Cause to Hide

“Thanks for scrambling together so quickly,” O’Malley said. “You have in your hands everything we know about this case so far with one exception. I had city workers pull everything they could from traffic light cameras in the area. Two of the four cameras show a woman walking her dog. And that’s all we got.”

“There’s one other thing,” one of the officers at the table said. Avery knew this man’s name was Mosely, but that was about all she knew about him. “I got word two minutes before stepping into this meeting that dispatch fielded a call this morning from an elderly man claiming that he saw what he described as ‘a creepy tall man’ walking in that area. He said he was tucking some sort of a bag under a long coat. Dispatch took note of it but assumed it was just a nosy old man with nothing better to do. But then when this burn case kicked off this morning, they pinged me on it.”

“Do we have this old man’s contact information?” Avery asked.

Connelly shot her an annoyed look. She supposed he thought she was speaking out of turn – even though he had told her no more than forty-five minutes ago that this was her case.

“We do,” Mosely answered.

“I want someone on the phone with him the moment this meeting is over,” O’Malley said. “Finley…where are we on a list of places that sell chemicals that can burn this fiercely in such a short time?”

“I’ve got three places within twenty miles. Two of them are e-mailing me a list of chemicals that could do such a thing and whether or not they keep it in stock.”

Avery listened to the back-and-forth, taking mental notes and trying to sort them into the appropriate slots. With each new bit of information, the more sense the odd crime scene from this morning started to make. Although, really, there wasn’t too much sense to be made at this point.

“We still have no idea who the victim is,” O’Malley said. “We’re going to have to go on dental records alone on this one unless we can make some sort of connection with the footage from the traffic cameras.” He then looked to Avery and gestured her to the front of the table. “Detective Black is the head on this one so everything you find from here on out will go directly to her.”

Avery joined him up front and scanned the table. Her eyes landed on Jane Parks, one of the lead investigators on forensics. “Do we have any results from the broken glass shards?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Parks said. “We know for certain that there were no fingerprints, though. But we’re still working to find out what the object was. So far we can only imagine it might have been some sort of knickknack that is in no way related to the crime.”

“And what is the opinion of forensics in regards to the fire?” Avery asked. “Are you also in agreement that this was no casual burning?”

“Yes. The ash is still being studied, but it’s obvious that no standard fire could burn human flesh so thoroughly. There were barely even any charred remains on the bones and the bones themselves almost look pristine, showing no signs of scorching.”

“And can you describe to us what the usual process of a body burning might be?” Avery asked.

“Well, there’s nothing typical about burning a body unless you’re cremating it,” Parks said. “But let’s say a body is trapped in a burning house and is lit on fire that way. Body fat acts like a sort of fuel once the skin is burned away, which keeps the fire going. Almost like a candle, you know? But this burn was quick and very succinct…probably so intense that it vaporized the fat before it could even act as a fuel.”

“How long would it take a body to burn down to nothing more than bone?” Avery asked.

“Well, there are several determining factors,” Parks said. “But anywhere between five to seven hours is an accurate number. Slow and controlled burns, like the ones used at crematoriums, can take up to eight hours.”

“And this one burned in less than an hour and a half?” Connelly asked.

“Yes, that’s the assumption,” Parks said.

The conference room was awash in murmurs of disgust and awe. Avery understood it. It was hard to wrap her mind around it.

“Or,” Avery said, “the body was burned elsewhere and the remains were dumped in that lot this morning.”

“But that skeleton…that was a new skeleton,” Parks said. “It wasn’t without its skin, muscle, tissues, and so on for very long. Not long at all.”

“Can you make an educated guess as to how long ago the body was burned?” Avery asked.

“Surely no more than a day or so.”

“So this took planning and some head knowledge on the killer’s part,” Avery said. “He’d have to know a lot about burning bodies. And being that he made no attempt to hide the remains as well as killed the victim in such a startling way…that denotes a few things. And the thing that I fear the most is that this is likely the first of many.”

“What do you mean?” Connelly asked.

She felt all eyes in the room turn to her.

“I mean that this is probably the work of a serial killer.”

A heavy silence blanketed the room.

“What are you talking about?” Connelly asked. “There’s no evidence to support that.”

“Nothing obvious,” Avery admitted. “But he wanted the remains to be found. He made no attempt to hide them in that lot. There was a creek right along the back of the property. He could have dumped it all there. More than that, there was ash. Why dump ash at the scene when you could easily dispose of it at home? The planning and the method of the killing…he took great pride and pleasure in this. He wanted the remains found and speculated over. And that holds the marks of a serial killer.”

She felt the room stare back at her, felt a solemn air descend, and she knew they were thinking the same thing she was: this was evolving from an odd case involving an impromptu cremation to a time-sensitive hunt for a serial killer.

CHAPTER FIVE

After the tension of the meeting, Avery was glad to find herself back behind the wheel of her car with Ramirez in the passenger seat. There was an odd bit of silence between them that made her uneasy. Had she really been so naïve to think that sleeping together was not going to alter their working relationship?

Was it a mistake?

It was starting to feel like it. The fact that the sex had been pretty close to mind-blowing made it hard to accept, though.

“While we have a second,” Ramirez said, “are we going to talk about last night?”

“We can,” Avery said. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well, at the risk of sounding like a stereotypical male, I was wondering if it was a one-time thing or if we were going to do it again.”

“I don’t know,” Avery said.

“Regretting it already?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “No regrets. It’s just that in the moment, I wasn’t thinking about how it would affect our working relationship.”

“I figure it can’t hurt it,” Ramirez said. “All jokes aside, you and I have been dancing around this physical chemistry for months now. We finally did something about it, so the tension should be gone, right?”

“You’d think so,” Avery said with a sly smile.

“It’s not for you?”

She thought for a while and then shrugged. “I don’t know. And quite frankly, I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it yet.”

“Fair enough. We are sort of in the middle of what looks to be a majorly fucked up case.”

“Yes, we are,” she said. “Did you get the e-mail from the precinct? What else do we know about our witness other than his address?”

Ramirez looked to his phone and pulled up his e-mail. “Got it,” he said. “Our witness is Donald Greer, eighty-one years of age. Retired. He lives in an apartment roughly half a mile away from the crime scene. He’s a widower who worked for fifty-five years as a shipyard supervisor after getting two toes blown off in Vietnam.”

“And how did he happen to see the killer?” Avery asked.