“Sure, if we find him,” George replied. “I saved enough DNA material from the embryo so we can get a match if we need to. Sorry to drop it on you like this, Joanna, but under the circumstances I thought you’d want some time to think this over before tomorrow morning when you’re reading the autopsy report.”
Joanna closed her eyes as she tried to assimilate the information. “So whoever killed Dora just left her body lying in the middle of the road for someone else to hit?”
“I didn’t say she was run over,” George corrected. “And she wasn’t. She was hit by a moving vehicle while she was fully upright. But she wasn’t standing upright under her own power. There were some bits of glass and plastic found on her clothing. There was also a whole collection of black, orange, yellow, and white paint chips on her body and what looks like traces of polypropylene fiber embedded in the flesh of both wrists. I believe her body was tied to something—a Department of Transportation sawhorse, maybe—while the vehicle crashed into her. The lack of bleeding and bruising from those impact wounds would indicate that she was already dead at that point.”
“Whoever did it wanted us to believe Dora Matthews was the victim of an accidental hit-and-run,” Joanna surmised.
“Correct. And since there’s no evidence of a struggle or any defensive wounds, Dora may even have been sedated at the time of suffocation. I’m doing toxicology tests.”
“But toxicology tests take time—weeks, even,” Joanna objected.
“Sorry,” George said. “You’ll just have to live with it. In the meantime, on the chance that there may be some additional microscopic paint flecks, I’ve preserved all of Dora’s clothing. I sent them back to your department with Jaime Carbajal so your AFIS tech—what’s her name again?”
“Casey Ledford.”
“Right. So Casey can take a look at them. Whoever killed Dora obviously doesn’t know much about forensic science, so I’m guessing he or she wouldn’t have been all that sharp about not leaving fingerprints behind, either.”
“Thanks, George,” she told hint. “I think.”
“And you’ll be sure to give your mother a call tomorrow?”
“I promise.”
“Who was that on the phone?” Butch asked once Joanna walked into the bedroom. He was already in bed. Manuscript pages were stacked on top of the sheet while he alternately read and scribbled penciled notes in the margins.
“It was George,” Joanna answered dully. “Calling to give me the news that Dora Matthews was dead before the car hit her. Somebody suffocated her, most likely after drugging her first, and then tried to fake a hit-and-run. George also said that she was three months pregnant when she died.”
“Yikes,” Butch said. “Do you think Jenny knows who the father is?”
The question startled Joanna. “I doubt it,” she said.
“He’s probably some little smart-mouthed twerp From school,” Butch theorized.
That was another disturbing thought, that someone in Jenny’s sixth-grade class at Bisbee’s Lowell School—some boy who might very well be sitting next to Jenny in math or science—might also be the father of Dora Matthews’s unborn child.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” Joanna said.
“You’d better,” Butch returned grimly. “We’d all better think about it. If there’s some little shit in the sixth grade who can’t keep his pants zipped, somebody at the school had better wise up and do something about it—before an irate father does it for them.”
As upset as she was, Joanna couldn’t help smiling. “You sound like an irate father yourself,” she said.
“I am,” Butch returned.
Joanna went into the bathroom. When she emerged, the manuscript and pencil were both gone. It was only then, as she crossed the room to turn out the light, that she noticed the baseball bat leaning against the wall between Butch’s nightstand and the head of the bed.
