Page 57

CHAPTER
49
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Detective Sergeant Marie Gagnon of the state police’s Major Crimes Unit slows her unmarked Chevrolet Impala and pulls over into the breakdown lane.
At the scene are two state police cruisers, a tow truck, an orange highway department pickup truck, and a sad-looking Sentra with its trunk half open. Two workers in orange vests are setting out traffic cones to cordon off the area.
Gagnon exits her vehicle, hoping her young son has gone back to sleep by now. He’s been running a fever since dinnertime. For a minute, she’d thought about letting somebody else take this call, but her husband waved her out the door. “Go, go. I got it. I’ll call you if he gets worse.”
When Gagnon walks by the second cruiser, she sees a man in handcuffs in the back seat slumped against the window, sleeping with his mouth open.
Gagnon knows both troopers. “Which one of you boys caught this?”
“It was Josephs’s stop,” says Tasker.
“Hi, Sarge. Right. Dispatch got a report of an erratic operator. I caught up with him here at mile marker fourteen and pulled him over at midnight. He failed all three field sobriety tests and a Breathalyzer.”
“I don’t suppose he mentioned anything about transporting human remains?”
“He did not.”
“Okay,” says Gagnon, “let me see what you’ve got in that Sentra.”
She pulls a pair of purple disposable gloves out of her coat pocket and slips them on. When she looks up, she sees a big MCU scene truck pull up behind her car, lights flashing. “Let’s wait for Vicki.”
The passenger door on the truck opens. A young woman with dark hair that’s pulled into a ponytail hops out. She’s wearing a blue windbreaker and carrying a digital camera.
“Sergeant Gagnon,” she says in greeting. Quiet. Respectful.
Gagnon turns to the two troopers. “You guys know Vicki Barnes? Best crime scene photographer we’ve got.” She knows a few compliments go a long way this early in the morning.
Barnes exchanges nods with the two troopers.
“Sorry to wake you up, Vicki,” says Gagnon.
“I wasn’t asleep, Sergeant. What’re we looking at?”
“We’re about to find out.” Gagnon walks to the back of the Sentra and lifts the trunk so it’s all the way open. Josephs shines a flashlight into the interior.
Gagnon sucks in a quick breath as if she’s been stung. She’ll never get used to this part of the job.
“Female,” she says, pointing at the skull. “Delicate glabella, and the suborbital rims are really light.” She turns to Vicki. “Shoot this before I move anything.”
The photographer leans in and clicks off a series of shots. Her flash illuminates the trunk in quick bursts.
I see you,Gagnon says to herself.Whoever you are, I see you.Her private mantra.
She pulls a pen from her pocket and gently teases the blue fabric away from the skull. A few spidery strands of hair still cling to the cranium. The skull is resting on a cluster of other bones. Ribs, femurs, tibiae, patellae.
“It’s a whole damn skeleton,” says Tasker.
“Hopefully nothing’s missing,” says Gagnon. She holds the fabric aside as Barnes clicks another series of shots.
“Josephs, pass me the flashlight,” Gagnon says, using two fingers like tweezers to tease out a small packet of red vinyl from among the bones. A wallet. The seams are loose, and the contents are poking out.
“New Hampshire license,” she says. “Old one.”