Thread of Fear, page 7
part #1 of The Glass Sisters Series
While she had been signing in and receiving a visitor’s badge, someone had transferred Jane Doe from the cooler to a gurney in the autopsy room, which was a relatively bearable sixty degrees. A metal folding chair had been set up for Fiona alongside the sheet-covered body. Having put in many grueling hours under much less hospitable conditions, she appreciated such considerations and attributed them to Jack. From the moment he’d ushered her into the Grainger County Administrative Building, it had been apparent he was a popular man around here. It shouldn’t have surprised her, really. He had that confident, easygoing way about him that made the men want to talk sports and the women want to flutter their lashes.
Fiona crossed the room, which seemed blessedly quiet for a county morgue. She glanced around, quickly taking in the stainless steel tables and sinks, the lights and hoses, the metal cart neatly loaded with sterilized tools, and felt vaguely comforted. From county to county and state to state, these rooms all had a sameness about them.
She took a small plastic container from her bag and un-screwed the lid. After dabbing some Vicks under her nose, she sat down and felt the cold, hard chair through her jeans. She shivered briefly, and was grateful to Jack once again for the loan of his flannel shirt.
She snapped on a pair of light blue surgical gloves. Then she pulled the cloth back from the face and tucked it in around the girl’s shoulders, all the while going through the mental routine she used to ease herself into the task. Hispanic female. Estimated age, sixteen or seventeen. Height, five-foot-two. Weight, one hundred and six pounds. Name, unknown. These details and others had been provided in the preliminary autopsy report, which the medical examiner had shared with her. The report also had been accompanied by several well-intentioned but practically useless Polaroids.
Many autopsy photos were taken with the victim lying down, giving little thought to scale, lighting, or the effects of gravity. To get a useful picture, the photographer would have to wait for rigor mortis to pass, then prop the body up, letting the tissues hang naturally, and strategically place a ruler or some other object to show scale. But many morgues didn’t go through all that, meaning Fiona was usually better off drawing directly from the body itself if it was available rather than a photograph.
Fiona spent a quiet moment now simply looking at the girl.
She’d been pretty, Fiona saw right off. The brown, slightly shriveled appearance of her lips and eyelids didn’t mask her attractiveness to someone accustomed to seeing death. Her right temple and upper lip showed several moderate lacerations, and a series of dark, oblong contusions encircled her neck, evidence of the manual strangulation detailed in the ME’s report. Another telltale sign—the tiny red dots visible at the corners of her eyes. The bruising around her cheeks and jaw told Fiona that her last hours had been painful. If Lucy’s experience was any guide, they’d been horrific.
For the first time in weeks, Fiona felt glad for the cold. Homicide investigators liked cold weather, particularly in Texas, where they more frequently dealt with heat, humidity, and abundant insects. In this case, the recent frigid temperatures, combined with the body’s quick discovery, had cooperated to minimize decomposition. The ME estimated she’d been found between eight and twelve hours after death. He’d also noted that the finger marks encircling her neck were consistent with an attacker who had large hands.
Fiona squinted at the girl’s face, trying to see beyond all the signs of violence and visualize the way she’d been in life. The critical identifier would be the arrangement and proportion of her features—not necessarily the details of the features themselves. Correct proportion was more important than a perfectly reproduced nose or eye. This was the reason some criminals could be apprehended on the basis of a blurry surveillance tape. It was the overall impression of the face that mattered most when it came to recognition.
Once a tentative ID was made, police could use more conclusive means to get a definite match. Fiona was the middleman here, and her drawing would be the bridge that linked this lonely corpse to a living, breathing family somewhere. At least she hoped so.
She spent a few moments selecting her drawing materials and then stood up to begin the sketch. She rested her board on her hip so she could peer around it at the girl. She started by lightly sketching the heart-shaped face, then blocking out the features. Working from top to bottom, she sketched in the brow line, the eyes, and then the delicate nose. Gradually she built up more and more detail until the picture started to resemble the subject. When the eyes and nose were refined sufficiently, she moved on to the mouth.
