Cold Spite (Cold Justice: Most Wanted #5)

Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T he San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office sprawled between County Services and the Sheriff’s Office.

Cas parked front and center of the main reception and headed inside the large, pale yellow and glass building. He’d changed into a suit and tie in the Jeep, which had to be one of the most uncomfortable experiences of his life—and he’d had many.

He strode up to the receptionist and said quietly, “I’m a representative of the Quinn family. I’m here to officially identify the body of their daughter, Delilah Quinn.”

She took his driver’s license. “Okay, sir. Take a seat while I verify the information and we prepare a viewing room.”

“No need for a viewing room.” He didn’t need accommodations. “I’m law enforcement, although I’m not here in an official capacity.” He pulled out his FBI creds. “I don’t want to delay the Medical Examiner who must be extremely busy, but I promised the parents I’d take care of this for them, ASAP. They live in Virginia and the trip would be hard on them.” He held the woman’s blue eyes and wondered why lying had always come so easily to him even though it went against his inherent code of honor. Maybe his parents had been actors? “They want to know for sure if their daughter is lying back there. ”

She assessed him for a moment. “I’ll go through and ask if it’s okay for you to join them. They’re doing the posts now.”

Cas nodded. He didn’t particularly want to bump into any of Delilah’s coworkers, but perhaps he’d learn something if he did.

The receptionist came back and waved him through a secure door. He followed her along the corridor. The AC was set cold enough that a shiver skipped across his shoulders and down his spine. Still not cold enough to mask the smell of disinfectant and something else, something slightly foul and pungent that tainted the air.

They came to an area outside the main autopsy suites.

“You’ll need to gown up.” The woman indicated a small changing area off to one side. “Once you’re ready, press the red button and someone will come to collect you.”

Cas nodded and hastily donned a gown, booties, gloves, and hair cover. It wasn’t his sexiest look, but he wasn’t trying to impress anyone.

Except Delilah.

Which he had no hope of doing, so what difference did it make how he looked?

He slapped the red button.

A few seconds later, a young woman with freckles, wearing frameless spectacles and blue scrubs, came to the glass double doors and pressed the button to allow him entry.

“Agent Demarco?”

Hostage Rescue Team members were operators not agents, but he didn’t correct her. The less impact he made the better.

“Dr. Richards just finished the second autopsy and is taking a break. I’m closing FBI Special Agent Gonzales. Special Agent Quinn is in the same suite along with another cadaver. If you’re okay with that?”

“Yes.” Had this really been Delilah, he wouldn’t have been able to see for the tears, but as far as these people were concerned, he was a fellow professional making a formal identification for the family—not identifying the only woman he’d ever loved .

“Fire victims…” She trailed off.

“It’s okay. I’ve seen fire victims before.” He’d once seen an entire houseful. The cartel had picked up as many of the competition as they could find. Bound them. Locked them in a house in the desert outside of El Paso and torched the lot of them.

Grim didn’t begin to describe it, but he doubted he’d seen more than this young medical professional.

“Yes.” Her expression looked wise and pensive. “But it’s different if you knew them when they were alive. Were you close?”

The question made him ache. “Not really,” he lied. “We worked a case together five, six years ago.” He pushed the memories aside. “I guess you could say that back then we were close.”

Until he’d blown it all to smithereens.

“Prepare yourself. It’s bad.”

They entered a large bright room where three metal tables were arranged parallel, each occupied by a naked corpse. Cas was immediately hit with the acrid stench of burnt flesh, coupled with the scent of decomposition despite the relatively fresh nature of the bodies. He raised his hand in instinctive protest.

Perhaps the smell was left over from other cadavers, but the ventilation system was forceful enough he could feel it lifting his gown.

He’d puked his guts up during his first autopsy for the Bureau. A humiliating experience for the cocky former SEAL. Working for the FBI had brought him to his knees in ways his Navy SEAL career never had. Probably because he had been solving crimes that directly impacted individuals. In the Navy, he’d been following orders and having the time of his life even during deployments into active war zones. But eventually even that hadn’t been enough. He’d needed to do more, and he’d found his calling thanks to a chance meeting with a Hostage Rescue Team member. He thanked God for his blessings, which were many, even if they didn’t include having someone to share his life with. But maybe that was the price he’d had to pay for having a job he loved.

