“Get this,” BJ said, as Carter walked into the courthouse the next day. He’d spent the last three hours at the scene of an accident where a semi had jackknifed on I-84. The huge truck had hit a patch of black ice and slammed into an SUV filled with teenagers on their way to the mountain for night skiing. One kid had been treated by EMTs and released, two others had been sent by ambulance to local hospitals, and a third had been life-flighted to Portland. The driver of the eighteen-wheeler had escaped without injury except for the mental anguish he was putting himself through.
“Just don’t tell me it’s more bad news,” Carter said, yanking off his gloves. He was cold, tired, and hungry, as he’d missed both breakfast and lunch. Freezing rain had snarled traffic, the schools had closed, and now a blizzard was blowing down the gorge.
BJ ignored his bad mood as he stopped in the small kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot simmering in the coffeemaker. He took a long sip and felt the hot liquid splash against the bottom of his empty stomach. Finally, as they headed toward his office, she asked, “What is it you’ve been bugging me about for over twenty-four hours?”
“The autopsy on the Jane Doe.”
“Bingo.” She flashed him a smile. “Just ask and ye shall receive.”
It was on his desk. He unzipped his coat and hung it on a peg, then picked up the computer pages and scanned them quickly. “Cause of death hasn’t been determined.”
“That’s right, but check out the teeth. Definitely filed down. No dental work to be found, so we can’t ID her that way. No flesh on her fingers, so no
prints. Not enough left of her to identify her from physical marks. No tattoos or scars, none of her bones were ever broken, well, at least none of the ones we’ve discovered. But they did analyze the stuff in her hair.”
Carter had already seen the note. “Latex?”
“Yep, but foam, not paint.”
“Foam,” he repeated. “Like the rubber stuff.”
“Mmm. And some of it was inside her. Now, check the other stuff they found. Alginate.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“It’s manufactured from a seaweed source, comes in a powder that, when added with water, creates the stuff that dentists use to make molds of teeth. Have you ever been fitted for a crown and had to bite into a mold filled with some cherry-flavored goop? That’s alginate.”
“How do you know that?” he asked. BJ always amazed him.
“I’m Internet-friendly.”
“So while I’m out freezing my butt off in the worst storm of the century, you’re surfing the Web,” he accused, leaning one hip on the edge of his desk as he reread the report.
“And drinking hot cocoa and eating bonbons, while I’m at it.” One reddish eyebrow arched impishly. “Isn’t that the way it should be?”
“Absolutely,” he said sarcastically as he tried to wrap his brain around this new information. “Why alginate and latex?”
“It might have something to do with why her teeth were filed down.”
Looking up, he asked, “You think we’ve got a sadomasochistic dentist on the loose?”
“I don’t know what we’ve got.” Suddenly she wasn’t kidding. Carter felt the humor disperse with the chill in the air. “But I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.”
“They think she’s been dead nearly a year.”
Carter nodded, reread the notes on the report.
“Any other information?”
“The crime lab’s working on it, but they didn’t find any tire tracks or footprints to cast and, so far, no other evidence in the surrounding area.”
“She didn’t crawl into the log by herself.”
“No, but whoever did it covered his tracks, and it’s been a long time, nearly a year. Seasons change, wild animals drag off body parts, soil erosion and rain wash away footprints. Any evidence that might have been left could be buried deep. So far, though, metal detectors have found nothing.” BJ ran a hand through her short hair. “You know what bothers me? The teeth. I keep coming back to that. Why kill someone and take the time to file down her teeth?”
“Maybe he did it while she was still alive.”