With a latex-covered finger, Fiona peeled back the girl’s lips and examined the teeth. Her upper lateral incisor was missing, but the ME had concluded this injury occurred around the time of death. It wasn’t a physical characteristic that could be used to help identify her, so Fiona ignored it. She spent a few moments repositioning the chin, trying to correct for the slack-jaw effect that could make a dead body appear quite different from a living person. Once she had an idea of what she wanted, she sketched in what she hoped was a naturalistic mouth and then leaned back to study her work.
Not bad.
Finally, she added the most challenging feature of all—the ears. The vast majority of her suspect sketches were men, so drawing ears realistically was a skill she’d been forced to learn early in her career. In this case, the ears might be important because the victim had two piercings in each lobe, which could be helpful for identification.
Fiona’s legs felt stiff, so she sat down and did some shading. For a few minutes she added highlights and shadows with an array of umber-toned pencils.
“Cold enough for ya?”
Fiona glanced up into the kindly brown eyes of the Grainger County ME. Dr. Russell Jamison was white-haired and grandfatherly and had a big, bulbous nose. Fiona had met him when she’d arrived, but he’d seemed to be on his way out, and she hadn’t expected to see him again.
“I’m okay.” She suppressed a shudder. “Nice and quiet today, huh?”
He glanced around his empty work room. “So far, so good.” He winked. “I’m not making any plans, though. Something tells me we’re in for a big night out on the roads. What do you want to bet we get a tree hugger by nine o’clock?”
Fiona raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment. In her experience, medical examiners had a strange sense of humor. To some, it might seem like Jamison was looking forward to a break from the boredom, but Fiona gave him the benefit of the doubt. Jack had described him as “highly dedicated,” and Fiona took the doctor’s meticulous autopsy notes as corroborating evidence.
“So,” she said. “You didn’t find any tattoos?” Fiona always made separate drawings for nonfacial tattoos, then left it to investigators to decide whether to share those details.
“Not a one,” the doctor said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants. In a padded green windbreaker and CCA cap, he looked ready for a fishing trip.
“And her hairstyle? I couldn’t tell much from the picture.”
Unfortunately for many victims, especially women, the process of washing the body during autopsy eliminated the possibility of re-creating a hairstyle. Again, the Polaroids had provided no help here, but Fiona didn’t want to criticize.
Jamison frowned. “It was a mess. Blood, debris, tangles. I’d go with straight, parted down the middle.”
Fiona mumbled something noncommittal. She’d been paying attention all day, and the current trend for area teenagers seemed to be a side part, so without better information, she decided to go with that.
Jamison stepped closer to her chair, and Fiona’s neck tensed. She disliked people looking over her shoulder as she worked. But she didn’t want to complain.
“Sure is a pity, someone so young,” Jamison muttered behind her. “And the animal activity…Don’t think she’d been out there long, but something sure got to her. I’d say a stray dog or a coyote.”
Fiona let her gaze slide to the jagged tear at the girl’s clavicle, just above the Y-incision. In the report it was described as a postmortem animal artifact, and Fiona had been trying to erase it mentally for the sake of the drawing.
Suddenly her eyes burned, and she had to blink rapidly.
“It really is a pity,” the doctor repeated. “I got a granddaughter about her age.”
Fiona didn’t say anything, sensing he wanted to talk.
“I know this may sound strange…” he continued.
She cleared her throat. “What’s that?”
“I wanted to ask you if you could, you know, in your drawing there, you think you could make her smile?”
Jamison was clearly uneasy with the sentimental request. But what he didn’t know was that Fiona heard it all the time, from medical examiners, and beat cops, and giant, tough-as-nails detectives.
Some cases were like that.
She took a deep breath and looked at the girl, who bore a not-so-surprising resemblance to Lucy.
