Snake Skin (14 page)

He released the jaw and the head fell
forward, splashing in the oil, disturbing the layer of wax-coated
debris.

"We found more teeth inside in the fryer
pan. It'll take a few days but we can probably get a decent dental
reconstruction. That and DNA are gonna be your only hope of ID'ing
her."

"It's not Ashley." The knowledge eased the
stranglehold locking her jaw muscles. She stepped away from the
container and took a deep breath.

"You sure?" Dunmar asked. "They found her
wallet in the trashcan inside the employee break room."

"I'm sure. Ashley only had one piercing in
her ears. This woman has four in this ear and a cartilage
piercing."

The ME let the woman slip back down beneath
the oil. "You looking for someone named Ashley?"

"Missing kid from Plum," Burroughs said,
coming closer but not looking into the container.

The ME frowned. "Might have something that
helps." He closed the lid on the dead woman and trudged over to his
evidence case. "One of her hands was shoved up against the lid of
the container. The flesh was gone, as you can imagine, but I found
these intertwined with the bones and soft tissue that remained.
Photographed and bagged them before any more damage could
occur."

He handed Lucy two plastic evidence bags.
One contained an oily hank of long, dark hair, torn out by the
roots. The other the remnants of a Piaget watch. The band had been
mostly destroyed, the crystal was shattered, but the engraving on
the back was clear: To Ashley, love Dad.

Lucy wordlessly handed them to Burroughs who
took one glance and reached for his cell.

"I figured our victim grabbed them as her
attacker held her down in the fryer."

A vision of Ashley holding another woman
down in the vat of boiling oil filled Lucy's mind. The stench of
frying flesh filled her throat, gagging her. Could Ashley have done
this?

Could Lucy have been wrong about
everything?

Chapter 12

Saturday, 4:41 pm

Burroughs hung up his phone. "Dad confirmed
it—he gave Ashley the watch for her birthday last year. Said she
never took it off."

Lucy nodded, still trying to absorb the new
information. "Call me when you have any results," she told the ME
and turned to Burroughs and Delmar. "I'm going to talk with our
witness. You know her name?"

"Doris. Doris Sykes."

She left the men outside and returned to the
break room, relieving the uniformed officer. Scooting the second
chair beside Doris's, she sat down and took the girl's hand in
hers. Doris's shoulder shook with silent sobs, but after a few
moments she looked up.

"Doris, my name is Lucy Guardino. I'm with
the FBI. Can you tell me what happened today?"

Tears still streaming down her face, Doris
nodded silently. Her eye makeup was clumped into pockets of baby
blue and black, threatening to topple from over-mascared lashes
with each blink. She sniffed and took the tissue Lucy handed her,
blowing her nose.

"How old are you, Doris?" Lucy began when
the girl didn't speak.

"Eighteen."

"Eighteen. Good." Doris kept nodding, so
Lucy bobbed her head as well. "How long have you been working
here?"

"Almost two years. Well, two summers. But I
graduated in June, so nows I'm full time here." She straightened,
dabbing at her eyes and succeeding in smearing her makeup further.
"Got promoted to Assistant Manager after I graduated."

"Assistant Manager. Wow, that's great. So
you have keys to lock up?"

"Yes ma'am. I work three to closing
Wednesday through Friday. All day on weekends—I'm in charge
then."

"That's a lot of responsibility. Who's the
manager?"

"Mr. Tillsbury. Well, he's the owner. Opens
weekday mornings at 11, gets things started for lunch."

"He works alone until you get here at
three?"

She shook her head in scorn. "Mr. T? Nah, he
just makes sure the bank deposit adds up and does the ordering.
He's usually out of here by one at the latest. And he never comes
in on Saturday or Sunday."

"So today you opened. Who else was
here?"

"Ronny Clarkson, he only works weekends.
He's a lazy sumthin-sumthin. That's why I was the one emptying out
the trash in here, that's how come I was the one—" Her hand covered
her mouth even as she kept on talking, trying to shove the terrible
words and images that accompanied them back down inside. "I was the
one who went out there, found that—her—the body." Fresh tears
started up. "Is it," she gulped and tried again, "is it
Noreen?"

