Chapter Sixteen #2
“You be careful, Elizabeth. I’m not a woman, but you are. All the eyes have been female, so he has a preference. I’d prefer not to find your icy-blue eyes in a jar, in a miscellaneous skull, or missing in general.”
Yeah, her either.
Since she was using them.
This was creepy, but she couldn’t back down now. Elizabeth had other concerns weighing on her.
“The person in the casket, Steph Lewis, if that is her, looks like her clothing was disturbed. Her skirt is messed up.”
Oh, hell.
He knew what she was saying.
“Necrophilia? Well, at least your profiler isn’t shocked by any of this. He called it, if I remember correctly. The skulls also had semen trace on them.”
Yeah, he did, and they did.
There was no shock there. Ethan had seen just about everything in his career with the FBI.
“Do we have anything on the semen?” she asked.
He hated to give her bad news.
“We’re still running it against databases, but so far, no hits in CODIS, the BOP, or anywhere else we normally find results. If this person has never committed a crime, or had a DNA sample taken, we’re SOL.”
Yeah, she was shit out of luck a lot when it came to cases. Why not one more?
“Thanks, Christopher. Run it against older cases. You know, cold cases. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
He could do that.
“On it, Sweetness.”
She didn’t doubt that.
“I have to get the scene covered. Be careful,” she said. “Use the tablet to find us. My tracker is active.”
He would.
When he hung up, she kept moving around, and that’s when she thought she saw something. As she began moving toward the next grave, Shadow put himself between her and it, and he began barking like a lunatic.
EVERYONE looked over.
The big dog was not happy, and at first, they all thought it was him losing his shit on her.
Only, that wasn’t the case.
He was focused on the trees. So much so, that she had to grab him as something moved in the distance, running away from where they were.
When Ivan went to follow, she stopped him.
“Oh, hell, no. This is the making of a horror movie. Investigators go into the trees, and they end up dead. We’re not chasing jack shit during the dark on this case.
I know a trap when I see it. Shadow knows one, too, apparently.
We’re staying out in the open, because I just promised I’d keep my eyeballs in my goddamn head. ”
That was the smartest thing he’d ever heard.
To.
Be.
Honest.
She crouched down, and she hugged the dog. His fur was standing up down his back, and she didn’t doubt he’d heard or seen something.
“Hey, good boy,” she said. “We’re not going into the trees. You’re a good boy for alerting,” she said. “Was that the person that hurt Jonathan?” she asked, almost like he could answer.
But he couldn’t.
Ivan patted the dog on the head, and Elizabeth laughed at that.
“He’s growing on you.”
Ivan sighed.
“Shut up.”
That was all she had to hear.
“We need to stay back by the grave,” she admitted. “Everyone stick together. I’m not losing anyone on day one. We already have enough issues.”
No one argued there.
“I have something on Steph Lewis,” Gene said, from where he was sitting with his back against a giant tombstone, so no one could sneak up behind him.
Elizabeth headed his way, her hand on Shadow’s collar to make sure he didn’t run into the trees. Because then, she was going after him.
“What did you find?” she asked, as Shadow laid down next to Gene, and the man began petting him.
He shared.
“Well, how’s this for weird? She was a diabetic, and she accidentally overdosed on insulin.”
That hung there.
“I wonder how long she was a diabetic?” she asked out loud, not really expecting an answer.
Gene had the autopsy on the tablet screen.
“No clue, but this made me think about Lory Vanbruggen. She was overdosed, too. Then we had two hit-and-runs. What if this nut OD’d her with insulin?
That could kill her. Ethan and I once had a case where the killer was a nurse, and she was an angel of death.
She was pumping people full of insulin, and it’s almost impossible to catch because it dissipates in the system almost immediately. We got lucky and found a syringe.”
She thought about it.
“I mean, it fits. What else do we know about her?” she asked.
Gene was working on social media.
“Well, how about this? She worked for the church.”
That made her raise an eyebrow.
“Pardon?”
He nodded.
“You heard me right. Steph Lewis works as the secretary to the church. That’s also why she was buried on this side in a family plot. Her whole family must be part of the church.”
Well, hell.
They had bodies taken from this cemetery, a caretaker of this cemetery, and now a woman who worked for the church that owned this cemetery.
That gave her a focal point, and just might be where this was all centered. Ethan had said she needed to find the connection to get this dude, and this might be it.
That was a few too many incidents that were tied to one singular place.
“Yeah, that’s not going to be a coincidence.”
