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“Again, we’re collecting information and trying to wade through the evidence, but no. The woman was in the cabin and...” Ginny didn’t try to hide the calming breath she took. “She’s dead.”
Chapter Forty-Five
LILA SAT SLOUCHED DOWN ON HER FAMILY ROOM COUCH WITHher head balanced against the back cushions. She thought about opening a bottle of wine, but in her current mood she might chug it, and she needed to stay rational and in control.
She and Tobias had spent the last few hours babysitting Jared. He moved sluggishly and kept mumbling to himself. They dragged him out of the sheriff’s office and back to her house but it took effort. He demanded more answers and wanted to talk to Samantha and know about the cabin. He’d yell one minute then look near collapse the next.
He sat in the oversize chair next to her fireplace and didn’t say a word. She and Tobias engaged in mindless chitchat, trying to give Jared time to find a mental equilibrium. He’d wanted to go home, but she didn’t want him to be alone. Brent had called. Work people had called. A few others she didn’t know had called. All were checking in on him. Cassie had called for her, and she’d said they’d talk later.
This time the call was for Tobias. He listened but didn’t saymuch. She heard him mention Ginny and then saw all the color drain from his face.
He got off the call, and his cell dangled from his lifeless fingers.
“What’s going on?” She didn’t know how the news could get worse, but it looked like it had.
“They identified the woman in the cabin.” Tobias finally seemed to focus. “It’s Karen Blue.”
GINNY HUNG UPthe phone and turned back to the medical examiner. Her case had now run right into the task force’s jurisdiction, which meant her time on this might be winding down. Never mind that she had all the intel on Aaron and Lila and everyone they knew in town. The task force was too visible and had support from the FBI, and that trumped her.
That was the only reason she stood in the morgue, running out of patience and wanting to be anywhere else. Despite years of wading into violence and death, this part always unsettled her. People became faceless bodies and a source of information at this point in the process.
Dr. Lori Timmons moved around the room like she owned it. As the medical examiner, she basically did. This was her domain.
As the doctor finished typing in notes, Ginny stood by a tray of personal belongings and picked up a small plastic bag. The thin silver bracelet in it had a charm with the number seventeen engraved on it. “Was Karen wearing this?”
Lori glanced over. “Yes.”
“Maybe it was a birthday gift. I’ll have to ask her parents about it when they come back.” After the initial identification, Karen’s parents had been numb and exhausted. Ginny had sent them for coffee and a short break before the rest of the investigative team descended and started asking about Aaron.
“Do we have an official time of death?... Unofficial would be fine.” She just needed to know when Karen was killed in comparison to when Aaron went missing.
“Well, that’s going to take a bit longer.” Lori stood between the two tables now, one with Aaron’s body on it and the other with Karen’s. “The decomposition seemed off, and there wasn’t a blood pool for him, which would be consistent with a stabbing death.”
“Maybe someone moved the body.”
Lori nodded. “Definitely. After they thawed it.”
Wait... no.“Excuse me?”
The doctor pointed at Aaron’s lifeless form. “My working theory is that he was killed then frozen then thawed then stabbed and put in the vehicle. Stabbing is not the cause of death. He was long dead before someone picked up the knife.”
This case kept taking odd turns. But Ginny had not seen this one coming. “Thawed...”
“It’s not going to sound any better if you repeat it.” The doctor picked up a file and flipped through a few pages. “I had an accidental drowning case about a year ago, right when I took over the department. The body had been frozen, so I did quite a bit of research on this. To confirm these bodies had been frozen and thawed, I measured the activity of short-chain—”
“Whoa.” Ginny held up a hand to stop what sounded like gibberish but was really quite important. “Adding a lot of science talk isn’t going to clear this up. Your point is, you know someone killed these two and froze their bodies?”
“Yes.” Lori lowered the file. “I collected samples from inside the standing freezer on the cabin’s back patio, and they confirmed my theory. Both had been in there. Her under him.”
“Any chance you found anything else in the freezer?”
“Sorry, no. No fingerprints or stray hairs or anything.” Lori looked at Karen’s body. “I’ll check her stomach contents to try to backtrack and see if we can match that up and get an approximate time of death for Karen. We don’t have clothes, but her body did give us some clues.”
“Such as?”
The doctor held up a bag. “She had scrapes all over her torso and arms, and her feet were pretty ripped up. Scabbed over in places and new cuts in others. All of which suggests she ran through the woods naked, probably more than once. These needles support the running recently. They were on the bottom of one of her feet.” Before Ginny could ask a question, the doctor took off with more information. “She has ligature marks on her neck that match the rope found in the cabin.”
“Are there fibers, DNA—anything that points us toward a killer? The cabin was clean except for one set of prints on the rocking chair.” Ginny pointed to Aaron. “His.”
