Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3) (3 page)

The detectives briefly interviewed the couple who’d discovered the body before sending them to the local police station with Davis’s partner to obtain more detailed statements.

              ‘So are you going to tell me what’s got you so fired up today?’ he asked Kennedy eventually as they made their way back towards the body.

The detective said nothing, just took out the same cigarette and tapped it against the packet again. Chris was experienced enough as an interviewer and friend to allow him the space and time to organize his thoughts and answer when he was ready.

Kennedy relit the cigarette this time, took a puff and let out a deep sigh.  ‘Ah it’s nothing…’

Again Chris let the silence do its job, looking sideways at his partner as he fiddled with the filter of his cigarette.

‘It’s Josie.’

Josie was Kennedy’s wife, the bedrock upon which he rested, his safe haven after a day amongst the detritus of society. A few years older than her husband,  she had taken early retirement, and seemed happy to potter around the house and be there with a warm dinner and a pair of slippers when Kennedy came home from work more often than not drained and exhausted.

‘What’s up?’

‘She’s been having some stomach problems, they ran some tests…there’s something not right…’ He looked sideways at Chris, worry etched across his features.  ‘You always fear the worst, though, don’t you?’

Chris nodded.  ‘Human nature.  And the more the person means to you…’

Kennedy stared out across the dark field once more for a few moments, before turning abruptly back to Chris. ‘You hear that?’

Chris listened.  He could hear the faint sound of another vehicle approaching. ‘Car? So what?’

‘That’s not just a car, that’s a gearshift cranking one-eighty.’  He reached over and started straightening Chris’s leather jacket. ‘Miss Baywatch is on the way. Here, let me smarten you up a bit.’

‘Give it a rest.’ Chris immediately recognized the sharp switch in mood as a cue to drop the subject. It was characteristic of Kennedy to not let his guard drop for very long. Still, Chris made a mental note to keep an eye on his partner. Such concerns were potentially a dangerous distraction from the job, something he himself knew only too well.

‘I keep telling you,’ Kennedy was saying, ‘one of these days you might catch her in a weak moment, when she’s desperate and lowers her standards…’

Unlikely, Chris thought, especially now. Right from the beginning, he and Reilly had had some kind of connection, and while at one point there might have been something brewing between them, he’d done something which disappointed her, and he knew it.

Back to his usual blustery self, Kennedy guffawed as the  headlights swept around the curves and Reilly Steel approached the scene. ‘Here comes trouble.’

Chapter 4

Reilly’s eyes widened. ‘Angel wings?’

‘Impressive, eh?’ Chris crouched down beside her as they studied the extensive tattoo on the dead girl’s body.

‘It’s beautiful…and so intricate.’  She pulled out her own flashlight and ran it slowly up and down the corpse.  ‘So what do we know?’

‘We thought you were going to pull out that iPad thing of yours and tell us.’  True to form, Kennedy was always the smartass.

‘Ah, don’t mind him,’ Chris chipped in lightly. ‘He’s having one of those days – must be his time of the month.’ But Reilly noticed the subtle yet meaningful look Chris gave her, suggesting that something else was at play with the older detective. She wondered what it might be. ‘She was spotted by passing motorists, they called the emergency services and a local patrol car was first on the scene. Seems she was already dead,’ Kennedy told Reilly. ‘No ID as yet, and as you can see she’s barefoot and in her nightgown.’

‘But her skin … it seems very wet?’

‘Well, it’s been drizzling most of the evening.’

‘I know.  But her clothes feel soaked right through.’  Reilly leaned down and sniffed at the hem of the dress.

Kennedy looked at Chris.  ‘Here we go,’ he groaned. ‘She’s going all weird on us again.’

Ignoring him, she straightened up. ‘There's something … I’m not sure but I don’t think it’s just rain.’  She stood up as the lights of another approaching vehicle illuminated the scene.

The drive out on the quiet country roads that evening had been her first chance to unwind after an already hectic day – and with another scene to process, it was likely to be the only time to herself before collapsing into bed some time after midnight. If she was lucky.

Unwinding for Reilly meant something different than it did for most. She had opened the windows of the van, allowed the cool, damp air to rush past and given her mind the freedom to wander. It gave her a tiny window of opportunity to dwell on things other than work. Random thoughts and promises. The organized nature of her brain would not allow for too much pointless daydreaming though; inevitably she would start to make mental to-do lists, like inviting her dad and his new partner over for dinner, or finding time to get out for a run before her ass got any bigger. Recently, the thing that loomed largest during a moment of quiet was a dull ache, a growing loss that she attributed to the absence of her sister.

Lately, though, it was becoming apparent that it was something more than that and once again her thoughts drifted to home.

Moving to Dublin had been an easy choice initially: the promise of a new challenge. Her father had already made the move and she had nothing to lose – or so she’d  thought.

Now things had changed. The truth was that Reilly missed the US. It had taken her a while to recognize the fact, mostly because the workload left little time for California dreaming.

‘That’ll be Thompson or your crew,’ said Chris, looking into the headlights.

Another white van parked behind the police car. The doors opened and two GFU technicians in boiler suits emerged.

Temporarily setting aside all thoughts unrelated to the here and now, Reilly sprung into action. ‘OK, let’s get this scene cleared – I’ll need all these cars backed up, and all non-essential personnel out of the way.’

Chris smiled, by now well used to her direct manner. He turned to the watching officers. ‘That means you lot – get your cars moved back at least a hundred yards either end of the road, and stay back there with them until she calls you.’

‘Who’s that and how come she’s in charge all of a sudden?’ grumbled Davis.

‘Reilly Steel from the GFU,’ Chris informed him, ‘and she’s the one who’s going to figure out what happened to our fallen angel over there.’

