A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(15)

“Oh, no.” Levi stopped his car a fair distance from the tape. “Not now.”

He and Dominic got out, the slam of the doors vanishing into the empty expanse of desert. Levi shivered as he buttoned his suit jacket. Once the sun set out here, the temperature plummeted.

It only took a few seconds for the reporters to catch sight of him. They rushed over en masse, clamoring to be heard over one another, their cameramen jogging behind.

“Detective Abrams!” One voice rose above the babble. “Is it true that the bodies being dug up here are previously undiscovered victims of the Seven of Spades?”

“No comment,” Levi said without breaking stride. He didn’t wonder how they’d found out so quickly. It was common knowledge that the media would pay top dollar for tips on the Seven of Spades case, and not every public servant was immune to bribery.

“Detective Abrams, do you-”

Dominic stepped smoothly between them, blocking Levi with his large body. “You heard him,” he said in a mild tone that nevertheless brooked no argument.

The reporters fell back as Levi and Dominic reached the tape, and a uniformed officer came forward to shoo the jackals even further away. Levi showed his ID to the officer maintaining the crime scene log, then gestured for Dominic to do the same. “He’s consulting on the case,” Levi said when the officer gave him a puzzled look.

She didn’t argue. Dominic signed into the scene as well, and he and Levi donned gloves and booties from the supply provided before ducking under the tape to join Martine on the other side.

Levi’s mouth fell open as he finally got a good look. Three rows of open graves scarred the gritty sand, outlined with wooden frames, next to which the unearthed corpses laid on tarps marked with plastic numbers. The crime scene technicians had to navigate carefully around the bodies and graves while they photographed the area and combed it for evidence.

“Jesus Christ,” Dominic breathed beside him.

“How many?” Levi asked Martine, his eyes fixed on the corpses.

“Thirteen, so far. Luckily, they were each in individual graves instead of one mass burial pit, so the remains didn’t get all jumbled together.”

A burst of barking sounded to their right. At the far end of one of the rows, a cadaver dog scrabbled frantically at a patch of as-yet undisturbed sand.

“Make that fourteen,” said Martine.

Levi stepped closer to the leathery, desiccated bodies. After years buried in the arid desert, most of them resembled beef jerky more than human remains. Many of the corpses had been partially skeletonized; one was simply a pile of disarticulated bones.

Seeing the direction of his gaze, Martine said, “That grave was shallower than the others. Looks like coyotes got to it. It’s what drew the construction crew’s attention in the first place.”

Levi skirted the edges of the open graves, careful to stay out of the technicians’ way. “Rohan was right. The Seven of Spades practiced killing people before they made their public debut. That’s how all of their murders have been flawless since Billy Campbell.”

“This is a hell of a lot of practice,” Dominic muttered. His face had been drained of color under the sallow floodlights.

“If this was the Seven of Spades,” Martine said. “It seems the likeliest explanation, but it hasn’t been confirmed.”

Levi swept out an arm, a poor way to encompass the nightmarish scene and all the horrors it implied. “Who else would have done this?”

“Detectives,” said a new voice.

It was Dr. Maldonado, one of the county’s medical examiners, an older woman with graying hair who wore her cat-eye glasses on a jeweled chain. Levi was surprised to see her-in the normal course of things, the MEs didn’t visit crime scenes, which were the responsibility of the coroner investigators.

Then again, this was far from the normal course of things.

After introducing her to Dominic, Levi asked, “Do you have anything?”

“Not much. The victims seem to have been buried without any clothing or personal effects, and given the state of the bodies, identification will be challenging, to say the least.”

Martine nodded. “How long do you think they’ve been here?”

“The more recent ones, a year at the minimum. And I won’t be able to offer anything definitive until we get them to the morgue, but some of these bodies could have been buried here for five years, or even longer.”

Years. The Seven of Spades had been slinking around Las Vegas, dragging away their victims, murdering them, and burying the bodies in the desert, for years, with nobody ever the wiser.

Levi suppressed a shudder. “Martine mentioned that several of the victims were killed with the Seven of Spades’s usual MO?”

“There are some with enough tissue left intact to exhibit incised wounds across the throat, yes. Again, for most of the victims, it’ll be impossible to determine anything of value without in-depth examination.” Maldonado sighed, her tired eyes roving over the corpses. “But to be honest, there’s nobody in the coroner’s office experienced in working with these states of advanced decay and mummification.”

“We can bring in a forensic anthropologist. I’ll talk to Agent Marshall about it.”

“I’d suggest a forensic entomologist as well. I’ve noticed a great deal of insect activity on many of the bodies.”