Stolen Daughters (Detective Amanda Steele)

“No… I…” She couldn’t get too close to the body for risk of disturbing evidence, but she bent over and peered into the bloody cavern at Malone’s prompting. “He cut out—” she paused, recoiling in disgust “—her tongue.”

“Yep.” Malone smacked his lips together.

“That is so wrong.” Trent blew out a mouthful of air and glanced at the ceiling for a second.

She was surprised by his reaction. Sure, it was a grotesque display, but Trent handled autopsies like a pro and they were far messier than this. “You going to be all right there?”

“Yeah, it’s just not something you see every day.”

“Thank God for that,” Malone lamented.

“I’ll be fine.” Trent cleared his throat. “So are we looking at the same bastard who killed the girl and set the fire, or someone else? It’s a different MO.”

Shannon’s killer had indeed used a different method of operation, but it was hard to ignore the fact her house was just a few down from 532 and hard to dismiss another truth. “She’s the one who called nine-one-one. Maybe the killer found out somehow and decided to silence her?” She motioned toward Shannon’s mouth, indicating the absence of a tongue.

“Her name was in the newspaper,” Trent said, “along with the fact she was a nurse at Prince William Medical Center.”

“Wow,” Amanda said. “Apparently, the media doesn’t hold anything back.”

“It would have been easy for the killer to find out where she lived.” Trent’s voice held a sour note.

“We need to keep in mind that we could be looking at someone else, possibly within Shannon’s circle.” As soon as they pigeonholed an investigation, they risked sabotaging the case. Regardless of where the evidence took them, she felt for Shannon Fox. She would have thought she’d done a good deed, but it hadn’t exactly netted a reward worth receiving. Even the intrinsic feeling of knowing she’d done an honorable thing had been short-lived.

“I read the article on the fire last night,” Trent volunteered. “The reporter played up Fox as a hero, but Fox herself was quoted as saying that she did what anyone would have done in her place.”

Maybe it hadn’t just been the call to 911 that had made Shannon a target. It wasn’t a leap that this killer might see himself as having done a good thing with the fire and killing of Jane Doe—and wanted the glory all for himself. Again, that was assuming that Shannon’s killer was also Jane Doe’s.

“Excuse me.” Paula Jeffery ducked her head into the room. She was another ME from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manassas, and not Amanda’s favorite person. She took herself too seriously, in Amanda’s opinion, and fared better in relationships with the dead than the living.

At her heels were CSIs Blair and Donnelly.

“We’re going to need the room,” Jeffery said.

“We’ll get out of your way.” Malone smiled cordially and was the first to leave.

Amanda and Trent followed him down the stairs and out the front door. They gathered in a circle.

Trent was the first to speak. “Doe’s killer had doused her body with gasoline, likely for the purpose of destroying it and making identification impossible. But the fire was put out before that could happen. I think the killer blamed Fox and her call to nine-one-one for ruining his plan. He thought he’d teach her a lesson.”

Malone latched a hand onto Trent’s shoulder. “Let’s just slow down before we start jumping to conclusions.”

Amanda turned away and settled her gaze on the woman who had been with Becky earlier. She was now in the passenger seat of the cruiser with the door open and her legs outside the vehicle. The yoga mat rested in her lap, and she was dabbing her cheeks with a tissue. Amanda nodded her head toward her and said to Malone, “That who found her?”

“Yeah. You should go talk to her.” With that, Malone was off across the yard in the opposite direction from Becky and the woman.

“Before we head over there…” She reached out and caught Trent by the crook of his elbow. “Just remember that we need to go into this investigation with an open mind. You understand that?”

He scanned her eyes but said nothing.

She continued. “We can’t just run on the assumption that the same killer is involved. We could blind ourselves to the actual evidence. We approach this like any other murder, looking first at the people in Fox’s life.” She was saying this just as much for herself as she was for him.

Trent angled his head. “You don’t think it’s the same killer?”

“An. Open. Mind.” She started toward the woman, Trent at her side.

As they approached, Becky helped close the distance and said, “You’re a busy woman.”

“You too. So who is she?”