The fields, p.19
The Fields, page 19
“You got prints?” said Riley, looking at Meyer. After the state she’d heard the Jane Doe was in, she was surprised.
“Just. The skin of her hands came off like gloves when we took her out.”
“How long do you think she was in there?”
“I’d say around thirteen days. She was dead before she went into the water though. There was algae in her lungs and stomach. If her heart had still been beating, I would have found it in her liver or kidneys. I’m afraid I can’t give an accurate time of death. My best guess is she died approximately twenty to twenty-two days ago. So, around the fifteenth to seventeenth of June.”
Riley glanced at Logan. Just days before Chloe was attacked.
“Although she’s badly decomposed, she is still better preserved than she should be,” Meyer continued. “I would guess she was kept somewhere after she died, a few days at least, in cold storage. A freezer perhaps.”
“Cause of death?”
“The wounds I’ve found were all inflicted postmortem. There are no visible antemortem injuries I’ve been able to pinpoint. No way to tell if there was any sexual assault, although she was naked when she came out of the water.”
“Drugs?” Riley speculated.
“I’ve sent vitreous and bile samples to the lab for screening, but I doubt we’ll get much in the way of results. She’s been dead too long.”
“We found bits of rope around her,” Saker chimed in. His shoes squeaked on the floor as he hurried to keep up with Meyer’s stride. “And scraps of plastic. We reckon she was wrapped and weighted down. Possibly in a creek, judging by the algae.”
“The water’s warm right now,” added Meyer, pushing open a set of double doors with his arm, allowing Riley to go through first. “Speeds up the process. With the buildup of gas, she most likely broke her bonds. Popped to the surface like a cork.”
“Who found her?” asked Logan. “We weren’t told in the report.”
“Couple of kids,” answered Saker. “Went in for a dip and came up on her.” He whistled through his teeth. “Their folks’ll need to put a few bucks in the therapy jar.”
The ME entered an autopsy room, where a steel dissection table stood, scrubbed clean. Riley smelled the familiar odor of death chemicals. Meyer opened a door on the far side, which led into a cooling room. There were three gurneys inside, bodies on each.
Deputy Saker paused at the door. “I’ll wait here,” he said, looking beyond them into the room. “I don’t need to see her again.”
Riley, Logan, and Meyer only just fit in the cramped, chilly chamber. Riley pulled on the mask and gloves Meyer handed to her.
“Hope you’ve got strong stomachs,” the ME said, putting on his mask and dragging one of the gurneys closer. The body was in a white bag, unevenly filled in places.
“So, we have a female. Mid-teens.” Meyer began unzipping the bag. “Around one hundred and twenty pounds. Five feet seven.”
Riley was struck by the smell as soon as the bag was opened—an overwhelmingly dank odor that smelled like putrefied fish. It made her twist her head away. The body that was revealed was barely human. There were bits missing—a foot, part of one leg, her lips, nose, and ears, one eye, much of her skin and hair. What was left was a raw, livid mass of red and blackened tissue, bones protruding. She looked more like a burn victim, Riley thought. She took sips of air through her mouth.
“Much of the damage you see was caused by the water and the things that got at her while she was in it,” explained Meyer. “She was a veritable buffet for bugs, fish, and birds.” He pointed to her foot, severed near the ankle, the flesh jagged and loose. “That could have been a boat propeller. OK, so these are what surprised me and what got Deputy Saker and the sheriff’s office so excited.” Meyer pointed to the torso of the corpse, where his neatly stitched Y incision carved through her. “It’s hard to see, but part of her breast tissue has been removed.”
“Removed?” Riley leaned closer, looking at the blistered flesh. She thought of Ed Gein, making a belt of nipples and a corset of skin in his Wisconsin farmhouse. A suit of girls.
“Yes, with a sharp blade. Very finely done. Very neat.” Meyer almost sounded impressed. “And here,” he continued. “See these areas on her upper arms? Her thighs? Her flesh was stripped away, again with some sort of blade. One buttock has the same cuts, although they’re harder to see due to lividity. It was done with near surgical precision.” He looked at Riley. “I would say whoever made them has worked with flesh before.”