“I’ll do my best,” she said.
Jack hesitated outside Fiona’s motel room, thrown off by the conspicuous lack of light coming through the curtains. Could she be asleep? It was 8:45, and she’d told him to come by at nine to have a look at the drawings.
He knocked softly, torn between not wanting to bother her and needing to get his hands on those sketches. He leaned close to the door and listened. The only sounds he detected were from the trucks speeding down Highway 44 and the muffled laugh track on the television two rooms over.
The door jerked back.
“I was just thinking about you,” a wide-awake Fiona said.
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
She motioned him into her room. The only light came from a clip-on lamp attached to a wooden easel. He hadn’t seen the easel earlier. She must have had it stashed in her car.
“I’m just finishing up here, and I need some info,” she said.
Jack caught a strong chemical smell as he closed the door. He followed Fiona across the room, noticing that she still wore his shirt.
“Her personal effects are at the lab,” she said, “so I had to go by the report. It says she was wearing ‘four-centimeter dangle earrings, feather design.’ Are we talking actual feathers or something made of metal, like maybe silver?”
Jack closed his eyes briefly and envisioned the crime scene. An earring had been hanging from the victim’s left ear when the techs zipped her into the bag. The second earring was found later, tangled in her hair. Jack had watched the ME remove it at the start of the autopsy.
“Metal,” Jack said. “I think it was silver, but it could have been something else.”
“Any other earrings? Maybe some studs? She has two holes in each ear.”
“That was it for jewelry.”
Both feather earrings showed traces of dried blood and were currently being analyzed at the state crime lab. Also at the lab were samples of forensic evidence collected from the victim’s body, as well as the plaster cast of a tire tread Carlos had created at the crime scene. Jack expected to get a full report on everything in a few days—give or take a year. The state lab was notoriously backlogged, but Jack didn’t have an alternative. The Graingerville Police Department couldn’t afford its own laboratory. It could barely afford a Coke machine.
Fiona pivoted toward her drawing. Her hair was knotted at the top of her head, and she’d stuck a pencil in it to hold it in place.
“I know it seems minor,” she said, “but it’s important to get the personal effects right. Sometimes a piece of clothing or jewelry can be the key detail that prompts recognition.”
Jack studied Fiona’s drawing of a smiling, dark-haired teenager. The picture was in full color.
“How’d you do that?” he asked, awestruck. It looked nothing like the brutalized corpse he’d seen…and yet it did.
“Do what?”
He gestured to the eyes, the smile. “Get her to look alive.”
“It took some time.” Fiona regarded her picture with a critical gaze. She picked up a bottle of Liquid Paper from the easel tray, shook it, and carefully added a tiny white dot to each iris, making the eyes look even more realistic.
“That’s the hardest part with postmortem drawings,” she said. “The look of life; it’s very elusive. But without it, even someone who knew her well might not see the resemblance. Real people are animated. Without that spark, even if you’re working from a good-quality photograph or a body with relatively minor trauma, it can be tough to get an ID.”
Jack watched her, admiring the confident way she talked about her work. She radiated strength. And yet she seemed fragile somehow, too—maybe because his shirt was miles too big for her. And then there was the childish bracelet she wore on her wrist. It was woven out of red and orange thread and reminded Jack of something his young nieces would make.
“Where will you distribute this?” Fiona asked.
He shifted his gaze back to the drawing. “The fruit-processing plant, for starters. The refinery. Workers around here have a fairly tight network. If she’s been here any length of time, someone’s likely to know her.”
“Jamison said he rehydrated the fingertips to get you a good set of prints. I assume no luck with the thumbs?”
“Nothing with the DPS,” he said. “And no criminal record.”
Fiona nodded. “She might be too young for a driver’s license. She looks fifteen to me.”
Jack looked at the drawing again. “I’ll also get this out to law enforcement agencies, plus some shelters and churches with outreach programs.”
