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“Thank you, Sergeant,” Michael replied.
The three of them walked inside and found a similar state of disarray. A half dozen uniformed officers flitted about, shouting over each other and alternately frowning down at some piece of paperwork or another and pacing back and forth directionlessly. They seemed not to notice the arrival of the agents or their dog.
Michael looked around the room and found someone who looked like they knew what they were doing. A woman around Michael’s own age in a well-fitting blue jacket and white blouse with a name badge that identified her as Dr. Thalia Heath stood near the back of the room talking with a similarly-uniformed man with a prodigious gut and a handlebar moustache. When she noticed the agents approaching her, she said something to the man, and he nodded and moved off, gut swinging comically.
“You must be the FBI,” she said when Michael, Faith and Turk approached.
“Must be,” Michael offered.
She looked less than amused at his playful tone and said, “The victims are located in the morgue. Sergeant Forster informed me you wanted to take a look at them.”
“Thank you,” Faith replied.
She nodded curtly at Faith and led the three of them away. Michael noticed that the fabric of her slacks fit tightly around her buttocks and berated himself for it. It was bad enough that Ellie was still half-certain he was carrying a torch for Faith. He didn’t need to be ogling random women on the job.
God, he missed Ellie. Sleeping alone was not a life he hoped to return to, and the past ten days had been nothing short of hell.
Dr. Heath led them to the morgue and closed the door behind them. Two tables stood in the center of the room. She pulled the sheets back on both bodies without ceremony, revealing the pasty-white forms of an elderly man and a middle-aged woman. Michael noted that the middle-aged woman would have had a very nice body for her age prior to bleeding out and then rotting for what he guessed was at least a week before being found. It sickened him to think that only a few days ago, this had been a living, breathing person, now reduced to a mass of bruised, yellowed flesh.
Fifteen years and counting with the FBI, and he still hadn’t gotten used to the sight of death.
“Patrick Jeter,” Dr. Heath said, gesturing to the heavyset, double-chinned man on the table nearest her. “Dr. Gemma Montgomery.” She pointed to the dead woman and added, “She’s the first victim. We found her three days ago in Fayetteville, about ten minutes east of the South Dakota state line."
“In a grain silo, correct?” Faith asked.
“Correct, although it hadn’t held grain for at least ten years and probably longer than that.”
“Have you interviewed the families yet?” Faith asked.
“Not yet. That’s next on the agenda.”
She lifted Jeter’s left arm, revealing a deep cut just below his armpit. “This is the cause of death,” she explained. “You’ll find a similar cut on Dr. Montgomery’s arm.”
She looked expectantly at Michael, and Michael said, "I'll take your word for it.”
Faith was less queasy. She walked around Michael and lifted the arm. It pulled Dr. Montgomery’s breast up in a disconcertingly sensual way, and Michael's stomach turned. He looked away and concentrated on Jeter's body. "How long would it take someone to bleed out from a cut like this?”
Dr. Heath replaced Jeter’s arm. “Two hours give or take.”
“So the killer could have made the cut elsewhere and left them to die?”
“It’s possible,” Dr. Heath replied, “but not likely. You may have noticed that things are more spread out here. It would be a lot harder to injure someone in this way and then keep them docile until the killer reached the dump spot. Much easier to subdue them and then kill them once he was on site.”
“How did he subdue them?” Michael asked.
“Well, just to be clear, we’re not certain it’s a he yet,” she answered. “We believe it is just because of the issue of moving the bodies, but we haven’t recovered any prints or DNA from the bodies or the scenes. To answer your question, we believe the victims were subdued by strangulation.”
“Strangulation? Wouldn’t that leave a mark?”
“Not if he used his arm. There are several choke holds that could render someone unconscious without leaving a mark.”
“I see,” Michael replied. “So the killer sneaks up behind them, chokes them out, takes them somewhere far away from civilization and watches them bleed out?”
“We don’t know that he—and again, not sure it’s a he—watches them. Both bodies were locked inside an abandoned building with no light, so we don’t think he could have seen them die.”
“He could have heard them,” Faith said, gently replacing Dr. Montgomery’s arm. “The door to the storm shelter was found ajar, correct?”
“Correct,” Dr. Heath confirmed. “The boy who found Jeter said he had to open it a little wider to fit himself inside, but he’s a rather husky boy. Someone of slighter build could have sneaked through.”
