Vulnerable (Morgans of Nashville 4)

“As soon as we can make an identification,” Rick said, “we need to notify her parents.”

“Sure. I’ll move as quickly as I can,” she said.

She set her camera aside and donned a Tyvek suit as well as a small headlight, which she snapped on. Without another word, she crouched and began crawling into the cave.

Her heart beat a little faster and beads of sweat formed on her face. She never relaxed in tight spaces. A stupid kind of fear. She was perfectly safe but her body always recoiled when the job required her to squirm into a tiny space. She’d been under the crawl spaces of homes, in small basement rooms, and low attic spaces. She should have been used to this kind of thing after a decade on the job. But she never made peace with it.

She moved forward, her shoulders stooped and she turned toward the entrance. “Brad, I need my camera.”

“Right here,” he said handing it to her.

The body was bloated with decomposition gasses and in several places the victim’s skin had split, allowing bodily fluids to puddle around her body. This close, she could see the white button-down had subtle blue stripes. The right sleeve was ripped and the arm bloodied, suggesting the injury happened before she died. Her skirt was khaki and her shoes, or rather shoe, was a blue loafer. The shoe on her right foot was missing, revealing small white toes painted a vivid purple that matched the color of her fingernails. The funky color didn’t quite jibe with the overall preppy look, and Georgia wondered if the girl had harbored a risky side that might very well have gotten her killed. Her right and left hands where crossed over her heart and her face was turned to the side.

She snapped more images and then allowed her gaze to skim the girl’s face. Death and time had ravaged what must have been a full and bright face into a very pale, drawn expression. Her lips were slightly apart.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

The victim wore simple gold earrings and a pearl necklace. Both looked as if they were expensive. Under the necklace, a dark purple band of bruises circled a thin white neck. This girl had been strangled, but it would take the medical examiner to determine if that had been the cause of death. She rose up above the body as much as the jagged low ceiling would allow.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

Peeking out from the white button-down was a pink, sleek lacy bra, another hint that this girl had harbored secrets.

A class ring encircled the victim’s right pinky and as Georgia leaned in close, she discovered it was a newly minted college ring. So damn young.

Her gaze trailed around the body as she searched for anything that might have belonged to the victim. She noted piles of leaves and rocks and along the rock wall several puddles of wax, remnants of candles burned down to the wick.

On her knees, she passed through something wet and she glanced back to see decomposition fluid on her jumpsuit.

“It just doesn’t get any lovelier than this,” she grumbled. A sharp rock on the cave’s floor cut into her palms and strained the protection of her latex gloves.

Beyond the body, the cave narrowed like the neck of a bottle. She tucked the camera into a pocket of her jumpsuit and crawled past the body toward the narrowing space closed off by a pile of neatly piled rocks. The arrangement was too defined to be natural and was reminiscent of the rocks piled in the primary cave’s entrance.

“How’s it look?” Brad asked.

“Dark. Very, very dark.”

“You okay?”

“I’m doing just swell. You know I live for this.” Her nose itched and she rubbed it with her forearm. As she shifted to the right, she hit her elbow against a jagged rock. Pain shot up her arm and she muttered a curse. Every move had to be deliberate to ensure no evidence was damaged.

The narrow light of her headlamp caught a wink of metal as she stared up at the rocks. When she leaned closer, she realized there was a pendant hanging from a chain dangling from the rocks. She snapped a picture of the pendant and then glanced in her viewfinder and blew up the image. The pendant was engraved with two scripted letters: BR.

Shit. Bethany Reed.

The death scent mingled with the musty wet mossy smells that belonged in caves. She glanced at the ceiling, praying the bats and hairy critters hiding in the darkness would scurry out of her path. Hating the space, she kept her focus on what she did best: cataloging facts.

She photographed the pendant several more times and then the rocks stacked at the back of the cave. As she set the stones aside a second, smaller area appeared. “What the hell is this place?”

