Dead Shall Speak (An FBI/Romance Thriller Book 10) Read online

  Now, Blackhawk had to do his thing.

  Lead.

  Spotting their anthropologist, Ethan and Callen opted to head there first, while Doctor Leonard prepped his team for the bodies.

  “Oh God! I am so glad to see you,” a harried Tony Magnus blurted. “This has been a hellish couple of hours.”

  They didn't doubt that at all.

  After all, three bodies and a handful of curious scientists didn't mix. Not when it came to forensics.

  “We’ll take over now,” Callen reassured. “I’ll contact the university and start coordinating this for the team.” He wanted to do his part, making Ethan’s job a little easier.

  “Yeah, that’s going to be a huge problem,” Tony stated. “The second we found these flesh covered corpses, the university wanted nothing to do with them. In fact, they’re ready to call this some government cover-up.”

  It was stupid shit like that which made Ethan Blackhawk want to lose it. Why would they cover-up bodies found on the school’s land? Did they honestly believe the FBI had nothing better to do with its time?

  “Do we have confirmation that they’re not part of the university’s anthropology projects?”

  Impeccably timed, Doctor Chris Leonard arrived, pulling on a clean suit and snapping on his gloves. “I think I can answer that once I get a look at them,” he offered, immediately hugging his buddy. “Hey, Tony! I’ve missed you. You charged out of Lyzee’s party and have been hiding out.”

  He laughed, jerking his head toward the redhead not far away. “I’ve been tied up.”

  Without missing a beat, Chris grinned wickedly. “I love when that happens. It’s good to see she unties you for work.”

  Ethan cleared his throat, knowing the men were heading toward bedlam. Unfortunately, with Elizabeth gone, he had to keep some sort of rein on the mayhem. “Do I have to separate you two?” he asked. “We’ve only been here three minutes, and it’s already starting. This may be a record, even for you.”

  Callen shook his head. “You’re screwed. The only person who can keep these two in line is Elizabeth.”

  He was well aware.

  God!

  He missed her.

  Both doctors snickered, knowing it was going to be fun to work together again.

  “Okay, all joking aside, where are they?” Chris asked, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically. “I’m anxious to get to my patients.”

  Callen tried not to laugh. The people on their team were good, but sometimes he questioned their sanity. Who was excited to dig around in decaying flesh?

  Only their ME.

  Tony led them to the pit and pointed at the three tarp covered bodies. “I’m sorry. I had to cover them with something until you got here. I know it’s not FBI protocol, but it was the best I could do. With the heat and the prey birds flying over, I didn’t want them snacked on before you could take a look. Those poor victims have been through enough.”

  Chris, while already calculating the ramifications, knew there was nothing he could do about it. Sometimes, you had to do anything to save as much evidence as possible.

  They’d worked with less before. This was a minor bump in the road.

  “I’ll get started,” he offered, handing Tony a pair of gloves. “Want to join me in the hole?” Chris asked.

  “I’ve missed this,” the anthropologist stated. Truly, he had. There was nothing like the easy familiarity of doing the same job you’d done for years. It was great to put his mind on autopilot, allowing himself to just be a Fed.

  As they climbed into the hole, Ethan noticed that Doctor Armstrong was keeping her distance. When he motioned to her, she didn't hesitate to head his way. It appeared that she was grateful to be away from the victims.

  “What happened?” he asked. “While they do their part, I need someone to debrief me on the situation.”

  She gave him the entire story, making sure to leave nothing out. “I didn't know I was about to move onto the next victim. We were careful with marking the graves before we began the tedious process of clearing them. Bones in the ground this long are more fragile due to the leaching of minerals. When I started working on the last skeleton, I found a hand.”

  Ethan had received the initial reports. “Was it attached?”

  “At first, I didn't know. Then when Tony had us start to pull back layer upon layer of dirt, we saw that it was a full skeleton, and it was intact.”

