Death Grip Read online

  ‘That’s my guess, too,’ Nitpicker said. ‘That means someone had been holding her for at least six months or so.’

  ‘Holding.’ A polite word for torture, maybe worse.

  Someone local. Who knew the secret ways of the Forest.

  TWO

  Nitpicker and I worked in silence. As so often happens in Missouri, the pleasant spring day turned blast-furnace hot, and we wilted in the humidity. My hair was dripping with sweat. Flies buzzed everywhere – in my eyes, ears, even my mouth. The insects tormented me inside my hood. The mosquitos were particularly vicious after the heavy rains. No matter how much mosquito repellent I slathered on, the nasty creatures always found a spot I’d missed.

  As I worked, I tried to persuade myself that this wasn’t the body of Terri Gibbons, the lost track star. I asked Nitpicker, ‘Do you really think this is Terri? Anyone could wear a Chouteau Forest High shirt.’

  ‘We can’t be sure until the ME confirms it with DNA or dental work,’ Nitpicker said, ‘but last time I checked there were no other missing persons’ reports for someone this age around here.’

  ‘Maybe she’s a sex worker from St. Louis,’ I said.

  Nitpicker quickly dashed my last hope. ‘And some kink put her in a Chouteau Forest High shirt because it turned him on? I doubt it. Her dental work is too good for her to be a drifter or a hooker.’

  She was right, and I knew it. As I worked, I thought about the twisted freak who’d killed Terri. That’s who she was in my mind now, even though she hadn’t been officially identified. I wanted to put a human face on this horror show. I’d seen Terri’s photo, and she’d been a strong, smiling young woman with determined brown eyes and the long, lean muscles of a runner.

  I swatted a mosquito on my ear, and continued my routine for Terri’s death investigation. I opened the ‘Information to be Developed for Unidentified Persons’ form on my iPad. The body was face-up in a shallow grave, about three feet deep, her head pointing to the east, away from the creek.

  I measured her body. She was about five feet six inches tall, and I estimated her weight at maybe 125 pounds. I wasn’t sure of her race – decomposed bodies darken – but if it really was Terri, she was Caucasian. Her mud-streaked hair appeared to be natural – medium blonde with hints of darker tones. In other words, dirty blonde. I couldn’t tell her eye color – I wasn’t sure if they were still there.

  The flesh had sagged, the abdominal cavity had caved, most of the internal organs were gone, and there had been extensive maggot activity. I gathered samples of all the insects, including the flies and beetles. I had to note all the insect life on her body. Awful as they were, they were Nature’s clean-up squad.

  The advanced decomposition hid any marks, deformities or scars, including surgical scars. I wouldn’t be able to make out any tattoos or body piercings. It was impossible to determine if there were holes for pierced earrings on her lobes. Her left hand and lower arm (the ulna and radius) had been exposed by the creek cave-in and were skeletonized. Two fingers were missing, the phalanges and metacarpals for her ring and little fingers. The eight remaining fingers had the remains of pale blue polish. The decedent wore no rings or other jewelry.

  I noted the green string around the victim’s neck that Nitpicker had pointed out, and photographed it again, taking special care to document the knot. The ME would cut the string during the autopsy and leave the knot intact. It was an odd knot, not a square or granny knot. My guess – and I shuddered at the thought – was that it was some sort of slip knot used to control the victim. There may have been bruising on Terri’s neck, but the advanced decomp made it hard to tell.

  The victim’s muddy shirt had a pocket, and I found something inside.

  ‘Hey, Nitpicker, look at this!’ I used tweezers to extract a bit of vegetation from the shirt pocket. ‘It looks like some kind of flower, but I’m not sure what variety.’ The flower was brown and wilted, but appeared to have five petals and was sort of funnel-shaped. I put the dead flower gently in a paper envelope I kept in my DI kit. It would be sent to a botanist later.

  ‘Do you think the killer put that flower in the victim’s pocket?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ Nitpicker said. ‘But killers usually put flowers on top of the body or in the victim’s hands, as if staging a funeral, and I haven’t found any. Maybe the victim hid it in her shirt to help us find who killed her.’