“A doctor or surgeon?” asked Riley.
“Possibly. Or a mortician? A vet even?”
“And you think this could be linked to our cases?” Logan said.
“That’s not for me to say,” answered Meyer. “But I can tell you, in all my career, I’ve never seen anything like this. Someone cut the flesh from this young woman after she was dead. Carefully. Deliberately.”
“Did she have anything on her?” Riley asked. “Anything that might help us with an ID?”
“She was naked, as I said. But she was wearing a ring on the middle finger of her right hand. Quite distinctive. It’s gone into evidence at the sheriff’s office, but I have a photograph on file. Are you done with the body?”
Riley nodded. She watched as Meyer zipped up the body bag and what was left of the young woman disappeared within its white folds. The smell of death was in her throat.
Ron Saker was waiting for them in the autopsy room. “Well?” he said, eagerly. “Do you think there could be a link to your dead girls?”
“Could be,” answered Logan noncommittally as Riley followed Meyer to a computer.
“Here,” said Meyer, tapping the keys. He stood back, allowing Riley to see the picture displayed on the screen. “As I said, it’s quite distinctive.”
Riley felt shock prickle her skin as she stared at the ring: a silver skull with two red crystals for eyes. “How far could a body float?” she asked, pulling out her cell and scrolling quickly.
“It’s hard to say. Two bodies could go into water at the same time and be found in completely different places. There are many factors that determine it. The size of the victim, what they ate before they died, the depth and temperature of the water, the flow of the current—”
“Could a body get all the way here from Waterloo? Down the Cedar River?”
Meyer looked thoughtful. “I’ve heard of a man thrown into a river in a motorcycle accident who traveled nearly two hundred miles in three days. So, yes, I suppose it’s possible.”
“Sarge?” said Logan, frowning.
Riley held up her phone. There, on the screen, was the missing poster they’d used for Gracie Foster. Her right hand was visible in the photograph. On the middle finger was a silver skull with winking red eyes.
* * *
The sun was going down over the Mississippi. The broad flow of water reflected the scarlet sky. A piece of driftwood, strung with a scrap of plastic, floated past. Bill Hamilton watched its progress from the backseat of the car as Blake Preston handed him the pages of his speech. They’d just pulled into the grain processing plant’s lot. As his aide ran through the names of the plant’s owners, Hamilton’s gaze remained on the river.
An hour ago, as the motorcade had driven south for tonight’s speech, he’d watched a clip of Jess Cook speaking at an organic farm, talking about sustainable growth.
“We need to return to the idealism and ambition of the past,” the senator had told her audience. “Men like Henry A. Wallace, who saw this country through the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Wallace was a champion of the small farm, creating vital subsidies to alleviate rural poverty. But Nixon gave away those subsidies to powerful corporations. It was Nixon’s administration who first told you to get big or get out. Who saw food as a weapon in the fight against Communism, securing deals with China and the Soviets to make them reliant on American corn. But only the giants could compete for those markets. As a state, we have lost our family businesses and the diversity of our crops. Government policy has rendered us reliant on foreign money, at the mercy of a hostile global marketplace. The same policies have kept those powerful corporations dominant, and we’ve all seen what the destructive forces of Big Ag can do to our communities and our environment. Seen the rich get richer while workers’ rights and livelihoods are eroded.”
She hadn’t been able to continue, the applause drowning her out. Like a preacher, she was sermonizing up there. But they were buying what she was selling. Cook had jumped another point in the polls.
“Sir?”
Hamilton saw Blake staring at him. His aide was looking concerned. Hamilton knew he was becoming unfocused, and his whole team had noticed it. He hadn’t been able to tell any of them why: his family and staff ordered by him not to speak of the break-in at the mansion. He’d said he didn’t want to reveal he’d been a target—that it could show weakness. In reality, it could show far, far worse. The hacking device one of Gage Walker’s men had found when they’d swept the mansion was evidence of that. “Yes, Blake? You were saying?”