  Callen looked around the field. It was like a cemetery, just minus the headstones. “How deep were all the other victims buried?”

  Jaxon pulled out her tablet. “The deepest grave we found was four and a half feet down.” She flipped through her information. “The shallowest graves happen to be the new bodies, and we have them tagged at barely three feet deep.”

  That was interesting.

  It was possible that these victims were dumped and hastily covered over. This gave Ethan something to ponder. They had thirty plus year old graves, and now fresh ones. Was it the same killer coming back to finish it up, or a new one playing copycat?

  From the grave, Chris got their attention. “These aren’t bodies misplaced from the body farm. They didn't lose any of their ‘guests’.”

  Callen leaned over the edge to check out the victims. “I almost regret asking this, but what the hell is a guest on a body farm?” he asked. It sounded wrong and revolting all at once, like so many things he’d discovered in the FBI. “Or don’t I want to know?”

  Chris Leonard stood, brushing the dirt from his knees. “It’s where the anthro department gets donated cadavers, and they place them out in the field to rot. It’s a teaching situation, so they put them in abandoned cars, barrels, in the ground, hanging from trees, and other scenarios to study the effects of nature on death.”

  He looked appalled. “Wait, why?”

  “To learn.”

  There was so much to say to that. Callen stared down at the now uncovered bodies in horror. In his mind, he was picturing rotting corpses hanging from tree branches like macabre Christmas decorations.

  Yeah, that was damn disgusting. He was so glad that he was liaison and not someone who had to play in the dead full time.

  “That’s nasty. I knew you doctors were freaks.”

  “Anything for science,” Chris Leonard replied.

  To him, as a Native American, death was just as sacred as life. One didn't flaunt it, hang it from a tree, or mock the Great Spirit.

  It was just…wrong.

  Once you were gone from this world, you deserved to rest in peace until your spirit could cross over. Science or not, the premise of studying a corpse was revolting. Weren’t there enough bodies found every day that scientists could learn from the victims as they solved their crimes?

  “I can tell that they’re not donations,” Chris stated, holding up a little black box. “I scanned them. There’s no microchip. When the body farm gets a corpse, they implant tiny chips to track it. They’re clean, but there’s also another reason I can tell that these were left by our killer and not someone’s donation.”

  He had their attention.

  “How, Doctor?” Ethan Blackhawk asked.

  Chris gingerly picked his way across the bodies to the third and last one. When he knelt beside her bloated, decaying corpse, he pointed at what remained. “She was abused before death. If the university is going to take a specimen, it has to be perfect. It can be riddled with cancer, but for decaying purposes, they don’t want any open wounds. They like to inflict them to keep the case studies controlled.”

  Callen was disgusted by that idea.

  Chris continued, “Plus, had they seen this kind of abuse, it would, or should have thrown up red flags. Someone would have notified the authorities that they had a wonky body. There are lots of regulations to running a body farm.”

  Standing in a pit of death, Callen was shocked that the abused body was the only ‘wonky’ thing Chris Leonard noticed. To him, it was all insane.

  “She was abuse
d?” Blackhawk asked.

  Chris Leonard wasn’t one to give too much away before an autopsy, but he knew that the bosses needed something to go on at first. “Just from my initial check, she has had some facial damage. I can feel the bones shifting beneath my fingers. The skull doesn’t do that unless it’s pummeled.”

  That was good enough for Ethan. “So, the university wants nothing to do with this.”

  Tony Magnus shook his head. “This could be a blessing,” he stated. “Now, we don’t have to jump through academic hoops to do our job.”

  Yeah, they could run it their way.

  It wasn’t like Blackhawk could blame them. This was bound to be a media firestorm once it leaked. It was just one more part of his job that he knew he needed to be on top of the entire time.

  Jaxon moved closer to the edge to stare down at Tony. He was kneeling beside the same victim that the ME was discussing, but his eyes were on her.

  He intently watched her, and Jaxon felt better. Tony would keep her safe, even as her emotions were whipped into a frenzy.

