Criminal (Will Trent 6)

Sara noted the date, which was over thirty years ago. “Very old case.”

“We were lucky they found it in evidence, though I’m not sure if we’ll need it after all.” He picked up the envelope and put it on his desk. The black dust transferred to his fingers. “The city used to purge closed cases every five years. We did some crazy stuff back then.”

Sara could tell the case meant something to him. She knew the feeling. There were still victims she’d worked on back in Grant County that would haunt her memories until the day she died.

Pete asked, “How are things at Grady?”

“Oh, you know.” Sara didn’t know what to say. She was called “bitch” so often that she turned her head whenever anyone yelled the word. “Swimming pools and movie stars.”

“In nearly fifty years, I’ve not once had a patient talk back or file a complaint against me.” He raised an eyebrow. “You know they’ll need someone to take my place when I’m gone.”

Sara laughed, then saw that he wasn’t joking.

“Just a thought,” he told her. “But this brings me to a favor I need to ask.”

“What can I do?”

“I’ve got a case that just came in. It’s very important. It has to hold up.”

“Does it have anything to do with that?” She indicated the dirty envelope on his desk.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I can do all the heavy lifting, but I need to make sure that six months, a year from now, someone’s around to testify.”

“You’ve got dozens of people working under you.”

“Just four at the moment,” he corrected. “Unfortunately, none of them possess the length and breadth of your experience.”

“I don’t—”

“You’re still credentialed. I checked with the state.” He leaned forward. “I’m not a duplicitous man, Sara. You know that about me. So you’ll understand that I’m being brutally honest when I tell you that this is a dying man’s last request. I need you to do this for me. I need you to go to court. I need you to speak directly to a jury and put this man back where he belongs.”

Sara was momentarily at a loss. This was the last thing she’d been expecting. Her apartment looked as if it had been hit by a tornado. She still had Will to deal with. She was dressed more suitably for a pickup softball game than for work. Still, she knew that she didn’t have a choice. “There’s already a suspect?”

“Yes.” He shuffled the papers around and found a yellow file folder.

Sara scanned the preliminary report. There wasn’t much. A dead Jane Doe had been found outside a Dumpster in a fairly upscale part of town. She’d been beaten to death. Her wallet was absent cash. The bruising around her wrists and ankles indicated that she’d been tied up, possibly kidnapped.

Sara looked up at Pete. She had an awful, sinking feeling. “The missing Georgia Tech student?”

“We don’t have positive ID yet, but I’m afraid so.”

“Death penalty case?” Pete nodded. “Is the body here?”

“They brought her in half an hour ago.” Pete looked up at the doorway. “Hello, Mandy.”

“Pete.” Amanda Wagner’s arm was in a sling. She looked worse for the wear, though she still kept up the formalities. “Dr. Linton.”

“Dr. Wagner,” Sara returned. She couldn’t help but look over the woman’s shoulder for Will.

Amanda asked Pete, “Did Vanessa come by?”

“First thing this morning.” He explained to Sara, “The fourth Mrs. Hanson.”

Amanda said, “Dr. Linton, I hope we can avail ourselves of your expertise?”

Sara felt a bit managed. She asked the obvious question. “Is this Will’s case?”

“No. Agent Trent is absolutely not assigned to this case. Which doesn’t explain why I’ve spent the last three hours of my day walking up and down every hallway in a twelve-story office building talking to people who have better things to do than watch us chase our tails.” She paused for a breath. “Pete, when did we get so old?”

“Speak for yourself. I always told you I was going to die young.”

She laughed, but there was a sad edge to the sound.

“I can still remember the first time you came into my morgue.”

“Please, let’s not get maudlin. Try to go out with some dignity.”

He grinned like a cat. There was a moment between them, and Sara wondered if Amanda Wagner had fallen somewhere along the timeline of the many Mrs. Hansons.

The moment passed quickly. Pete stood from his desk. He reached out, bracing himself against the chair. Sara jumped up to help him, but he gently pushed her away. “Not to that point yet, my dear.” He told Amanda, “You can use my office. We’ll go ahead and get started.”

Pete indicated that Sara should leave ahead of him. She pushed open the doors to the morgue, resisting the urge to hold them for Pete. He seemed more diminished in the large tiled room. The office had served as a buffer against his wasted appearance. In the bright lights of the autopsy theater, there was no hiding the obvious.

“A bit cool in here,” Pete mumbled, taking his white lab coat off the hook. He went to the cabinet and handed Sara one of his spares. His name was stitched over the pocket. Sara could’ve wrapped the coat around her body twice. But then, so could Pete.

“Our victim.” He indicated a draped body in the center of the room. Blood had permeated the sheet, which was unusual. Circulation stopped when the heart stopped beating. Blood congealed. Sara couldn’t help but feel some guilty excitement. She relished a difficult case. Working at Grady, dealing with the same types of ailments and injuries over and over again, could become a bit mind-numbing.

Pete said, “We’ve already photographed and X-rayed her. Sent her clothes to the lab. Do you know we used to just cut them off and throw them in a bag? And rape cases.” He laughed. “My God, the science was flawed from the beginning. There was no taking the victim’s word for it. If we didn’t find semen in the suspected attacker’s underwear, then we couldn’t legally sign off on a charge of rape.”

Sara didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t imagine how awful things used to be. Thankfully, she didn’t have to.

Pete looped his braid on top of his head and pulled on an Atlanta Braves baseball hat. He was in his element inside the morgue, visibly more animated. “I remember the first time I talked to an odontologist about bite marks. I was certain we were looking at the future of crime solving. Hair fibers. Carpet fibers.” He chuckled. “If I have one regret about my impending doom, it’s that I won’t live to see the day when we’ve got everyone’s DNA on an iPad, and all we have to do is scan some blood or a piece of tissue and up pops a current location for our bad guy. It’ll end crime as we know it.”

Sara didn’t want to talk about Pete’s impending doom. She busied herself with her hair, tightening the band, tucking it into a surgeon’s cap so she wouldn’t contaminate anything. “How long have you known Amanda?”

“Since dinosaurs walked among us,” he joked. Then, in a more serious tone, he said, “I met her when she started working with Evelyn. They were both a couple of pistols.”