Chapter Twenty #2
She glanced over at her husband, the ME.
“Did they collect samples?”
He nodded.
“Back then, DNA wasn’t done as much. We both know how hit or miss it was. I’m assuming you want me to get it sent here, so that Chrissy can test it to see if it matches our perp?”
What choice did she have? Chrissy was right. She couldn’t let forensics slide.
She nodded.
“It’s a long shot, but if I need those victims exhumed, at some point, that’s going to give me the catalyst to get it done. If we can prove that this person has been doing this for almost two decades, that will get a judge to be a little more willing to sign off on twenty-year exhumations.”
Chris agreed.
“Any word on the current ones?”
She was to the point.
“Ethan called and checked for us. It’s coming, so be ready to be called out for that. We’ll have four victims coming in, and they go back a few months, so the remains…”
He knew what she was saying.
Someone was not likely going back to the hotel for a nap anytime soon. They couldn’t have it both ways. As a Fed, he had to be there for exhumation.
They were going to be rotting corpses that he was responsible for the second the ground was opened.
Oh, his world was so much fun. The one thing he hated more than anything was exhumations that went back and yielded rotting flesh.
That was a smell you didn’t forget, and it was locked inside a casket, festering.
It.
Was.
Gross.
“We’ll be ready. Hopefully, I can get some downtime in,” he said. “Alexi will let me know if he needs me back here.”
Oh, boy.
She was going to have to tell him sooner rather than later.
“What about Steph Lewis’s remains. What can you tell me?” she asked.
Chris nodded at Chrissy.
The floor was hers.
“She was definitely defiled postmortem,” she said. “We swabbed, and we found semen. I also ran it, and it’s a direct match for the semen you found in that room with the skulls. Your mad masturbator is also your coffin humper.”
Elizabeth laughed because…God. It was good to have Chrissy back.
“Well, no shock there,” she said. “How about any trace?” she asked.
Chrissy shook her head.
“I swabbed the shit out of that coffin, not literally, of course. There are fingerprints, but when we ran them, they came back and don’t scream killer.”
She lifted a brow.
“Who? Maybe I should decide that.”
Chrissy picked up a piece of paper, and rolled toward her boss to share.
“We found the victim’s mother, her father, two siblings, and then the funeral home staff.
A Hector and Travis Del Rio. I ran them, and they are both in the system, but not for anything major.
Travis has a DUI, and Hector once had to access a military base to pick up a deceased soldier, so he was fingerprinted. ”
Elizabeth heard the names, and that piqued her interest. Yes, they were the funeral homeowners, but she couldn’t let anything slide.
“Send that over to me.”
Chrissy would.
She continued.
“I kept working on the skull that was found tombstone adjacent,” she offered. “The eyes were Steph’s. They came from her. I ran the DNA from them, and compared it to some skin I scraped from the remains. This person plucked them out, and used them to set the scene.”
Ethan knew why.
“He was testing you to see how long it would take you to figure out they belonged to Steph, and if you’d figure out she worked for the church. He’s layering in clues, and likely watching to see how far behind you actually are.”
Yeah, well, he liked to watch, apparently.
Let him.
It would be his downfall.
Chrissy continued.
“We ran the horns,” she offered, and was cut off by Ben who was not far away, stewing in his own juices. He had a look on his face, and Elizabeth was glad this was not her circus.
Chris was likely going to have a war brewing there. Someone didn’t like not being the ONLY head tech.
“I ran the horns,” he corrected, and they are from a particular antelope that is only found in Asia. It’s big game,” he added.
Chrissy rolled her eyes, and Elizabeth knew why.
There was no ‘I’ in team when working for her, and it seemed like Ben didn’t know that.
“Okay, so someone got an antelope and used its horns to look like a devil to freak me out. What’s it attached with?” she asked.
Ben couldn’t answer, but Chrissy could.
“Get this. Gorilla Glue. You can buy it anywhere, and I tested for fingerprints on the skull, hoping maybe the person touched the glue and left me a print somewhere, but he didn’t.”
Damn.
This person was hella smart.
When Chrissy’s system chimed, she rolled over.
“Hot damn,” she said.
That had Elizabeth’s attention.
“What?” she asked.
Chrissy printed out a sheet and rolled it back toward Elizabeth.
“I found you something to help out.”
That intrigued her.
Reading it, she smiled.
“You ran the DNA through the system to see if we had any cold cases for rape?”
Chrissy nodded.
“And you have them. Ten years ago.”
Oh, well, that was interesting.
Ethan lifted a brow.
