The Truth Seeker (14 page)

“Let’s get to work.” He took off his hat and dropped it on her head.

“And I could do without your getting a case of sunstroke.”

She watched him walk away, relieved to be out of the quicksand subject but distressed at the fact he was mad at her, and worse, that he was deciding she wasn’t worth the trouble.

She awkwardly adjusted the too large hat, finding that abrupt action of his disconcerting. Even when mad, he still paused to shove his hat on her head.

He opened the file and looked back at her. “Take me through what happened here.”

She pushed her hands in her pockets and reluctantly walked forward to join him. It was hard to get focused on work, but he’d made the transition with a completeness that was almost ruthless. “She was found back here.”

She felt nauseous. She’d been weighed and found wanting; it wasn’t a new feeling, but it made her regret what she’d said. Kate wouldn’t have responded that way to him, or Jennifer. He wanted her trust. She’d concede reality: She already trusted him. She just didn’t want to give him what he was asking for. Her past was private, and for her sake best left alone.

The terrace was formed from a curving wall of rocks about four feet high. She walked down the five stairs to the lower level, walked north along the path, her steps slowing, and then she stopped. It was like walking back in time. She let herself remember and then realized she had been standing there silently for several moments; Quinn was patiently waiting, watching.

“They were excavating this turn in the stones, reinforcing it so they could enlarge the exercise ring in this direction. They uncovered her left foot, still wearing the remains of a blue tennis shoe. We were called out.”

“What did you find?”

“She was lying face down, buried immediately behind the rocks at a depth of about two and a half feet. She would have been buried deeper than that originally; the ground along here had been washing away over the years with the heavy rains, being pulled down to the river.”

She crouched down, ran her hands along the weathered, flat smooth stones, each one heavy and about ten inches deep. “When we began work, this wall of stones had a back and forth tilt, they had been undisturbed for years and had settled. It looks neat now, but

“What?”

She stood, glanced back at him. “Her hands weren’t just bound at

then

you could see grooves where the rains had cut into the soil and torn away the packed dirt between the stones. Nothing had been disturbed since she was buried here.”

She sighed, remembering. “Her hands were behind her back.

There were remnants of the duct tape used to bind them still around the bones.” She frowned.

the wrist. The backs of her hands were pressed together and tape also wrapped around her palms. She had two broken fingers, as if she’d been grabbed, bound in that fashion, and thrown to the ground on her back, her fingers breaking under her own body weight.

“She had a dislocated left shoulder and wrenched vertebrae in her lower back indicating a struggle, consistent with how she had been bound. No skull fractures recording a blow to the head, no nicks in bones recording a bullet. The hyoid bone in her neck had mostly decayed, but I found a pressure fracture in the left branch of the U-shape bone and a break at the forming fuseline.”

“She was strangled.” Quinn’s voice was cold. He had a special hatred of men who used physical violence toward women; that was so clear it was painful to see.

“Or at least put in an injury-inducing choke hold,” she replied quietly.

“At twentyfive, the three bones in the horseshoe formation of the hyoid had just begun to fuse. The pressure fracture indicates it was serious, but was it the fatal act? She may have been suffocated or even drowned as the actual cause of death. What I do know is she was grabbed by the neck during the time of her death. But the vertebrae damage is inconclusive as to how she was held.”

Quinn took a seat on the steps between the terrace levels, opened the file, and laid out the pictures, studying them again. “You have a hard job.”

She didn’t need his pity. “We die and we turn to dust. I just know

a bit more than most people about how that actually happens.”

But the pictures pulled at her. She took a seat beside him and picked up one of the gravesite photos recording the excavation. She’d been lying beside the body in the deeper side trough they had dug to create a pedestal for the skeletal remains. They had to record what they found by grid and depth, for below the body was often trapped a treasure trove of evidence.

This photo was typical: She had her gold pen clamped between her teeth and a frown of concentration on her face as she tried to retrieve a fragment of thread and a button from the dirt with a long pair of tweezers, apparently not bothered that she was stretched out inches from a skeleton. The gold pen was more than a fashion statement, blood and bacteria couldn’t get into the casing; it could be wiped clean with one of the foil-wrapped medical swabs she carried by the handful in her pocket when she worked a scene.

“What other evidence did you find?”

“Her only jewelry was a ring on her right ring finger. She wore no watch. Her clothes had decayed, but there were remnants of threads from a white polyester shirt with a blue front pocket. Her jeans had decayed to the seam threads and a zipper—cotton always decays fast—

and she wore blue Nike tennis shoes.

“That clothing is significant because it matched what she was last seen wearing the day she disappeared years before. The ground around her body was unusual; there was a much heavier concentration of black topsoil than was found at the same depth just a few feet away.”

“Not uncommon around a stable and landscaped grounds.”

“True, but it made her remains decay faster than say a clay-based shallow grave.”

“She was buried here. No one would notice the turned-over dirt?”

“The month she went missing, this stone wall terrace was built. It’s why the police think this spot was chosen for the grave instead of somewhere in the forest preserve—an animal might have dug up the

body there. This apparently had sod laid down to the edge of the stones, making it relatively easy to conceal the site if he had the time to work and dig the grave. And back then Grant Danford did not have the full-time staff working this property.”

Quinn looked around the area. “How far back does the Danford property extend?”

“Roughly to that line of trees. From there you are on forest preserve land.”

“No one from the house could see here.”

“And as you can see, the forest preserve trails are nearby but not in =e=e line of sight. From evidence in the grave, the type of bug cocoons found, she had been dead for a few hours before being buried. Small bits of gravel and wood shavings found on her shoes and under her body suggest the murder occurred somewhere in the forest preserve.”

“She was killed the day she went missing?”

“An assumption, but reasonable. She was wearing the same clothes.”

