Page 32 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

He hesitated.

“I take that as a yes.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Come on, Cliff. You guys are going to release the names as soon as the next of kin have been notified.”

“It’ll happen this afternoon.”

“So, give me a little bit of a head start.”

He sighed through his nose, and Nikki felt a second’s relief. Cliff always let out his breath before spilling significant beans. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt. There are two women, one older and decomposing badly—we don’t know who she is. The other one is younger, obviously been in the coffin a short while.”

“How short?”

“Less than a day.”

“Who is she?” Nikki asked

“Her name is Barbara Jean Marx. Goes by Bobbi. Native Savannahian. Look, that’s all I can tell you, really. I’ve got to go.”

Nikki wrote down the victim’s name. It was a start. “How did she die?”

Hesitation. Nikki put a question mark by the name.

“What about the other one?”

“I’ll leave it at homicide, at least in Bobbi’s case, but I really can’t discuss it any further. It could injure the investigation.”

“That’s department mumbo jumbo and you know it.” Nikki wrote Reed’s name beside the victims and put another question mark by Who is the other victim? How related?

“For now, it’s all I can say.”

Bobbi could tell Cliff wasn’t about to be swayed on the cause of death issue, so she tried another tack. “So, who is she? And I’m not talking about her name.”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“You’re beginning to sound like a broken record.”

“Good.”

Hearing the finality in his tone and knowing he was about to ring off, she quickly asked, “Why would the department send Reed? Or did the Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Department request him?”

A beat. No answer. He was clamming up. She had to work fast. “Was it because he lived up there once, or because he’s got some special skills, or just because he was the cop on duty?”

“Figure it out, Nikki,” Siebert growled. “It ain’t rocket science.” He hung up with a loud, final click.

“Damn,” she muttered, but tore the piece of paper from her notepad and stuffed it into her purse. She didn’t waste a minute. This was her chance. Her BIG chance. One she wasn’t going to share with Norm Metzger. No way. No how. No matter what Tom Fink wanted. She wouldn’t take a chance that somehow someone in the office might discover what she was researching, so she packed up her laptop, logged out and drove home. Even though she might freeze as the insulation in her turret apartment was nearly nonexistent, she did have cable Internet and a password that would allow her into news archives at the Sentinel and its sister newspaper in Atlanta. Whatever there was to know about Barbara Jean Marx, Nikki would discover it this afternoon, then start the legwork to check out “Bobbi’s” home, her workplace, her friends. And maybe in so doing she’d figure out why the woman was murdered.

“What do they know up at the sheriff’s department?” Reed asked when McFee entered his office around three. Reed had worked all morning, catching up on other cases, tracking down the lab to see if they’d gotten any latent fingerprints off the note he’d received the other day, calling St. Claire and asking about more information on the victims in the grave. The ME had faxed over the preliminary reports and Reed was reading them now. Everything St. Claire had told him had proved true. Barbara Jean Marx had died of asphyxiation, she had a high blood alcohol level and traces of a sedative, Ativan, in her blood. Her fingers were scraped raw, her knees bruised, her forehead bloodied, presumably from hitting her head on the inside top of the coffin. She’d lost fingernails and toenails while trying to claw her way to freedom. And she’d been about eleven weeks pregnant. His gut clenched as McFee settled into a side chair. “You talked to Baldwin?”

“A couple of times, but we still haven’t got much more information than we had a couple of days ago,” the big detective admitted. His scowl was more pronounced as he ran a hand over his jaw. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small notepad. “Prescott Jones, the kid who wa

s hurt up at the mountain, he’s still critical. Baldwin went up to talk to him and find out what he saw, but didn’t get much out of him and the doctors and nurses weren’t happy to have anyone disturbing him. The boy’s old man wasn’t any help. Seems to think the kid can sell his story to a tabloid. Baldwin’s still working on him, though. He talked to the other boy.”

“Delacroix?”

“Right. But his story hasn’t changed and he can’t remember any more details. There was something about him, though…he seemed to be holding back.”

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