Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(75)

“Detective Montgomery?” he asked.

Max nodded. “Dr. Taylor, how do. This is my associate Afton Tangler.”

Afton gave a short nod. Taylor was gloved and gowned and made no effort to shake their hands.

“I just got through a few preliminaries,” Taylor said. “But we’ll have to wait until our director, Dr. Healy, runs a few more tests and makes a final determination. I’m sorry he couldn’t be here, but his brother-in-law had a heart attack this morning.”

“Sounds like a tough deal,” Max said. “Any chance this could be kicked up to the State Crime Lab?”

“You’d have to take that up with Dr. Healy when he’s available,” Taylor said.

“So is there anything you found that could be of help?” Max asked. “Even though Pink isn’t technically our case, she’s somewhat pivotal to the kidnapping that we’re working.”

“I understand,” Taylor said. “Our police chief already briefed me.” He picked up his clipboard and read from it. “Weight: sixty-three point five kilograms. Height: one hundred fifty-seven centimeters. Based on the evidence at the scene and my examination of the body, it was determined that the victim sustained a class-four hemorrhage and lost over four liters of blood.”

No shit, Afton thought. Anyone at the scene could have determined that the victim bled out. It didn’t exactly take an advanced degree in medicine.

“So what’s the bottom line on all this?” Max asked. “How’d she die?” He was practically salivating for a little more information, too.

Taylor glanced at Pink’s body. “Based on lateral bruising on her neck and the angle of the initial cut, we surmised that the assailant grabbed our victim from behind and stabbed downward into our victim’s abdomen.”

Our victim, Afton thought. Yes, she was ours. She became ours and we let her down. “So he grabbed her and slashed her?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Taylor said.

“By ‘complicated,’ you mean gruesome,” Afton said.

“Yes,” Taylor said. “The entry wound only crippled her.”

“So she was still alive after the initial cut?” Max asked.

Taylor nodded. “The assailant then made a second incision into the abdomen, slicing from the waist up to the terminus of the evisceration at the victim’s third rib. Both the celiac artery and abdominal aorta were cut so the victim bled out quickly.” He looked up. “And of course, her inner organs spilled out.”

“Like you’d gut a deer,” Afton said. “Just like a hunter might.”

“This guy is a hunter,” Max said.

“Well, yes,” Taylor said. “I suppose you could compare it to that. In fact . . .” He hesitated.

“What?” Max said.

“It’s an odd thing that you should even mention hunting,” Taylor said. “Because a couple of stray hairs turned up on her.”

“Animal hairs?” Afton asked.

“Probably. I’m guessing fox or coyote perhaps? They’ve got that look of a canine coat, like guard hairs.”

“But Muriel Pink didn’t own a dog and I doubt she was out running around in the woods,” Max said. “The woman was almost eighty years old and her neighbors said she hardly ever left town. Except for her doll shows.”

“The hairs might have come from one of her dolls,” Afton said. “Remember the reborn doll Susan Darden told us about? It supposedly had fox eyelashes that were hand-inserted.”

“So that could be it,” Max said. “It would make sense anyway.”

They all stood there for a while in the unnatural cold and fluorescent lighting, the sound of heavy-duty fans rumbling above their heads.

Finally Afton said to Dr. Taylor, “Have you ever seen anything like this before? The stab wounds? The dumping of the organs?”

Dr. Taylor slowly took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It was as if he needed a minute to pull himself together. “Working here, I’ve seen a lot of bad shit,” he said, in words that suddenly seemed out of character to his professional demeanor. “But nothing, nothing, quite like this.”


*

ON the way back to Minneapolis, Afton put in a call to Dr. Sansevere. When she finally got the ME on the line, she asked one simple question.

“Dr. Sansevere,” Afton said. “Can you check to see if there were any stray animal hairs found on that baby you autopsied? The Cannon Falls baby?”

“I can tell you the answer to that right now,” Dr. Sansevere said. “There were. But I just chalked them up to her prolonged exposure in the woods.”

“But the baby’s blanket wasn’t torn or mauled?”

“No,” Dr. Sansevere said. “I found no evidence of that.”

“So how do you account for the animal hair?”

“Probably the surrounding area was just animal habitat.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much.” Afton ended her call and rode in silence for a while.

“What was that all about?” Max asked.

Afton drew a deep breath. “What if it was the same person?”

“What?” Max sounded shocked. “What are you talking about?” He glanced sideways at her.