Girl Missing - By Tess Gerritsen Page 0,1

Ratchet, veterans of the local knife and gun club, were waiting for her. Sykes looked dapper as usual in a suit and tie – a black homicide detective who always insisted on mixing corpses with Versace. His partner, Vince Ratchet, was, in contrast, a perpetual candidate for Slim-Fast. Ratchet was peering in fascination at a specimen jar on the shelf.

‘What the hell is that?’ he asked, pointing to the jar. Good old Vince; he was never afraid to sound stupid.

‘That’s the right middle lobe of a lung,’ Kat said.

‘I would’ve guessed it was a brain.’

Sykes laughed. ‘That’s why she’s the doc and you’re just a dumb cop.’ He straightened his tie and looked at her. ‘Isn’t Clark doing this one?’

Kat snapped on a pair of gloves. ‘Afraid I am.’

‘Thought your shift started at eight.’

‘Tell me about it.’ She went to the slab and gazed down at the bag, feeling her usual reluctance to open the zipper, to reveal what lay beneath the black plastic. How many of these bags have I opened? she wondered. A hundred, two hundred? Each one contained its own private horror story. This was the hardest part, sliding down the zipper, unveiling the contents. Once a body was revealed, once she’d weathered the initial shock of its appearance, she could set to work with a scientist’s dispassion. But the first glimpse, the first reaction – that was always pure emotion, something over which she had no control.

‘So, guys,’ she said. ‘What’s the story here?’

Ratchet came forward and flipped open his notebook. It was like an extension of his arm, that notebook; she’d never seen him without it. ‘Caucasian female, no ID, age twenty to thirty. Body found four A.M. this morning, off South Lexington. No apparent trauma, no witnesses, no nothing.’

‘South Lexington,’ said Kat, and images of that neighborhood flashed through her mind. She knew the area too well – the streets, the back alleys, the playgrounds rimmed with barbed wire. And, looming above it all, the seven buildings, as grim as twenty-story concrete headstones. ‘The Projects?’ she asked.

‘Where else?’

‘Who found her?’

‘City trash pickup,’ said Sykes. ‘She was in an alley between two of the Project buildings, sort of wedged against a Dumpster.’

‘As if she was placed there? Or died there?’

Sykes glanced at Ratchet. ‘You were at the scene first. What do you say, Vince?’

‘Looked to me like she died there. Just lay down, sort of curled up against the Dumpster, and called it quits.’

It was time. Steeling herself for that first glimpse, Kat reached for the zipper and opened the bag. Sykes and Ratchet both took a step backward, an instinctive reaction she herself had to quell. The zipper parted and the plastic fell away to reveal the corpse.

It wasn’t bad; at least it appeared intact. Compared to some of the corpses she’d seen, this one was actually in excellent shape. The woman was a bleached blond, about thirty, perhaps younger. Her face looked like marble, pale and cold. She was dressed in a long-sleeved purple pullover, some sort of polyester blend, a short black skirt with a patent leather belt, black tights, and brand-new Nikes. Her only jewelry was a dime-store friendship ring and a Timex watch – still ticking. Rigor mortis had frozen her limbs into a vague semblance of a fetal position. Both fists were clenched tight, as though, in her last moment of life, they’d been caught in spasm.

Kat took a few photos, then picked up a cassette recorder and began to dictate. ‘Subject is a white female, blond, found in alley off South Lexington around oh four hundred . . .’ Sykes and Ratchet, already knowing what would follow, took off their jackets and reached into a linen cart for some gowns – medium for Sykes, extra large for Ratchet. The gloves came next. They both knew the drill; they’d been cops for years, and partners for four months. It was an odd pairing, Kat thought, like Abbott and Costello. So far, though, it seemed to work.

She put down the cassette recorder. ‘Okay, guys,’ she said. ‘On to the next step.’

The undressing. The three of them worked together to strip the corpse. Rigor mortis made it difficult; Kat had to cut away the skirt. The outer clothing was set aside. The tights and underwear were to be examined later for evidence of recent sexual contact. When at last the corpse lay naked, Kat once again reached for the camera and clicked off a few more photos for the evidence file.

It