Chapter Seven #6
That was for damn sure. Only, she needed to know who was the bad guy, and who wasn’t. That meant making a call to someone who could help her.
She pulled out her phone and phoned an expert to help her figure this out. She needed to know one thing.
When Tony answered, she went there.
“How old are the skulls?” she asked. “Is there a way you can tell me anything about them, like how long they’ve been out of the ground?”
He laughed.
Yeah, he was accustomed to questions like this from Elizabeth, especially when she didn’t have a full body to get forensics from on a case.
“I mean, I can try, but they were boiled. The flesh was pulled off, and the rest was boiled off. There are stress fractures from hot water. We might have another eater. I haven’t seen teeth marks yet, but I’ve just started looking at them.”
She hated when he called cannibals that.
Why?
It was three days beyond nasty, and the last thing anyone wanted to hear in reference to a victim.
Tony, as per usual, was being Tony.
“Cannibal,” she corrected. “Don’t be a nut.”
Then, she went there, trying to think of another way she could get the information from the man. Sometimes, you had to change up the way you were asking the question for the doctors to give something up.
“If you were going to guess how long they’ve been in that room, what would you say? Guess for me,” she said, knowing he absolutely would.
In the background, they heard Chris.
“REALLY?” he asked, loudly. “Are you kidding me with the guessing?”
No, she wasn’t.
A girl had to use whatever she could to get a case solved.
PERIOD.
So instead, she opted to ignore the ME’s protests.
“Speculate, because I’m trying to eliminate a suspect,” she said, explaining, even though she ran this shitshow. Elizabeth owed no one an explanation.
Tony considered it.
“I’m going to say somewhere between two to three years. They were discolored from the light hitting them. When they were fleshy, they were pure white. Sunlight ages the bone, and there is definitely discoloration. They were more yellowed than a fresh set.”
Ethan knew what his wife was thinking.
“Slater acquired the building recently, so that meant they were likely there before he obtained it.”
She nodded.
That was what she was thinking. If they were there longer, she could eliminate one person from her suspect list.
“One skull was still pale white,” Tony said.
Yeah, but that wouldn’t explain access to the building months ago from a man who inherited it from his father’s previous business deal. She couldn’t connect him to it before the present, and that made him very low on the suspect list.
He didn’t find the victims’ eyes, so she could take him off her list of ‘he who found it, left it’.
It just didn’t fit.
Also, his dad had died a year ago, and a new skull that was pure white meant recent, so that cleared his father.
There was no way he climbed out of his grave, did this, and went back.
The Slater’s didn’t fit.
This was a case of wrong place, wrong time, but the building version.
They had a secret dumping ground, where the killer likely assumed it would stay hidden. Whoever had created his little sexual memorial likely didn’t think the building would be sold—or utilized.
“Thanks, Tony. Keep going with the skulls. Tell Chris to keep working on the eyes.”
He would.
“He said to stay out of trouble because you tend to get into it,” Tony offered, passing on the message.
Wasn’t that the truth?
Well, what fun would that be?
“Yeah, I gotta be me. That’s not changed in forever, so tell him not to hold his breath.”
When she hung up, Ivan turned in his seat to share what he’d overheard—or in this case, hadn’t.
“Nothing weird went on when you were inside with your interview. Well, the attorney gave off a vibe. He ran in like his sphincter was on fire.”
Uriel actually laughed.
“Meat eaters,” he joked.
Elizabeth slapped him on the arm.
“Cut it out, granola hippy. Some of us like a steak now and again. Don’t judge.”
He just winked at her.
Because of all that transpired, Elizabeth was to the point. She had a top suspect, solely based on his behavior.
“I told Gene that I want the lawyer run. He looked twitchy,” she admitted, as Gene held out the business card.
“We’ll run this for DNA too. Mine and Gene’s will have to be excluded, but we have the attorney’s now.
Thanks, Devon, for making Mr. Sweaty give me a business card,” she said to no one in particular.
The man had helped in ways he’d never know.
“What do you want to do next?” Callen said. “We have the address ready to go for the man’s security firm.”
She wasn’t shocked.
“Hold onto that. I’m going to mull this around a bit.
We’re going to head to the cemetery to talk to the groundskeeper first, since that’s where people are being buried.
Put the security company on our list of interviews.
I need to consider if the person who did the drive-bys needs to be on my list.”
They could do that.
“I know that they’d be able to access the building at all hours of the night since there are no windows in most places, but it seems too…I don’t know, obvious. If we do have to interview, maybe best-case scenario, they saw someone there and can give us an idea of what they look like.”
They could do that.
Elizabeth had a process, so they were going to abide by that.
Their fingers were crossed.
“I’ve also got to call Gabe. Devon said he is in our circle, but I vaguely recall seeing him. Then again, I’m usually miserable at social functions, and trying to find an escape route.”
Yeah, that was the truth.
Ivan chimed in.
“I’ve seen him before,” he said. “The last time was when we were at that fancy thing you had with the president two years ago. He was on the guest list. We always get the list so we can make sure no one is there that you’ve pissed off as of late.”
She laughed.
Oh, well, sue her.
She pissed off a lot of people.
Currently, there were some senators gunning for her since she took down a group of them for trading kiddie porn.
Which was weird since that was her goddamn job.
“Thanks, Ivan,” she admitted. “Still, I need another character review. Gabe knows everyone, and if he is rich, and his father was rich, they likely rubbed elbows with Gabe or gave him money. You know how he likes a political donation.”
Callen was curious.
“Did we donate to his campaigns?” he asked, not sure if they had or not. They mostly stayed out of politics.
When you were in The District, you were either up to your eyeballs in politics, or the antithesis.
She was the antithesis.
Her opinion stayed out of her work, and for good reason. She hated almost all politicians just based on how scummy they tended to be.
Case in point, the pedo senators.
At his question, she actually laughed.
“Hell no! He’s a dick. Who would let him run this country?” she asked. “You know how he is.”
From where Gene sat, he was now curious.
“Uh, didn’t you all vote for him not once, but twice?” he inquired.
Yeah, they did.
Why?
The devil you knew.
PERIOD.
“I didn’t say I made the brightest decisions,” she stated, making Gene laugh.
Because they were burning daylight, Elizabeth looked at her watch.
“We just have to get a line on this killer. Get me to the cemetery. I’m about to wander around with the dead, and see if I can figure this shit out.”
Her husband went there.
Someone was feeling brave.
“Oh, you love the dead,” Callen said. “I hear you calling them by name at home. What did you call the one? Oh, yeah. You goddamn ghosts?”
Yeah, that was exactly what she called them.
Instead of going there, she flipped him off.
Yeah, they were in her goddamn house, and that was the last thing she wanted, or needed.
Instead of saying anything to him, because he knew what he did, she focused on the case.
They needed one important piece of information.
If someone could just tell them who owned the skulls and eyeballs, they could go deeper into this case and find a lunatic.
Without it, she was on hold.
And that gave the person behind this time to raise some hell.
Oh, and that was never good for her.
EVER.