Veiled (A Short Story) by Kendra Elliot Page A

groom?
    She and Jack had spent several minutes alone with the woman.
Jack had hauled the body out of the hot tub and was doing chest compressions by
the time Lacey arrived, her cell phone connected to 911. She’d known at once
that there was no hope, but Jack’s training and optimistic nature had pushed
him to try. After being assured the police were on their way, she’d run to the
front desk to alert the staff. At six in the morning, there was one clerk at
the desk, a girl whose name tag said “Jessica.” She’d called the manager at
home and started to follow Lacey to the scene, but halted when she saw the dead
body in a dress and veil.
    “I’ll get something to cover her up with,” Jessica said,
backing up with her gaze locked on the white flesh.
    “Get some sheets. We don’t want to cover her, but we can
block your guests’ views,” Lacey said, scanning the balconies of the rooms
surrounding the pool. No curious eyes met hers.
    Jessica froze. She couldn’t be more than twenty years old.
“We can’t leave a body by the pool.”
    Lacey pointed at the front-desk area. “Go get the sheets.”
    Jessica shakily nodded, turned, and dashed away.
    Lacey had pulled some chairs into position to block any
direct view from the hotel rooms. She knew enough about a crime scene to not
throw something over the victim before police had arrived. Yes, she would love
to give the woman some dignity, but once she’d seen the marks on her neck and
exchanged a knowing glance with Jack, she knew they had to preserve any
possible evidence.
    If they hadn’t destroyed it already.
    The first cop to arrive, Mathews, had given Jack a bit of a
hard time for pulling the body out of the hot tub. Jack had flushed and
snapped, “If you’d been in that tub, would you want me to blow some air in your
lungs or worry about where I stepped?”
    The cop had shut up.
    Now, Lacey and Jack simply watched. Mathews and the second
cop, Garcia, seemed to struggle to get their thoughts in order. Jack had to
prompt them to secure the scene.
    “Never seen a dead body before,” Lacey heard Mathews whisper
under his breath.
    She wished she could say the same. As a forensic specialist
for the state of Oregon, she dealt with death on a daily basis. Her role
usually came late in an investigation, after the remains had been cleaned, and
she had simply bone and teeth to deal with, but there had been plenty of cases
where she’d had to look directly into the mouth of death in its original
setting. She was skilled at ignoring the smells of decay and keeping her focus
where she was comfortable: the teeth.
    Sometimes she was the last hope for identification. Finding
a positive match in the dental records was the highlight of her job. Attaching
a name to a Jane Doe. Usually her cases were comparisons. Someone already had
an idea of who the body was, and the medical examiner could locate dental
records. But sometimes the cases were complete mysteries, turned over to her
and the forensic anthropologist to uncover clues to the identity.
    She studied the body sprawled out on the flagstones. The
woman had long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Lacey couldn’t guess her
age. Water and death tend to distort a person’s features, and fortunately, the
woman’s veil covered the upper half of her face. Lacey was amazed that Jack had
even tried CPR.
    “It’s my job,” he’d muttered after she’d pulled him away
from the body, begging him to stop.
    It wasn’t his job. It hadn’t been in a long time. Jack had
walked away from the police force after being shot and watching the pregnant
woman he’d been trying to protect die before his eyes. Apparently you could
quit being a cop, but you couldn’t take the cop instincts out of the man.
    Even though the body in the hot tub had been facedown in the
water when Lacey had spotted it from her balcony, the purpling of her skin on
her calves told Lacey the woman had been on her back for a period of time after
death.
    Had