Блейк Пирс – Before He Harms (страница 6)

“Any idea how far she had been running?” Ellington asked.

“We’re not really clear on that,” Burke said. “There’s a field about a mile and a half away from here that shows some signs of someone passing through that same night. But the growth of weeds and wild grass makes it impossible to tell for sure if it was this woman—or even a human being at all. Could have been a deer or something.”

“And no one around here saw anything?” Mackenzie asked. She looked down the street, to the slightly sloping road and the nice homes. There were plenty of streetlights. It was hard to believe no one had seen anything.

“My men and I questioned every homeowner on this street. We have one night owl who claims to have seen an old town car driving through the neighborhood with its lights off. But they didn’t get a plate number.”

“And what about the girl?” Ellington said. “No known identity at all?”

“None that we can find. The driver’s license was a fake. And a damned convincing one at that. We of course took her fingerprints and drew blood. None of them match to anyone in the system.”

“That makes no sense,” Ellington commented.

“And that’s why we called you guys out here,” Burke said. “You saw the pictures of the body at the scene, I assume?”

“Yes,” Mackenzie said. “Black duct tape over her mouth. The ME believes it was placed there postmortem.”

“That’s right. Checked the tape for prints and got nothing.”

Mackenzie had studied that strip of tape in the photographs for a while last night and on the plane this morning. She figured it could be symbolic, some way of the killer letting the woman know even in death that she needed to be quiet. But why? What did she have to say?

“With no identity, I guess it’s been next to impossible to identify friends or family members,” Ellington said.

“Yeah. We have nothing. So I will now gladly hand this over to you. Need anything from me?”

“Yes, actually,” Mackenzie said. “No prints were found on the driver’s license?”

“Just the girl’s.”

“What’s the forensics lab like at your station?”

“Not state of the art by any means, but better than most in towns of this size.”

“Get your forensics guys to take a closer look at that license. Check it under a microscope with ultraviolet light. Some forgers put a little signature or mark on their work. It’s always hidden well, but sometimes it’s there. Sort of a sneaky little middle-finger to people like us.”

“I’ll do that,” Burke said. “Anything else?”

Mackenzie was about to ask Ellington what he thought, but she was interrupted by the ringing of her phone. It was on silent, but they could all hear it buzzing from inside her coat pocket. She turned away and pulled the phone out of her pocket. She was irritated and a little alarmed to see it was her mother. She nearly ignored it but the thought of her and Frances keeping Kevin sat heavy on her mind.

She took a few steps away and answered the call, already dreading the news that may be waiting on the other end.

“Hey, Mom. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything is good. Kevin is perfectly fine.”

“So then why the call? You know I’m right at the start of case, right?”

“I do. But I just need to know something. Is Frances always this overbearing?”

“How do you mean?”

“Just being bossy. I know she’s been around Kevin more than I have but she’s acting like she knows every single detail about him, and questioning everything I do.”

“That’s why you’re calling me?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Mackenzie, I just—”

“Both of you are big girls. You’ll find a way to work together. For now, I have to go. Please, Mom…don’t call me again unless it’s urgent.”

“Okay.” There was hurt and disappointment in her voice, but Mackenzie looked past it.

She killed the call and turned back to Ellington and Burke. Burke looked at her almost apologetically as he headed back to his patrol car. “I was just telling your partner here that we’ve got an office space set up for you guys back at the station. I’ve got a few other things I need to check on, so just make yourselves at home. And feel free to call me directly if anything pressing pops up.”

He seemed relieved to be leaving the scene as he got into his car. He gave them a little wave before he pulled off, leaving them to look at the section of road where the mystery woman had been killed.

“Important call?” Ellington asked.

“It was my mother.”

“Oh? Everything okay?”

“Yes. She was just calling to let me know the cage match is officially underway.”

