Page 12 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Ten

It was a flawless crime. Every loose end tied up.

Tobias and Cora had been shot execution-style and then the entire car, with them strapped inside, had been pushed into the river three hours from the last place they’d been seen.

No traces left behind. In seven years, no one had been able to locate them.

Had the drought not been so bad, they would probably still be entombed on the bottom of the Susquehanna.

Who knows if they would have been found at all?

Across the exam table that held Cora’s remains, Gretchen met Josie’s eyes. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Based on this alone?” Josie glanced back toward the other table. “Without having seen the Brighton Springs case file? One or both of them were involved with organized crime. Or they saw something they weren’t supposed to.”

“The other possibility is murder for hire.”

“Yes,” said Josie. “This looks a lot like a professional hit.”

Professional killers or people who killed on behalf of a gang or the mafia often used close-range head shots because they were fast and efficient. Very precise. No chance of the victims surviving. That kind of killing was cold and unemotional. Unlike most murders that came from personal disputes.

“Yeah,” Gretchen agreed. “I saw a lot of those when I worked in Philly. Very different from homicides where the killer and victim had a personal connection. Those were usually pretty messy. No organization.”

That was because perpetrators who had a personal connection to their victims acted on impulse, in the heat of the moment, or they were provoked.

“Instrumental violence versus expressive violence,” Josie murmured.

The former was deliberate and goal-oriented whereas the latter was usually spontaneous and driven by highly charged emotions.

There was something else bothering her. “We don’t know whether they were killed outside the vehicle and placed inside after or if they were killed while they were still trapped inside.”

Gretchen said, “But if they were shot outside the vehicle, blood evidence would have been left behind at the scene. Maybe the boat ramp? They could have been led, lured, or forced there, made to get out of the vehicle, killed, and then placed back inside before the perpetrators pushed the car into the river. There had to be at least two perpetrators.”

“One person with a gun and a lot of upper body strength may have been able to pull it off,” Josie said. “But I agree with you, we’re looking at more than one person.”

“Regardless,” Anya said as she draped a sheet over Cora’s bones. “In terms of blood evidence, it’s been seven years. Outdoors. The river level rises and falls. It would be washed away by now, if there was any.”

She was right. That particular boat ramp was rarely used, having been in disrepair for as long as Josie could remember.

Plenty of citizens of Denton—particularly teenagers and petty criminals—liked to congregate in abandoned places but that whole area was more remote than most and difficult to reach.

That was likely why the couple had been killed there.

The gunshots would have gone unheard. There were no residences or businesses close enough to have registered them.

Still, Tobias and Cora had gone missing in April when trout season opened.

It was always a busy time for fishing. Was it possible that in the days and weeks after Tobias and Cora were murdered, no one had gone there?

Or if they had, they hadn’t seen anything suspicious?

Although if they had, it would never have been connected to Tobias and Cora’s case because they had gone missing three hours from Denton.

Anya said, “Keep in mind that in Tobias’s case, the projectile didn’t go through and through. There would have been less blood at the scene than if it had. Plus, if the bodies fell with the wounds facing upward, gravity wouldn’t be pulling even more blood from the wounds.”

“So there might not have been a significant amount of blood evidence at all if they were killed outside the vehicle,” said Gretchen. “Still, I suppose we can always search old reports to see if anyone saw anything and called it in.”

Even if someone had found blood and reported it to police, Josie doubted such a report would yield anything useful after all this time. On the other hand, perhaps the couple had been killed closer to the place they were last seen and then been driven to Denton.

Anya removed her gloves and went back to her laptop. “There’s something else you should know.”

Moments later, a series of X-rays appeared on the screen. Anya clicked through them, pausing when she came to the ghostly image of two eye sockets. “This is an X-ray of Cora Stevens’ face taken using the remains you found yesterday. See these cloudy spots?”

Josie counted three of them around the edges of Cora’s eye sockets.

“Calluses?” Gretchen asked.

Anya nodded. “You’ve probably heard this from me a hundred times but when someone sustains a fracture, a blood clot forms at the site.

Then it’s replaced by what we call a ‘soft callus’ which is just fibrous tissue and cartilage.

Over time, it hardens and becomes bone. Eventually the hard callus matures and remodels into the bone’s original structure. ”

“But you can still see the calluses on X-rays,” Josie said. “We’re looking at old orbital fractures.”

“Yes.” Anya clicked through more images, stopping to point out more old fractures. “Cora Stevens had several old fractures. Clavicle, ribs, ulna, some on the finger bones that were recovered.”

Face, collarbones, ribs, forearm, fingers. Those types of breaks were hallmarks of intimate partner violence.

“Someone abused her,” said Gretchen. “Regularly.”

“These old fractures are consistent with that, yes,” Anya replied.

“Can you tell how old those injuries were?” Josie asked.

“Months or years,” Anya answered. “Healing time varies from person to person but once the bone remodels, even with the appearance of the callus on the X-ray, it’s impossible to pinpoint any specific time frame for when the fracture occurred.

If I had Cora Stevens’ medical records, I could potentially determine the age of some of them. ”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Gretchen said.

“I wish I had more,” Anya said. “Now that we’ve confirmed their identities, I’ll need to call the ME’s office in Brighton Springs so they can notify the family.”

Josie had already looked up all three of the couple’s children. “Only Tobias Lachlan’s youngest son still lives there. Zane Lachlan. His oldest son, Jackson Wright, and Cora Stevens’ daughter, Riley, live right here in Denton.”