The Narrows - Michael Connelly [53]
He’d caught her off guard. She hesitated.
“Why are the bodies being taken to Nellis instead of here or L.A.?”
She knew the answer before asking the question but needed to say something to escape the moment.
“It’s easier to keep a lid on things this way. The military knows how to keep a secret.”
His tone suggested an unspoken final line: Do you? He swung his view back to Richards.
“Doctor, go on.”
Rachel picked up on the subtle difference. Alpert had called Richards Doctor, whereas he had simply addressed Greta Coxe by her first name. It was a character trait. Alpert either had trouble with women in positions of power and knowledge or he didn’t respect the science of anthropology. She guessed it was the former.
“Well, we’re looking at suffocation as the cause on these,” Richards said. “It’s pretty obvious from what we’ve got. There is not a lot left to work with on most of them but with what we’ve got we’re not seeing other injuries. The unsub overpowers in some way, tapes wrists and ankles and then puts the bag in place over the head. The taping around the neck we think is significant. That is indicative of a slow death. In other words the unsub was not holding the bag in place. He took his time, pulled it over the head, taped it and then could step back to watch.”
“Doctor?” Rachel asked. “Was the tape applied from the front or back?”
“The ends are at the back of the neck, indicating to me that the bag may have been pulled over from behind, possibly when the victim was in a sitting position, and then taped in place.”
“So he—the, uh, unsub—may have been ashamed or afraid to face his victims when he did this.”
“Quite possibly.”
“How are we doing on identification?” Alpert asked.
Richards looked at Sundeen and he took over.
“Still just the five that were included in the Las Vegas investigation. We assume the sixth from their group will be one of the final two excavations. The others we have nothing on so far. We’ve got no useable prints. We’ve forwarded the clothing—what’s left of it—to Quantico and perhaps Brass has an update on that. Meantime, we —”
“No, no update,” Doran said from the television screen.
“Okay,” Sundeen said. “We have the dental data just going into the computer today. So maybe we’ll get a hit there. Other than that we’re just waiting for something to happen.”
He nodded at the completion of his report. Alpert took back the lead.
“I want to go to Brass last, so let’s hear about the soil.”
Mary Pond took it from there.
“We’ve sifted all of the sites and it’s all come up clean except for one piece we got yesterday that is exciting. In excavation seven we found a wad of gum in a wrapper. Juicy Fruit, according to the wrapper. It was between twenty-four and thirty inches down in a three-foot grave. So we really feel it is related and could be a good break for us.”
“Dental?” Alpert asked.
“Yes, we have dental. I can’t tell you what yet but it looked like three good impressions. I boxed it and sent it to Brass.”
“Yes, it is here,” Doran said from the television. “Came in this morning. I put it in motion but I don’t have anything on it yet either. Maybe late today. I agree, though. From what I saw we’ll get at least three teeth out of it. Maybe even DNA.”
“Could be all we need,” Alpert added excitedly.
Even though she distinctly remembered that Bob Backus had a habit of chewing Juicy Fruit gum, Rachel was not excited. The gum in the grave was too good to be true. She thought there was no way that Backus would allow himself to leave such important evidence behind. He was too good as both a killer and agent for that. She could not properly express this doubt in the meeting, however, because of her agreement with Alpert not to bring up Backus in front of other agents.
“It’s got to be a plant,” she said.
Alpert looked at her a moment, weighing the risk of asking her why.
“A plant. Why do you say that, Rachel?”
“Because I can’t see why this guy who is burying a body in the middle of nowhere, probably in the middle of the night, would take the time to put his shovel down,