“Wait. So you have someone stealing skulls almost twenty years ago, and then someone assaulting women ten years ago?” he asked.
Elizabeth nodded.
“There are three rapes that went cold when the guy couldn’t be found. He broke into the homes, raped the women, and left. Why is that bothering you?”
He was to the point.
“It wouldn’t happen like that.”
She lifted a brow.
“It wouldn’t?”
Ethan shook his head.
“No, it’s backward. The person would have started with rape, got freaked out about getting caught, or got more turned on by bodies, and went to coffin jacking—not in reverse. They wouldn’t start taking skulls before assaulting women.”
She stared at him.
“Uh, what’s it mean then?”
Oh, he knew.
Only, he needed more information.
“Where is the DNA from that coffin from years ago?” he asked.
Chris shared.
“In Salt Lake City.”
He glanced over at Callen, who had been silent the whole time as he was listening.
“Bro, I need you to go pick it up, and get it back here. We need it run, ASAP.”
Callen lifted a brow.
“That important?” he asked.
He nodded.
“Yeah, trust me on this. Chrissy, when he gets back with it, make it a priority over the other trace. Then, compare it to the semen we have, and the semen from the unsolved cases. Get them all.”
She scribbled down a priority list, and nodded.
“I’ll get on it, but if we get called out…”
Ethan wasn’t having it.
“Then Ben will have to go out, but I need you on those samples.”
She didn’t question it.
Neither did Elizabeth. She knew it had to be big if Ethan was taking over with directives. He rarely did that.
Chrissy began making calls to handle what Ethan was requesting.
Callen pointed at Uriel.
“Let’s ride,” he said. “We’ll catch up,” he said to his wife, giving her a kiss.
She warned him.
“Be careful,” she stated. “Cas, make sure you watch both of your backs.”
He nodded.
They headed out.
Chris picked up where Chrissy left off, since she was busy arranging trace to be sent there from police archives in Salt Lake City.
“The skin we found over the eyes wasn’t Steph’s. It is a male, so we have no clue where it came from,” he admitted. “We’ll get the DNA on that.”
Ethan stopped him.
“Don’t worry about it as much. He’s tossing in all the red herrings to mess with her.
Let’s keep it focused. This person is laying the groundwork for the final game.
That’s not going to help, and it’ll just slow down Chrissy.
Our ace in the hole is her, and how quickly this division can process DNA.
This person is accustomed to going against regular labs—not ours. ”
Elizabeth agreed.
“We button it down, and we make sure we keep it cohesive. I need all of the techs on their game.”
She stared at Ben.
“ALL OF THEM.”
He said nothing, but she knew he wanted to. They were going to have to address that mess that was coming.
She could see it.
“Anything else on trace?” she asked.
Chris shook his head.
“No, Elizabeth, we’re still running everything else, and we’re also processing eyeballs. We don’t have anything new on that, since we got hit with Steph Lewis last night.”
She figured as much.
Anything he got from here on out was going to just bog them down even more. It meant more exhumations.
“Chris, if you have a minute, can I speak to you?” she asked, whistling to get Shadow to follow her, and like the good dog he was, he did.
Chris led them into the small storage room, and patted the thread-worn couch.
“Since you brought the dog, I’m assuming I’m not getting lucky,” he joked.
She snorted.
“Oh, you’re about to get the opposite.”
He lifted his brow.
“Unlucky?”
She nodded.
“You know how much I love and adore you, and that it pains me to dump shit on you…”
“Oh, no. What did my mother do? Was she dancing in the moonlight again, naked? I don’t know if I can glue her clothes to her, Elizabeth. She likes a full moon.”
Yeah, it was a full moon, too.
Oh, she wished that was the case, but it wasn’t.
Here it went.
“We came across something. It’s not about Janet. Oddly, she’s the least of your problems right now. We have a legality issue.”
He paused.
“Is it about Chrissy and me buying her off to come work here?”
She laughed.
“Oddly, no, and that better not come back to bite me in the ass, Christopher.”
He was confused.
“Then, what, because I tend to do things by the book?”
Oh, this was going to make a grown man cry, so she just went there to rip the bandage off.
“Alexi’s father was arrested and went to jail for black-market organ harvesting. He lost his medical license because of it, and Alexi changed his last name to hide from it. So if you’ve been vetting him, you’re not finding anything suspicious under Redmond.”
The second she said it, his face said it all.
“Oh, holy fuck.”
She said nothing.
It was time to let him absorb this.
“I can’t believe this. I find the perfect ME, and he’s tied to something ugly like that?”
She was to the point.