Shinning her light into the second space, she could see it narrowed so much that once in she would not be able to turn around. The only way out of here was to back out so if something furry charged, she would have to choke back a godawful scream or suffer the jokes of the cops.

She cleared more rocks so that she could move forward into the second chamber.

Her left hand settled on something hard, brittle and narrow. She dropped her gaze, her headlight catching the object.

It was a bone. Human.

* * *

Jake stood at the cave’s entrance, listening as Georgia burrowed deeper into the darkness. He admired her guts. He was street tough, but this scene put him on edge.

Feet braced, he tapped his index finger against the butt of his gun. “Brad, I don’t hear her moving. What’s going on in there?”

Brad, kneeling at the mouth of the cave, glanced back at Jake as if to caution patience. But when he took a good look at Jake, he silenced his comments and leaned into the mouth of the cave. “Georgia, what’s going on?”

For a moment, she did not answer and the silence fueled Jake’s concern.

“She’s fine,” Brad said. “She’ll holler if she needs help.”

“I understand that.” A blunt tone sharpened the edges of each word.

Rick shifted his stance. “Give her a few more seconds.”

Jake’s lips flattened into a grim line. “Brad. Yell in there again.”

“Georgia!” Brad hollered. “What’s your status?”

Jake was quickly losing patience. He’d give her five more seconds and then he’d head inside. One. Two. Three.

“I’m alive.” Her strong voice echoed out from the depths of the cave. The camera flashed a dozen more times. “It’s a bitch turning around in here. I’m on the way out.”

He freed some of the tension banding his shoulders. “She’s taking a hell of a lot of pictures.”

“She won’t miss anything,” Rick said.

Finally, he saw her booted, muddied feet appear at the entrance. Next, a very nice bottom, also covered in dirt and sludge, a narrow waist, shoulders, and that crop of red hair pulled into a topknot.

She straightened and rolled her shoulders as she turned. She wiped a curl from her face with the back of her hand. “Female, approximately twenty years old. Nicely dressed. My guess is that she was strangled, but that’s the medical examiner’s call. She’s well into the decomposition process and given the cool weather and fifty or sixty degree temperature in the cave, she’s been in there three or four days.”

“You were in there a while,” Jake said.

“I searched around the body. I found three candles burned down into puddles of wax, but nothing else. And I spotted a pile of rocks in the back of the cave. They’re too neatly arranged to be natural so I removed a few. Behind the first chamber there’s a longer, narrower tunnel that cuts deeper into the hill. That’s what took me so long.”

“You get stuck?” Rick asked.

She shot him an annoyed look. “No. Are you saying I have a big ass?”

“Not at all.”

She drew in a breath. “In the second chamber I found bones.”

“Human?” Jake asked.

She reached inside the front pocket of her jumpsuit and pulled out her camera. She scrolled back through pictures and handed it to Jake. Rick moved forward and the two studied the image. “You tell me. Looks like a human femur to me.”

“How many sets?” Jake asked.

“One that I saw, but I won’t know until I get back into the cave and really look,” she said.

“There is no chance that two killers would find the same hiding spot?” Rick asked.

“Whoever hid the body in the exterior chamber had already hid a victim in the back section of the cave,” Jake said.

Georgia pushed the back button on the viewfinder until the image of a gold pendant and chain appeared. “Found that dangling from one of the rocks blocking the back chamber. Look closely at the pendant. It’s engraved with the initials BR.”

Both detectives studied the image. “Bethany Reed,” Rick said.

“You’d think the hounds would have picked up the scent five years ago,” Jake said. “Jesus, there must have been two hundred people canvassing the park.”

“That back chamber is tucked away and the entrance was covered with rocks,” Georgia said. “If the killer spread a little lye on the body, that would have masked the scent. But before I can think about excavating the second site, I’ve got to deal with our Jane Doe.”

Rick removed a small notebook from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and flipped it open. “Elisa Spence, age nineteen, was reported missing on Sunday by her roommate. Five foot four, one hundred and fifty pounds, muddy brown hair.”