Scorched (24 page)

“Listen, I need to get going,” she said. “Do me a favor, would you? Don’t mention that you saw us here.”

“What if someone asks me? Such as Special Agent Lohman?”

Kelsey froze. “Who?”

“Trent Lohman, with the FBI? He was here twice last week looking for you. He gave me his business card.”

Gage walked over. “You still have it?”

Aaron looked at Kelsey. He took out his wallet and handed her the card.

“Thanks, I’ll give him a call.” She glanced at Gage. “You ready?”

He picked up a shovel and followed her up a narrow dirt path leading to the back of the building.

“As insertions go, I’d say that was a bust.”

She gave him an annoyed look. “Are you blaming me?”

“Nope—that was my bad. I should have seen him there.” The fact that Gage hadn’t even though he’d checked made him think the guy had been hiding. Had Aaron spotted them coming and then ducked behind a tree to spy? The encounter didn’t sit well with Gage. Even though Kelsey trusted the people here, Gage had his doubts. With the exception of Kelsey, the only people Gage trusted right now were his SEAL teammates.

Kelsey swiped her ID badge and opened the door. Once inside, she flattened her palm against a biometric panel to open yet another door.

“Maybe we’ll have better luck inside,” she said.

“Let’s hope. We’re both risking our necks to be here, and if this doesn’t work, we’ll have to cut over to Plan B.”

“Which is?” She led him down a short staircase and through yet another door into a frigid hallway.

“Damn, it’s freezing in here.”

“What’s Plan B?”

“I don’t know,” Gage said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

She stopped in front of a door and did another palm-press thing to open it.

“Here we are. The Bones Unit.”

He nodded at the little black pirate flag pinned up beside the door. “Cute.”

“A little geek humor.”

Gage stepped into the room as she switched on the light. Far from the high-tech laboratory he’d imagined,
the room looked like any other shared office space. It was crammed with desks, computers, and bookshelves filled with clutter.

“I just need to grab a few things.” She shrugged into a lab coat. Then she took a clip from her desk and eyed Gage suspiciously as she pulled her hair into a ponytail. “What’s that look?”

“I ever tell you about my nurse fantasy?”

She rolled her eyes and strode into the next room.

“Doctor works, too.” He followed her. “I’m open-minded.”

She crossed the room and opened a cabinet as Gage glanced around. The room contained several stainless steel tables. He noted the hanging scales, the sinks, the stove with the giant pot sitting on top of it.

Gage turned away and noticed the bulletin board covered in color photographs. He read one of the labels and stepped closer.

“These are from Basilan Island?”

She glanced up from her work. She’d put on latex gloves and eye shields and was transferring the evidence she’d collected at Weber’s into glass vials.

“That’s the skeleton I told you about. James Hanan.”

Gage studied the bones. “The guy who started all this mess.”

“Maybe,” she said. “We don’t know that for sure.”

“I do. It’s too much of a coincidence that Blake was helping you on this case at the time he was killed, and now you’re being targeted. Plus we just bumped into one of Hanan’s comrades-in-arms out at Weber’s place.” Gage squinted at one of the photos. “What are these little pouches?”

“Cheek implants. They were my first tip-off he’d had plastic surgery.” She came to stand beside him and pointed at a view of the skull. “Also, see the scratch marks on the mandible? And here, just above the eye orbit?”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Well, it’s very obvious under a microscope. He underwent extensive plastic surgery.”

Gage looked at her standing there in her lab coat and eye shields and felt a wave of regret. This was a side of her he’d never really known, only glimpsed. How many times had she flown out to California to visit him on his turf? She’d met his friends, she’d been to his favorite hangouts, she’d toured the naval base. He’d only been to visit her in Texas twice, and she’d never brought him to see this place that was so important to her. Seeing her here made him realize she’d been right—he
had
been pretty focused on the sexual side of their relationship to the exclusion of everything else.

And to top that off, he’d broken up with her. She was understandably gun shy.

But she still cared, he knew. He could read her. The challenge was going to be getting her to admit it.

