Page 42 of Her Frozen Heart

The privacy shelter Rory had put up was still in place, and she could see Courtney setting up to collect evidence.

“That coat looks like it weighs more than you.” Nikki shrugged out of her backpack and placed it against a tree, out of the way.

“I don’t care,” Courtney said. “It’s damn cold out here. I can’t believe that thing thawed the ground.”

“Technology is a wonderful thing sometimes.” Nikki pointed to the vinyl barricade. “Miller and Blanchard in there?”

“And the forensic anthropologist,” Courtney said. “Blanchard had the body bag Kesha was in sent to the lab. I found particles all over the inside of the bag, like something had been put in with her, possibly to help neutralize odor. I should have test results back in the morning.”

“Miller said it looked like the bodies could be in bags on the ground-penetrating radar,” Nikki said. “Which would be consistent with our theory that the killer originally intended to bury Kesha here but couldn’t get through the ground.” Another reason to believe that he was local and had some outdoors experience. Walking out on the ice and drilling a hole took care and guts, and Nikki was betting the killer had ice fished before. She wished they could figure out if he’d gone out on the lake the same night he’d come to bury her or if he’d come back the next night. Chelsea and her boyfriend might have spooked him enough to wait a couple of nights, but Nikki was more interested in whether he had the ice equipment on hand or had to purchase it.

The two of them went into the makeshift enclosure Rory had constructed. According to the ground-penetrating radar, the victims appeared to be lying side by side in roughly an eight by eight foot grave. Rory had blocked off double that amount of space, so they all had plenty of room to move around inside.

“How close are we?” Nikki asked.

Miller wiped sweat off his forehead. “Doctor Willard didn’t want us using large shovels, since the bodies don’t appear to be much deeper than three or four feet. We’re down to the last few inches of earth, so Doctor Willard and her assistant took over the digging.”

Nikki had worked with the forensic anthropologist a few times since she’d returned to Minnesota six years ago, and she’d been fascinated with the woman’s knowledge about skeletal remains. As the only certified forensic anthropologist in the state, she’d worked on several high-profile cases. She’d also done her graduate work at the University of Tennessee with Dr. Bass, the creator of the Anthropological Research Facility, better known as the Body Farm. Dr. Willard’s experience with remains in all states of decay made her invaluable to the investigation.

“Doctor Willard, good to see you again. Can you bring me up to speed?”

Dr. Willard sat back on her heels. Her auburn waves peeked out from her wool hat. “We’re removing shallow amounts of dirt with buckets. My graduate student, Omari, is pouring the dirt into a sieve, looking for anything we can test, like buttons, bits of fabric or jewelry. We’ve got a receptacle for inanimate objects and one for flora, fauna and any sort of seeds. At this point, everything we can take out of the ground, including the dirt itself, is evidence.”

Courtney snapped on a pair of gloves and examined the bits and pieces Omari had taken from the dirt. “Are these parts of shotgun shells?” she asked eagerly.

“This is all popular duck-hunting ground,” Miller said. “I’m surprised there aren’t more. So don’t get too excited just yet.”

“Did you have a chance to talk to the sex offender who posted on the fishing forum?” Nikki asked him. Miller’s unassuming manner and his ability to connect with just about anyone had made him a better candidate to talk to the sex offender than Nikki’s trainees.

“He was out of town for Thanksgiving and had credit card receipts to prove it,” Miller said. “He was on the lake the weekend of the fourteenth and fifteenth, but he worked both evenings until midnight. His boss confirmed.”

“Nikki, I’m glad you’re here,” Blanchard said. “I finished Kesha’s autopsy. Her stomach and her bowels indicated she’d last eaten pizza. Sheriff Miller said she ate at the mall shortly before she disappeared, but she didn’t die that day and probably not the next. Digestion takes about thirty-six hours. Her bowels hadn’t been emptied since she ate the pizza at the mall, so she likely died within the first twelve to twenty-four hours after the kidnapping. Cause of death appears to be asphyxiation. I didn’t find any fibers or residue around her mouth and nose. Between that and the bruising on her neck, I’m pretty confident he strangled her. We’re still waiting on toxicology.”

“Any idea how long she might have been in the water?” Kesha had disappeared on Black Friday, but her body didn’t look like it had been in the water that long.

“There were signs of very early decomposition, suggesting she’d been stored somewhere cold, and she may have been frozen at one point. If he put her in the water shortly after her death, given the water temp, I’d expect to see adipocere because cold speeds it up. But there isn’t any, which again makes me think she might have been kept frozen. Given the condition of her body, I doubt she’s been in the water more than a week, two tops.”

“What about sexual assault?” Nikki asked.

Blanchard nodded. “Tears on the inner walls of her vagina and rectum suggest that she was, and I found spermicide still inside of both.”

“So we need to look for all of that on these victims,” Nikki said. “If they’re skeletonized, how much will you be able to tell about the bodies, Doctor Willard?”

“Knives often nick bone, as do bullets. If there is any soft tissue remaining, we can test it and the bones for signs of poisoning. If the method of killing is strangulation, that often results in the hyoid getting broken,” Willard said. “It looks as though the grave has been extended as each victim was buried, sort of like a trench.”

Dr. Willard gently probed the remaining soil. “I can feel something solid right here, so we’re close. Omari, make sure we’re keeping an eye for any sort of tool marks along the edges of the grave.”

Within minutes, dirty material started to become visible beneath the loose dirt.

Nikki crouched next to Willard. “That doesn’t look like a body bag.”

“It’s not,” Willard answered. “It looks like a big towel, and it’s pretty degraded. But the one next to it is an emergency disaster body bag.”

“Same on this end,” Dr. Blanchard said. “Emergency disaster body bags.”

“Like Kesha’s,” Courtney said. “I’ll compare the two and confirm the match. You should be able to track who purchased them, right?”

Blanchard snorted. “You can buy body bags on Amazon, especially this kind. Good luck getting a subpoena through their legal department.”

---