Bones Don't Lie (Morgan Dane #3)(16)

Obvious reasons.

But now his hollow gut churned.

“You don’t know who she is?” Lance asked. This unidentified woman was now the key to his father’s disappearance.

“No,” Frank said. “Not yet. We’ll start with any local girls who went missing in 1994 and work from there.”

Lance’s ears rang. His gaze swept over the skeleton, suddenly seeing its feminine slightness. “Can you tell me anything about her?”

Frank consulted a clipboard. “Measurement of the femur tells me she was approximately five feet, five inches tall, give or take an inch.”

“Any idea how old she was?”

Frank gestured toward a row of X-rays on a lightboard. “Impacted wisdom teeth. She was likely at least eighteen.”

“The fact that she didn’t have the teeth removed could also mean that she didn’t have access to dental care,” Lance added. “Or she couldn’t afford the procedure.”

“Right.” Frank waved a hand over the skeleton. “Some, but not all of her growth plates are closed. The clavicle, or collarbone, is the last bone to complete growth. The medial end is not fully fused, so she was under thirty.” Frank picked up a magnifying glass and examined a rib bone. “The ends of the ribs change as people age. Based on the smoothness I see here, I’d estimate that she was in her early twenties.”

“Any idea how she died?”

“Yes.” Frank read from his clipboard, then set it down and returned to the table. He pointed to a U-shaped bone below the skull on the sheet. “The hyoid bone is fractured.”

The hyoid bone was located in the middle of the neck between the chin and the thyroid.

“She was strangled,” Lance said.

“Most likely.” Frank nodded. “We’re lucky. That only happens in approximately one-third of strangulation deaths.”

She wasn’t lucky.

Lance stared at the tiny, meaningful bone. “So she was dead when she was put in the trunk?”

“It’s possible to survive a fractured hyoid, but I hope she didn’t.” Frank frowned.

“Me too.” Lance shuddered. Being strangled would have been bad enough, but he couldn’t imagine the alternative.

“Do you remember anyone who meets her description in your father’s life? Did your father have any female coworkers or friends that he was close with?” Frank was circling around the topic, but his line of thinking was obvious: infidelity.

“I don’t know.” Lance did not want to think about his father cheating, but he searched his memories. “No. My parents had some friends, but they were all about the same age as my parents, in their midthirties in 1994.”

“If you think of anyone this could be”—Frank waved a gloved hand over the skeleton—“please call me.”

“I will,” Lance said.

Frank stripped off his gloves. “If she was a local and someone filled out a missing person report, I should be able to identify her. If nothing pans out, I’ll bring in a forensic anthropologist.”

“Good luck.” Lance left the autopsy suite. He tossed his PPEs in the appropriate bins on the way out. As he walked across the parking lot toward his Jeep, his gut knotted.

Where was his father?





Chapter Nine

The wind whipped at Morgan’s face as she crossed the parking lot from the diner to her minivan, where Mac was leaning into the open door of his SUV.

“Thanks, Mac.” She rolled the top of the brown bag down. Inside were her blood-soaked, now-crusty jeans. Mac had brought her a clean pair.

“You’re welcome.” Mac had transferred the girls’ safety seats to his SUV and was securing them in the back seat. “It’s a little tight, but we’ll manage. What are you going to do with the van?”

“I called a tow truck.” There was no way she was sitting in a pool of blood to drive it to a garage. Besides, she wanted a mechanic to give the van a thorough once-over in case some other damage had been done.

“Whoever broke into your vehicle damaged the locks.” Mac tugged on a child safety seat.

Morgan pressed a hand to her forehead. “I didn’t notice when I opened the van.”

Seemingly satisfied with the car seat’s fit, Mac stepped away from the open SUV door. “That’s because your fob still chirps when you press the button, but the locks don’t work.”

Sophie tugged on Morgan’s hand. “Can we go soon?”

Morgan squatted to her level. “Yes. I just need to talk to the deputy for a couple of minutes. Stay right here with Mac.”

“OK.” Head low, Sophie turned back to Mac’s car. She’d awoken early this morning and would fall asleep as soon as the vehicle was in motion.

Morgan approached the deputy typing up the incident report in the front seat of his patrol car. He pointed with his pen toward the Rapid Stain Identification Kit sitting on a clipboard in the passenger seat. Only one red line appeared in the test window. “It’s not human blood.”

“Some sort of animal blood, then.” She glanced back at her van. Animal blood was less disturbing than human blood, but still creepy.

The deputy got out of the car.

“Were you able to get the feed from the security cameras?” she asked.