  I felt a flash of pity. What had Terri’s last days been like, knowing she was going to die and perhaps leaving clues for the people who might find her? I shook off those thoughts. Wallowing in the awful details of her death wouldn’t help. Documenting what I found would.

  ‘I swear we’ll get justice for you, Terri,’ I said, then realized I’d spoken my words out loud. Fortunately, Nitpicker didn’t seem to notice my melodramatic pronouncement. Red with embarrassment, I went back to work.

  I noted that Terri’s clothes were muddy but intact. She wore matching green gym shorts and white socks, and it looked like she’d put her clothes on herself – nothing was inside-out or backward. There were no tags or identification.

  When I examined her right arm, I saw that a rectangle of skin appeared to be missing. The missing patch was four inches long and two inches wide – a neat cut two inches above her wrist. ‘What do you think this is?’ I asked Nitpicker.

  She examined the wound. ‘My guess is the cut was made after her death, possibly to remove a distinguishing birthmark or tattoo.’

  Jace came over and I showed him the missing patch of skin. ‘Her description mentions that she had a blue butterfly tattoo on her right arm, near her wrist,’ he said.

  I spent more long hours securing the evidence. At last, that task was finished. Now it was growing dark. Long black shadows reached for us like dead fingers, and the air was suddenly chilly. Nitpicker and I were finished. We were both sweaty and mud-smeared, and we stank. The dogs had found another body, bringing the total to three, counting Terri.

  Who would murder Terri? I wondered, as I packed up my gear. Why had her killer buried two more women deep in the Forest woods? Those were older burials. Although an outsider – a curious hiker – had discovered the first body, I was pretty sure a Forest resident had created this remote burial site. While the Forest paths were mostly used by teenagers, plenty of grown-ups remembered where they used to hook up or get hammered.

  But this hidden glen was no kids’ party place. The uniforms had found little evidence for that. No downed tree trunks or big rocks for comfortable seating, no signs of youthful partying – beer cans, used condoms, or joints. In my mind, I could see the killer here, leaning against a big tree, contemplating his crimes, enjoying owning these victims. Savoring the knowledge that no one else in the whole world knew where these victims were.

  A chill wind dried the sweat on me and I shivered, but not entirely from the cold. I wanted out of here. The night woods felt like they were closing in. The dusk was still and stifling.

  ‘I’m ready to call the pick-up service,’ I said. Chouteau County had a contractor to move bodies to the morgue. ‘Are you going to work the other two bodies, Nitpicker?’

  ‘No, those are older burials. They seem to be mostly skeletons.’

  Climate and the environment affected the rate of decomposition. Here, it took about a year for a body to decompose into a skeleton in these conditions, so the decedents had been here a while.

  Nitpicker was packing away her tools. ‘We’re going to have to bring in a forensic anthropologist from City University – Dana Murdoch.’

  ‘I know her. She’s good.’

  ‘The best,’ Nitpicker said. ‘But you won’t be doing the body inspection on those two decedents.’

  I felt relieved, until Jace came over and reminded me that my work wasn’t done. ‘We’re going to have to inform Terri’s mother that we need her daughter’s dental records,’ he said. ‘We’d better get there before that poor woman finds out through the Forest rumor mill.’

  That was
my job – the worst part of it – to inform the victim’s family. Some jurisdictions assign this task to another investigator, but not the Forest.

  ‘Didn’t you ask for Terri’s records after she was missing for a while?’ That was standard procedure in a missing person’s investigation.

  ‘We did,’ he said, ‘two months after Terri went missing. The case was getting a lot of attention, what with her being a track star and everything. Her mother refused to give them to me. I tried to be tactful, too. I asked about Terri’s physical health and mental health, and who her doctors were. Her mother said Terri was fit mentally and physically, and she was elated over her sports success. No indication that she was cracking under the pressure. I asked her mother if she’d sign a healthcare release form, “in the unlikely event we need any records.”

  ‘Terri’s mother saw through me. She said it wasn’t necessary, because in her heart she knew her daughter was alive.’

  ‘Back then, Terri probably was alive,’ I said.

