What Lies Behind Page 14

  “Ah.” Sam walked to the other side of the body and saw a small puncture in Souleyret’s neck, clearly the source of much of the blood at Cattafi’s apartment.

  “She was wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt and jeans when they brought her in. They were extensively bloodstained.”

  Casual clothes. Good for travel. She made a mental note: Check the file Charlaine’s sending—how did Souleyret get back into the country?

  “Shoes?”

  “Boots. Military-style. In the bag, just there.”

  Sam saw the bulging white trash bag on the table near the wall, nodded.

  “So she wasn’t undressed, hadn’t taken off her shoes and gotten comfortable?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Can we turn her, please?” Sam asked.

  Nocek nodded, went to the woman’s head. Sam stationed herself at her waist, and they turned her over slowly.

  Here the damage was dreadful. The wounds were stark against the fair flesh of her back, red gashes that gaped wide like heavy-lidded eyes. Sam quickly counted them, six in all—one cut in the right side of her neck, two extremely deep ones below each scapula, the other three varying from deep to superficial.

  Fletcher was standing a few feet away. “So she was running away when she was stabbed?”

  Sam nodded. “The neck wound came first. That slowed her down long enough for her attacker to hit her in the lungs, one on each side. The rest were reaches. Amado?”

  “Yes, I believe you are correct. There are very few defensive wounds. There was nothing under her nails—no breaks, matter, anything. It fits with the theory of her running away.” He tsked, as if in sympathy with the girl’s plight. “There is something else I believe you should see. On external examination, we discovered a tampon in place. Subsequently, we removed the tampon. This is not an unusual occurrence, save for this. There was no indication our guest was menstruating. The tampon was clean of any biological material I would normally associate with its usage.”

  Now that was interesting. “Has it been disposed of?”

  Amado shook his head, pointed toward a small tray on the counter. “I saved it. Its placement and status felt...off.”

  They moved Souleyret’s body back into position, then Sam went over to the tampon. It wasn’t pristine, but there was no blood. She glanced at Fletcher, who was eyeing her with the kind of horror most men do when faced with anything oriented to a woman’s monthly cycle, and bit back a laugh.

  “It won’t bite, Fletch. I promise. I just want to test it. It could be laced with drugs. I’ve seen it before.”

  She took a scalpel and teased the edge of the cotton apart, clipping a bit to put into a tube for testing. She set the tampon back onto the tray, then something caught her eye. A dark edge inside the tampon itself.

  “What is that?” Fletcher asked.

  Sam used her small forceps, got a grip on the thing. It came out easily. She turned it over, looked at Fletcher with a grin.

  “A micro SD chip. Now that’s a handy place to carry something you need to sneak into the country.”

  “What do you think is on it?”

  “I have no idea.” She turned to Nocek. “Do you have a secure server, one that doesn’t hook into the OCME network? This could be classified information. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “No, we do not, not in the way you need. Just as we can access anything from any computer in the building to put up on the screen here, technically speaking, it could go the other way, should someone want to snoop. Normally, this is a wonderful way for all of our doctors and technicians and administration to access files. For instance, should I have a death I believe is linked to another, I can call up the previous files and do a comparison on the spot, without leaving the autopsy suite or waiting for files to be delivered.

  “In this case, if this is sensitive information, I believe you would be safer trying to open the contents away from any sort of wireless network. We are trustworthy, but I do not want you to get into any trouble down the road.”

  “Thank you for your candor, Amado,” she said, and he inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment. Such a graceful man, she thought, both in action and speech.

  Sam put the SD card in an evidence bag and handed it to Fletcher, who looked at it like it might explode. “Chain of custody,” she said with a smile.

  His hand convulsed on the bag, and he placed it carefully on the table beside him.

  “Let’s get going,” he said. “Get her posted. I’m eager to see what’s on this SD card.”

  “Me, too,” Sam said. “Amado? Shall we?”

  He nodded, pulling up his mask. “Let us go inside our guest, and see what else may be happening.”

