Page 9 of What’s Left of Us (What Left #3)

Nodding, Jensen glances back towards the stairs. They were a bitch for us to walk down; I can imagine it would be a grueling struggle to get up after an injury like that.

An officer steps downstairs - she’s shorter and doesn’t have to stoop like us.

I nod to her, and Jensen indicates to the knife he set down.

“Let’s bag that, run it through and make sure it matches Constantine.

I want photos of the room before anything is taken down.

Get everything and bag it. This is all evidence. ”

“Yes, sir,” she replies, and I’m already moving past her back towards the steps. This is just one room in a house of nightmares.

Jensen follows me, and at the steps I look down the long hall then towards the kitchen. “Go through the front room and kitchen. We’ll canvas the land next. I’m going to check the rooms.”

“Got it,” he says, and I turn away from him.

The bathroom is the first door I come to, and there’s more stains here.

Alastair mentioned moving through the home trying to bandage himself, and from the looks of things he tried his best with the crappy options in front of him.

There’s a towel on the floor that’s stained, but I’d assume it’s his blood before anyone else’s.

I nod to the officer following me to document this room too.

“Constantine did say it would be like looking into the past,” I grumble, repeating one of the few things Alastair did say.

As much as his new attorney grates on my nerves, part of me is happy he’s there.

The last time Alastair folded, which is exactly what I wanted him to do when I first arrived in Florida.

Now I don’t think he’s good for all these murders, maybe even the original ones too. He needs someone who understands the law to stand in his corner and fight for his rights, and it can’t be me. Or Jo or Vinny. No one that would draw questions.

Still… learning from McKinney that Xeno Ajello hired him for Alastair’s case was a surprise.

I’m not sure Xeno ever officially met Alastair before the conviction.

No one specifically told me who hired McKinney, I just took a guess in the dark after we finished speaking to him.

Before he left, I asked if Vinny had hired him, and he chuckled and told me no.

Xeno hired him using the Ajello funds, and he wouldn’t say anything else on the topic.

Truthfully, I’m surprised McKinney said that at all.

He’s not obligated to tell me who hired him, just that he’s been retained.

I assume he told me so there wouldn’t be any additional focus on Vinny, which feels like something Xeno would preemptively try to do.

Even if Vinny is distracted sometimes, his brother is constantly watching out for him.

The last room has similar questions popping into my head. Clothes, marks on the floor and remains of the bedding, everything fits what Alastair explained in his statement.

But there’s no sign of the supposed homeowners, James and Diana. Whenever they fell off the grid, their lives here ended. This place is inhabitable, and I’m certain Porscha has another spot somewhere where she lived. This place just is too grim to sleep and exist in.

As nice as it is to see details, so far there’s no evidence to help me convict Porscha for anything else.

We’re still building the case against her, and we need as much as we can get for a conviction.

Every person who died because of her deserves to have their stories heard, and we need evidence on all of it.

“Agent Gideon!”

I turn, one of the officers who swept the perimeter coming into view. “You need to see this.”

He hurries away and I follow, glancing at Jensen in the kitchen. He’s digging through a large stack of envelopes, his brow furrowed. For the moment I leave him be in case he finds something of interest.

Outside the grounds are just as unkempt as the interior.

The swamplands have a lot of greenery, and the rains around here ensure that everything is growing tall and shielding things from immediate view.

From the road it’s hard to see too much with the low branches, and as I follow one of the SWAT members further into the property I can see how it would be easy to hide plenty back here.

There’s a dog barking, and when I look over at the SWAT member he’s pulled the K-9 back but he’s still pawing at the dirt. Looking around, a few distinct things stick out.

When I look back towards the house, I can see how sheltered this spot is, hidden by the trees. It’s covered in weeds, and the ground looks like no one’s kept up with maintenance just like everywhere else on the property.

There’s a spot on the ground where the earth is disturbed where someone obviously started digging and as I stare down, I can see what made them call me over.

A skull.

The closer I get the more I can tell it’s only part of a skull, but the shape and eye hole are unmistakable. Kneeling down I dust some of the dirt away, studying it.

