with his arms on his knees. He coughed out all he had left in his stomach—a grilled cheese sandwich and a diet soda from the deli at Safeway on Bethel. His hand trembled as he reached for his phone, but he confirmed what he already knew. No service in that part of Banner Forest.
Goddamn! 911 I need you!
Unaware that he had screamed out when he saw the body in the bag, he got on his bike and made his way down Limerick. The forest whizzed by and he nearly crashed into a stump, but despite his accelerated pace, the smell stayed lodged in his nostrils. So did the image of what he’d seen. Martin Best had served in Afghanistan. Proudly so. He’d seen things that were beyond words.
None of it compared to what was in the bag.
A woman walking her dog in the forest made the first call to 911.
“Hey, I’m in Banner Forest and I heard a man scream bloody murder. You need to get out here.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t some kids just messing around?” the Comm Center operator asked.
The caller took a gulp of air. “Look, the man that screamed out ‘Oh God it’s a body!’ wasn’t some kid playing a game. You better get here now. Hurry. He might be having a heart attack or something.”
The operator took the woman’s name and told her to wait at the trailhead for the responders.
A minute later, the second call came in.
This time it was Martin Best. He was out of breath and desperate.
“I’m in Banner Forest,” he said. “You need to get someone here right now.”
“Sir, please calm down,” the operator said in a voice that indicated she was more about procedure than actually calming him down. It was the same tone a call center in India used on Martin one time when his laptop crashed.
“I am goddamn calmed down,” he said, this time yelling. Martin was nearly hyperventilating. His back was striped in sweat. “I think you got to get here.”
He stopped talking and started dry-heaving.
“Help is on the way,” the operator said. “Go to the main entrance on Banner Road. Someone will be there in a few minutes. Hang on.”
Soon a swarm of deputies and crime scene techs were on the site. Birdy had taken Elan up to Silverdale to buy some more new clothes at Macy’s. Her phone had the worst possible service, so she missed the call.
No matter. The remains would be waiting for her in the chiller in the morgue. Quietly. And yet, Birdy knew of this case as she did of all the murder victims who’d found their way to her office: “They bide their time until someone finds them and brings them to me. Then they’ll tell me what I need to know.”
At least that’s what she always hoped.
A badly decomposed body is a stew of information. Sometimes, as Birdy Waterman knew as she prepared to autopsy Darby Moreau, the clues most needed are lost among the rotting flesh. If an individual dies from an overdose, for example, the residues of lethal drugs are often recovered in the lab. If a person has been shot, the remnants of a bullet are easy enough to discern. Sometimes an X-ray will even turn up the bullet or a fragment of one. Birdy Waterman was no lightweight, but she put on a mask that she’d swabbed with mentholated ointment to diminish the stench that had knocked Martin Best to his knees.
Items collected from the scene included the plastic bag, which Martin Best said he’d touched. His fingerprints were expected to be found somewhere on its slippery black surface, as were, Kendall and Birdy hoped, the killer’s. The bag, the girl’s clothes—jeans, a running shoe, a bra, a T-shirt—were all sent off to the county’s crime lab at the sheriff’s department. There, they’d run a battery of tests on all of that. They’d dry the clothes, superglue-fume the plastic bag in a fish tank they’d set up for that purpose, and with the use of scopes and a small vacuum scour for trace evidence.
If there was anything to find, the county techs there were up for it.
The body, however, was
Goddamn! 911 I need you!
Unaware that he had screamed out when he saw the body in the bag, he got on his bike and made his way down Limerick. The forest whizzed by and he nearly crashed into a stump, but despite his accelerated pace, the smell stayed lodged in his nostrils. So did the image of what he’d seen. Martin Best had served in Afghanistan. Proudly so. He’d seen things that were beyond words.
None of it compared to what was in the bag.
A woman walking her dog in the forest made the first call to 911.
“Hey, I’m in Banner Forest and I heard a man scream bloody murder. You need to get out here.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t some kids just messing around?” the Comm Center operator asked.
The caller took a gulp of air. “Look, the man that screamed out ‘Oh God it’s a body!’ wasn’t some kid playing a game. You better get here now. Hurry. He might be having a heart attack or something.”
The operator took the woman’s name and told her to wait at the trailhead for the responders.
A minute later, the second call came in.
This time it was Martin Best. He was out of breath and desperate.
“I’m in Banner Forest,” he said. “You need to get someone here right now.”
“Sir, please calm down,” the operator said in a voice that indicated she was more about procedure than actually calming him down. It was the same tone a call center in India used on Martin one time when his laptop crashed.
“I am goddamn calmed down,” he said, this time yelling. Martin was nearly hyperventilating. His back was striped in sweat. “I think you got to get here.”
He stopped talking and started dry-heaving.
“Help is on the way,” the operator said. “Go to the main entrance on Banner Road. Someone will be there in a few minutes. Hang on.”
Soon a swarm of deputies and crime scene techs were on the site. Birdy had taken Elan up to Silverdale to buy some more new clothes at Macy’s. Her phone had the worst possible service, so she missed the call.
No matter. The remains would be waiting for her in the chiller in the morgue. Quietly. And yet, Birdy knew of this case as she did of all the murder victims who’d found their way to her office: “They bide their time until someone finds them and brings them to me. Then they’ll tell me what I need to know.”
At least that’s what she always hoped.
A badly decomposed body is a stew of information. Sometimes, as Birdy Waterman knew as she prepared to autopsy Darby Moreau, the clues most needed are lost among the rotting flesh. If an individual dies from an overdose, for example, the residues of lethal drugs are often recovered in the lab. If a person has been shot, the remnants of a bullet are easy enough to discern. Sometimes an X-ray will even turn up the bullet or a fragment of one. Birdy Waterman was no lightweight, but she put on a mask that she’d swabbed with mentholated ointment to diminish the stench that had knocked Martin Best to his knees.
Items collected from the scene included the plastic bag, which Martin Best said he’d touched. His fingerprints were expected to be found somewhere on its slippery black surface, as were, Kendall and Birdy hoped, the killer’s. The bag, the girl’s clothes—jeans, a running shoe, a bra, a T-shirt—were all sent off to the county’s crime lab at the sheriff’s department. There, they’d run a battery of tests on all of that. They’d dry the clothes, superglue-fume the plastic bag in a fish tank they’d set up for that purpose, and with the use of scopes and a small vacuum scour for trace evidence.
If there was anything to find, the county techs there were up for it.
The body, however, was
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