“Statistically, killers who abduct and kill in the first hours are strangers to the victim.”

“This is a case, not a statistic. Grant Danford knew Rita; they had been casually dating for six months when she disappeared. During the missing person’s investigation, he told the police he hadn’t seen her the day she disappeared; during the investigation of her murder, a witness was found who placed them together walking the forest preserve trails that very afternoon.”

“Was he ever really a suspect when this was just a missing person’s case?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “He had put out a large reward for information, cooperated with the police, added his political pressure to keep the case alive. But the case eventually became cold from lack of evidence.”

“The cynical interpretation being that he stayed so close to the

investigation he made sure they never looked where evidence could be found.”

“Yes.”

“And when her body was discovered here on his property, Danford became the chief suspect if not the only one,” Quinn speculated. “They never looked any further once they had a witness who contradicted his original statement to the police.”

“They moved pretty fast on making the arrest.”

“He was overseas when the stable manager found the body?”

“England.”

“If he was guilty of the crime, why in the world did he risk leaving the body here all those years?”

“Arrogance? He thought he had gotten away with it. Fear? Why mess with something he had dodged once? The vast majority of buried murdered victims are never found. That’s a statistic you know as well as I.”

“A crime of passion?”

She got up, walked a few feet away before turning back to face him.

She didn’t like that question because of its answer. “That’s what the police concluded and the DA proved to the jury’s satisfaction.”

His eyes narrowed. “But?”

“That never felt right, not with the bound hands. Those case notes—you’ll find interviews with practically every woman Grant ever went out with. He didn’t type as a guy with dark fantasies, and that’s what the bound hands, the struggle suggest.”

“So he was convicted because of association with the victim and location of the grave.”

“And testimony of a witness. Christopher Hampton testified that he saw Grant and Rita together the afternoon she disappeared. And by the way—you met Christopher’s brother the other day.”

She’d caught him off guard with that observation. “Hampton?

Christopher is a relation to the guy who just died in the fire?”

“Believe it or not, yes—a nephew. Christopher was actually working for Grant parttime that year at the stables, as well as working parttime for his uncle. He wanted the chance to ride regularly and this way he could afford it. Christopher said he was taking his afternoon break, walking the trail to head over and get a late lunch for the other stable hands when he saw the two of them together.”

Why didn’t he speak up during the original missing person’s investigation?”

“During the trial he admitted he was getting lunch for the guys, but he was also meeting his bookie, paying off a gambling debt, and he didn’t want his uncle to know. Blaming his boss, the guy offering the reward wouldn’t be to his benefit, and the only thing he could testify to was that he saw the two of them walking on the forest preserve trail about P.M. He chose to stay quiet.”

“Did you believe him?”

She shrugged. “I suppose. It seemed credible.”

“He bribed Grant Danford for his silence.”

“What?”

“Lincoln uncovered it. Found out about the gambling problem; found out from the bookie that there was no way Christopher could pay his debt, and yet a few days later he had the whole amount in cash.

And Grant as much admitted it when Lincoln pressed on the matter.

Christopher demanded Grant pay up or he would go to the police. And he apparently paid him quite handsomely over the years Rita was missing.”

“So Christopher told the truth at the trial—he did see them together the day she disappeared; Grant knew it and suppressed it.”

“Yes.”

This didn’t make sense. “Why didn’t Grant just say he had seen her if he’s innocent like he claims?”

“His explanation—Rita had asked him not to mention she had been by; her parents wanted her focused on college, her photography,

and her career, not dating a much older man. When the police first asked if he had seen her he said no, then felt like he couldn’t risk changing his story later. And once he paid off Christopher—big mistake.

Christopher just kept coming back for more.”

“How does Grant explain her body being found on his property?”

“He blames an unknown killer,” Quinn replied, his opinion of that in his voice.

“I’m surprised Lincoln took his claim of being innocent seriously.

Grant was dating Rita; she was seen here the day she went missing; her body was found on his property. It doesn’t leave much room to maneuver.

Not to mention the fact this murder is eleven years old. New evidence is going to be hard to find.”

“But why did he kill her? You said yourself a crime of passion doesn’t easily fit the image of the remains. They had been going out six months, were apparently happy together even if her parents were against it. What triggers a man in a relationship to suddenly turn murderous, choke, and kill?”

She couldn’t give him a good answer. “You said he’s apparently hiding secrets, being uncooperative. Was there one that she found out? If not a crime of passion, then was it a crime of necessity? Does Lincoln have any ideas? Any other suspects?”

“No. Right now he’s simply talking to everyone who testified at the trial.” He set aside the file. “Do you think Grant Danford is guilty?”

Her answer would carry some weight with him; she didn’t answer right away. She thought about that summer. So many had wanted Grant to be found guilty

but the evidence she’d testified to had been solid, and she remembered the victim. No matter how powerful the man, it was the victim she had focused on. “Yes.”

Quinn thought about it, thrust his hand through his thick hair. “I tend to agree with you. The lie, the bribe—he really wanted to keep hidden that he saw her that day. That points to guilt. But Lincoln isn’t so sure. I can’t dismiss that. And if Grant is innocent—then someone

Quinn didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve seen enough to understand He paused by the pasture fence. “Grant had a good eye for horses.”

“Really?”

She leaned against the railing beside him. Quinn pointed. “The

else killed her. Someone who is still out there. What are the odds a murderer kills only once?”

What a tangled question. The only real answer was it depends.

There were as many varieties of killers as there were reasons to kill. The gamut ran from domestic disturbances that got out of hand to killing someone picked out at random. She’d unfortunately seen examples of them all.

the basics of the case, what memories it’s going to bring up when I talk to Mrs. Beck. It was headline news for the duration of the case, that’s the biggest point I need to know. Let’s call it a day.”