At least, that was the bullshit he’d believed until recently. Maybe he still believed it, deep down where that lonely, abandoned kid lingered. That he didn’t deserve to be happy.

He shook off the thoughts.

This wasn’t about him.

He tried to hold his breath because this part of the job stank. Literally and figuratively.

The young doctor took pity on him and handed him some Vicks VapoRub to smear beneath his nostrils.

“The smell is actually a mix of Cadaverine, Putrescine, Indole, and Skatole, plus a few hundred other nasty compounds that build up during decomposition.” The young physician rolled a trolley containing what were presumably David Gonzales’ clothes and belongings to the side of the room. His gold shield lay on the top of the pile, and it hadn’t protected him one iota. A timely reminder.

She blushed slightly as he stared at her. “I find it helps me deal with it better if I understand the science behind it.”

He realized belatedly that they were the only people in the room, the only ones breathing anyway. “Just you and Dr. Richards for three autopsies?”

“Yep. Today anyway. We already completed a homeless guy and a fentanyl overdose. Dr. Richards is an early riser.” She pulled on fresh surgical gloves with a snap. She went back to the table and removed a threaded needle and poked it through the skin of Gonzales’ chest, the thick black thread closing the Y-incision like a zipper, hiding the internal organs that had been weighed, measured, and sampled, inside.

When he didn’t speak, she filled the silence. “Looks like Dr. Richards took the FBI agent with him on his break. Perhaps you know him?” She gave him a name, but he didn’t recognize it.

“I’m based out of Quantico these days.” He’d assumed there would be someone local in attendance. “The agents in the field office here must be devastated.”

“Sounds like it. They’re forming a task force to look into the murders.”

He wondered what they’d found out so far and if they could transfer the investigation to the task force Patrick Killion was hopefully assembling.

Finally, Cas forced himself to stare at the blackened corpse who looked as if she was struggling to fight off an attacker. He knew it was an illusion, but it still tore at him.

The doctor looked up. “She has the classic pugilistic attitude where the ligaments and muscles contract due to the heat.” The young woman pressed her lips together. “Fire victims always look angry in my experience. Pissed.” She put another black stitch into Gonzales’s pale chest. “But perhaps that’s my overactive imagination.”

“I can see why they’d be pissed.” Cas took a reluctant step forward and stared at the woman who’d been Delilah’s best friend. The long dark hair hid it, but the back of her skull looked shattered, which further distorted her blackened features. There was no way he could identify this woman based on facial features but that should work in his favor.

Lying about the identity of the victim went against the grain, but if it kept Delilah safe, he’d do it. And he was pretty sure her friend, Valerie Strauss, would forgive him if it meant finding her killer.

He cleared his throat before asking, “Did she suffer?”

The doctor hesitated. Then seemed to decide that she could talk to him. He was a federal agent. “We’re not yet sure how she died.”

He angled his head toward her in question.

“There’s no soot in her trachea.”

His eyes widened. “She was dead before the fire started?”

She nodded.

How ? “Doctor… ”

“Deuck. Linda Deuck.” Her cheeks flamed.

“Dr. Deuck. Linda. Was there any other sign of trauma?”

The woman nodded. “When we removed the ball cap she was wearing, we discovered massive injury to the skull. Unfortunately, that trauma meant that most of the brain matter cooked in the fire.”

His stomach wanted to repel the earlier baked goods. He forced it down. “She was hit on the back of the head?”

Linda pursed her lips. “Perhaps. But not necessarily. It’s possible when the fire was being extinguished something smashed into her skull. The roof collapsed.”

Hmm . “So how do you think she died?”

“Evidence is inconclusive. It’s possible she was unconscious when the fire started. Drunk or drugged. Or asleep. Toxicology is being run. We’re going to ask a forensic anthropologist on staff to reconstruct the skull to see if we can discover a specific injury, but she’s currently out in the Pacific doing some work for DPAA for the next two weeks.”

