style="font-size:15px;"> Varitek said, “It’s a possibility, especially given the suspicions that Croft might not have worked alone.” He glanced at the body, then back to her. “Has your department made any progress on identifying the remains from the canyon?”
Cassie stiffened. “We’re working on it.”
Truthfully, they’d been swamped by other cases. With Bradford Croft dead and the kidnapped girls home safe, identifying the skeleton had dropped on the priority list.
Without the skull, all they had to go on was the approximate age, sex and height of the skeleton—late teens, female, around five-six—and the fact that the bones had been in the ground for a decade, give or take. Feeling a sense of empathy for the girl, Cassie had run the database searches and had come up with a handful of missing-person reports in and around Bear Claw during that time period. None of them had panned out, meaning that the next step was to expand the search statewide. That’d give her a couple of hundred names, most of which—if not all—would be dead ends.
With her current caseload, Alissa’s vacation and Maya’s conference, Cassie hadn’t found the time.
No, she corrected herself with brutal honesty. She hadn’t made the time. So she squared her shoulders and said, “I ruled out some local missing person reports, but haven’t taken it any further than that. My bad.”
But Varitek didn’t respond to the apology. His attention was fixed on the severed index finger. Cassie saw that a thin trail of blood had leaked onto the upholstery beneath, but the larger wound area was sealed over.
“Looks like it was cauterized premortem,” Varitek said, so quietly he was nearly speaking to himself. “Souvenir, maybe?”
Disgust and a low-level horror twisted in her gut. Every now and then during the course of her work it hit her. This was real. It wasn’t a movie set or a scene playing out on TV. The body belonged to a real person. Someone’s son. Maybe someone’s lover.
Cassie swallowed a quick bubble of nausea, while a fragment of a half remembered conversation surfaced in her brain. Face it, you’re not tough enough to hack it in the field, Lee Adams had said. You’re a chemist, not a cop.
Lee had been five years older than she, an instructor at the master’s level forensics program she’d attended outside of Chicago. He’d been handsome and a little bit mysterious, and for a while, she’d bought into everything he said. Years later, some of his comments still snuck up on her when she least expected it.
Like now.
She set her teeth, swallowed the weakness and forced herself to think about the corpse at its most basic—as a piece of evidence in a case they’d thought was closed. “If this body is connected to the skeleton in the canyon, then Alissa was right. She did hear someone else when Croft was holding her captive. There was another man.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Varitek stepped back so they were shoulder-to-shoulder, staring down at the body. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
She felt the warmth of him and wished she didn’t notice such things. He was attractive, yes, but he already had three strikes against him in her book. He was in law enforcement. He was controlling. And he was impossible to get along with. The first was a fact. The other points she’d discovered months earlier, when she’d been forced to let him into the kidnapping case and he’d taken over, brought in his own people and shoved her to the edges of the investigation, claiming she’d be safer there.
Well forget him. She wasn’t looking to stay safe at the expense of the job.
She scowled. “I’m not jumping to conclusions, I’m using my version of the razor theorem—the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. We’ve got a body tied to a crime scene from the kidnappings. The kidnapper is dead, so we know he didn’t kill this guy. Other lines of evidence have already suggested Croft had an accomplice. Ergo, we’re looking at a partner.”
“We’re not looking at anything but the evidence,” Varitek said bluntly. He turned away and reached for his bigger, meaner-looking crime-scene kit, which Cassie knew from experience contained everything hers did, and then some. He said, “Let’s get to work. The sooner we release the body to the ME, the better. We’re going to need a cause of death, time of death, ID…anything we can get. The chief said that based on our findings, he’ll decide whether to recall the task force.”
And that quickly, that easily, he took over her crime scene.
Again.
Cassie fisted her hands at her sides, so tightly that her blunt nails dug into her palms. She thought about going for her weapon. Instead, she said, “Agent Varitek?”
He didn’t even turn around when he answered, “Technically, it’s Special Agent.”
“Yeah, you’re special all right,” she muttered loud enough that he could damn well hear. Then she raised her voice, but fought to keep it level. Businesslike. “Until the task force has been officially reopened and your assistance has been requested by the proper channels, I consider this my crime scene. I’d like you out of it.”
“We don’t always get what we want,” he said, and his voice held a thread of something she couldn’t quite interpret. He glanced back at her, pale green eyes unreadable. “Your boss called my boss—that’s proper channels. You don’t like me being here? Take it up with the chief. If you’re not going to do that, then suit up. We’ve got a scene to work.”
FOUR HOURS LATER, with the body long gone and the empty, dismal-feeling room nearly processed, Seth straightened to his full height and stretched, groaning when his joints popped in protest. His knees still ached from time to time, a legacy of his younger days when he’d gone from catcher’s mitt to goalie’s mask and back again, depending on the season. Not quite good enough to go pro as either, he’d slid sideways into law and then law enforcement, gotten married and then—
Irritated, he slammed the lid on that train of thought. Ancient history had no place on the job. But still, the dark memories soured his already bleak mood as he turned to make the last few notations and pack up his kit.
He was aware of Cassie watching him, aware of the tension humming between them, a mix of professional antagonism and something more complicated. She’d made it obvious that she didn’t like him from the first moment they’d met. She wanted the crime scene to herself and resented his every breath. It annoyed her that he had better equipment, better contacts.
Normally, he wouldn’t have wasted five minutes on a local cop who didn’t want his help, but something about her drew him. Intrigued him. She was an evidence specialist who had to force herself to touch a corpse, a prickly woman with shadows of sadness in her eyes.
And those legs. He couldn’t help noticing her legs. She wore tan pants cut more for field work than fashion, but they did little to disguise the long length of her calves, the sassy curve of her rear and the aggressive swagger of her hips as she moved around the room, shoulders stiff with resentment.
But even as those legs strutted through his mind, he focused on the rest of her, on the prickles, the defensiveness and the bloody-minded territoriality. All things he had no patience with, especially when they interfered with his ability to do his job.
“You ready to go?” Cassie asked. She stood near the door holding her evidence kit, which held their photographs, notes and measurements, as well as a rough sketch
