mind him, he’s a transplant from New Mexico,” Hunter told the detective. “I’m sure you didn’t come all the way over here to talk about the unusual shift in the weather.”
Wilson smiled, making Hunter think of a cat that had secretly swallowed a canary. “Indirectly, I am.”
While Hunter claimed that his evenings out had no effect on him, last night had been particularly taxing. He’d gotten all of three hours’ sleep, and it was beginning to catch up with him. Opening a drawer, he checked to see if he was out of aspirin. He was.
“Wilson,” he said, closing the drawer again, “I’ve got a headache building behind my eyes and I’m not in the mood for twenty questions. Now, is this belated weather report going somewhere or not?” he asked.
Instead of answering the question, Wilson asked one of his own. “Mind if I sit?”
Hunter played along and gestured toward the chair next to his desk. “Now, what did you come all this way to tell me?”
James Wilson worked on another floor for another division, but what would have seemed close to another man was like a trek through the Himalayas to the man now sitting beside his desk. It had to have taken a lot to bring Wilson here, Hunter reasoned.
“You know that cold case you keep coming back to?” Wilson asked. When Hunter didn’t respond, Wilson added, “That first one that you picked up?”
Hunter knew exactly which case the other detective was referring to. It was the one that really haunted him because he could never identify the victim for a very basic reason.
“You’re talking about the man who was missing his hands and head,” Hunter said.
Like a game show host, Wilson pointed toward Hunter, then touched the tip of his nose as if the other detective’s answer was dead-on. “That’s the one. You know that rain we had yesterday?” Wilson asked.
“The rain you led with?” Hunter asked. It was a rhetorical question. “What about it?”
Wilson enjoyed having other people listen to him and it was obvious that he was stretching this out. “Well, apparently it washed away some dirt.”
“It was a torrential downpour,” Jason recalled. “A lot of dirt was washed away.”
“Yeah, but this dirt was covering up what turned out to be a shallow grave.” Wilson paused, whether for dramatic effect or because he’d temporarily run out of breath wasn’t clear.
In either case, both Hunter and Jason cried out, almost in unison: “What was in the grave?”
“Hands and a head,” Wilson informed them almost smugly.
Hunter was on his feet immediately. “Where are those hands and that head now?” he asked.
“Where do you think? The ME’s got them,” Wilson answered.
Hunter started to hurry out of the squad room, then abruptly stopped. They were two men down today, bringing their total down to two. Jason and he couldn’t both leave the squad room at the same time. He looked back at his partner, a quizzical look on his face.
The latter waved him on. “You go, Brannigan. This was your baby to begin with. I’ll man the desk and answer the phones—not that they’ll ring,” Jason added.
“You sure?” It evolved into a joint case, although it was more his than Jason’s since he had taken the case over from the retiring homicide detective who hadn’t been able to close it.
“I’m sure.” Jason grinned, looking at his friend. “Looks like the color came back to your cheeks, Brannigan. Both of our names might be on the report, but this is your case. I wouldn’t deprive you of going down to see this latest piece of the puzzle,” he told Hunter.
That was all Hunter needed.
“How did you happen to find out about this, anyway?” Hunter asked the other detective. He slowed down in order to allow Wilson to catch up.
“Heard two detectives talking in the snack room. Thought of that cold case you had,” Wilson said with a touch of bravado. They got to the elevator and he pressed the down button. “What do you think are the odds that these hands and head are your cold case’s head and hands?” Wilson asked.
“Well, given that this isn’t a run-of-the-mill kind of kill,” Hunter speculated as the elevator car arrived, “I’d say the odds are better than fifty-fifty.”
Getting in and holding the door open for Wilson, he waited until the other detective got on, then pressed for the basement. Ordinarily, the medical examiner’s offices were housed in a different building. However, in the interest of efficiency, in the last few months the office had been moved to the building that housed the police department. It now occupied the same floor as the CSI lab and the computer tech department.
The elevator arrived in the basement, but as the doors opened, Wilson remained where he was. When Hunter glanced at him, Wilson said, “I’ll let you go the rest of the way yourself.”
“You don’t want to come with me?” Hunter asked.
He’d been surprised that the detective had accompanied him this far and had just assumed that Wilson would tag along to see if this was indeed connected to the cold case he’d taken over when he first came to the division.
However, Wilson looked more than a little pale as he hung back.
“I’ve seen enough things on this job to give me nightmares as it is. I don’t need this to prey on my mind, too. Just wanted to bring you the ‘good news,’” Wilson said, raising his voice just as the elevator doors closed again.
Hunter shook his head. “Takes all kinds,” he murmured under his breath.
He wasn’t particularly anxious to see a dismembered head either, but if it brought closure to the case he’d worked on over the last few years, it would be well worth it. Maybe now he could go through the database and put a name to the headless, handless person who had been his first case. Put a name to him and possibly bring closure to a family if the murder victim actually had one.
In any event, as long as the fingerprints weren’t burnt off—and he really doubted that they would be, because why get rid of the hands if you could burn off the prints more easily—he stood a good chance of at least giving the victim a name.
The moment Hunter stepped into the medical examiner’s room, he knew that the head and hands didn’t belong to the man whose file was in his desk. The head and hands on the ME’s table looked much too fresh, as if whoever had been dismembered and buried had suffered the indignities less than a week ago. Decomposition hadn’t gone too far yet. The victim in his cold case file had been killed several years ago and his hands and feet—unless extraordinary measures had been taken to preserve those body parts—would have been badly decomposed.
Still, he was here so he might as well ask a few questions, Hunter thought.
“What do you have for me, Doc?” Hunter asked, walking in.
“Not all that much yet I’m afraid,” Dr. Alexander Rayburn said, gesturing toward the three body parts on his table. “The crime lab
