Picture Me Dead

Suicide. Never. It was a theory to be rejected entirely. No one who’d known her could ever even begin to accept such a possibility.

“Are you going to be all right with this?” Gannet asked softly.

“You bet. I’m a professional, Gannet. And if we do need to make comparisons to past cases, there’s no one out there who knows both the facts and the theories better than I do.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Gannet said. Gloves on, he looked over the remains. Two assistants from the morgue had arrived to take the body when Gannet and the scene-of-crime investigators had finished their site inspection. Gannet nodded an acknowledgment to the others and quietly asked them to make sure they included the dirt and scrub around the body when they removed it from the site.

“Any idea on the actual cause of death?” Jake asked.

“Not natural,” Gannet said.

“Wow. I don’t have a medical degree, and I knew that.”

Gannet grimaced at him. “Knife…big knife. Maybe a machete.”

Jake looked at him in surprise. “There’s not enough flesh—”

“A few courses in forensics and you’d see this just fine.”

“I’ve had a few forensics courses,” Jake reminded him dryly.

“Maybe. But the condition of the corpse makes it hard to see the forest for the trees. Almost literally. Shift this foliage and filth around a little and you get a good look at the bone. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s covered with dirt. But see? If you look really closely…the scratch there? I have to do a full autopsy, but I’d bet we’re talking a very large blade. And you’d need a blade to do that to the ears…and the features. The animals have been at her, but still…those aren’t teeth marks. Definitely made by a blade. And, as we’ve both seen, the flesh was removed from the fingers. You’ve been at this a while, and you seem to know more than you let on most of the time, because you want me to make what you’re already pretty damned sure you do know, official. Yeah, animals have been at her. But the flesh from her fingers was cut off, not gnawed away, or simply decomposed.”

“Hell. This is more than déjà vu. We could definitely be talking the same—” Jake began.

“From what I see so far, yes, but don’t go taking anything as absolute yet. Let me get her down to the morgue. And don’t forget, Jake, what we both already know, as well. There can be copycats out there. There have been cases where murders have been researched and studied and duplicated almost perfectly. There are victims assumed to have been murdered by one serial killer who in reality were killed by someone else entirely.”

Jake arched a brow to him.

“Hey,” Gannet said with a grin. “You learn more about autopsies every year, and I learn about cop work.” He was quiet again for a moment, eyes on the victim. When he spoke again, his tone was serious and flat. “Like I said, I’ll get right on it. You can meet me at the morgue. Hey, I heard you’re moving your houseboat.”

“I moved it. Yesterday.”

Gannet was watching him carefully. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. A change of scenery is always good.”

“It’s still the same old boat,” Jake said dryly.

“Still…a new marina. You wake up to a different view.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t say more. He had the feeling that Gannet—like others around him—believed he’d shared more than a patrol car with Nancy, so, a change of pace now was a good thing. Even if it had been almost five years since Nancy’s death.

He could have said something, he supposed, could have come to his own defense, though he wasn’t being attacked, he knew.

And he had no need to excuse or defend himself to anyone. The inquest had cleared him—as far as that night went, anyway. The general and even logical consensus had been that Nancy, feeling desperate over the disintegration of her marriage and the pressures of her job, had just gone wild for a night. She’d met someone, done some drinking, popped a few pills…and found her way into the canal. But there was one factor he and Brian had in common—they’d both known Nancy well. The year after her death, even with the breakup of Bordon’s cult, had been a bitch for Jake. He’d been like a dog with a bone, determined to connect the two. He’d come close to crossing the line between investigation and harassment, and he’d been called on it. He’d resented his time with the police psychiatrist, though it was common practice for cops to receive such counseling after the death of a partner. He’d realized after a while that he would have to take a step back. Outwardly, he’d become a practical and methodical cop again, following the rules as closely as he could.

But he’d never changed his mind about the truth of the situation. Or his determination to see it come out one day.

“I’d like to live on the water,” Gannet said. “Maybe one day.”

“You should come by on a Sunday sometime. I keep a little motorboat, as well. Fishing is good for the soul.”

“Yeah, I’d like that.” Gannet grimaced. “Maybe my wife will let me come.”

“Bring her.”

“She’s not big on beer.”

“We’ll get her a bottle of wine.”

“I’ll take you up on it, one way or the other, soon enough,” Gannet assured him.

“Dr. Gannet, Detective Dilessio?”

Jake turned. Mandy Nightingale was back. “Are you ready to move the body and let me get the rest of the scene?”

“I’m good to go, Mandy,” Gannet said.

“Jake?” she inquired.

He nodded. “If Gannet’s ready, so am I.”

“Good. You should know then, Jake,” she said softly, “that they’re holding back a slew of reporters over there.”

“Want me to handle them?” Marty asked Jake.

Jake shook his head. “No, it’s all right. Get some of our men started on a door-to-door. I know the doors are pretty far apart around here, but someone might have seen something. I’ll take care of the press.”

“Are you sure? I saw your eyes. It’s all coming back, and you took the entire thing way too personally before—”

“Martin, I’m all right. We’re talking about something that happened five years ago. I’m a cop, this is my job. Just keep an eye on things here, Marty. We can’t let anything, not the most minute clue, slip away.”

Martin nodded. Jake walked from the scene and across the road, where the uniformed officers were holding the onslaught of reporters at bay.

“A murder, right? A young woman?” Jayne Gray, from one of the local stations, called to him.

“Jayne, I’m afraid there’s not too much we can say right now. We’ve got the body of a woman who has apparently been dead several weeks, even a few months. We’ve yet to determine anything else as fact, but as soon as the M.E.’s office has further information, I know they’ll share it. And when that happens, you know that a police spokesperson will be telling you all that they can. There’s nothing else you can learn here right now, folks.”

“But, Detective Dilessio, there must be more you can give us.” Bryan Jay, an obnoxious, heavy-set man from the local paper, called out. “It’s a murder, right? You’ve found the victim of a murder, in the mud, off the side of the road.”

He was tempted to give Jay a real wise-ass reply. Hell, no. She decided to drop herself off there, lie down and die.

“Mr. Jay, give the medical examiner time to do his work,” Jake said firmly.

“Right,” Jay replied dryly. “Come on, Jake, give us something.”

“I’ve already explained that we have the body of a woman, Mr. Jay.”

“Think we have a single crime here, or do we have a serial killer on the loose? Isn’t this the way the first victim was found in those serial killings years ago? Are there any mutilations?”