Gene didn’t think so either.
“I’ll see if everyone is tied to the church in a way. If it is, we might have a situation. I know that you and Ethan don’t think that Jeffrey Von Gunter is behind this, but what if he is, and he’s so good at faking it, he’s made us miss something?”
She didn’t know.
The bottom line was that he could be faking it. He’d have to be a damn good actor, but it was possible. Anything was when you were chasing a watcher and collector.
“I’ll keep that in the brain and let it bounce around,” she said. “I’ll talk to Ethan. I know I told you to call him, but I’m going to do the deed. I just need to know about the other two victims who Chris ID’d.”
Well, they knew who could help them there.
“MATE?”
Her assistant materialized beside her.
“I need you to find out how someone died for me. Chris just ID’d her. I already know how Lory Vanbruggen died. Now, tell me how Alina died.”
MATE hummed.
It didn’t take her long. She went into Chris’s drive, and found her details. Then, she found the autopsy from the ME’s office.
“Alina Mussen was a nurse. She died around six months ago when she had a car accident.”
They waited.
“Her car, with her in it, was found in a ditch. She died of blunt force trauma from a vehicular incident.”
Elizabeth was curious.
“Go into the police system, and see what the detectives who handled this said about it. Because we had two victims, Penny Rich, and Joan Gehert get run down by a car. Now, we have another woman who was in a vehicular accident? That’s looking a little too suspicious for me.”
MATE went silent for a few seconds, and then, she shared what she’d found.
“I’m in,” she said. “The detective running the case has in his report that there was trace paint from another vehicle. It was inconclusive, though.”
Gene wasn’t buying it.
“I’m betting she was run off the road. Another ‘accident’ which gave this lunatic access to her body. That’s my bet on all of this. We do have a killer, but he’s just smart enough to make sure he doesn’t give us his DNA or too much evidence.”
She did too.
It was certainly looking like Chris wouldn’t have to leave anything out of the autopsy when it came to the embalming. Because if it walked like a killer, and acted like a killer, it wasn’t an innocent person.
Only, there was one sure-fire way to find out if this was definitely more.
“We’re going to need warrants signed on them, too. That’s why I wanted everyone on that list sent over. Update the judge’s office via email. I need the warrants to exhume for Joan, Alina, Penny, and Lory. He left Steph out in the open, so she’s free game.”
Gene knew what that meant.
“Tomorrow, their families are going to get wind of this, and we’re going to be the most hated people on the planet.”
Oh, she was aware, but she was accustomed to playing the villain role when need be.
No one wanted their family’s grave defiled, but if they were right, someone had already defiled them.
Like Steph Lewis.
“We’ll get the warrants easily,” Elizabeth admitted. “There’s no judge out there who isn’t going to see three vehicular incidents, a drug OD, and my name on them and fight it. We’ll get them.”
Gene didn’t doubt it.
“I’ll send the update email over. It’s after dark, so we won’t have them until tomorrow.”
She was aware.
Only, it was still only day one, so she had time. It wasn’t like this would escalate that much faster.
Right?
Except the shit was getting deeper, and she knew it.
“Now, I have to call my profiler, and see if he can riddle me something more. I’ll make sure he doesn’t lose his nut,” she said, pulling out her phone. “MATE, how are we doing with the search I asked you to do on the ME?” she asked.
Why?
Well, he’d done a few of the autopsies, and she was covering her bases.
MATE was to the point.
“It’s a deep search. Do you want the results right now? Or when I’ve concluded?”
She could wait.
“I don’t need it now. I do need one thing,” she admitted. “Can you compile me a list of the funeral homes that embalmed the victims?” she asked. “They’d be on the reports from the ME’s office on who signed for release.”
Callen knew where she was taking that.
“We’re going to be visiting funeral homes, huh?” he asked, knowing his wife.
She nodded.
“I just want to cover my bases. If we open those coffins tomorrow, and the heads are all intact, and they weren’t violated postmortem, then the person is fucking with me, and those eyeballs came out earlier.
That’s a different angle, and the only way they could have been taken is then between the MEs handling and the funeral.
The funeral staff would have noticed missing eyes, and reported it. So...”
Callen knew what that meant. It would be someone who handled the bodies last.
The funeral homes.
“I can do that, Elizabeth,” MATE said. “Your other husband is on his way. The techs just left the morgue. They should be here shortly,” MATE admitted, trying to pet the dog.
It was watching her, and Shadow was confused.