Known (19 page)

“English, please,” said Chris.

“Blood is prey to gravity immediately after death,” said Gianna. “It settles in the tissues of the lowest point of the body and stays there, creating dark patterning in those tissues. He was on his left side when I saw him and Frisco took the first photos.”

“Got it,” said Chris. “But how do you know he took a blow to the back of the head before the temple?”

Nora saw Gianna start to speak, then defer to Dr. Rutledge, who grinned at her restraint. “Can I see your notebook?” he asked Nora. Her current small notebook was tucked under her arm. Her notes were organized and legible. Not scribbles on a wrinkled flimsy pad like some detectives’.

She flipped it to a blank page. A small twinge of vulnerability shot through her as she handed over her book. Her cases relied on what she wrote in that book, and her hands abruptly felt empty and useless.

Dr. Rutledge drew a large circle. “Here’s the skull. The first blow was enough to send cracks from the point of impact. Think of the blow like a kid’s drawing of a sun.” He drew a tiny circle for the impact site and added a series of lines that shot out like rays from a sun. “These cracks follow the path of least resistance, creating a distinct pattern. Now the second blow over here doesn’t have the freedom of expression that the first blow did.” He drew a small impact site and started to give it the same sun rays. “The cracks from the second site will be blocked when they come to the first site’s cracks.” His lines stopped as they tried to cross the first set of lines. “We look for which site has the unblocked cracks. That’s our first impact.”

“Fascinating,” Chris said softly. “I can’t imagine what it looks like when someone has taken a dozen blows to the head with a hammer.”

“That’s a tougher puzzle to solve,” admitted Gianna.

Nora watched Chris’s hand creep up to touch the back of his own skull. He’d spent months in the hospital after he was found. Head trauma had been only one item on the long list of his injuries.

“There’s a distinct muzzle stamp around both of the bullet entrances,” added Dr. Rutledge. “Even with the burns from the fire, I can still see it. The gun was pressed against his skull when it was fired.”

“Caliber?” asked Nora, knowing it would be only a guess from the medical examiner, since the bullets were still missing.

“Not small. Big enough to blow through his skull in a straight line. Unless the perpetrators dug up the floor or ground where they shot him, I imagine they’re buried and waiting to be found.”

“So we agree the cabin wasn’t the murder scene for John Doe,” Nora stated.

“Correct,” said Dr. Rutledge. “Obviously it was for Francisco Green, but I haven’t gotten to him yet.”

“Why go through the trouble of dumping the body in an occupied cabin?” Chris asked. “Either Gianna and Violet were in the cabin when it was placed or it was put in there right after they got out.”

“Wouldn’t Violet have seen someone with a body when she was in your vehicle?” Nora asked.

“I know she slept part of the time,” said Gianna. “But from what I understand, she was focused on me in the backseat and the windows steamed immediately. Under the cover of dark, it could have happened. I think it’s more likely than someone doing it while I was sleeping on the main floor.”

Chris shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Is someone trying to make a point with his death?”

Nora agreed. “That’s what I’m here to find out.” She knew she’d be closer to the answer once she figured out the identity of the victim. “What do you have so far to help us identify him?” she asked the examiner.

Dr. Rutledge blew out a breath. “Caucasian male in his fifties or sixties. Gray hair, five foot ten, medium build, poor muscle tone. Extensive dental work. Implants have replaced three of his front teeth and he’s had other cosmetic dental work done on his front teeth. Expensive work. I need to take a closer look at all his films, but right off I noticed old breaks in his right radius and ulna.”

“Both bones?” Gianna asked. “Possibly from the same incident?”

“I’ll take a closer look, but they’re in the same location and demonstrated the same amount of repair. They’re old, nearly smooth in their healing.”

“Clothing?” asked Nora.

“Jeans, flannel shirt, long-underwear-type shirt, heavy winter jacket. All from Eddie Bauer. Same with the boots.”

“All from the same store?” Gianna wrinkled her forehead. “That’s odd. Right?” She looked at Chris and the medical examiner. “Or do some men do all their shopping in one store?”

“Whatever’s fastest,” stated Chris. Dr. Rutledge nodded in agreement.

“Must be a man thing,” said Gianna, looking to Nora for confirmation.

She nodded, but found the fact as curious as Gianna. Had the victim suddenly needed winter clothing and bought it all at once? Did the fact that Eddie Bauer had a large mail-order business indicate that the victim avoided stores? Or was the victim from an area where clothing stores weren’t readily available?

Or did it mean nothing at all . . . simply a man who shopped the fastest way he knew how?

“Do you have the medallion he was wearing?” Gianna asked.

“Yes.” Dr. Rutledge walked back over to where his assistant was stitching up the long incisions the medical examiner had made during the autopsy. He grabbed a small silver tray from an adjacent table and brought it back to the group. The three of them leaned forward for a closer look.

The medallion’s gold-colored chain was heavy and thick. It reminded Nora of an ancient foreign coin, and she wondered if it was real gold. She suspected so. Something about the quality of the piece told her that someone had spent a lot of money. With relief she noticed the jewelry hadn’t been cleaned. Possibly she could find fingerprints that would reveal the victim’s identity if he’d been arrested in the past. Maybe she’d get lucky and he’d be local. Swirling loops covered the medallion in a raised pattern. To Nora it looked like it’d been designed with one of the old Spirograph sets. She and her brothers had spent hours with the small plastic disks and colored pens, trying to outdo one another’s designs.

“Can you turn it over?” Gianna asked.

Dr. Rutledge produced a pair of long-handled tweezers and the medallion clanged in the metal tray. More swirly patterns shone through the dusty ash that clung to the metal.

“Are those initials?” Chris muttered.

