“You, too, Dr. Fullbright,” Whitney said. “Thank you. Except … would it be possible for me to see the two girls who died last week?”
She thought that Jake would step in and proprietarily inform her that they had nothing to do with this case, and that he had it covered.
Fullbright did look to Jake.
Jake nodded.
“My assistant will escort you,” Fullbright said.
“Thank you,” she told him.
They followed a fellow in scrubs out and down the hall. In another room, there were rows and rows of steel drawers. Apparently, despite the number of deaths that came through the morgue, the murders of the two unknown girls were remembered. The assistant knew right where he was going. He glanced at Jake apologetically. “We’re calling them Jane Doe wet and Jane Doe dry. The more recent body was pulled from the river,” he explained to Whitney, something she already knew. Jackson Crow was thorough when he briefed his team.
He pulled out the drawer and pulled back the shroudlike sheet covering the corpse. Whitney locked her jaw.
The flesh on the girl’s face had met with the elements and any number of hungry river carnivores. The skull peeked through in many places. The skin that remained was a mottled gray-blue color, where it wasn’t pulpy-red.
She glanced at Jake. “I’d like to take some photos. One of my teammates is a true whiz on a computer. He can work any graphics program invented, and I think he can get us a likeness of this girl’s face by tonight. He’s flying in tomorrow, but if he can get something right away, you can have the image by morning.”
He was still wearing a mask over his mouth; maybe that made his eyes seem all the more intense.
He nodded.
She looked at the M.E.’s assistant. “I need a tape measure or a ruler,” she told him.
“We have excellent photos at the station,” Crosby told her.
“I can email these straight from my phone,” she told him.
He obliged her with a nod, and she drew out her little high-megapixel phone/camera, and began shooting from every conceivable angle. Both men waited for her, and she worked quickly. On the one hand, she felt as if, in this steel and sterile environment, nothing was real. On the other hand, the girl in the drawer was far too real. Eventually, the police would find out who she was, because although Whitney hadn’t known Jude long at all, she was certain that he would never give up. She had to keep snapping pictures; the police could find out who she was. Her work was to find out who had done this to her and why.
And hopefully before more died.
When Whitney was done, she nodded grimly. The assistant gently covered the dead girl’s face again, and closed the drawer while Whitney prayed that she had a signal, so she could email the photos to Jake Mallory efficiently—and quickly.
Jude thanked the attendant and started walking on. Still hitting the send key, Whitney followed in his wake.
All the drawers were numbered. That seemed incredibly sad to Whitney. They were people in the drawers, not numbers.
In contrast, the second victim looked serene, as if she were sleeping. She might have been, if it weren’t for the deep gashes on her body, visible when the sheet was pulled back.
“We’ve had her picture out everywhere,” Jude said quietly. “And no one has claimed her body yet. She’ll stay here a few more days, and then they’ll house her in the morgue in the basement—and then she’ll go to a potter’s grave at City Cemetery,” he told her.
Whitney took just one picture. The assistant covered the body and shut the drawer.
As it closed, Whitney felt as if she was surrounded by steel, the scent of formaldehyde and other chemicals, and realized just how cold she was.
“Well, I have a witness to find, Miss Tremont,” Jude told her.
“Of course. I’m here to follow in your footsteps,” she said.
He paused. She knew he really just wanted to tell her to go away. He didn’t. He shrugged. She’d been assigned to him; he’d been told to accept the team’s help.
“All right, fine.”
He turned and walked quickly. She hurried to keep up with him. He was tall. She was—not.
Outside, horns were blaring, pedestrians moved about the street and it seemed that everything in the world was small and slow next to the size and speed of the city. Jude Crosby, however, knew his city well. He maneuvered the sidewalk in a long stride; he’d parked his car on the street. That in itself was quite a feat—she was a good driver, but she’d never figure out how he parked his car in the tiny space where it was wedged. He started to walk around to the driver’s side, but then remembered her. He turned and opened the passenger side door.
She slid in quickly. She had the feeling that if she didn’t move fast enough, she was going to be left behind.
“Who are we looking for?” she asked him.
“Captain Tyler,” he said briefly.
“A cop—a sea captain?”
“Old veteran. Vietnam,” he said. “He wanders that area at night. The woman who found the body thought that he was sleeping nearby when she came out of the subway. He might have seen something.”
“Have you spoken with the last people to see Virginia Rockford yet?” Whitney asked.
“We’ll be going through the cast and crew from the movie next, and those who were working at the on-site location,” he said. He glanced at her. “Obviously, a sensationalist murder like this, I’m not the only cop on the case.”
“But the two earlier victims—you were assigned to them?”
“My partner and I were assigned as the lead detectives on both cases. We’ve had a decent record, even when we’ve come up against unknowns. How anyone can live in this day and age and not be missed by someone, I don’t know.”
“Well, they must be missed by people who can’t imagine they’d be in New York,” Whitney said.
He stared straight ahead; she didn’t blame him. In school, she hadn’t kept a car in the city. She wondered if she’d actually be capable of driving when everyone seemed to think that they belonged in every lane, when the streets stopped up and people were everywhere.
“I suppose someone, somewhere, misses them. But you’d be amazed by the amount of people who really don’t seem to belong anywhere,” he said.
“I understand your partner is in the hospital,” Whitney said softly, realizing she was probably treading on dangerous ground.
“He was shot. Mainly because people who don’t know what they’re doing need to stay out of police business.”
“But he’s going to make it,” Whitney said.
