Page 116 of Cold, Cold Bones

“To be safe, three to five days. Lividity is fixed. Air temp dropped into the thirties every one of the past three nights, never got out of the forties during the days. Rigor—”

“Whoa, whoa. Back it up, Doc.” Slidell pulled the ubiquitous pencil and spiral from his pocket and began taking notes.

Nguyen indicated the body. “Notice the dark mottling on her belly, the fronts of her thighs, the undersides of her arms, and the right half of her face?”

“The flesh turned purple ’cause the blood settled when her ticker stopped pumping. You push your thumb in, it goes white, yeah?”

“For a while.” Nguyen simplified. “After about ten hours the red blood cells and capillaries decompose sufficiently so blanching no longer occurs. That’s the case here.”

“And rigor?” As usual, Slidell pronounced itrigger.

“When the body arrived, rigor had come and gone.”

Sweet Jesus.

Slidell raised both brows in question.

“Rigor usually ends after a few hours or several days. Again, the cold weather would have slowed the process.”

Slidell looked like his thoughts were going somewhere else. Somewhere dark. “So, she died days before she got here.”

“Yes,” Nguyen said.

“Who found her?”

“A trucker pulled over to relieve himself, spotted the body, dialed 911. She arrived at the morgue a little after ten this morning.”

“What’s the guy’s name?”

“Gordon Halsted. His statement is in the police report.”

Barely breathing, I studied the scene photos again. The first series showed an empty stretch of two-lane not different from what I’d pictured in my mind. A narrow strip of gravel and dead vegetation ran each side of the road, yielding to dead underbrush as the ground sloped downward.

The next series focused on the body. The girl lay on her back, hem of the denim dress hiked up onto her thighs. Her right leg twisted outward from her hip at an impossible angle. Beside the foot, not on it, was one of the black suede boots. The left leg lay straight,the foot crooked unnaturally toward one side. Both arms were flung high and outstretched above her head.

Bands of anger and sadness squeezed my chest. I forced a deep breath.

The next several photos drew closer. The girl’s face looked ghostly white against the backdrop of oil-darkened gravel and black winter vegetation.

A thought cut through my dread.

“She has no outerwear. No jacket, scarf, gloves. But it’s been cold the last few days.”

No one replied.

I moved on, through close-ups of the battered face, the crushed hands, the sad little boots.

Slidell finished jotting. Punctuated his note with a tap of the pencil. Then, “So lemme get this. The kid’s running—”

“Or walking,” Nguyen cautioned.

“The bumper slams the back of her thighs. She goes down. Her chin smacks the pavement. Her arms fly out. The vehicle rolls over her, crushing her fingers, then reverses and gets her again while she’s down.”

The id brigade was screaming now. A young girl. Three to five days. A double hit. I knew they were right.

Nguyen nodded.

“So what killed her?”