“Any evidence of drug use?”
“No,” he said. “And no signs of malnutrition, either. Wherever she came from, she had people taking care of her.”
Fiona sighed quietly beside him. It was such a hopeless sound, and again Jack felt guilty for getting her involved in this. She was a pretty woman, and he suddenly wanted her back in Austin painting pretty pictures instead of spending her time down here up to her elbows in death and gore. She wasn’t suited for this job.
“Are you finished with the perp yet?”
She flinched—just slightly—but Jack caught it. “Almost,” she said.
She crossed the room to a cheap wooden bureau and switched on the light there. Beside the lamp were a can of spray fixative and a charcoal drawing of a man’s head and shoulders.
“This is the original,” she explained, “based on Lucy’s description.”
Jack studied the picture. The man had dark, shaggy hair and a wide nose. His complexion looked rough, pockmarked even. Shadows surrounded his deep-set eyes.
“He’s not familiar to you, is he?”
He looked at Fiona, who was watching him intently.
“No,” Jack said. He evidently hadn’t hidden his disappointment well. And now he felt foolish for harboring such an unrealistic expectation. What had he been thinking? That he’d get some famous artist down here, and snap, she’d draw a picture of the guy who sacked groceries at the Pick & Pack?
Real investigations didn’t work that way. At least, none of his ever had. Homicide cases were about long hours, thorough police work, and logical thinking. And even then, much of it amounted to luck.
Maybe he’d expected Fiona to be his good-luck charm. He’d let himself believe that if he could just get her involved, all the pieces would fall into place. He realized, with a growing sense of shame, that he’d been watching too much TV news. He’d actually bought into the hype about her.
“Lucy believes her attacker was probably in his twenties.”
Fiona lifted the picture and pulled another drawing out from beneath it. This picture showed the same face, but heavier and with a thicker neck. The hairline had receded, and the wrinkles bracketing his mouth had deepened.
“This is a ten-year age progression.” She overlaid a sheet of clear acetate, suddenly giving the man facial hair and glasses. “Here’s a variation.”
Jack nodded his approval.
Then she pulled out yet another drawing, only this one showed a much thinner man than the previous two. His bones were pronounced, and his cheeks looked gaunt.
“This is another possibility,” she said. “It all depends on his health. Maybe he’s an addict of some sort and he doesn’t eat much. Or maybe he’s put on a hundred pounds. I have no way of knowing.” She glanced up at him. “Here’s another detail that might interest you: Lucy said she remembers smelling cigarettes during her ordeal, both on his breath and in the room. This guy is a smoker, or at least he was eleven years ago. I don’t know if that helps or anything, but I thought you’d want to know.”
Jack nodded, surprised he’d never thought to ask about a detail like that. It wasn’t in the police report. Yet another clue everyone had missed so many years ago. It was almost as if no one had investigated a goddamn thing.
She returned her attention to the sketch. “The best age progressions start with a photograph. I usually use school portraits for kids and mug shots for perpetrators. I also like to use photos of siblings and parents, too, if they’re available. That makes it easier to predict how the person is likely to age. In this case, the original image is a drawing, unfortunately.”
Jack blew out a sigh. He hadn’t really considered all that.
“Because of all the ambiguity,” she said, “I can’t recommend you release any of these suspect sketches to the public. There are just too many unknown factors, too much time has passed. And you don’t even know for sure we’re dealing with the same man who attacked Lucy, right?”
He met her gaze, set his jaw. She was right, but he had a hard time admitting it. He wished he could plunk down some sort of proof the cases were connected, but at this point everything was circumstantial. Maybe when the labs came back—
“Jack? I’m afraid I have to advise you not to use any of these.”
“Well, they’re my drawings now, right? I reckon it’s my call.”
She jerked back, stung. The rapport they’d been building since this afternoon vanished. “Well, no. I don’t think it is.” She shifted in front of the sketches, physically blocking his view.