  And without further ado, his scalpel flashed in the overhead lights, and the Y-incision was made.

  Chapter 24

  SAM AND AMADO went through the rest of the autopsy with relative ease, while Fletcher called one of his computer geeks to bring a secure laptop so he could take a look at the micro SD card.

  Amado did the oral recitation of Souleyret’s wounds so his report would be easier to compile when he was finished. Sam, used to both dictation and writing specifics on a whiteboard, took a few notes of her own. They sawed and weighed and dissected companionably, as if they’d been working together for years.

  The initial Y-incision had shown little subcutaneous fat, and coupled with the girl’s oversized calf muscles and lithe build, Sam took her for a runner. Her heart was beautiful. There was nothing remarkable about the woman’s head, nose or throat, though Sam could tell she had been delicately pretty while she still breathed, fit and healthy. Amado was correct—she had not been menstruating.

  It was her lungs that told the tale. Souleyret had died of hemothoraxes of both her right lung, the result of a four-inch-deep stab wound, and another on the left, three inches deep, between her ribs in the eighth intercostal space, puncturing the lung and causing the hemothorax. There was quite a bit of blood in her lungs; despite the gash in her neck and all the arterial spray, she hadn’t bled out. Which meant a good deal of the blood at the crime scene must have come from Thomas Cattafi, something the crime scene techs would realize once they began processing the evidence.

  Three of the six stab wounds were superficial, though two inches deep. It was impossible to tell which of the two deeper wounds was the culprit, but Sam was comfortable with Amado’s conclusion that the hemothoraxes had killed her. The perpetrator was right-handed; the wounds were horizontally oriented and were deeper on the right posterior than the left.

  The rest of Souleyret’s autopsy was nominal. She’d never carried a child to term, something Sam noted with as little internal imagination as possible. Her liver and kidneys were clean, her brain matter coiled tightly. She hadn’t eaten in the few hours before she died.

  Unless there was something significant in her blood, which had already been sent to the OCME’s in-house lab with specialized instructions to test for all sorts of unusual diseases more common to the African continent than the normal tox screens would cover, she had certainly died as a result of the stabbing.

  Stabbed in the back. Sam wondered again if there was some significance to the crime scene, or if it was just her imagination on overdrive. Something just felt so strange about all of this. And it wasn’t only seeing what made Amanda Souleyret tick, as it were.

  And the tampon...now that was one for her annals. She’d pulled all sorts of things from orifices over the years, most of them drug related, some the result of pleasure gone wrong, but she’d never had information smuggled in a tampon before.

  Fletcher, who had promptly set the bag with the SD card down once Sam had handed it to him, had finally been coaxed closer to the “thing,” as he called it, lying quiet in its bag on the small metal tray, which he eyed from time t
o time with great distaste. “I suppose this is one advantage to being a woman. Smuggling is easier.”

  “This is true. Something this small, she could have swallowed it, but stowing it in a tampon is a much less messy proposition.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Quite.”

  “What’s on it?” he wondered aloud for the twentieth time.

  Amado had called a tech to close the incisions, and joined them, staring at the innocuous bit of fiber. “When I was younger, I once knew a man in Naples who was a smuggler. Diamonds, mostly, and other jewels. His partner took them from the hotel rooms of the rich who stayed in the city. He always struck rooms that faced the Bay of Naples. He would place the jewelry in trash bags, and throw them off the balconies toward the cliffs. Then his people would walk the cliffs, ostensibly cleaning up the trash, and take the jewels at their leisure.”

  Sam was amused by the story. “I can’t imagine you being friends with a lawbreaker, Amado.”

  “Not friends, Samantha. Never that.”

  “So how did they smuggle out the jewels? I assume they needed to get them out of the country? If they had them in hand, couldn’t they just cash them in?”

  “Your assumption is correct. They wished to move the jewels out of the country, exchange them for money. At the time, there was an alert at the borders for this man. If he tried to fly, or to drive across the border, he would be caught. So he used a woman in a similar way. A bag of jewels, liberated from their settings, followed by a tampon. The border patrols were thorough searchers, but when they spied the string, they backed away.”

