The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(6)
“Doubt the killer would have bothered to go to this extreme to dispose of the body if she was a hooker or a junkie,” Tracy said.
“Well, if she isn’t a hooker or a junkie then someone should have reported her as missing,” Kins said.
“This is the way the gumbas do it back in my hometown,” Faz said. “One tap to the back of the head and you sleep with the fishes.”
“You might be right,” Kins said. He looked to Williams. “I’m just saying we could save a step.”
Williams shook his head. “Let’s ask now, when everything is fresh. Besides, if she was shot, it means there’s another crime scene somewhere.”
“Which might be as easy to find as determining where the boat put in,” Kins said.
Funk exited the tent. For a change, he did not resemble an absentminded professor. A recent haircut had tamed his silver hair, which often looked as though Funk didn’t own a comb, and the sunglasses he’d donned were far more fashionable than the silver-framed spectacles too large for his narrow head.
“We can fit the cage in the van. I’ll take it back to the office,” he said, “but I won’t get to it today.”
“Any tattoos or piercings?” Tracy asked.
“Not that I can initially see,” Funk said.
“What about track marks?” Kins asked.
Funk shook his head. “Again, don’t know yet.”
“How long you estimate she’s been down there, Doc?” Faz asked.
“Two to three days,” Funk said. “No more.”
“I want to keep the crab pot intact as much as possible,” Tracy said. “Maybe something on it will provide a clue where it came from.”
“I’ll do my best,” Funk said.
“Call us when you get to her,” Tracy said.
As Funk departed, Williams turned to Del and Faz. “Get started canvassing the buildings.” Tracy and Kins would go with Harbor Patrol to where Schill had found the pot. “Let’s meet back downtown later this afternoon.”
As Tracy and Kins walked toward the waiting boat, Kins said, “You got sunscreen?” Tracy handed him the tube. He squirted the cream into his palm and applied it to the back of his neck. “I could think of worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.”
“Bet Jane Doe can’t,” Tracy said.
Tracy and Kins spent the remainder of the afternoon getting baked by the sun. The temperature hit ninety degrees, but it felt hotter on the water, with no hint of a breeze. When Schill took them to his “honey hole,” several problems quickly became apparent. With the strong current and a rope longer than eighty feet, Schill could not be precise about where he’d snagged the commercial pot, or even where, exactly, his pot had come to rest on the Sound’s bottom. That increased the search area significantly. The water was also dark and murky at that depth, limiting visibility to no more than a couple feet. The divers had scoured as large an area as they deemed reasonable, but failed to find a gun or anything that appeared to relate to the woman in the trap. It didn’t come as a surprise. The killer had clearly intended that the body would never be found.
After getting off the water, Tracy wanted to drive home and jump in a cold shower, but that would have to wait. She and Kins returned to Police Headquarters downtown and met in a conference room with Faz, Del, and Billy Williams. Faz reported that their initial canvass of the condominium and apartment buildings, as well as the marinas, had failed to produce anything significant.
“Would be better if we had a photograph,” he said again.
Tracy had called Funk when she got off the boat. His office had extricated Jane Doe from the pot, but he said it was unlikely they’d get a usable photograph from the autopsy. A sketch artist might be able to fill in the significant blanks where the marine life had fed on the flesh, but at present the only thing that would come from Faz and Del showing Jane Doe’s autopsy picture to tenants in the buildings or boat owners at the marinas would be a lot of vomit.
CHAPTER 3
After a long weekend, Tracy met Kins on Monday morning at the Medical Examiner’s Building at Ninth and Jefferson Street, just across from the Harborview Medical Center. The fourteen-story building, all tinted glass and natural lighting, was nothing like the cement tomb where the ME once worked. While the rest of the building had been dressed up, not a lot could be done to make over the processing room where Funk and his team examined and cut open victims’ bodies. Cold and sterile, the room contained stainless steel tables and sinks, with drains and traps illuminated beneath bright lights.
Jane Doe’s body lay naked on the table closest to the door. A body block beneath her back forced her chest to stick out and her arms to slump away, making it easier for Funk to do his work. Ordinarily, there would have been a body bag, but given the nature of the crime and crime scene, that was not the case.
At the moment, Jane Doe was less a human being and more a piece of evidence, something to be dissected and processed. The impersonal nature of autopsies remained a stark and harsh reality Tracy had yet to fully accept, even after nine years working violent crimes. It stemmed from the knowledge that her sister’s bones, recovered from a grave in the mountains above her hometown twenty years after Sarah had disappeared, had once been pieced together on a similar table—like a fossil find from an archaeological dig. Tracy had vowed to never forget that the body on the table had once been a living, breathing human being.