Page 6 of Last Girls Alive

Katie looked up and saw John, the forensic supervisor, coming down to her with an evidence bag and a digital camera hanging around his neck. He carefully followed Katie’s footsteps in the mud.

Once by her side, he took several photographs for documentation. Behind him, Katie saw that Detective Hamilton was making notes and McGaven watched with intense interest as John expertly recovered the single fingernail and placed it into the evidence bag. He looked at it closely. “It looks like the nail from an index finger—right index finger,” he corrected. He looked at Katie, gave a brief smile, and then waited for her to continue before he started photographing the body.

Katie blinked twice, steadying her nerves, then turned her focus back to the body. Her mind whirled questions.

Did the victim fight until the very last moment? Was that how she lost her fingernail?

Why is she naked?

Wouldn’t it have been easier to bury the body in the woods where no one would find it?

Katie inched closer. The girl was partially decomposing. Flesh had rotted away from the upper arms, part of her breast and stomach areas, and one side of her face. The back molars were showing through the vacant patches of skin around the jawline.

She studied the girl’s face and head. There didn’t appear to be any type of blunt-force trauma or any other obvious injuries. She gently moved the long dark hair away from her face to look at the girl’s neck. A welted line common with strangulations was visible. She continued to examine the body and found that the girl’s right hand was missing the right index fingernail. Wrapped tightly around the left wrist were the remnants of what appeared to be thin twine—now darkened and deeply embedded into the remaining skin.

She didn’t want to move the body in any way until forensics took all the photos necessary to document the scene. She wasn’t sure how long it had been buried, but it looked to be six months or more, by the level of decomposition. That was for the medical examiner to conclude. The missing persons report Katie had looked over a couple of weeks back indicated that Candace Harlan was reported missing almost five years ago. If the body was Harlan, she definitely had not been dead for five years. More questions attacked her thoughts.

What was she doing back here?

Why?

The Elm Hill Mansion had been vacated for close to two years. Katie studied the area at the top of the property where the estate stood. The shell of the house looked like a prop on a movie set, and suddenly made the entire crime scene feel staged and strangely unreal.

“Detective Scott,” said John.

Katie looked over.

“You need to see this,” he said. His voice was anxious and that was out of character for the usually unflappable forensic supervisor.

Katie hurried back up to see what he was referring to.

“Look,” he instructed and pointed to the victim’s back where a word had been carved with deep cuts to the flesh, but it also appeared as if some type of ink was used. The letters were crudely cut, with some exaggeration on the tail of thegnow blackened, but still clear enough to read.

“What is it?” asked McGaven at the top of the hill.

“I’m not sure,” said Katie slowly. She shuddered to think. “I think it says something like ‘raccoglitore’.”

“Is that Italian?” asked John.

“I’m not sure,” she said again. “Wait… there’s more.” She carefully crumbled away the mud as more letters appeared beneath.

“What is it?” said Detective Hamilton.

“It says,” she began slowly. “It says ‘raccoglitore di cacciatori’.” Katie thought about the words. It sounded familiar to her, but she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t gibberish. It meant something. She said, “Does anyone know Italian, or maybe Portuguese?”

“Wait a minute,” said McGaven as he retrieved his phone. “Repeat again slowly.”

“Raccoglitore di cacciatori,” Katie said enunciating the best she could.

McGaven typed in the words on his cell phone and waited. He quickly read the results, stopped and looked at the detectives.

“What does it mean?” asked Katie. Her heart beat faster, not from anxiety but from anticipation of a message from a killer.

“It means… ‘hunter-gatherer’.”

Four

Monday 1230 hours