CHAPTER SIX

The first thing Mackenzie did when they arrived at the station was to go through the physical records to get actual photos of the crime scene rather than the digital ones she and Ellington had been given. She spread them out on the large table that took up most of their designated office space and hunched over them for a moment. As she studied them, Ellington started taking down notes on his phone.

The girl was rather young. Mackenzie doubted she was older than twenty. She was blonde and had a face that most would consider pretty. But there was some quality to her, even in her emotionless dead face, that made Mackenzie think the girl may have been a runaway or a vagrant. That, or she’d been through some trauma recently. Her skin simply had a pallor to it that spoke of grime and hard living.

“No identity,” she said, speaking to herself more than to Ellington. “I wonder if she was from WITSEC.”

“Witness protection?” Ellington said. “That’s a bit of a leap. Especially with a license you think might be a fake.”

“Well, she has no real ID and she was running hard from someone. If she was with witness protection and on the run, that would give us at least somewhere to start looking. Maybe someone from her past found her.”

“That’s why I love you,” Ellington said. “You’d rather look hard at a theory without legs than admit you have nowhere to start.”

“There’s always somewhere to start,” Mackenzie said, still eyeing the photos. “It’s just that sometimes the place you start is the hardest.”

She pulled out her phone, her eyes bouncing back and forth between her contacts and the pictures of the dead girl on the table.

“Who you calling?” Ellington asked.

“I’m going to have DC patch me through to the US Marshals office to see if they’ll get me a list.”

Ellington, clearly surprised by the suggestion, nodded comically. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

As the phone was answered and she was placed on hold and then finally patched through to the Marshals office, she continued to eye the pictures. The injuries sustained by the vehicle striking her weren’t obvious in the pictures, but the harsh slit across her throat was glaring. The pavement in the pictures was slightly wet and glistening, making the dark red coming from her neck almost surreal.

“This is Assistant Chief Manning,” a rough voice said through the other end of the phone. “Who is this?”

“This is Special Agent Mackenzie White, with the FBI. I’m working a case in Salt Lake City that I believe may involve a young woman out of WITSEC. We have absolutely no ID. Her prints aren’t in any database and the driver’s license found on her body is a fake. I’m taking a shot in the dark and hoping she might be in your system.”

“Agent White, you know I can’t give you the identities of people under our security. That would be breaking about a dozen different laws and regulations.”

“I’m aware of that. But what if I sent you a picture? Using facial recognition, you could maybe come up with something and—”

“Pardon me, but even if you only suspect she might be with WITSEC, sending a picture back and forth breaks even more rules.”

“Being that it’s a crime scene photo, I think it’s permissible,” Mackenzie snapped. “She was hit by a vehicle and then had her throat slit. So I’m not sending you a glamour shot.”

Manning gave a deep sigh that indicated Mackenzie was about to get her way. “Send the picture over and I’ll have someone run a facial recognition search. Of course, I can’t promise anything. But I’ll see what we can do.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.” He gave her the information of where to send the picture before hanging up.

Ellington had been looking over the coroner’s report while she spoke with Manning. “Got your way, huh?”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

He shook his head and handed the coroner’s report over to her. “This is the most recent, fresh off the presses about five hours ago. Sort of interesting, don’t you think?”

She scanned the report, looking over the obvious content until she came to the most recent updates. What she found did indeed seem interesting. According to the most recent updates from the coroner and the medical examiner, it appeared that the victim had suffered several broken bones in the past that had not healed correctly. Two ribs, the left wrist, and a buckle fracture along her right arm. According to the coroner’s notes, the bones of the left wrist looked as if they had never been properly set at all.

“You thinking domestic abuse?” Mackenzie asked.

“I think she was running away from someone and she had a history of broken bones that weren’t set. So yeah…domestic abuse and maybe even something darker. I wonder if she was maybe held captive. She doesn’t look the healthiest, you know. The report has her listed as weighing one hundred and fifteen pounds. And you can see it in her face in the pictures…she looks sort of…I don’t know…”