  ‘You know, Doc Stone is a stickler for the HIPAA privacy regulations,’ Jace said. ‘He won’t release the dental records unless he has permission from the next of kin. That’s Terri’s mother. The father’s long gone.’

  ‘Couldn’t Doc Stone look at the morgue X-rays?’ I asked. I really didn’t want to do this.

  ‘We’d still need Terri’s dental records,’ he said.

  There was no way out of my unpleasant duty.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ Jace said. I could have hugged him, except no one would want me near them in my current state.

  I looked down at my muddy jumpsuit and said, ‘Give me time to shower and change into something decent.’

  ‘I should change, too,’ he said, brushing mud off the knees of his pants. ‘Terri’s mother, Lillian, lives on Duchesne Circle. I’ll meet you at the entrance to her street in an hour.’

  I pulled off my jumpsuit and bagged it in the contaminated trash at the site, then looked around at the suddenly cold forest. I hurried down the deer trail to my car.

  On the drive home, I was pleased that Jace had volunteered to go with me to break the news to Terri’s mother. This was always an emotional time, and I didn’t like to go alone. Ordinarily polite people reacted unpredictably to the news that they’d lost a loved one.

  Three months ago, when I told a mother that her only son had died of an opioid overdose, she screamed, ‘Liar!’ and tried to hit me. Jace stepped between us just before she raked her sharp red nails across my face. Eventually, he calmed her down. She was a fifty-six-year-old assistant bank manager. After several cups of tea and an ocean of tears, she said, ‘I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry.’

  I knew she was, but I also knew I had to be careful.

  Jace and I had an even worse task. Usually, I came with absolute news, telling someone the son, daughter, husband or wife they loved was dead. But this mission was even more delicate.

  We weren’t sure that Terri Gibbons was dead. In effect, I’d be saying, ‘Sorry, your daughter may be dead. Can we have her dental records?’

  That was far worse. When Jace and I would be asking Terri’s mother, Lillian Gibbons, for her daughter’s dental records, we were giving that poor woman sorrow and uncertainty at the same time. Lillian was smart enough to know what that request meant. We were really breaking the news of her daughter’s death to her. Maybe.

  I headed home, threw my clothes into the laundry, showered, and longed to fall into bed, but that luxury was denied to me right now. I was a widow – my husband had died young of a heart attack – and I missed his love, his comfort, and most of all, his conversation.

  Today I was alone, and the bearer of bad news. Even worse, I had some idea of how my news would affect that poor woman: she’d be wounded to the depths of her soul.

  THREE

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  Terri’s mother opened the door, took one look at Jace and me, and said the words in a flat voice. We didn’t even have to introduce ourselves. Lillian Gibbons had been expecting this news, and her face was ravaged by grief. She was about fifty years old, and under different circumstances might have been attractive. Her hair was a smart brown bob, and she wore a gray sweatshirt and straight-legged jeans. But all the color left her face when she saw us on her doorstep.

  I found her complete lack of emotion frightening. I was afraid she’d suddenly break and lash out in a violent storm.

  We stood on the doorstep of her ranch house in the working part of Chouteau Forest, with the sneery nickname of Toonerville. I caught a glimpse of a green-painted hall, the wall covered with photographs of a young woman in sports clothes. Terri, I presumed.

  ‘We’re not sure, Mrs Gibbons,’ Jace said, his voice quiet and cautious, the way he’d approach a possibly dangerous person. ‘We need your help.’

  ‘We’ve found someone who could be your daughter,’ I said, ‘but we need to confirm it.’

  ‘Why can’t I identify her body?’ she asked, in that same dangerously flat voice.

  ‘Uh, the body has been buried,’ Jace said. ‘For a while.’

  You couldn’t possibly recognize the daughter you love, I thought, damn the killer’s shriveled soul.

  ‘But her body’s been found,’ Lillian said, her voice insistent. ‘Why can’t I look at her?’

  ‘Because, uh, the person we found doesn’t resemble what she looked like in life,’ I said. In fact, she doesn’t even look human, I thought.

  Lillian began screaming. ‘I would know my own daughter! No matter what she looked like now!’

