Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)(42)

She walked over to the tray containing the placenta. “What I observed first is jagged tearing here that could be consistent with a prolapsed uterus.” She pointed to one spot, and then to another. “But not here. Or here. These tears are straight.”

Nan got in close, taking pictures.

Eve didn’t need to see the cuts for herself because she understood the point Lopez was making. “Straight cuts don’t occur naturally.”

“No, they don’t, Detective. I think the nicks on the baby’s head came from the same knife or other sharp object that did this.”

The autopsy continued. It was clinical and detailed and that helped distance Eve from what she was seeing and keep her emotions in check. When Lopez finished her work, she peeled off her gloves and said, “I can conclude, with a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that the baby was not the product of a natural birth and died of asphyxiation in utero, likely as a result of the mother’s death.”

Eve wanted to be sure she correctly understood Lopez’s conclusion. “You’re saying the mother and baby died during a botched C-section?”

“I wouldn’t put it so nicely. This baby was torn out of the womb. And I can tell you if the mother’s body is out there, nobody in Los Angeles County has reported it yet.”



Eve called Duncan as soon as she stepped outside and told him everything.

“You’re saying Anna McCaig cut this baby out of a pregnant woman’s body and pretended it was her own child?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Eve said, trying to keep her voice even and unemotional, to choose her words carefully and not betray her rage. “The actual term for it is ‘fetal abduction’ and it’s an extremely rare occurrence.”

“Thank God for that.”

“The deputy medical examiner has read about such cases but has never dealt with one until now.”

“That makes two of us. I would have liked to retire without ever having heard of or investigated a fetal abduction case, but here we are. But we don’t know for certain that Anna McCaig did it.”

“Did you find reports of any missing pregnant women in Los Angeles?”

“Not in the county or even in the state of California,” Duncan said. “And no women have come into any ERs in Los Angeles or Ventura Counties with injuries consistent with what you described to me before.”

“So it had to be Anna McCaig.”

“Don’t get locked into one theory of the case. It has got you into trouble before.”

That was true, but she knew in her bones that she was right. What other possibilities were there? That someone in the neighborhood just happened to toss a baby in Anna’s dumpster? Anna’s cruel “gift from God”? Eve didn’t believe it. There was a desperate look in Anna’s eyes, like a cornered animal, when Eve confronted her at the hospital with her inconsistencies. It was the look of a guilty woman.

Eve walked around the parking lot, trying to calm herself down so she could think clearly. But the crime that Anna McCaig committed was so barbaric that it was hard to remain calm and reasonable, to resist the urge to hunt her down and strangle her to death.

She spoke to Duncan with a forced, measured tone. “I don’t know why there hasn’t been a missing person’s report filed, but I know the real birth mother is dead and her body is at Anna McCaig’s house.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because the baby was still warm, still covered with blood and other fluids, when the paramedics got there.”

“Okay, assuming you’re right, that Anna McCaig abducted a pregnant woman and hacked a baby out of her uterus, that doesn’t mean the body is still on the property. Anna came home from the hospital yesterday. She could have waited until nightfall and disposed of the body somewhere else.”

“That’s easy enough to check by reviewing the front gate videos. If she came or went, we’ll see it. But whether she moved the body or not, the murder happened in the house.”

She saw a family of four, the parents and their two children, emerge from the old administration building. The father carried a black Los Angeles Coroner body bag–style sleeping bag, the mother had on a cap with the department logo, and the kids were wearing matching T-shirts adorned with the chalk outline of a dead body. Eve turned away, disgusted, and walked back to her car. This wasn’t an amusement park and there was nothing fun about death.

“I’ll start writing up a search warrant request for her property, the dumpster, the porta-potty, and her car,” Duncan said.

“How long do you think it will take a judge to grant the warrant?”

“You’ll probably hear a sonic boom before you get back to the station.”



Anna McCaig’s cold house was full of crime scene technicians in white Tyvek, led by Nan Baker, who’d spent three hours checking every room, every surface, and every drain for signs of flesh and blood.

Eve and Duncan stood in the dining room, watching the search unfold. Eve’s arms were crossed under her chest, mostly to retain her warmth, and she tapped her right foot nervously on the floor. Neither the two of them, nor anybody in the CSU, had discovered any evidence yet.

Duncan nodded to the wall of food. “Somebody should search that box of Ding Dongs.”

“You think a murder weapon might be in there?”