Of course Porscha would have a body to hide out here, maybe more than one.

“Let’s get Dr. Briggs out here,” I say, glancing up at Jensen.

He nods, his phone already out. “The rest of you, let’s sweep the area and see if there’s anything else hiding out here.

Get the cadaver dogs and have them help you search.

If you find anything, don’t disturb it. We want the scene preserved in case there’s anyone else buried out here.

Secure the area and don’t touch anything until the ME arrives. ”

They agree and fan out, and I pivot around the scene once more, taking it in. I’m careful to step away from the skull and back towards the house, but something about the scene sticks in my head.

I glance up at the trees, eyeing the way the house looks from here. The more I look around, the more it seems familiar.

I head back to the house, past the scene where officers are coming in and trying to get things sorted now that there’s remains. The longer I’m here, the more familiar this feels.

When I reach the dirt road, I turn back and study the house. From this angle it’s more familiar, and I didn’t catch it at first because it’s a little different from the drawing itself. Tearing off my gloves I open my phone, scrolling until I find the pictures I took of Alastair’s cell walls.

There. One of the drawings is just of a rooftop framed by tall trees but what draws my attention to the image is the slight details below the slopes of the roof, and I stare at the image before holding my phone up to compare.

On the drawing there’s a J near the slope of the roof, something I thought he added because of Jo. But maybe J stands for James, not Jo. If Alastair drew a house like this before his abduction, he’s at least seen it once before.

By the time Briggs arrives on scene they’ve uncovered more remains to look at in the backyard. He spends time analyzing where the body is, documenting all the details I would read about later.

I don’t even end up going back out to look at the bones; I meet Briggs hours later because I’m busy trying to alert my team of all the new developments. By the time I make it to his office, he’s already spent the time to have the bones documented and brought carefully back to be examined.

“Agent Gideon,” he says, leading me back into his space.

I let Jensen go back to help Tyler go over everything found at the Nunes’ and we already have Soto looking into everything she can on our two missing people.

After seeing what else they found on scene, I’m not hopeful that we’ll find either alive. “I’m afraid I don’t have good news.”

“Let’s hear it,” I say, rubbing my eyes. This is one of those days that doesn’t feel like it has an ending, and after cataloging the contents of the house we just kept finding more and more evidence.

From what Jensen told me after helping to preserve the scene, they found one intact skeleton and the bones of severed hands elsewhere. If that’s the case, there could be more involved with the Nunes' old house than we expected.

“This poor fellow never stood a chance,” Briggs says with a sigh, leading me over to the examination table.

There’s a complete skeleton on one, and on another table there’s just two hands and nothing else.

“The conditions weren’t ideal for preserving the bones, but your team did a good job helping ensure that what remains of our skeletal friend got back here intact. ”

“What do we know about him?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“I already went ahead and sent for an expedited examination of the DNA collected from the bones,” Briggs explains. “We’ll rush it and hopefully be able to ID both victims sooner rather than later.”

“Do you think it could be James Nunes?”

“Don't get ahead of yourself, Agent Gideon,” he says, giving me a wry look. “We’ll get our answers as quickly as we can. What’s interesting about these two victims is the way they seem to have died.”

My eyes drift to the hands, and truly I just want to know if they are connected to the body Porscha used to fake her death. They’re nothing but a pile of bones now, but that was sixteen years ago now. The hands should be in a different state than the body originally was.

“Our victim here was a male, mid to late twenties, standing at roughly five-foot-ten,” Briggs says, pulling me from my thoughts. “Given the state of the bones and the conditions they were in, I’m estimating the DOD to be roughly thirty to thirty-five years ago.”

I purse my lips. “Thoughts on the COD?”

Briggs nods, pushing up his glasses with the back of his wrist before moving towards the head. “The markings on the back of the skull here indicate that our victim was struck from behind. It left a large divot in the bone.”

He points to a spot, and I lean in to examine it with him. There’s definitely a good size mark on the bone. “It cracked the skull?”