The “Defense POW/MIA Accountancy Agency” identified and repatriated the remains of US war dead. It was a noble undertaking.

Cas frowned. “I honestly can’t tell if this is Delilah or not.” No one possibly could by looking at what remained.

“I don’t suppose Agent Quinn had any distinguishing marks? Tattoos?”

And this was the moment he put his career on the line. Or maybe he’d done that the moment he walked in the door. Delilah had told him she and Valerie had matching tattoos at the base of their spines. He’d traced his tongue over Delilah’s whenever he’d had the opportunity.

“She apparently had an infinity tattoo low on her back.”

Linda’s features fell. “We found one exactly like that. A simple infinity loop. I’m very sorry for your and her parents’ loss. We can also run DNA, but there’s a backlog, and this won’t be a priority now… ”

He closed his eyes and nodded, grief dragging at him for this young woman and the pain Delilah would forever bear at the loss of her friend. When he opened his eyes, he saw what remained of Valerie’s clothing hanging in a drying cabinet. The remains of an FBI ball cap, almost unrecognizable, sat on a tray. It cemented in his mind that this was a case of mistaken identity. The killer had assumed the victim was Delilah as she’d sat in the semi darkness of Delilah’s living room wearing Delilah’s ball cap. Cas would keep that misconception alive for as long as humanly possible until the killer was caught—and hope it didn’t cost him his career.

“Any idea how the fire started?”

“Well, obviously that isn’t part of my job.” Her eyes shot to the door. “But I overheard the other agent say the fire appears to have started in the downstairs apartment.”

He pressed his lips together. He hadn’t found as many answers as he’d hoped for.

He turned and looked at poor David Gonzales. He’d been a good-looking guy until someone had pointed a gun at the back of his head and pulled the trigger. The exit wound had taken out his right temple.

Had he and Delilah loved one another? Or had it been more casual? Any jealousy he felt was misplaced. And he would rather Gonzales, and Valerie, still be alive and for him to forever be out of Delilah’s life, than the current circumstances.

Delilah deserved to be happy.

“You find the bullet?”

“Fragments only. Nothing definitive. Agent Gonzales died instantly.”

He hid his relief.

“What about the other guy?” Cas turned to stare at the body on the third table. A man in his early thirties. “He connected?”

The overhead lighting emphasized the dark circles under Linda’s eyes. “Apparently, he was an informer for the FBI, for these agents actually. Clarence Carpenter. He was found in his car in his driveway this morning. Died of asphyxiation.” She finished one line of the Y and started down the torso. “It’s possible Agent Quinn was asphyxiated prior to death also, but we haven’t found the usual markers. The fire could have masked them.”

Cas frowned and went to look closer at Clarence Carpenter. Even basic recruits were taught various chokeholds to subdue attackers. By applying pressure to the carotid artery in the neck, the blood supply to the brain was cut off. If you held a chokehold for long enough, the recipient died.

The marks on the dead man’s neck were reminiscent of a chokehold from behind. Had the attacker hidden in the back of Clarence’s vehicle?

“Seems suspicious.”

“Highly.” Linda agreed.

“You have his TOD?”

“Between five and seven a.m. this morning. Roughly.”

“So after the two FBI agents died.” Voices could be heard coming down the corridor. It was time to leave. “I’ll get out of your way.” He headed toward the exit. “Thank you for your help. I will call Delilah’s parents and inform them of the sad news.”

“I’m very sorry for their loss.”

“Thank you.” He nodded slowly. If that’d been Delilah’s body on that gurney, he’d be in a fetal position on the floor, weeping like a babe, and this woman wouldn’t be able to move him for a week.

And this had to be how Delilah felt, he realized suddenly. She’d lost her best friend and her partner. He’d been so relieved she was alive, he’d forgotten she was dealing with so much trauma. Not only the loss of two people she cared about, but also her home and possibly her career.

It was a wonder she could function at all.

He hadn’t been there for her before.

He knew that.

But this time.

This time .

He’d be there for her.

Scanlon wasn’t getting anywhere near her. Not on his watch.