He followed the pattern of scorch marks scarred into the dim red bricks. Gasoline burned upward of five hundred degrees, but add in the fact those bricks held on to that heat and the metal inside the fireplace, there was a good chance dental records, fingerprints and DNA had all been burned away. Without an ID on the body, the chances of that six-year-old boy coming home only got smaller. “Damn it.”
Sevierville PD had taped off the target scene with a wide perimeter through the trees at JC’s instruction, the entire property in controlled chaos. Local PD had already searched and processed the house, but out here it’d take days—weeks—to filter through what qualified as evidence. Small towns like this saw a few instances of violent crime, but this case was about to blow Sevierville’s crime stats through the roof. Someone had used the fireplace out of convenience, knowing the remains would be found, but they hadn’t wanted the victim to be identified. That was where the accelerant came in. With any luck and depending on how long the fire had been going, the forensic lab might still be able to put a rush on pulling DNA from the bone marrow of the victim and nail this killer to the wall. JC would be there when they did.
He noted the shortened bones of the hand the coroner was in the process of securing. He faced Evan Duran, hostage negotiator extraordinaire, crouched a few feet away, and dropped his arm away from his mouth and nose. “Looks like our UNSUB went out of his way to ensure pulling fingerprints were out of the question. Cut the tips of the victim’s fingers clean off before lighting the match.”
“The guy knows what he’s doing, that’s for sure. That’s why we couldn’t trace the bug he planted in Olivia Reeves’s hospital room and couldn’t get any surveillance of the getaway vehicle the night of the kidnapping. I’d say our suspect has at least some knowledge of crime scenes or forensics given he chose to toss in the gasoline.” Duran straightened, gaze to the ground as he moved farther from the epicenter of the crime scene. This case had the entire Tactical Crime Division team on edge. Hell, JC couldn’t even imagine what was going through Ramirez’s head right now having to partner with a former lover to find the guy’s son, but for Duran, this investigation hit a little too close to home. The hostage negotiator’s little sister had been taken from right in front of their apartment building when he was only ten years old, too small to do anything but watch, but it was that moment that drove Duran’s attention to this case now. He would do whatever it took to bring Owen Reeves home. They all would. Shadows darkened Duran’s Latino features as he nodded to the trail carved through the mud. “But he wasn’t careful enough.”
“What do you got?” JC arced his path out from his teammate’s to avoid contaminating whatever Duran had found. Slowing, he caught sight of the deep grooves carved into the snow and mud—most likely drag marks from his victim’s heels—coming from the house and snapped a pair of latex gloves over his hands. Cold worked past the thick layer of his coat the longer they searched the scene, but the sight of a silver or white gold piece of jewelry partially uncovered in the dirt froze him straight through. A charm in the shape of the scales of justice with the eyelet spread wide as though it’d been torn from a necklace or bracelet. He swiped up on his phone’s screen and took a photo before digging for an evidence bag from his jacket. He pinched the metal between his index finger and thumb and dropped it inside.
“Might help us identify the victim,” Duran said.
“The coroner would’ve mentioned if there’d been evidence of jewelry melted to the bones. Gasoline burns hot, but not hot enough to evaporate silver or white gold.” JC pushed to his feet, studying the charm still in his hand. Sunlight pierced through the trees, reflected off the tarnished metal. His lungs still burned with the smell of gasoline and dropping temperatures. They were losing daylight. In another hour Sevierville PD would have to pull out the spotlights, making it that much harder to search the scene. “Which means it came from somewhere else.”
From someone else. Another victim? Were they about to find more bodies out here? JC messaged the photo he’d taken directly to Ramirez. Scanning the trees around them, he couldn’t shake the feeling every piece of evidence they recovered, every move they’d made out here, was being carefully curated and watched. The vibration of his phone snapped him back into reality, and he answered Ramirez’s call. “You get the picture I sent?”
“Where did you get that charm?” A combination of tension and panic tinted her words, and everything around JC slowed. Ramirez wasn’t the kind of agent to wear her emotions on her sleeve, but something about this charm had obviously rattled her.
“You recognize it.” Not a question. He leveled his gaze with Duran’s, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.
One second. Two.
“Ramirez?” JC checked the screen. The call hadn’t been dropped.
“Yes. I recognize it. It belonged to a fifteen-year-old girl whose body was found a few months after she went missing from Sevierville. Her name was Samantha Perry,” Ramirez said. “I was one of the agents assigned to find her.”
Chapter Five
It wasn’t possible. Samantha Perry’s charm shouldn’t have been at that crime scene. Not unless... The edge of her phone cut into her hand, her gaze rising to meet Benning’s. “Search the rest of the property. I need
