Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(62)

Symansky laughed. “Developed? Lonergan, what century are you from?”

Lonergan’s face colored, his mouth twisted into a snarl. “Shove it, Symansky.”

“All right, cut it out,” Griffin barked. “What else?” She clapped her hands impatiently. “C’mon. So far we have a lot of theories, no definitives. Give me definitives. Our dance card’s full, people; I don’t have to tell you that. In addition to Wicks, three other homicides came in overnight.” Groans went up around the room. “Welcome to paradise. Wicks’s autopsy’s number one priority. It looks like she connects by age, by race, but she’s obviously not a redhead, and she wasn’t hacked to pieces and left naked by that dumpster. The missing SD card’s curious? Let’s look for it in case it did get trampled on. Maybe it was in her pocket; maybe she swallowed it—I don’t know. I’m grasping here. Talk to me.” Griffin scanned the room. “Now!”

“Bigelow and I can take the autopsy,” Lonergan said.

“No. I’m shaking things up. Foster and Li take the autopsy. You and Bigs talk to the friend, Fahey? Symansky, Kelley, you take the guy who found the body, and you’re on cameras this time. I’m spreading the pain around. Start around the Billy Goat. I can’t think of anything else down there she’d want to take pictures of. And I don’t think I have to impress upon anybody here how quickly we need to do all of this. Now get out.”

The phone in Griffin’s office rang, and her face fell. Then the phone in her pocket started up, her ringtone the theme to the TV show Cops—“Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you . . .” “All of you, get out there and get me something before they peck me to death.” She rushed back to her office and slammed the door shut.

“Wow, I wouldn’t take her job on a bet,” Kelley said.

Symansky smirked. “I’d take it for the pay jump. I got two kids using me like an ATM.”

Foster watched as Bigelow and an unhappy Lonergan walked back to their desks, Lonergan working up a mad she had no remedy for.

“Grant is so not going to be happy to see us again,” Li said as she grabbed her bag out of her bottom drawer. “This makes three in less than a week.” She wiggled into her jacket, grabbed her cell phone. “The pattern idea doesn’t look like it’s holding. This guy’s all over the place. Maybe Wicks is just a down-and-dirty mugging? Unrelated.”

Foster grabbed her things. “What kind of mugger carries a blanket around with him?”

Li groaned. “I really hate the weird ones.”





CHAPTER 41


Dr. Grant glared at Foster and Li over her autopsy table. What remained of Evelyn Wicks lay there, small and still, her slender neck gaping open, her eyelids at half-mast. There was no music blasting out of the speakers this time, their second indication, after Grant’s daggerlike glower, that things weren’t going to go well. It took less than five seconds for that to be confirmed.

“Nuh-uh. Don’t bother taking your coats off,” Grant said, her eyes as hard as Satan’s ore. Nothing made her angrier than violent, senseless death, Foster knew, especially when it involved the young. “The slaughter of innocents is an abomination,” Grant had once whispered to her as they’d stood over her son here. Foster had agreed with her then and now. And she hated this room, hated being back here, hated standing over bodies, young or old. Grant pointed to the gaping gash at Wicks’s throat. “Cause of death. Exsanguination.”

Li cleared her throat, lifted her eyes off her shoes to hold Grant’s. “Any physical evidence worthy of note?”

The beat Grant let pass was long, fraught with danger, and dripping with reproach. “Wouldn’t all of it be worthy of note?”

“Yes. Absolutely,” Li said. “I just meant—”

Grant cut her off, her eyes sliding to Foster. “Are you any closer to finding this fool?”

“Depends on your report,” Foster said. “On whether it helps or hurts us.”

Grant stared at her, then moved away from the table and plucked a folder off the counter. “Preliminary report. Still waiting for full tox, but I don’t think we’ll find anything there. Nothing under the fingernails. Like the others, no prints, no semen, no hairs, no saliva, no signs of habitual drug use, no needle marks. Also, no lipstick, but there was a dainty rose tattoo on the left ankle. Years old. This theft of life is not like the others, but it’s equally egregious.”

“And . . . the blood,” Foster said.

“No signs of Rea’s or Birch’s blood anywhere on her body or clothes. Clean cut, approached from the back. Quick and dirty.”

“Anything else?” Foster shoved her notebook into her pocket.

“You’re looking for a lefty,” Grant said. “The knife traveled right to left, leaving jagged edges.”

“No way of confirming that for Birch or Rea, though,” Li said.

“Gold star for you, Li. Anything else?”

Neither of them had another word to say.

Grant stood over Wicks. “Three’s your limit, ladies. Get out of my autopsy room.”

Li pushed through the front door and took a deep breath, Foster walking right behind her, fishing for the car keys. She had a headache, three bodies, and a mountain to climb. And it felt like a thousand-mile walk back to the car. She wondered if Li felt as defeated as she did, though she certainly didn’t look it. Foster slid into the car behind the wheel as Li eased in beside her.