“Yes,” whispered Gianna. “GDM.”

Nora looked sharply at the petite doctor. She’d gone pale and Nora had the feeling that she’d fully expected to recognize the pattern when she’d asked Dr. Rutledge to flip it over. “You know who this belongs to?”

“It belongs to me,” she said quietly.

“It’s a very masculine-looking piece,” said Detective Hawes. Her stare made Gianna feel like Gianna herself had pulled the trigger that had killed the man on the silver table. “Why didn’t you say it was yours when you saw it in the pictures?”

“I didn’t know,” said Gianna. “I didn’t recognize it then. I knew it felt familiar but didn’t know why. It wasn’t until sixty seconds ago that I remembered.”

How did my necklace end up around the neck of a dead man?

The thought ricocheted through her head.

Who is he?

“Why?” asked Hawes, her green eyes as penetrating as lasers. “How could you not recognize your own jewelry? Was it missing from your break-in?”

“No.” Gianna’s heart pounded faster as she tried to unscramble her brain. Both Dr. Rutledge and Chris were watching her with the same intensity, and her mouth dried up. “I haven’t seen it in ages. It was mine as a child. A gift from my maternal grandmother. I haven’t seen it since . . . since my parents died. We’d always thought it’d been lost in the mess of clearing out their house after their deaths. I really don’t remember it that well . . . I got to wear it or see it only on special occasions. My mother always kept it in her things and promised I’d have it once I was older.”

“So you’re not positive that this is the same medallion. It could just be something similar.”

Gianna looked back in the metal tray. “This is it. I
know
it is.”

Doubt raced across Detective Hawes’s features.

“This man must have known you somehow,” Hawes said. “And you know we need an identification on him as soon as possible. Nothing else about him prompts any memory?”

Gianna stepped closer to the table. In the cabin there’d been little to indicate his age without further investigation. The victim’s face was half-gone, his hair burned away. His lips had curled back and burned away, exposing his teeth. His torso had been well protected from the flames by his clothing and seemed unnaturally white compared to what was left of his face.

Something has to be familiar.

Nothing about him stirred a memory.

“No.”

Nothing.

“I’m sorry, I truly don’t know who he is.”

Hawes nodded in acceptance, her eyes slightly sad. “I’ll start looking in other ways. We’ll figure it out.” She turned a curious gaze to the body. “I bet it’s going to be a fascinating story.”

Gianna felt like she’d let the detective down.

“The chain on the medallion is different,” said Gianna, searching for something helpful to add. “I remember it being thinner . . . it was one of those square-shaped chains. A box chain. I remember running it between my fingers over and over, fascinated with the movement of the chain more than the medallion. I always thought the medallion was boring even though my initials were on it.”

“Any chance you have a picture of it from back then?” Hawes asked.

Gianna took a deep breath. “I can’t remember. Maybe at my uncle’s house. He kept ninety percent of all the photos that belonged to my parents. He boxed them up and put them in storage, but he’d put together two nice albums of pictures for me, so I always had pictures of the three of us to look at.” Tears threatened, creating burning sensations in her eyes.

Her parents had died over twenty-five years ago.
Why does it still hurt?

It wasn’t their deaths that ached today; it was what her parents had missed. Primarily it hurt that they’d never known Violet or seen the major accomplishments of Gianna’s life. Her memories were so old, she often wasn’t certain that they were accurate. When she looked through the albums, she believed she remembered the circumstances of each photo. Or were the photos creating the memories? Would she still remember riding the pony at the fair if her mother hadn’t taken the photo?

Chris put an arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her against his side. “Pictures are important,” he said. “When I look at old photos of Michael and me, it’s like they’re from someone else’s life. That time period ended, and I went for a long time with nothing to remind me of that life. Michael and my mother put together some albums for me about a year ago. One is of the four of us Brodys together, and I have another one of their lives after I was gone. They weren’t sure that they should do it, but I wanted to see how they’d lived without me, because every single day I ask what my life would have been like if one event hadn’t shifted everything to a new course.”

He’d nailed it.

Gianna understood perfectly. One event had changed her life and it still guided her current course.
But what if
. . . ?

She couldn’t make an album that showed what could have been if her parents had lived. She had to rely on imagination.

The photos were both a curse and a blessing.

“You can’t be certain this medallion is yours,” Hawes stated.

“That’s correct,” admitted Gianna. “It could be one that simply looks like it and happens to have my initials. But I’m telling you, I remember that pattern. I remember tracing the swirls on the other side and wishing they formed a flower or a tiara instead of nothing. I remember—”

What did she remember?

Her teeth ached with a memory.

“I remember biting it as a child,” she said slowly. “I’d seen people in cartoons bite gold coins to see if they were real. I bit it and it made marks. I was terrified my mother would notice and I’d get in trouble for damaging it, but she never said anything.”

A childish recollection of fear swept through her. She’d been terrified for days that she’d be in trouble for ruining the precious present. She leaned closer to the medallion. Dr. Rutledge picked it up with his tweezers and peered closely.

Gianna saw two small dents on one side. So tiny. Barely remarkable within the pattern of swirls. He turned it over and she saw four more in an arc.

“I’m not an odontologist, but I’d say those are bite marks. Someone bit it at some point. No way to tell who did, but it lends some credence to your story,” said Dr. Rutledge. He grinned at Gianna.

I knew it.

She wondered when her uncle Saul would arrive. She remembered discussing the lost jewelry with him after she’d moved into his home. He’d had his people search through all the belongings from her parents, but the necklace hadn’t been found. She’d missed it, but not because she loved it. She’d missed it because it was a link to her maternal grandmother and it’d been created expressly for her. She truly hadn’t thought about the piece since junior high.