“Is everything all right, sir?”
“Cook,” murmured Hamilton after a pause. “She’s going to win, isn’t she?”
Blake leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “Give us a moment.” He looked back at Hamilton when the driver climbed out. “OK, I didn’t want to say anything just yet. But I might have something.”
“On Cook?” Hamilton shook his head. “We did all the opposition research. Woman’s whiter than bleach.”
“A staffer on her team got fired last week. Wasn’t pulling his weight. I know the guy. He might talk. I was going to get into it when we’re back in the city.”
“It’s not much, is it?”
“Sir, I promise we’re going to—” Blake was cut off by the governor’s cell ringing.
As Hamilton took it out and saw Walker’s name lit up on the screen, his heart skipped. “I need to take this.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll stall them until you’re ready.”
“Walker,” said Hamilton, pressing the phone to his ear and watching Blake head across the factory lot to the waiting crowd. The plant’s lights had hummed on, illuminating the bellies of the clouds of white smoke that belched from the chimneys. “What have you got?”
“I think we’ve found her, sir.”
Hamilton closed his eyes in relief. “Do you have her?”
“Not yet. Jones spotted her in a photograph we took at one of Cook’s rallies—that group we thought could be part of Mission Earth? We matched it with the security footage. I’ll send you the pictures now.”
“You think you can track her down?”
“We’re on it, sir.”
Hamilton let out a breath. “Whatever files she took? Whatever she found…?”
“We’ll get it done, sir.”
Hamilton didn’t need to push. He had hired Gage Walker specifically because of his reputation.
Ending the call, he opened the file Walker had sent over. There were two photographs side by side. One he’d seen already—the grainy image taken from a security camera in the mansion’s grounds, enhanced to show the woman’s face. The second was a close-up of a crowd, zoomed in on a figure with a crop of pink hair, a banner raised in her fist. It was the same woman. Hamilton tapped the image with his finger, making the screen blink. “Got you.”
As he closed the file, his cell screen returned to the page he’d been looking at earlier. It was a piece in the Des Moines Register about the murders in Black Hawk County. He remembered something he’d meant to ask Blake before he got distracted by Cook’s speech. Stowing his cell, he got out of the car.
Blake was there to greet him. “All good, sir?”
“Very good.” Hamilton put on a smile as they headed toward the waiting crowd. Behind, the Mississippi had turned to wine in the last of the light. “Get me a number, would you, Blake? For the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office.”
35
They crowded into the high school gymnasium: store owners and farmers, worried fathers and anxious mothers, gung-ho men keen for a hunt. The chairs filled quickly, leaving those that shuffled in behind crammed against climbing bars and ropes.
Mayor Angela Roberts, a straight-talking, keen-eyed woman in her fifties, introduced Sheriff Reed. As Reed stood at the podium, the frenetic hum of voices died away. There was a projector screen lit behind him, the logo for the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office flickering in the center.
Reed cleared his throat into the microphone, which whined with feedback. “I want to thank you all for coming. As you know, our great community has been blighted by the horrific murders of two young women.”
Three women, thought Riley. It was three days since she and Logan had returned from Mercer County, and she hadn’t been able to get Gracie Foster’s bug-savaged face from her mind. It was hard not to blame herself for thinking the teen had run away, for not searching more, despite the fact Gracie was already dead, days before they’d found Chloe; before they’d known something was horribly wrong in their county.
She watched the crowd from her place onstage. Some craned their necks to watch Reed, frowning as they listened. Others fanned their faces, the rumbling air-conditioning unit struggling to cool the packed space. To Riley’s right sat Sergeant Hal Edwards, to her left Mayor Roberts, the county attorney, and the chiefs of Waterloo and Cedar Falls police departments. It was a show of strength, of unity. Since word had spread of the murders of Chloe Miller and Nicole King and, with it, fear and suspicion, they needed to calm the growing unease. We want vigilance, Reed had remarked to the mayor earlier. Not vigilantes.