"Who's Noreen?"

Doris shot a quick glance over her shoulder
and leaned forward until they were shoulder to shoulder. "Don't
tell Mr. T, promise? I don't want to get her in no trouble."

"Noreen works here?" She nodded. "What's her
full name?"

"Noreen Crenshaw. She only works part time,
has a baby to watch out for. Usually works 11 to 4 on
weekdays."

The woman had been dead more than 24 hours,
the ME had said. Yesterday. Right around the same time Ashley was
last seen. "Was Noreen here yesterday?"

Another nod. "Most of the time. Said she had
to leave, so I came in early. Place was empty."

"You mean she left it unlocked? No one was
here?"

"She locked the register. Not like there's
much else to steal except hotdogs. And who'd take the bother to
cook them themselves? This time of year the place is always empty.
Mr. T only keeps it going 'cause if he sells it, his wife would
make them move to Florida and he don't want to go."

Lucy tried to steer Doris back on track.
"You spoke with Noreen? Was anyone here with her? Any
customers?"

"Doubt it. She must have been real bored
'cause the place was as clean and spotless as I've ever seen it.
Everything scrubbed down and shiny."

"What exactly did she say? When did she call
you?"

Doris slipped a cell phone from her pocket
and flipped it open. "We didn't talk. She texted me."

Damn technology. Didn't people actually talk
anymore?

Doris tapped a blue enameled nail on the
phone keys then turned the screen around.
Gotta
go, sorry, cant help it, N

"I just figured it was something to do with
her baby."

Lucy looked at the time stamp. 2:11 pm
yesterday. She pulled out the picture of Ashley. "Have you ever
seen this girl before?"

"Not in person. But her picture was on the
bus pass I found in the trash with that wallet the police
took."

"She's never been in here?"

She sucked in her lower lip as she
concentrated. "No ma'am."

"Do you have any pictures of Noreen?"

Doris pushed back her chair and reached
behind Lucy to the bulletin board. "Here's one of her and me right
after graduation."

Lucy took the photo. Two smiling faces
beamed out at her. Noreen's brown hair was pulled back far enough
to reveal a sparkling array of earrings dangling from her ears.
Five from the left and four from the right.

"I need to take this. Did Noreen have a
car?"

Doris frowned. "Yeah. But it's not
here."

"What kind of car is it?"

"Toyota Corolla, blue, hatchback. Real old
and pretty rusty."

Lucy didn't think she could get anything
else helpful from the manager. "Thanks, Doris, you've been a great
help." She started out the door, then couldn't help herself, and
turned back. "You said Noreen had a baby?"

Doris nodded, tears seeping from her eyes
again. "Jared. He's four months old. Looks just like his
mommy."

Lucy forced herself not to think of the
motherless baby, instead imagined Noreen's last moments, begging
for her life, for her baby's future, fighting her attacker.

Could Ashley have done that to another girl?
Did she have the strength? Not just physical strength, but the
psychological will it took to dehumanize and kill.

She turned to her resident expert and called
Nick. She told him what they'd learned so far. "I've heard of
teenagers who kill in groups or go on sprees, but what about
carefully planned murder? A murder whose only purpose was to cover
your tracks?"

"If it is her, the fact that she chose a
target who looked like her but overlooked details like the earrings
is definitely indicative of juvenile thinking," he said. "As is
wiping the place clean, destroying the face and fingerprints but
not thinking of DNA and dental records."

"Yeah, what's with that?" Lucy asked,
tapping her wedding ring against the phone, wishing she could see
his face as he spoke—a lot of times Nick would lay out persuasive
arguments both for and against a position, seeing both sides
clearly, but she could always tell by his face where his heart
really lay. "These days with CSI catching criminals in thirty
seconds flat, you'd think a kid would think of that. It's as if our
killer can't really focus for long—he comes up with big ideas but
can't implement them fully."

"Like a kid with ADHD," Nick suggested.

"Or an adult. I don't think it's her," she
said flatly.

