Page 24 of Never Stay Gone
“The third most recent victim is our mutilated Jane Doe. She and victim number four, another Jane Doe, were killed at about the same time. Similar stages of insect activity from the grave were found within both cranial cases. Both corpses are approximately ninety days from estimated time of death.”
Glancing left, Dakota saw Shane go pale, tinged with green. Senior year, Shane had pretended to be sick for a week to get out of their dissection unit in biology. “You need some air?” Dakota murmured, leaning close enough to smell Shane’s hair and his skin, the sweat that had soaked into and dried on his long-sleeved uniform shirt. It reminded Dakota of how he used to smell after a game, when the two of them were driving out to the desert and holding hands in Shane’s truck.
Shane shivered. Shifted away from Dakota, pressing against the driver’s door. He cracked the window, turned his face to the rushing wind. Closed his eyes.
“Killed at the same time?” Dakota said, refocusing on the call. “Those bodies look wildly different, Doc.”
“Victim number four wasn’t burned. You’re looking at regular decay. Externally, she doesn’t look too much different from victim five, Amber Serrano. Once you get to that stage of decomposition, thirty days doesn’t make too much of a visual difference, but there’s a lot of internal changes happening. The Serrano girl was killed approximately 120 days ago, and, based on decay rate, insect activity, and the drippings from the other remains piled on top of her, I think she was the first fleshed body to be dumped into the grave.”
Shane shoved open the truck door and tumbled to the road. Dakota watched him lurch toward the tailgate, one hand grasping the truck bed. Then he disappeared, ducking down.
“Ranger Jennings?”
“Yeah. Uh, I’m here.” Dakota watched the corner of Shane’s truck, waiting for Shane to come back. Nothing. He slid over and followed Shane out the driver’s door, onto the side of the road. “Gimme a sec, Doc.”
He saw two denim-clad legs flat on the ground behind the truck.
Dakota jogged around the tailgate and saw Shane sitting against his back tire, face turned up to the wind, breathing deep and slow. His face was ashen, the color of a cloud, and his fingers dug into the denim covering his thighs.
Dakota rooted in the back of Shane’s truck bed—tools, evidence collection kits, plastic bins, an old red sleeping bag—and finally found a case of water. He pried out a bottle and brought it back to Shane.
“I’ll finish the call,” he said softly, opening up the bottle of water. “You hang here, ’kay?”
Shane nodded and sipped at the water. He wouldn’t meet Dakota’s eyes.
Dakota waited until he was back in the truck with the door closed before he spoke to Dr. Trevino again. “Okay, Doc, sorry ’bout that. My, uh, partner had some bad breakfast.”
“I’ve never worked with the Big Bend sheriffs on a murder investigation,” Dr. Trevino said. “They don’t get many out there. This is a hell of a case for someone to dive headfirst into.”
“Tell me ’bout the last set of remains. Number six.”
Dr. Trevino sighed. “Much, much different than the rest.”
“Older? Maybe the killer’s first victim? He waited a few months before trying again?”
“I think you’re right that those bones are an earlier victim of the killer, but you’re wrong about the time interval. Try years, Ranger. Whoever those remains are, they have been dead for a long time. At least a decade.”
“Adecade?”
“At least. And they were buried somewhere else before being buried in your desert. The bones were completely defleshed before going into the Big Bend grave. Before being reburied, they had been interred somewhere where they collected acidic soil along the grooves and joints. I scraped samples off the ribs, pelvis, and jawbone. It’s distinctly different than the soil we have out here in West Texas. We have a more alkaline soil, thanks to the limestone deposits from the ancient seas. Those bones were previously buried in an acidic soil grave.”
“How far do you have to go to find acidic soil?”
“East Texas. Other side of the state.”
Dakota stared at the photo on Shane’s laptop, at the reordered bodies. A lineup of death, a march back in time. One killed every month, maybe, except for when two were killed at once. And the first victim, who was killed a decade ago.
Were these exceptions to a pattern? Or was there no pattern at all?
“Let’s talk similarities,” Dr. Trevino said. “They’re all women. All of them appear to be under forty years old. Each one was strangled by hand, not by ligature. I found evidence of fingertip bruising and nail impressions on the left and right sides of Klein’s, Lynn’s, Serrano’s, and Jane Doe four’s throats. I couldn’t recover a fingerprint or any foreign DNA, so whoever strangled them might have been careful enough to wear gloves. All victims have fractured hyoid bones and fractured left horns of the thyroid cartilage, which means the killer is probably right-handed. Whoever killed them used great force and attacked quickly and brutally. These women were likely unconscious within seconds. I didn’t find any defensive wounds on any of the bodies. Whoever did this either knew all of the victims or was someone they were comfortable enough with to not be on guard. And the killer did all this face-to-face.”
Dakota whistled, long and slow. Face-to-face killing was an intimate, aggressive act. Most murderers who strangled turned their victims over, strangled them from behind. Looking a person in the eyes as they died took a level of rancid hatred that few criminals possessed.
“All of the victims except for Jane Doe three are intact. No missing teeth, no missing fingers. I’m waiting for dental ID to come back on Jane Doe four and, hopefully, six—though with remains that old, there might not be anything in the system to compare the dental X-rays to. Jane Does three and four were killed very close together, close enough I can’t say which was first or second. I didn’t find any evidence of sexual assault, but Jessica Klein had recently had sex with someone. There was sperm inside of her.”
“She lived with her fiancé.”
“Since the sex appears to be consensual, he’s a likely candidate. Unless you found evidence of an affair during your missing persons investigation?”
