Her Last Word

“The sagittal suture.” Dr. McGowan drew her gloved finger over the top of her head. “When we’re born there’s a soft spot in the center of our head. The bones need to be flexible so the brain can grow. But from the day we’re born, the left and right sides of our skull begin to close and create the sagittal suture, which is basically a line down the center of our skull. It continues to harden and close until we’re in our midthirties. Based on this victim’s skull, I believe she was less than twenty years old.”

“Do you know how she died?” Adler asked.

“Too early to say. I don’t see any trauma on the skull, but I have a lot more bones to excavate. I did find the hyoid bone, and it appears intact.” This horseshoe-shaped bone was located in the neck and would snap when a victim was strangled.

“Is she Gina Mason?” Ricker asked.

“My office has requested dental records, so we’ll make a comparison at the lab once I unearth the mandible. I understand Gina had several fillings on her two back molars, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Did you find anything with the bones?” Adler asked.

“Nothing yet, but we’ll be sifting all the dirt as we go.”

Adler remembered Gina’s smiling picture at Kaitlin’s lecture. “How long will it take?” he asked.

“Several hours. There’s no point in you remaining here. I’ll contact you when I’m finished.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Ricker said.

Dr. McGowan left the trio and returned to her crew.

“She’s meticulous and won’t miss a thing.” Quinn rolled her shoulders, then turned her head from side to side.

“Did you bring your yoga mat, Quinn?” Adler asked.

She laughed. “I would have if there weren’t so many cops here.”

The GPR technician called out to Adler and Quinn, “Detectives. A word?”

“I don’t like that look,” Ricker muttered.

“Me neither,” Adler said.

The detectives and Ricker moved toward the technician. The gray image on the radar screen showed a series of waves.

“A body?” Adler asked.

“Looks like it.”

“Jesus, another one?” Quinn whispered.

Adler studied the waves that rolled through the center of the gray image. He turned toward Dr. McGowan and called her over. She slowly rose and crossed the field.

“Have a look at this.”

It took her just a split second. “I’ll get a shovel.”

Without raising his gaze from the screen, Adler said to the technician, “You’re going to need a bigger scanner.”

INTERVIEW FILE #26

WHO KILLED JENNIFER AND ERIKA?

The discovery of Gina’s bones directly implicated Randy Hayward in Gina’s death. He had motive and opportunity, and most of all, he had taken the cops to her body. However, finding Gina didn’t answer the question of who killed Jennifer and Erika. Who stabbed me? Derek Blackstone and Brad Crowley had been friends of Randy Hayward’s in high school and college. They were a triple threat. They had vowed to always stick together and protect each other. And neither had ever had their DNA tested to see if their blood matched the blood on the fragment of dress found by the original crime scene.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Saturday, March 24, 2018; 8:00 a.m.

With her body healing and her mind clearing, Kaitlin could shift her attention to Derek Blackstone, who she was certain knew far more about Gina’s fate than he was letting on. She’d spent most of the night reading up on Derek, scraping together all the details she could find about him. His credentials were impressive. There was nothing that set off alarm bells.

So, when the clock struck eight, Kaitlin decided to shake the trees a little harder and see if anything new fell out. Drawing in a breath, she dialed Derek’s home number. A cleaning lady answered.

“Mr. Blackstone’s residence.”

“This is Kathryn Sommers.” She wasn’t police and therefore not bound by honesty. Lying wasn’t against the law. “I’m calling from Mr. Blackstone’s office building. Is he there?”

“No, he left a half hour ago. He should be arriving there now.”

“Oh, right. I think I see him. Thank you.”

Her next call was to his office, wondering if she’d get anyone to answer on Saturday. As the phone rang, she sat straighter when she heard a woman’s crisp voice say, “Hawthorn, Blackstone, and Myers.”

“I’m calling for Derek Blackstone. I’m a neighbor of his.” She’d thought up a dozen scenarios to get him on the phone, but in the end opted to keep it simple. “I think his house is on fire.”

A leaden silence filled the next few seconds before the woman said, “He’s out of the office today.”

“He is? I just saw him, and he said he was going to the office.”

“Not today.”

“Oh, wow. I called the fire department.” If he were in the office, this would get him to the phone. “Are you sure he’s not there?”

