Alone (Bone Secrets, #4)(22)

Lorenzo stared at Ray, his mouth opening slightly, his face flushed. “They were never buried? No prayers said over them?”

Mason shifted in his seat. He wasn’t religious, but he tried to respect the beliefs of others. “Uh… no. No one knew who they were, let alone their religion. They were kept in the hopes that someday their mystery could be solved.” He cleared his throat. “We’ve already got one of the best forensic anthropologists in the country examining them, looking for identity indicators that our predecessors may have missed or not had the knowledge of.”

Lorenzo leaned back in his chair, nodding. Mason could tell the lack of interment upset him, but he’d understood the reasoning.

“Do you remember if Lucia ever broke any bones?” Ray asked, his pencil poised over his notebook. “Or any unusual characteristics about her teeth? I’ll get a tech in here to take a cheek swab for DNA if you consent. That will get things moving in the right direction. It can take a few weeks to get results.”

Lorenzo gestured at the envelope. “You can see her teeth. I don’t remember if any of my sisters ever broke bones. And yes, I’ll do the DNA testing.”

Mason unfolded the flap of the envelope. It smelled old. Like a bookstore full of used books. He shook the contents out onto the table. Three black-and-white photos slipped out, yellowed and faded with age. Two were small photos with thick white borders. They were family pictures, informal groupings with two adults and six children clustered together. Mason glanced at them and quickly discarded them; the faces were too small. The large school photo was the one he wanted. A beautiful girl met his scrutiny; her strong will shining from her eyes. Oh, yes. I bet you gave your father hell. The picture was a formal school shot with her hair in the popular bouffant style of that decade. Dark eyes, dark hair, and distinctively crooked upper front teeth.

Score.

Mason’s day brightened. Victoria Peres and Lacey Campbell were going to love the photo.





Victoria opened the back of her vehicle to unpack her gear, feeling clear of the stress of yesterday. Last evening, all the girls had been identified. It’d been a dreadful day, but when the last girl was confirmed, she’d wanted to weep from the relief. Trinity’s friend, Brooke, was the girl fighting for her life in a hospital bed. Brooke’s parents had returned from a night at the beach to find their daughter near death. But they were the lucky parents.

Dr. Campbell had slowly gone through the questionnaires, eliminating the obvious and setting aside the possibles. It’d narrowed down to nine missing girls who fit the general descriptions. Victoria had heard the other three missing girls had eventually made their way home. All three had spent the night and day with friends, either deliberately avoiding communicating with their parents or blaming dead cell phones.

The five dead girls were beautiful. Victoria and Lacey had looked at their school photos, tears streaming down their faces at the sight of the life and energy that leaped from the pictures. What a waste. Each attended a different local high school, but they all were cut from the same cloth. Vibrant, healthy, cheerful young women, whose parents all swore their daughters had no desire to kill themselves.

It matched what Trinity had said about Brooke. These were girls looking forward to dates next week and college next year.

Someone poisoned them.

Someone deliberately destroyed that beauty and vivaciousness and put it on display for the world.

Victoria was determined to help find out who.

Today she’d woken up with excess energy to burn. She’d been lucky this morning. The sky had been clear for rowing practice, and she hadn’t felt a drop of moisture. Well, except from the paddles of the other rowers. Late fall was a crazy time for dragon boat drills, but she loved it. The rowing workout was exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. When the days were clear, like it had been this morning, there was no better place to be than on the Willamette River.

It helped clear her head of sorrow. And anger.

For the past two years, she’d been a part of various dragon boat teams. Occasionally she went out of town for a competition if someone begged her, but she didn’t do it to compete; she did it to get out of the house and morgue and be on the water. This morning’s two-hour practice had flown by. The air was crisp and cold, and the river was high with the heavy rains from the last two weeks. Lots of rain meant debris on the river, and it stirred up the water into a muddy brown no matter how blue the sky was. When ample rain worked its way from streams and tiny rivers into the Willamette River on its way to the Columbia River and then the Pacific Ocean, it made for treacherous rowing.

Victoria loved the challenge. There was something about being at the water’s level and seeing the city and riverbanks from a turtle’s-eye view. Mount Hood seemed taller, city skyscrapers seemed mightier, and she simply felt vulnerable and alive. When you spend every day studying the remains of death, getting out into the living elements of the world was essential.

Her next-door neighbor had introduced her to the dragon boats. She and Jeremy had bonded over local wines and his golden retriever when she’d moved into the neighborhood after her split with Rory. Victoria wasn’t one to get to know her neighbors, but Jeremy had inserted himself in her life and she’d meekly acquiesced. The seventy-year-old was a force to be reckoned with. Gray-haired, marathoner-lean, and proudly flaming gay. She’d never met anyone like him and had instantly adored him.