  He grinned once, haughtily, and not necessarily amused. “Old mythologies die hard, do they not? And so the jewels were taken across the border, sold for exorbitant prices and the man was not caught for many years. They called him l’Ombre—the Shadow. He was one of the most successful cat burglars in history. He died recently, a very rich old man. I believe someone was writing a book about his escapades.”

  Sam was charmed. “He sounds like an absolute scoundrel, Amado. How in the world did you know him?”

  His face was eloquently blank. “The woman who crossed the borders for him was my mother.”

  Chapter 25

  NOCEK’S SOBERING REVELATION ended the afternoon’s exercise. They cleaned up and, casting a last glance at Souleyret’s now-stitched and empty body, Sam said a quick prayer for the woman’s soul, and they left the autopsy suite.

  Amado escorted them to the lobby. “I will send an official report to your email address this evening, Lieutenant Fletcher. It was pleasant seeing you once again. Samantha, we are still engaged for the symphony next week? I look forward to our evening with Rachmaninoff.”

  “As do I, Amado. I’ll see you next Friday. Thank you for your help today.”

  At that moment, Fletcher’s tech hurried through the doors, bringing the secure laptop, and was closely followed by the courier from Quantico sent by Charlaine Shultz. Fletcher went to deal with his guy, and Sam greeted the courier. He was a kid, a newly minted agent who’d probably just graduated. He had a fresh haircut, a red tie and was out of breath, like he’d run from Quantico.

  “Dr. Owens? I’m Agent Marcos Daniels. I have the package Dr. Shultz prepared for you.”

  Sam held out a hand. “Thanks for bringing it. Glad you didn’t get a ticket on the way. You must have just broken the land speed record from Quantico.”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid I have to bring it back when you’re done reading. I’m your shadow until you do.”

  “All right,” Sam said. “Once Lieutenant Fletcher is finished, I believe we’re heading to the homicide offices. I’ll ride with you and start looking over the file. We might be a minute, though. Catch your breath.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He nodded sharply, subsided into a chair and took three deep breaths. Sam loved the literal ones.

  Fletcher, meanwhile, had taken the laptop from the officer and shooed him away. He joined them, speaking quietly.

  “We need to move quickly. Word’s out we have something, and Armstrong wants to know what it is.”

  “I thought he was on board with the subterfuge.”

  Fletcher shook his head. “Not yet,” he said grimly.

  “Oh, Fletcher. You are playing with fire.”

  “I know. Isn’t it fun?”

  “No, it’s not. I want to see what’s on the SD card. If you’re avoiding your boss, where shall we go to look at it?”

  “The only place in this town where there’s any privacy, of course. Mine.”

  * * *

  It was only a few minutes’ drive to Fletcher’s town house on Capitol Hill. Sam rode with Agent Daniels, who proved to be a pleasant companion for the short trip—he said not a word, leaving her to her thoughts. She couldn’t get Amanda Souleyret out of her mind. The helpless body, attacked from behind, the bloody spray on the ceiling and walls. The knife wound in the neck...

  Now Sam had it, what had been bothering her all morning. Amanda hadn’t fought back. When she was attacked, she’d run.

  Running was counterintuitive. Souleyret was a trained professional. She would know how to defend herself, and how to defend Cattafi. Yet, when faced with an attack, she’d tried to get away instead of fighting her way out.

  What in the world had spooked the girl so badly she’d turned tail instead of trying to fight?

  The killer had gotten close to her, very close. There was no forced entry. Cattafi, or Souleyret, had let the killer in. Or the killer had a key and surprised them.

  No, that long hallway from the door to the kitchen wouldn’t dampen sound. They’d have heard him coming. So they must have let him in.

  Was she trying to reason with him? Talk him down? Was she trying to surrender?

  Worse, was she dealing with someone she knew? Someone trusted enough to get face-to-face?