  “If I was part of the university, I wouldn’t touch this with a ten foot pole either. This could scare away donations,” she stated. “They already found a mass grave dating back three decades or more, and now a fresh set? They’re going to want to keep this as quiet as possible. It takes a lot of money to fund an anthropology department. If they lose funding, the big wigs get a pay cut.”

  Blackhawk got that. He was responsible for their budget, and it was a pain in his ass.

  Chris Leonard agreed. When he gave money to the universities back home, he liked to make sure it went to the programs, not the president’s paycheck. This was exactly the publicity you didn't want when you ran a giant university.

  Tony continued, “That’s why they’re not going to want to house the victims there. While they have the medical facilities, they won’t be offering them up. For now, they’ll want to bury this, so to speak.”

  Blackhawk got that. It wasn’t like he was shocked or surprised in the least.

  They were on their own when it came to procuring a place to work. This was yet one more part of their job that sucked. Oh, and to top it all off, his wife generally handled the shitty jobs like this.

  Blackhawk had one more reminder of how vital his wife was to their team.

  “I’ll have to head into town and find the local sheriff’s department. We’ll have to go from there. Hopefully, they have a facility that we can use.” Ethan knew if they didn't, they were basically screwed. He’d have to head to the university and beg for their lab.

  “And if they don’t?” Chris Leonard asked.

  “I’ll pull an Elizabeth. What choice do I have?”

  Chris went back to work, wishing he could be a fly on the wall for that one. Ethan Blackhawk was generally cool under pressure. It would be interesting to see him lose it.

  Well, as long as it wasn’t directed at him.

  Standing beside the open chasm, Jaxon noticed one thing. The man she loved was excited to have his team there. She could tell that he was thrilled to be back on the job. His eyes were bright with joy, and from the tone of his voice, he was ecstatic to be using his brain once more.

  She realized something.

  Well, two things.

  The first was that he needed to feel fulfilled in his job. The FBI gave him the satisfaction he needed to carry on with his day. It was true that he was giving back to people who had no chance at justice without their help.

  It touched her.

  Then, she realized something even more important. He must love her a lot. He’d followed her to a hole in the ground, did endless paperwork, and left his friends and family to stay by her side.

  Every day had to be hell for him. If that wasn’t total adoration, what was?

  Now her heart ached with the love that threatened to swamp her. Never had she ever felt anything like this before. Tony Magnus was a good man.

  “Doctor?” Callen asked, touching her arm. “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head, pulling out of the sexy daydream about the man she adored. “I’m sorry, Director. I was just thinking. When I get sucked in, I get lost.” Yeah, and lately, when it came to Tony that was more and more often.

  Chris and Tony had moved from the third victim back to the first one, or what appeared to be the remains of the first one.

  “Give me something, Doctor Leonard,” Ethan Blackhawk demanded. If he was going to make this work, they needed to know what they were up against.

  Tony waited while his partner in death got ready to give out the basics.

  “Victim number one is in the worst condition decomp wise. She’s been in the ground around one year. You can tell by the missing flesh and the slight staining of the bones which are showing. This is a clay dense area, and that red soil has taken effect on the body.”

  Ethan made notes on his phone. “Continue, Doctors.”

  Tony picked up, knowing how the man operated his scenes. Pointing at the pelvis, he gave the information that he could decipher from the mess of her remains. “We definitely have a female. Since her pelvis is openly visible, I can give you gender. There is a more outwardly flare to her hip bones, the sciatic notch is broad, and there is an open, circular pelvic inlet. In a male, there is more of a heart shaped opening.”

  “Okay, so we have a female. What else?” Ethan asked.

  “The bone structure is more delicate, where as a male would be broader and thicker.”

  “Continue.”

  “Victim one has never given birth.”

  Chris continued, “I can give you the basics. She had black hair, since some is still beneath the body. She was approximately five foot seven, and was on her feet a great deal.”