Reilly strode over to the advancing techs.  ‘We’re going to need to move the van back at least a hundred yards, then we can start to have a proper look at what we’ve got going on here.’

Gary had an open friendly face with a scruffy half-beard that made him look far younger than his thirty years. ‘Will do, boss,’ he said, in a typically upbeat manner. He turned on his heel and headed back to the van, the keys jangling in his hand.

Lucy, the other tech, was in her mid-twenties.  Her blond hair was cut into a stylish bob, and she wore dark-framed glasses –  an attempt, Reilly always thought, to make herself look older.  But despite her best efforts at promoting a more serious persona, Lucy was the energetic, enthusiastic member of the team, the spark plug who kept them going over long shifts when energies were flagging and spirits were falling. 

Lucy hurried over to Reilly, who noticed she couldn’t keep her eyes from the body lying in the road.  ‘Where do you want to start?’

‘Someone hit that girl, and we need to try and figure out who. Let’s concentrate on the area immediately around the body for starters.’

Lucy’s eyes remained on the dead girl.  ‘Do they have any idea who she is?’

Reilly shook her head.  ‘We’ll deal with that later. Right now let’s focus on trying to figure out what happened here.’

Lucy reluctantly tore her eyes away from the body. ‘Sure.’

While they were talking, the surrounding vehicles were moving away. As their headlights receded, the scene took on a different air, the fainter lighting giving it an almost artistic look – a fine, misty rain falling through the beams of the police cars’ headlights, the girl lying on her side, almost peaceful looking, the angel wings visible through her thin nightgown. 

It almost looked as though she could get up at any moment and fly away.

With the area cleared, the forensic techs set to work, combing the road for anything that might be of interest, like road debris that could have come from the vehicle that hit the girl or any sign of recent skid marks.

It was painstaking work, crouched over scanning the road with a flashlight, trying to ignore the damp that settled on the back of their necks. Every time one of them found something of interest – a scrap of forensic trace that might be relevant – they put down a numbered marker, took a photo of the item they’d found in situ, then bagged and tagged it, the number on the evidence bag corresponding with the number on the yellow plastic markers.

Before long, the road on either side of the girl’s body was littered with markers, but Reilly paid little attention to what her team were doing – she was focused on the body, her flashlight moving at a snail’s pace up and down the corpse.

Every so often she would stop, and try to order her thoughts, before continuing her search. So engrossed was she that she didn’t notice the approach of Karen Thompson, the Medical Examiner. The older woman gave a little cough.  ‘Reilly, OK for me to do my initial exam on the body now?’

Reilly looked up, surprised.  ‘I didn’t hear you pull up. That would be great, thank you.’ She stood up and moved a respectful few paces back to allow her the space to conduct her examination.

A tall imposing woman in her late forties, Thompson lowered herself slowly to her knees and hunched over the corpse.  She had a distinctive way of leaning over the bodies she examined, almost as though she needed to get close enough to them to hear their stories.

Reilly was aware of the doctor talking to herself, almost as if she was cross ex
amining the victim in a witness box, her latex-gloved hands gently turning the limbs, checking under the hairline at the base of the girl’s skull, feeling for broken bones, crushed muscles, ligaments and tendons torn apart by the impact of whatever had hit her.

After a minute or two she climbed to her feet.

Reilly eagerly awaited her verdict, but Karen wasn’t done, simply changing position. She moved to the other side of the body, knelt down once more and resumed the examination.

Reilly already had a fair idea of what she was going to say. She had enough training and experience to know the difference between injuries that directly caused death and those that had occurred post-mortem, but she knew better than to say anything – it was protocol and politeness to defer to the ME, even when the cause of death seemed obvious.

Finally, Karen Thompson finished her examination and called the detectives back over.

‘Hit and run. Killed on impact,’ she stated sympathetically, turning her wide eyes on the three of them. ‘But I’m sure you already knew that.’ She nodded towards the body.  ‘See here…’ Reilly and the detectives crouched down over the body together.  ‘Impact was right here.’  Karen pointed to the back of the girl’s legs. ‘She was struck from behind, just above the knees. But there’s also impact here.’ She gently lifted the girl’s nightdress to reveal contusions on her lower back.

Chris frowned. ‘So more likely a van than a car?’

‘Correct. A car would have rolled her up across the bonnet, causing a different pattern of injuries. So yes, a slightly larger vehicle with a flatter, non-aerodynamic front end.’

‘And the official cause of death?’

Thompson crouched down again, and indicated that the others should do the same. She gently prodded the back of the dead girl’s skull – it gave slightly under the pressure of her fingers. ‘Secondary impact. All these other injuries’ –  she indicated the grazes and abrasions to her arms and legs – ‘are primary,
arising from contact with the vehicle itself, but the secondary injury –  blunt force of impact to the head –  would have killed her, after the collision threw her into the air and back onto the tarmac.’

 
              ‘So we should be looking for a van with damage to the front and probably a cracked windshield,’  Chris stated flatly.

‘I’ll be able to tell you more after full autopsy of course. I’ve called to arrange transport and will try to schedule the  exam for tomorrow afternoon. All going well
you can expect the full report by teatime tomorrow, but you might have to wait a little longer for the toxicology report.’

              ‘Thanks, doc,’ Kennedy said. ‘So our angel didn’t jump or get pushed out of a moving vehicle then.’ 

‘Definitely not. Such a scenario would cause a completely different injury pattern.’

Reilly scanned the array of cones that were laid out across the road.  A single set of spray-paint marks suggested that Colin O’Dea’s car had been the only vehicle in the immediate area that had recently tried to slow down. 

So was the collision that killed the girl accidental or intentional?