  That must be it, Sam decided. Whoever killed Amanda Souleyret was a known entity.

  Which made this even harder. Betrayal resonated more deeply than any other motive, made it an ever deeper tragedy.

  One last turn, and they were on Fletcher’s street. His row house was charming white brick, situated on a street catty-corner to the Longworth Office Building on Capitol Hill, just down from the Capitol Hill Club and the RNC.

  Sam had been to Fletcher’s place before, and always wondered what the stone angel in his front yard symbolized to him. Darren Fletcher was as far from a religious man as she’d known, though he wasn’t an atheist, not that she knew of. For a Catholic like herself, nominal as she may be, the idea of not having that mysterious support was anathema. She’d have to ask him about it sometime, like he had with her desire to be a medical examiner.

  They parked on the street and followed Fletch up the stairs to the front door.

  “Sorry for the mess,” he said, and she knew he wasn’t sorry for it at all. He was a man, a cop, and rarely if ever spent more than a few hours a day in his own home.

  The house was surprisingly straight, though, and Sam detected a few homey touches she hadn’t seen the last time—a potted plant in the corner, candleholders on the dining room table, black leather placemats. Surely that was Agent Jordan Blake’s doing. The two were well-matched, Sam thought. She liked Jordan, respected her as a cop and thought, given a few drinks on consecutive relaxed Saturday afternoons, the two might even become friends. She was also wildly protective of Fletcher, another attribute. Fletch needed someone to care for him. He withered without a woman’s touch.

  “Does she have a drawer yet?” she asked him.

  He looked at her sideways. “No. There’s no point. Neither of us have time to settle in, you know? But I did buy her a toothbrush.”

  “Oh, Fletcher. The lengths you go to are mind-boggling. Even I’m overwhelmed.”

  “Hush,
Owens.” But he wasn’t annoyed. He had the sort of suffused glow a man in the early throes of a love affair should have when imagining his woman spending the night.

  Daniels was clearly unnerved by their banter. “Sir? Can I help with anything?”

  “Can you cook?”

  The kid shrugged. “I make a mean grilled cheese.”

  At the mention of food, Sam’s stomach rumbled in a very unladylike manner. Fletcher gave a little laugh and pointed at the kitchen. “We’d be in your debt, Agent Daniels.”

  “Sure thing.” The kid disappeared. Sam and Fletcher took seats across from each other at the dining room table. He put the secure laptop on the table, and Sam plunked down the black binder on Souleyret. He turned on the machine, plugged in the SD card.

  “There’s a lot of data here. It’s going to take a while to upload.”

  “And off we go,” she murmured, opened the stiff faux-leather cover and started to read.

  * * *

  Sam found the FBI file on Amanda Souleyret much more satisfying than the one the State Department had given her, and also more infuriating. Souleyret had definitely been operating under her own auspices for several years. She was an autonomous undercover agent, working around the edges of the pharmaceutical world, reporting to multiple people— including Girabaldi at State when necessary—sending reports back to the FBI. She made her own cases, did her own thing. She had few handlers, and even fewer people knew she was FBI. She seemed to take jobs from all sorts of agencies on an ad hoc basis. She was a freelancer, in many ways, with a variety of aliases to backstop her stories.

  Clearly, Amanda Souleyret was a very accomplished spy.

  As Girabaldi had told them, she specialized in getting information out of corporate databases. Which explained the SD card, Sam thought. She traveled the world on cases, settling into cities and jobs as needs be.

  There was a photo in the file, too, one taken a few years earlier. Souleyret was smiling, lips closed, but there was a sparkle in her eyes. Sam was right; she’d been quite pretty. Not a bombshell by any means, but pretty. Sam imagined if you glammed her up with makeup and clothes she would stand out in a crowd, but dressed down, hair in a ponytail and no makeup on, she looked like a fresh-faced farm girl. Cute enough to use her looks if she needed them, but more than likely, she played it down in order to move around without notice.