Chapter Eight
Lance parked his Jeep in front of the medical examiner’s office in the county municipal complex.
He had been to the ME’s suite in his days on the police force, but this time, his role was as a member of the victim’s family. It was a new part for Lance and about as comfortable as a suit made of poison ivy.
Inside, the smell of burned coffee in the waiting area didn’t help his nausea.
He gave his name to the receptionist. “Dr. Jenkins left a message on my phone asking me to stop by today.”
The call had come while Lance had been in the shower.
Stop by if you can. I have a few questions for you.
Did that mean Frank needed more information to ID his dad’s remains?
“Dr. Jenkins is in autopsy suite three,” she said. “He said you could go on in.”
Lance swallowed. He’d hoped the ME would be in his office.
He reminded himself that all he’d see would be bones. There would be no putrid smell. No rotting flesh. No bloated body. It couldn’t be that bad or Frank wouldn’t have invited him in. Right?
Right?
But Dr. Frank Jenkins was not known for his interpersonal skills.
Lance suited up in the antechamber. Gown, booties, gloves. He carried the plastic face shield. Damn things made his face sweat. He wouldn’t put it on until he had to.
He opened the door and hesitated at the threshold, sweating even without the shield. The other tables were empty. For once, there were no bodies in sight, but the scents of formalin and decomp were permanent fixtures. The smells lay heavy in the air, coating the back of his throat and threatening to gag him.
“Lance, come on back.” Frank waved him into the room. “I want to show you something.”
Lance held his breath and waded in.
Let’s get this done.
A sheet covered the stainless-steel autopsy table. On it, a skeleton had been loosely assembled.
Frank circled the table, his attention focused on the remains. “I had my assistant put the skeleton in order. Some of the small bones were missing, but we have a good number. Hopefully, enough to get a positive ID.”
Hopefully?
Lance walked closer. “Then you haven’t formally identified my father?”
“No.” Frank looked up, his face confused. The light glinted off his face shield. “Didn’t Sheriff King call you?”
“He did not.”
Frank muttered something that sounded like asshole under his breath. “I’m so sorry, Lance. I should have called you last night after I called Sheriff King. This isn’t your father.”
Wait. What?
The blood left Lance’s head, leaving dizziness in its absence. “Excuse me?”
“It isn’t your father.”
Lance glanced at the skull. The jaw looked undamaged, most of the teeth present. He breathed through his mouth, but the taste of the autopsy suite only made him feel worse. “You have his dental records?”
“I don’t need dental records.” Frank gestured to the bones. “The skeleton is female.”
Shock hit Lance like a cold slap. “Are you sure?”
Frank arched an annoyed eyebrow. With a sigh of great patience, he motioned to the skeleton and shifted into lecture mode. “Number one, the overall size and thickness of the bones, especially the femur, humerus, and radius, suggest this is a female.” He moved down the table to the center of the skeleton. “Second, the female pelvis is wider than that of a male specimen. Lastly,” he pointed to the skull, “the skull and jawbone of this victim also suggest it is female.”
Lance stared at the bones, trying to take it all in. “Are you sure all of these bones belong to the same victim?”
Frank nodded. “We collected about eighty-five percent of the skeleton. Most of the missing ones are small: fingers, toes, vertebrae, etc. The bones are consistent in size, and there are no duplicates that would suggest a second individual was in the trunk of that car.”
The medical examiner stepped away from the table and lifted his face shield. “Bones don’t lie, Lance. This is not your father.”
A few seconds ticked by as Lance absorbed Frank’s words.
Not. My. Father.
Those were the last words he’d expected to hear from the medical examiner.
Now what?
Someone put a woman in the back of his father’s car and sent it into the lake.
Who? Why?
Shit.
Where is my father?
His visit with Frank was supposed to answer questions, not generate a dozen new ones.
Pain thumped at Lance’s temples. He’d wanted to visit the ME on an empty stomach.
Obvious reasons.
But now his hollow gut churned.
“You don’t know who she is?” Lance asked. This unidentified woman was now the key to his father’s disappearance.
“No,” Frank said. “Not yet. We’ll start with any local girls who went missing in 1994 and work from there.”
Lance’s ears rang. His gaze swept over the skeleton, suddenly seeing its feminine slightness. “Can you tell me anything about her?”
Frank consulted a clipboard. “Measurement of the femur tells me she was approximately five feet, five inches tall, give or take an inch.”
“Any idea how old she was?”
Frank gestured toward a row of X-rays on a lightboard. “Impacted wisdom teeth. She was likely at least eighteen.”
“The fact that she didn’t have the teeth removed could also mean that she didn’t have access to dental care,” Lance added. “Or she couldn’t afford the procedure.”
“Right.” Frank waved a hand over the skeleton. “Some, but not all of her growth plates are closed. The clavicle, or collarbone, is the last bone to complete growth. The medial end is not fully fused, so she was under thirty.” Frank picked up a magnifying glass and examined a rib bone. “The ends of the ribs change as people age. Based on the smoothness I see here, I’d estimate that she was in her early twenties.”
“Any idea how she died?”
“Yes.” Frank read from his clipboard, then set it down and returned to the table. He pointed to a U-shaped bone below the skull on the sheet. “The hyoid bone is fractured.”
The hyoid bone was located in the middle of the neck between the chin and the thyroid.
“She was strangled,” Lance said.
“Most likely.” Frank nodded. “We’re lucky. That only happens in approximately one-third of strangulation deaths.”
She wasn’t lucky.
Lance stared at the tiny, meaningful bone. “So she was dead when she was put in the trunk?”
“It’s possible to survive a fractured hyoid, but I hope she didn’t.” Frank frowned.
“Me too.” Lance shuddered. Being strangled would have been bad enough, but he couldn’t imagine the alternative.
“Do you remember anyone who meets her description in your father’s life? Did your father have any female coworkers or friends that he was close with?” Frank was circling around the topic, but his line of thinking was obvious: infidelity.
“I don’t know.” Lance did not want to think about his father cheating, but he searched his memories. “No. My parents had some friends, but they were all about the same age as my parents, in their midthirties in 1994.”
“If you think of anyone this could be”—Frank waved a gloved hand over the skeleton—“please call me.”
“I will,” Lance said.
Frank stripped off his gloves. “If she was a local and someone filled out a missing person report, I should be able to identify her. If nothing pans out, I’ll bring in a forensic anthropologist.”
“Good luck.” Lance left the autopsy suite. He tossed his PPEs in the appropriate bins on the way out. As he walked across the parking lot toward his Jeep, his gut knotted.
Where was his father?