21st Birthday (Women's Murder Club #21)(22)

That was an interesting thought but took me nowhere.

The trees in the park were alive with the light rustling of leaves and the sweet sounds of birdsong. It was the kind of day that made you think that nothing bad could ever happen here.

And then Brady’s phone buzzed.

He answered, “What’s up?”

His face went rigid. He said, “I got it. I got it. Wait, let me get the coordinates again.” He slapped his shirt pocket, got back into the car, opened the console, and was reaching for the glove box when I handed him a pen and my notepad. Brady scribbled and said, “Thanks. See you later.”

He clicked off and went into deep thought.

I said, “Brady? What happened?”

“That was Teller.”

“Teller?”

“A CSI. A body was found on the eastern side of the park. Female.”

“Is it Tara?”

“Don’t know. Lady walking her dog found a girl’s body in a shallow grave. Throat cut. I’ve called for backup.”

What the hell was this?

Had Burke killed Tara and buried her in the park? And now that bastard was loose? My mind was ranging, trying to take in this new information and make sense of it.

I needed to see the victim.

I stuck with Brady as we all followed Hallows along a trail into the lush greensward. We’d walked for no more than five or six minutes when we reached a half dozen CSIs who’d roped off the area around the body.

My heart was pounding, but Brady was a brick. He had a quiet word with the CSIs that boiled down to “We’ll take it from here.”

I edged close enough to the deceased to see that she was partially covered with soil and leaves. But she was exposed enough that I could see that she was naked. Her throat had been cut on an angle and her breasts had been sliced, in no discernable pattern. From where I was standing, only her profile was visible.

I stared up as a news chopper hovered overhead. Then Clapper drove up in his car, lights flashing.

Ready or not, this gruesome murder was about to go public.





CHAPTER 30





CLAPPER LOOKED OVER the partially exposed and mutilated body and made a general announcement.

“Listen up, everyone. You know the rules. Play dumb. Do not speak to the media or anyone else. I’ll make an announcement after the vic has been identified and next of kin notified.”

I decided to get out ahead of the ID I knew was coming. I said, “I can notify her mother. I know her.”

This would be a horrible job. Kathleen would go insane, but I thought it better for me to deliver the news than a stranger. Just then, a CSI appeared at Clapper’s elbow saying, “Sir, we found something.”

“Go ahead. What is it?”

“A pile of women’s clothes. All folded neatly. I looked in the handbag. Here’s her license.”

Clapper took the license by the edges from the CSI’s gloved hand. As he looked at it, a muscle twitched in his cheek.

“This license belongs to a Wendy Franks,” said Clapper. “She resembles Tara Burke. But, her nose. The width of her forehead …” Clapper stooped down and held the driver’s license, containing the requisite California state seals and holographs, near the dead woman’s face.

“Unless her prints say otherwise, the victim is Wendy Franks.”

Things went a little crazy about then, everyone talking at once, firing off opinions, comparing the DMV photo to the victim’s face. I looked at the license in Clapper’s hand and said, “Wendy Franks had brown eyes and was five nine. From her description, Tara Burke has blue eyes. She’s five six.”

Alvarez said, “So, is Franks’s death a mistaken-identity situation? Or was her death totally unrelated?”

The CSI said, “I took a shot of the clothes.”

I peered at his image on his phone, saw a folded green striped dress, sandals, a brown shoulder bag. Not the clothes Tara was wearing on the video from Monday morning.

More confirmation.

The dead woman wasn’t Tara. Period.

Claire and several of her techs joined us graveside. She greeted those of us she knew and began shooting pictures of the deceased in situ, while Hallows’s team did the same.

I paced away from the body, looked at my watch every five minutes. Conklin and Alvarez were talking together under a tree. Brady stood with Clapper and Culver, and so forty-five minutes passed.

When the scene had been photographed from every angle, Claire and a tech carefully lifted the dead woman from her shallow grave and placed her onto a sheet.

I stooped next to Claire as she wrapped the body.

“Can you estimate time of death if I don’t hold you to it?”

“Swear it’s between you and me, Lindsay. Because I’m not ready to retire.”

“Promise,” I said.

“The young lady is out of rigor. I’d say she died twenty-four hours ago and you don’t need me to tell you cause or manner of death. Once I’ve got her on my table, I’ll do a preliminary workup.”

Brady joined us.

Claire said, “You’re gonna want a cheek swab from Burke. Maybe she scratched the bastard as he was killing her. Maybe he left trace behind. Or maybe he didn’t do it.”

Leaving Brady at the scene, I hitched a ride back to the Hall with Conklin and Alvarez. I slumped against the back seat, just thinking. Lucas Burke had been released more than twenty-four hours ago. He’d had time to kill her, barely. Maybe.