There was no sign of James Miller. Riley hadn’t really expected him to be here, but he’d been in her mind since the interview. The photograph she’d stolen from Chloe’s album was in her locker, greeting her each morning with a jolt of unpleasantness. She had thought about taking it down to Special Services, setting up a trace. But there was enough of her past crawling around her right now as it was. Maybe, when this case was closed.
Maybe.
She thought of Miller’s anger at being questioned, his fury when he’d caught her looking at the photographs. That cut-off sentence? If I could have—what? It seemed pretty certain he hadn’t murdered Chloe or Nicole or Gracie, unless his alibis were fake. But there was something not right there. A piece that didn’t belong in the puzzle. In her experience, anger often hid fear. But what might James Miller be scared of?
Riley started into the present as she saw Reed nod to her.
“My deputies, aided by officers from our police departments, are working around the clock to solve these murders. Sergeant Fisher, head of our Investigations team, has a few words to say on the case.”
Riley walked to the podium as Reed sat beside the mayor. Her skin prickled at the feel of all these eyes on her. Her mouth was dry, but there was no water on the stand. Clearing her throat, she went to speak.
Before she could, a man shouted from the back of the gymnasium. “Why haven’t you arrested anyone?”
Others chipped in, voicing their agreement.
“We’ve got our kids on curfews,” called a woman. “This monster should be locked up. Not them!”
A scattering of applause followed her words. Riley held up a hand for quiet, but others wanted their say.
“Black Hawk’s reputation is on the line,” interjected a man in a John Deere T-shirt. “The state fair is just weeks away. I’ve been speaking with customers and suppliers across the state, but these murders are all people can talk about. They aren’t interested in our farms and produce right now. Heck, gossip is fast becoming our biggest export!”
There were many calls of agreement at this.
“I understand your worries,” Riley said, raising her voice above the protests. “But if we work together as a community, I am confident we can bring this case to a close.” She waited until they’d settled into a reluctant silence. “Many of you will have seen this photograph in the news.” She pressed the clicker on the podium, and an image appeared on the projector screen. “We need to speak to this man—George Anderson—as a matter of urgency. We believe he’s been living on the streets for some time.” Riley motioned to the gymnasium’s doors where a desk was set up, Logan and Fox seated behind it. “My deputies have flyers with Anderson’s picture and a number to call, should any of you see him. Those of you who own businesses, please take a stack. Put them up in your offices. Hand them out to customers. But, under no circumstances should you approach this man yourself. Call us.” Her eyes swept the crowd. “Let us do our job.” She pressed the clicker again, and another image appeared. It was a woman with a thin face and badly highlighted hair, eyes too wide and too bright. “We also need to find this woman.”
“That’s Gracie’s mom!” called a teenage girl in the front row. “Sarah Foster!”
“We have another number for you to call,” said Riley, raising her voice above the murmurs. “If you have any information on Sarah Foster’s whereabouts.”
The noise built as more people recognized the name of the missing teenager. Riley wondered what the mood would be like when they learned of Gracie’s fate. The girl’s flesh carved away. Her naked, mutilated body left to the waters until she was scarcely human. Fished out to be laid on a steel tray in a cold room in another state. And no one yet to claim her.
Dental records had confirmed her identity, but the sheriff’s office wouldn’t make it public until they’d informed her next of kin. Trouble was, there was still no sign of her mother. Schmidt and Fox were working their way through the list of contacts they had, questioning everyone who knew Sarah Foster. But the growing concern Riley had felt for the woman had begun to turn into a feeling that they might now be looking for yet another body.
It wasn’t just the county’s citizens who were on edge. The department, too, was uneasy. What had started as two murder cases had shifted into something bigger, the bloody threads of which were now spooling out beyond their borders. They had three dead women—all with flesh missing. They had vanished people, swirling rumors, circling reporters, and an increasingly agitated community. They had no firm leads and, without witnesses or DNA results, no certain suspect.
