
Her part of the building was very different from the morgue.
As they approached her laboratory Jenna could see the team working diligently.
Sifting through tons of soil dug from pigpens hadn’t been an easy job but was a necessary one as the Larkins were accused of feeding people to their pigs.
The only way of proving their theory was to look for evidence in the soil, as pigs ate everything but couldn’t digest some bone matter, teeth, or jewelry.
As Jenna, Kane, and Wolfe stepped into the examination room, the glass doors hissed shut behind them.
The usual strong smell of disinfectant and death had been replaced with the odor of disturbed earth.
As Jenna had expected the room to smell of pigs, she heaved a sigh of relief.
Norrell stood at the central workstation, her gloved hands resting on the edge of a tray filled with sieved soil, beside her a young man adjusted his glasses and nodded toward them, before stepping away. Jenna turned her attention to Norrell. “Do you want us to wear masks?”
“No, it’s not necessary. The soil has been washed and filtered.” Norrell indicated to a line of small evidence dishes. “You’ll want to see these.”
Jenna moved closer with Kane at her side. A chill ran down her spine as her gaze ran across bone fragments, teeth, a number of mismatched earrings, and a fragment of a gold bracelet with a heart attached. “Did all that come out of the first pigpen?”
“The reason this took so long is that we removed the dirt in layers and kept them separate.” Norrell leaned against the bench and crossed her arms over her chest. “These came from the bottom layer. Pigs churn the upper soil constantly, so we only find recent deposits there, but those items came from the bottom layer. That’s where things settle and the soil is more compacted.
So we could be talking about any time frame.
I’ll be doing tests to narrow this down, and since discovering these items, we’ll need to include the entire piggery as we don’t know if Larkin moved the animals around. ”
“Have you made any determination if they’re human or not?” Kane lifted his gaze to her. “I’m aware that pigs are similar to humans in many ways.”
“These are human.” Wolfe frowned at them. “It’s the proof we need to get search warrants for the house and the entire piggery.”
“How do you know they’re human?” Kane stared down at the evidence dishes and raised one eyebrow.
“This is a cortical bone fragment.” Norrell waved tweezers holding a piece of bone under the bright overhead lamp.
“It’s dense with a thickness only found in humans.
Pigs don’t have this structure. And these teeth.
” She indicated to the teeth in the small bowl.
“I’ve examined these under a microscope.
The enamel is unmistakable and one has a filling made from composite, another amalgam. That alone rules out animal remains.”
Uneasiness tightened Jenna’s stomach. She looked from Wolfe to Norrell. “How many victims are we talking about?”
“Undetermined at the moment.” Norrell blew out a sigh. “We have a ton of soil to sieve through yet, but right now we have teeth from at least three different individuals, possibly more. The earrings alone suggest up to four separate females.”
“With these bone fragments”—Kane leaned closer, studying the small pieces—“how can you tell they’re not from the same person?”
“The larger pieces suggest different stages of skeletal maturity. This fragment here”—Norrell pointed with the tweezers—“the growth plate is fully fused, so that suggests an adult but this one”—she lifted a smaller thinner piece of bone—“is unfused. So I would suggest late teens, maybe early twenties. It’s unusual in such a small sample to find two different age profiles. ”
“There are other fragments that are being examined at the moment.” Wolfe leaned against the counter and pushed his hands into the pockets of his white coat.
“We found fragments in different layers of soil. The deeper ones suggest bodies were deposited in the pen at different times. This is crucial evidence to prove the Larkins have been using the pigpen to dispose of bodies over a long period of time.” He turned his attention to Jenna.
“And strangely enough, no one has gone missing in Black Rock Falls that we haven’t investigated. What do y’all make of that?”
“Worst-case scenario”—Kane raised both eyebrows—“funerals are expensive, and maybe Larkin is running some type of funeral scam. You would be surprised how many old folks die in homes and the relatives either can’t afford to bury them or would opt for a quick cremation.
These people wouldn’t require a regular funeral.
Larkin takes the bodies and feeds them to his pigs.
It’s a win-win situation for him, isn’t it?
He’d get the money for the body disposal and a free meal for his pigs. ”
Trying not to gag, Jenna pressed a hand over her mouth.
As her stomach slowly settled, she stared at Kane in disbelief.
“I’ll check all the local advertisements for quick cremations or whatever when we get back to the office but that doesn’t cover the young girls, does it?
This must go deeper than that. What if Larkin is a serial killer and brings his bodies home? ”
“We’ll know the range of ages when we run more tests.” Norrell looked from one to the other. “Maybe it’s a little of both.”
“Can you walk us through the tests?” Kane straightened.
“Sure.” Norrell set the bone fragment down with care.
“As you can see, the team cleans and catalogs every piece, then we examine them under a microscope to confirm species, although I’m already confident these are human.
Finding teeth is the silver dollar. The pulp inside a tooth is an excellent source of mitochondrial DNA.
This will give us the sex of the victim.
As you know, Shane’s laboratory has everything available to create profiles from DNA samples. ”
“If we find anything viable, we’ll run it through Snapshot.” Wolfe nodded slowly. “This gives a very reliable image of the person. These can easily be matched through facial recognition to any missing persons on file.”
A shiver went down Jenna’s spine. The thought that Raven might have been one of those bone fragments if they hadn’t arrived in time chilled her to the bone.
She moved her attention over the small pieces of evidence.
Those earrings belong to someone who never left that pen alive.
She lifted her gaze to Wolfe and Norrell.
“You’re doing incredible work here but this has to be one of the saddest, most horrific cases I’ve ever seen.
I’m not sure if I can sleep at night knowing that people might have been fed alive to the pigs.
When we find out who they are, how can I break it to their families? ”
“Don’t worry about it now, Jenna.” Norrell squeezed her arm. “We’ll get you answers. No one is going to get away with murder.”