She glanced up at him. “What’s that look?”

“What look?”

“I am
not
playing doctor with you, so just get that out of your head.”

“Hey, I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking it.” She pocketed the vials of evidence and led him back into her office, where she rummaged through a desk drawer. “Here’s a visitor’s badge. It’s old, but it should work.”

Gage clipped the badge to the lapel of the shirt he’d been wearing for four straight days now to conceal his holster. He followed her out of her lab and to an elevator bank.

“First stop, Spiderman—but I doubt he’ll be in on a Sunday.”

“Spiderman?”

“That’s what they call our entomologist—although the nickname is really a misnomer, because spiders aren’t actually insects.”

Gage shuddered.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of spiders?” She smiled as she stepped onto the elevator.

“Hate the damn things.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“You’ll pit yourself against bombs and terrorists and soldiers who are trained to kill you, but you’re scared of arachnids?”

“I understand bombs and terrorists and people who want to kill me. Arachnids freak me out.”

The doors dinged opened and they stepped into a long carpeted corridor. Kelsey stopped at the first door and knocked. No one answered, and she used her palm print to gain access.

“That work everywhere?” Gage asked.

“Just the sections I frequent on a regular basis—Entomology, Serology, Osteology.” She flipped on the light and he found they were in a large room with a tall slate table in the center. On it were several microscopes.

“Okay. Exhibit A.” She collected some items from a drawer and began preparing slides.

Gage glanced around and immediately noticed the terrarium on the counter. The tarantula inside it was as big as his hand.

“That’s Aragog,” Kelsey said. “Don’t worry, he’s friendly.”

Gage stepped over to a computer station. On the wall behind it was a series of photographs, and he leaned closer for a better look.

“Are these maggots?”

She glanced up from the microscope. “Blowflies, in various stages of their life cycle. He keeps those on display as sort of a cheat sheet for when he’s out of the building. Here, tell me what you think.”

He stepped up behind her and peered over her shoulder into the microscope.

“These are pupal casings.”

Gage glanced back at the photographs. “So, that’s the fifth stage, which he conveniently labeled for the rest of us poor saps who don’t have a doctorate in bugs.”

“The presence of pupae indicate that the corpse is at least six days old. But did you notice how in several of these specimens, the end appears to be cut off? That tells us the flies have already emerged, which means time since death is longer.”

“How much longer?”

“A lot depends on conditions, but given what I saw of the body, plus the most likely weather conditions, I’m going to guess about eighteen days since death.” Kelsey sat down at a workstation and brought the computer to
life with the tap of a mouse. “Let’s corroborate that with the ADD software. That’s Accumulated Degree Days, which is something forensic anthropologists use to help determine postmortem interval.”

Gage watched as she clicked on a skull and crossbones logo to open a new program. Several blank fields popped up, and she entered yesterday’s date and the zip code of Charles Weber’s property.

“So, number of days times the average temperatures on each of those days in that zip code. The software factors in climate conditions such as moisture levels and translates that to a specific phase of decomp . . .” Her voice trailed off as the little hourglass turned in a circle on the screen. After a few moments, a line of text appeared.

“‘Advanced putrefaction / mummification,’” Gage read.

Kelsey’s shoulders slumped. She buried her head in her hands and looked to be on the verge of tears.

Gage didn’t get it. What was she upset about?

“So . . . mummification?” he asked.

“The hot, dry air up there. The body showed some signs of heat desiccation. I was worried my time-of-death estimate might be off.”

“But it’s what you thought, right?”

She nodded.

“So, what’s the problem?”

“I just needed to confirm everything.” She stood up and squared her shoulders, and Gage understood. She’d needed proof of what she’d insisted on back in Utah—that Blake wasn’t there when the murder occurred. She’d needed proof that her ex wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

She collected the slides and dropped them into an envelope, then slipped them in her pocket. Tears glistened in her eyes, and he felt a fresh wave of jealousy over how much she’d obviously cared about a man Gage couldn’t stand.