"Okay." His neutral tone. The therapist's
tone. Which meant he disagreed with her.

"I'm going with my gut here."

Silence. "You usually do. You gonna make it
home for dinner?"

"No." Even if she could take the time, she
wouldn't—working a case this messy, she felt like she was
contaminated. It made her queasy to think of bringing it home with
her. "Megan doing okay?"

"No more fever—just moping about maybe
missing soccer on Monday."

"Give her a kiss and hug for me." Megan
still let her father touch her, even if she rebuked Lucy's shows of
affection. She hesitated. Best to face the music. "My meet tomorrow
with the Canadians got moved to the morning. I won't make it to
Mass with you guys."

The fact that he didn't even bother to sigh
was a bad sign. As if he knew all along she wouldn't be there with
her family. "I'll tell her."

Guilt stabbed through her. Not only at
missing time with her family but at making Nick play the bearer of
bad news. Again. She stroked the phone, wishing it was his face—or
Megan's. What else could she do? "Love ya."

She hung up and returned outside where
Burroughs, Dunmar, and several other law enforcement officers were
overseeing the ME's removal of the container. From a distance, of
course.

"This is your victim." She handed Noreen's
photo to Dunmar and told him about the missing car. "She worked
here and went missing between 2 and 3 pm yesterday."

Dunmar arched an eyebrow at her as if she
were a particularly bright pupil who had surprised him. "That so?
Damn shame there's no security cameras or any other way we could
track the vehicle from here. But I'll get my boys and the Staties
working on any traffic cams, see if we can get a bearing on which
way it went."

It was a long shot, but worth a try. She
looked out past the Tastee Treet at the traffic zooming by, bumper
to bumper on Route 22. A very long shot.

"I think we should try to cover any possible
dumping grounds within a five to ten minute radius. He wouldn't
have wanted to leave his vehicle here for long while he dumped
Noreen's."

Burroughs cleared his throat at that.
"
He?
Who's to say Ashley didn't kill that girl and steal her
vehicle?"

"We need to cover every angle," Lucy argued.
"If Ashley was taken from here, then it's a whole new ballgame. We
should see if we can find anyone who was here yesterday, maybe saw
Ashley or anyone else."

"
If
there was anyone else."

Lucy hated to admit it, but she was starting
to wonder herself. This whole case was screwier than the snake
handlers she'd dealt with this morning—and she'd thought they rang
the bell on the whacky-meter.

She looked back at the forlorn Tastee Treet.
Ashley, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?

Ashley couldn't tell if she'd been there for
hours or days. The complete absence of light and outside sound made
her too anxious to venture away from her pole. She clung to her
pole, at the bottom of a dark pit, close to the molten lava that
formed the earth's core—hot and dark and empty, like the sixth
level of Hell in Shadow World. That'd been the hardest level to
beat. It was where she'd lost Draco. Her friend, her ally, her
love.

Just like she'd lost Bobby. Or had Bobby
lost her? Was he dead already or sitting in his own Hell worried
about her?

At first she called for help. Until her
voice died. Then she tried to think of ways to escape—hard to
consider when engulfed in all-consuming blackness.

Eventually, she found herself treating her
leash as a crutch, like a rope a blind woman would use, keeping her
from falling—or worse.

She gave up on walking. Even after drinking,
she was too dizzy when she stood. Better to keep her body pressed
against the solid ground—anchored, secure. One hand wrapped around
her pole for security.

When she grew thirsty again, she tried to
ignore it. But the heat sucked the moisture from her. The more she
ignored her thirst, the way her tongue felt swollen, her teeth
aching from being so dry, the worse it got. The thought of
venturing back out into the darkness made her stomach rise up in
rebellion, she would have puked if she had any spit to swallow.

She needed water. Or she would die.

Reluctantly, she let loose of her pole and
crawled in the direction where the bucket and commode sat on her
left.

It was gone.

Panicked, she flailed out, laying flat on
her belly, kicking and moving her arms as if swimming over the
vinyl floor, inching along, guided by her tether. Her thirst
escalated with her terror. Without water, she would die.