Her face felt flushed and her heart picked up a few beats. She addressed him quickly. “What brings you here? Homicide isn’t keeping you busy enough? Are you handling vice too?” Though she hadn’t seen him since that night at the Anchor Bar she had to admit that she had a hard time keeping him off her mind.

Gavin laughed. “I’m a jack of all trades.”

Val didn’t have a chance to respond. Officer Perez emerged from the living room and called Gavin over. She followed them as they walked back to the dead woman.

“Possible cause of death?” Gavin asked Val.

“Looks like an overdose. Can be either oral or intravenous. We won’t know until the autopsy’s done.”

Gavin said a few words to the officer and then pulled out his phone. Val overheard him talking to Warren, telling him to get there as soon as possible, and then saying, “What the hell is going on?”

Val was confused. Why was Gavin so interested in this victim? She glanced at her report to get the name of the deceased.

It read: Samantha Ritcher.

10

“Well, gentlemen, the remains from the Lockland Landfill are those of Francine Donohue,” Julia announced. “Both the arm and the skull belong to her. We had the DNA double-checked. That’s why it took so long.”

Gavin couldn’t believe it. How could this be? Warren raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Blythe just had his arms crossed. The body parts sat on a small table in the private autopsy suite in the morgue. The fact that both pieces came from the same victim, and were discovered so quickly after her teeth were found, put this case in a different light.

Things were escalating.

“Did you roll her fingerprints? We’ll need them to compare to the unknowns in her apartment,” Gavin asked.

“Not yet,” Julia answered.

“Do you think we’ll get anything from these?” Warren asked. He pointed to the dried leathery fingers. They were shrunken and curled toward the palm as if trying to make a fist.

“We just have to soak them in warm water for a little while then inject saline in the fingertips and they’ll be fine,” Julia said.

“Why is the arm and skull so different?” Warren said.

“The skull was stripped of its tissue but not baked this time. The arm was though. He left the skin on the arm and then must have put it in an oven at a low temperature to get it to mummify like this. This time he cooked the arm but not the skull,” Blythe said.

“Phil, slow down. You know this whole baking thing is speculation,” Julia said.

“Only if you have no clue on how pathology works,” he responded sharply.