“So, we’ve established that Blake didn’t kill him,” she said crisply. “Now, let’s find out who did.”

•   •   •

Elizabeth stepped into the condo and smiled at Officer Resnik. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

“I’ll wait right here. Holler if you need anything.”

For the second time that week, Elizabeth stood on the square of butcher paper and traded her shoes for paper booties. For the second time, she pulled on latex gloves. For the second time, she walked into the foyer and gazed down at the spot where a fellow agent had died.

Or where she
assumed
he’d died. Crime-scene investigators had found no sign that the victim had been killed elsewhere and transported. And yet Derek’s words kept going through her head.

You guys got something wrong.

Elizabeth crouched beside the dried puddle of blood and examined the stained grout. She stood up and glanced around. She looked at the front door and once again saw no sign of forced entry. She looked around the living room. Her gaze fell on the evidence tags sitting on the coffee table, marking the spots where a beer bottle and a computer had been removed. Those two critical pieces of evidence had shaped the working theory of the case: Blake had been at home Monday night, working on his computer, when someone knocked on his door—without
leaving fingerprints. Blake had gone to the door and likely recognized the person—Gage Brewer—whom he’d met two summers ago during a terrorist incident in West Texas.

Maybe Blake had been surprised to see him, maybe not. Gage had come in for a beer and maybe a little talk about the woman they both knew, which was of course when things escalated. The conversation moved to the foyer, possibly as Blake tried to get Gage to leave. The SEAL grabbed him from behind, broke his neck with a quick twist, then whipped out his combat knife and stabbed him through the kidney.

Derek’s words echoed through her mind again:
Why’d he kill him twice?

She couldn’t get past that point because he was right—it didn’t make sense. It also didn’t make sense to her that someone who had clearly premeditated the crime by coming all the way from California and showing up armed with a silent weapon would be careless enough to leave fingerprints on a beer bottle.

Then again, violent people did dumb things all the time—particularly in the heat of the moment. Maybe he’d been overcome by emotion. He’d certainly been emotional enough when Elizabeth first met him on the naval base.

Elizabeth thought of Kelsey. The woman was the key to all of this, she felt certain.

What had spooked her into running away? Had she known what Gage had planned? Had she helped plan it? Had she witnessed something, and now she was running for her life?

Derek had said that Gage was protecting her.
Protecting,
not threatening.

Elizabeth firmly believed Kelsey had been in this apartment on the night of Blake’s murder, although she had no physical evidence to back up that theory. What she had was a lack of evidence in key areas.

She moved down the hallway now and into the bathroom, where, strangely, no fingerprints had been recovered. CSIs had dusted the doorknob, the faucet, the toilet, the cabinets. No prints had turned up, not even the maid’s. How was that possible? According to her original interview, the maid who found Blake’s body came every Tuesday and cleaned the condo top to bottom. If she was the last person to wipe down this room, that meant Blake hadn’t used the bathroom closest to his living area in a week. So every evening, he’d gone all the way downstairs to use the restroom?

The lack of fingerprints had puzzled the entire team at first, but after tossing the topic around awhile, everyone had dismissed its importance. Maybe Blake didn’t use his living room much and preferred to spend time in the master suite downstairs, which had a larger TV. Or maybe he was just quirky about his bathroom habits.

But Elizabeth didn’t believe either of those explanations. She felt almost certain someone else had been in this bathroom on the night of the murder and carefully wiped away all the prints.

Elizabeth glanced in the mirror and was startled by what she saw. She looked tired. Disheveled. More than anything, she looked overwhelmed. She
felt
overwhelmed,
even though she shouldn’t because she’d been kicked off the case and sent home with her tail between her legs. She was back to her regular duties, back to tasks she could handle. But instead of handling them, she was secretly still working on the very case that had almost cost her her job.

She couldn’t let go of it.

She didn’t know why, but this crime scene kept pulling at her. Maybe because it was her first real murder scene, or maybe because she’d known the victim. Whatever the reason, Elizabeth hadn’t been able to stay away.