  Ethan glanced up from his phone. “Explain.”

  Tony lifted her mostly decayed leg with gentle fingers. “Our victim has an extra foot bone. The accessory navicular would have made dancing almost impossible, so we can narrow down that kind of foot stress.”

  They all looked at the woman’s foot. Funny, they didn't see anything of the sort. It must be a bone thing.

  Tony continued, “From the wear on the back of her foot bones, to the stress on the heel, she was in some kind of service industry, including manual labor.”

  “Age?” Callen asked. It was hard not to be fascinated by what the men were doing. While they only saw a dead body, these men painted a completely different picture for them. It was like they saw the woman before she was hurt. They were reading the bones, almost like an investigator would read a case file.

  Jaxon took this one. “She was young. When I found her, I could tell by her clavicle. She’d just reached maturity. I’d put her around twenty five years old.”

  Ethan was impressed, not by her ability to spout the information, but that she was strong enough to step in. This was a different woman than a few weeks ago. Before, Jaxon Armstrong would be nervous as hell. Now, she was self-assured. That had everything to do with Tony Magnus.

  There was no doubt.

  Both men in the hole checked the bone in question. There was agreement from Doctor Magnus on Jaxon’s assessment. “She was definitely young. I’ll venture to say that she wouldn’t be any older than twenty five. That’s your upper cap.”

  With probing fingers, Chris began searching for more clues. When he moved a thatch of decaying flesh to reveal the throat and hyoid bone, he had more details to share with the team.

  “She was strangled. That’s likely going to be your COD, but I’ll hold off on declaring that until I do tox on her remaining flesh.”

  Ethan made notes.

  Chris moved out of the way so Tony could see his find. It wasn’t lost on anyone there, including Jaxon, that they moved like a well-oiled machine.

  Doctor Magnus ran his fingers over the tiny bone as if scrutinizing it. “Yes, her hyoid is broken. Someone had their hands around her neck,” Tony stated. It was sad, since from the bone structure, he could ascertain that she wasn’t a
big woman. This was a petite person who was abused as she fought for her life.

  It made him sick.

  Without discussion, Chris Leonard moved to the next victim to continue his assessment. Everyone on the side of the grave shifted to stick with him. Sadly, it was a dance they’d done many times before.

  “Our second victim,” he stated, pausing before he continued, “and the only reason I’m saying that she was likely the next to die is because she has the second most predominant showing of decay, and is naked with no signs of abuse.”

  Tony ran his fingers over her ribs before leaning down. “I feel and see some remodeling. Our victim had broken some ribs at some point. The fractures healed and were damaged again.”

  “Torture, Doctors?” asked Blackhawk.

  Both men shook their heads.

  “There’s no way to tell at this point,” Tony offered.

  Ethan made notes while Callen scanned the area. He could feel eyes watching them, and he wasn’t sure if it was the dig team or something far more sinister.

  “What else can you tell us?” Ethan asked.

  “We have another female. From the shape of her pelvis, she didn't give birth either,” stated Tony.

  From the edge, Jaxon spoke, “Tony, if you look under her body, you’ll see some metal. I didn't move her, but I was able to spot it when I stared down through her ribcage and out her back.”

  Immediately, Chris motioned toward the tech team and they hurried over with a camera.

  The flash went off rapid-fire, documenting everything before Chris attempted to move her.

  Meredith waited until Tony moved the skeleton, and then she went back to taking photographs. “You have a necklace and ring,” she stated, using gloved fingers to drop them into an evidence bag.

  Chris examined them through the plastic. “The one is a locket. Once we get to a morgue, I’ll open it. Until then, I don’t want to risk any more contamination. We might find some DNA inside or a fingerprint.”

  “Good call, Doctor,” Ethan said, patting Jaxon on the back. “What else do you have?” he asked, directing the question at the men in the hole.

  “She was also strangled,” Chris stated. “Her hyoid is broken too.”