  I flinched, but stood firm. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Gibbons, but you don’t want to see this person, whether or not she’s your daughter.’

  Jace gently took her arm and steered her inside. ‘The best way to help us confirm this is Terri is to sign the papers allowing Dr Stone to release your daughter’s dental records, so we can compare them to this person’s. Then we’ll know for sure.’

  I softly closed the door and followed Jace into the kitchen at the end of the hall. It was a good choice. The room had the comforting smell of cinnamon and coffee. Blue-checked curtains gave it a homey look. We sat down at a polished pine table with a blue bowl of fruit as a centerpiece. The short walk and Jace’s soothing tone gave Mrs Gibbons time to recover.

  Now she was weeping openly. ‘I knew my baby was dead,’ Mrs Gibbons said.

  Jace handed her a fresh, white handkerchief and she wiped her streaming eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I know the day she died, too. It was February twelfth at twelve-seventeen at night. I felt it. I felt it in my soul. Something stabbed my heart and I blacked out for a few minutes. I was in bed, and when I came to, I knew then that my Terri was dead.

  ‘I guess you think I’m crazy.’ She looked at me, a challenge in her voice.

  ‘No, I don’t doubt you,’ I said. ‘I never question the connection between a mother and child. She’s part of you.’ Besides, the timeline was eerily right for Terri’s death, judging by the condition of her body.

  ‘We were connected, the two of us,’ Mrs Gibbons said. ‘Her father took off when she was just a baby, and from then on, it was Terri and me. I went to every practice, and took a part-time job to get her the coaching she needed. I was so proud when she got those scholarships. That’s why, when she didn’t come home that night, I knew something was wrong. I knew she was in trouble.’

  She started crying again. When her tears stopped, I asked, ‘May I make you some coffee?’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said, sniffling. ‘But you don’t need to make it. The coffee in the pot is still fresh. If you would pour me a cup, I’d appreciate it. I take mine black. Pour some for yourselves, too. The cups are in the cabinet next to the stove.’

  While I went to get the coffee, Jace introduced us formally. I brought three mugs of coffee over to the table and we sipped the fragrant coffee.

  Mrs Gibbons broke the silence. ‘Ever since I knew she was dead, I’ve b
een praying that my girl would be found, so I could bring her home. I want her to be with her grandparents. She loved them so much. They were our support system.’

  She sounded almost as if Terri would be living with them, but I guessed that was her way of coping with the dreadful news.

  She took a deep breath, then said, ‘I’ll sign those papers now. How long will it take to make the identification?’

  ‘Not long,’ Jace said. ‘I’ve called Dr Stone and alerted him. He’s on standby. As soon as he gets permission from you, he’ll compare the X-rays and give us his decision.’ Jace didn’t add that my friend, Dr Katie Kelly Stern, assistant county medical examiner, had stayed late at the morgue to X-ray the body. She’d already emailed those X-rays to Dr Stone.

  ‘Do you have a scanner?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Would a fax machine work?’

  ‘That will work fine,’ Jace said.

  ‘I have one in … in …’ Mrs Gibbons stopped, gulped back more tears, and finally said, ‘in Terri’s room.’

  She signed the paperwork and we followed her to Terri’s room. It was painted a dramatic dark blue cut with bold slashes of red. The walls were decorated with posters of women track stars. I recognized Olympians Allyson Felix and Sanya Richards-Ross. I hadn’t the heart to ask Mrs Gibbons about her daughter’s Olympic aspirations. Like the rest of the house, Terri’s room was scrupulously clean. Three tall bookcases were crowded with trophies and packed with books.

  Across from the bed was a desk with a fax machine and a phone charger. ‘The police took my daughter’s laptop and cell phone,’ Mrs Gibbons said. She showed us how to work the fax machine, and we faxed the signed permission paper to Dr Stone. Jace stepped outside to phone Katie and Dr Stone.

  ‘Do you have someone to stay with you this evening, Mrs Gibbons?’ I asked. ‘Someone you can call so you won’t be alone?’

  ‘Yes, my cousin, Bobbie Kramer. I’ll call her now. Even though she’s my cousin, Terri always called her Aunt Bobbie. My phone’s in my room.’