Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [159]
A veteran.
Meg had always prided herself on her even temper and logical approach to problems, but suddenly her vision blurred and she wanted blood—the blood of the killer, the blood of a society that didn’t value those who fought for them. Men like her father . . .
She pushed him from her mind and focused on the homeless veteran. “Detective!” she called, wanting an ID as quickly as possible. Wanting to know how this soldier had ended up homeless and dead.
Detective Kamanski was at the edge of the crime scene talking to a small group of people. Uniformed officers were along the perimeter to keep the onlookers from getting too close. He glanced at Meg, then approached with a casually dressed young black man carrying a medical bag.
“Agent Elliott, this is Deputy Coroner Roland Banks.”
Meg shook hands, then pointed to the chain. “I think those are dog tags. We might be able to get a quick ID on this victim.”
“That’d be nice,” Banks said. “We have a few dozen unidentified homeless filling the deep freeze right now.”
While Banks did his job, Kamanski said, “I called in a detective who worked undercover down here for several months last year. He knows this area and the homeless better than anyone on the job.”
“Good. We need an insider. If we do have a witness, it could be hard to get them to talk.”
“Exactly. Abrahamson is on his way down.”
Meg asked, “So how do you want to handle the investigation?”
“We’ll need to have your boss and my boss talk, but I’m open. Joint task force?”
They both cracked a wry grin.
“Can you take care of the canvass and forensics? But if you need anything from our lab, let me know and I’ll jump on it. And I’ll start working the joint jurisdiction issues with Texas and Nevada, talk to both the locals and Feds and get copies of the files. It might help. Something connects these three men. It just doesn’t seem random.” To Banks she said, “I’d like to observe the autopsy.”
“Probably first thing in the morning,” the deputy coroner said. “They’re already jammed up this afternoon.”
“I’ll be there. One thing I’m looking for are needle marks on the body. Very small, likely on the feet, neck, hands, and groin.”
“The body is already in decomp, I don’t know what we’ll see underneath the clothes, but I’m not removing them here. The skin is already slipping.”
“How long has he been dead?” Kamanski asked.
“In this heat? Decomp is telling me about twenty-four hours, but with this heat could be as few as six. I’ll have to do some calculations, factor in his clothing, the position of the body—fortunately, he’s not in direct sunlight. I’ll take a wild stab—and I mean a not to put in your report guess—at six to ten hours. I know, he looks like twenty-four plus, but he’s not.”
Banks pulled out the dog tags. “Price, George L.,” he read. “This looks like U.S. Army. No medical restrictions, blood type A negative. Christian. Have the social as well.”
Both Meg and Kamanski wrote down the information. Tate snapped pictures. Banks put the chain down and Meg didn’t hear anything. “Wait,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“There’s only one tag.”
Banks held up the chain. Carefully, Meg searched along the chain for another tag, as she said, “The two tags should be together. Either attached and separable, or the second tag on it’s own small chain.”
“There’s only one tag,” Banks said.
“Maybe he lost it,” Kamanski offered.
“Not likely,” she said, but she didn’t discount the possibility. “Maybe the killer took it for a souvenir.” Or another reason. Maybe he did lose it. Maybe he’d been injured or there was some other reason the second tag had been removed in the field when he was a soldier. It felt odd to Meg, but she didn’t have any facts to base her instincts on so she kept her mouth shut.
An attractive brunette exited a nearby building across 12th Street and waved at Kamanski. “Dave, we found something you need to see,” she said over the radio.
“That’s Simone Charles, day shift supervisor for the CSU,” Kamanski told Meg.
As