Phones rang in the background. “Look, I can take your name and number and track him down.”

She decided to go aggressive. “What’s your name?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What is your name? And do you have a supervisor?”

“Who is this?” the woman insisted.

She gripped the phone. This ruse wasn’t going to work. “Tell him Gina Mason called. He can call me back at this number.”

She dialed Adler’s number. It rang twice and went to voicemail. A now-familiar graveled tone hummed over her nerves. “Adler, this is Kaitlin. I’m calling about Derek Blackstone. I think his link to this case goes way deeper than attorney-client relationship.”

Adler’s phone buzzed in his pocket, but he let it go to voicemail. He was standing in the medical examiner’s autopsy suite with Quinn and Dr. McGowan. On the two stainless-steel tables were separate sets of bones. Neither set had yet been arranged in anatomical order.

Dr. McGowan clicked on an overhead light. Gingerly she lifted the first skull. “We’ve already taken X-rays and cross-referenced dental records. This is Gina Mason. She’s finally come home.”

He studied the skull cradled in the doctor’s hands. Images of the young woman’s smiling face stoked his anger. This kid had not deserved such a violent fate. “And the other one?”

Dr. McGowan had set the first skull down and picked up the second. “Female. Under the age of twenty, I think.” She turned the skull to the side and traced her finger down a fracture. “Someone hit her hard on the back of her head. The blow was enough to knock her out and maybe kill her. I also noticed that her pelvic bone is broken, suggesting there was more trauma. I can’t tell you if that occurred ante- or postmortem. The pelvis is very vascular, and if she were alive, this would have caused tremendous bleeding and pain.”

He hoped to hell it was postmortem. “Can you determine the cause of death?”

She gently set the skull down and lifted one of the victim’s ribs. “There are distinct markings here.” She ran her finger along an angled indention. “It was caused by a large knife. If you look carefully you’ll see the edges are slightly serrated. Maybe it was a hunting knife. If you found the knife I’m confident I could match it.”

“How long has she been dead?” Adler asked.

“I’d say a couple of years longer than Miss Mason.”

“And Miss Mason was also stabbed?” Quinn asked.

“Yes. There are knife marks on at least two of her left ribs. If you look closely at the marks, you’ll notice the blade is serrated and matches the other rib we just examined.”

Quinn shook her head with contempt. “Two women murdered within a couple of years. Hayward goes to priso

n on drug and burglary charges, and within four weeks of being out, he knifes a woman to death.”

“The knife recovered from the convenience store murder was a hunting knife,” Adler said. “That victim was stabbed in the ribs.”

“You just took the words right out of my mouth,” Dr. McGowan said. “I pulled the complete set of records from that autopsy. The knife that killed that victim was also serrated.”

“Hayward said he went up to the barn after he was released from prison,” Adler said. “He finds the murder weapon he stashed fourteen years ago, thinks enough time has gone by, and the stupid shit pockets it.”

“He saved the knife as some kind of trophy?”

“That’s my guess,” Adler said.

“Do you really think Hayward would be so stupid to take us to Gina’s body knowing Jane Doe is one hundred yards away?” Quinn asked.

“I think he’s that arrogant and also that desperate. Gina was his one shot to save himself.”

“So he assumes our attention would be exclusively on unearthing Gina’s body and bets we won’t look anywhere else,” Quinn said incredulously.

“Have the GPR technicians found any other bodies near these two?” Dr. McGowan asked.

“No. Not yet,” Adler said.

“You think Blackstone knew about the second body?” Quinn asked.

“I don’t know,” Adler said.

Quinn’s grin was sly. “The immunity deal with Hayward covers the Gina Mason and convenience store murders only, correct?”

He smiled. “Correct. It does not cover Jane Doe.”

“So if we can tie Hayward to Jane Doe’s murder, we can charge him with murder.”

“That’s the goal.”

They spent several more minutes discussing the cases before Adler could step away and check his voicemail. He played back Kaitlin’s message.

He didn’t like the idea of her chasing Blackstone. If Blackstone had been covering for Hayward all these years, he had a lot to lose. And that made him very dangerous.

Adler dialed Logan’s number. He answered on the second ring, his voice thick and heavy with sleep.

“Did I wake you up, Logan?”

“Up until four a.m.”