Page 14 of Vanished in the Mist
“It’s Tanya, isn’t it?” she asked, already nodding.
His jaw tightened. “No. The… What I found down there wasn’t Tanya Jericho. There wasn’t much left, not enough to make an ID. But Chief Dawson was certain the pelvis bones were that of a male. Even if he’s wrong, judging by the length of the femur and the tibia, the victim was at least ten inches taller than the missing teen.”
Disappointment had her shoulders slumping. “I suppose it would have been a miracle to find her on our first try. You said as much earlier. It makes sense that it’s not her. If it was, I’d have expected the police to have found her when she originally went missing. After all, you discovered that body really close to the area where her parents thought she’d gone that day. Do the police have any idea who he might be? Officer O’Brien didn’t seem to know about any missing-persons reports that might account for another accidental drowning out here.”
“Whoever he is, there’s more to his death than an accidental drowning. That hand I found didn’t detach from the rest of the skeleton on its own. There were tool marks on the bones.”
Shanna stared at him with growing dread. “Are you saying that someone…cut off his hand?”
He gave her a tight nod. “Hopefully the autopsy will tell us that it happened after he died. Regardless, drowning victims don’t have their skeletons chopped up. This guy, whoever he is, was murdered. Which begs the question of—”
“Whether Tanya was murdered, too.”
Chapter Seven
Following Officer Grace O’Brien, Chief Beau Dawson, and Shanna into the Mystic Lake police station, Kaden paused just inside. If it wasn’t for the gold letters above the glass door he’d just come through, he wouldn’t have known this building housed the police. He certainly hadn’t realized it when he’d arrived in town yesterday, admiring the row of quaint shops fronting the cobblestone street out front that bordered the lake. His assumption was that this was the tourist-focused part of town and that the government offices and other businesses were clustered somewhere else.
“Not what you expected?” Shanna’s words echoed his thoughts.
“I suppose it’s got everything a police department needs. A set of holding cells to the right, vending machines and the chief’s office to the left. A glass-walled conference room along the back wall. The small cluster of four desks here in the squad room. It’s just so—”
“Small?”
He smiled. “My Realtor sister would call it cozy. Only four officers plus the chief to take care of the entire town seems like it would be a struggle. Then again, I haven’t seen that many people since arriving. I wonder what the population is in Mystic Lake.”
The chief, obviously having heard them since he was only a few feet away talking to O’Brien, seemed amused as he joined them. O’Brien headed into the conference room.
“Less than two thousand locals,” he said. “A third of those only live here part-time, in vacation and hunting cabins high up in the mountains. Two to three officers per thousand is usually enough in a small town like this, where the crime rate is low. But I wouldn’t mind having a few more permanent officers to help when we get a flood of tourists during the summer months. We make up the difference by contracting with other law-enforcement agencies to temporarily beef up our staff during the busy times, or to help cover us when our staff takes vacations. Which reminds me, we don’t have a contract with you for your services. But we’ll definitely reimburse you for what you did for us today. Send me the bill.”
Kaden nodded his thanks.
The chief studied him for a moment. “You don’t plan on billing me, do you?”
“No reason to. I knew what I was in for when I agreed to come here at Cassidy Tate’s request. I’m covering the cost of this trip, searching for Tanya Jericho pro bono. I just wish it was her we’d found today.”
Dawson nodded. “Tanya’s an only child. Her family’s been through hell. I’d like nothing more than to bring their daughter home. But thanks to you, we’ll at least have answers for another family, once we figure out who you found. On the way here, I sweet-talked the Chattanooga medical examiner to put a rush on trying to ID the remains once we transport them. But as you can imagine, with no personal effects or even clothing to help with the identification, it’s going to be hard to figure out the identity of our John Doe. None of our locals have gone missing, so it’s likely a tourist who went swimming or fell off a boat andnever came back up. Unfortunately, we get some of those cases most years and rarely recover a body.”
Shanna addressed the chief. “How will you determine the victim’s identity with mostly bones to rely on? DNA?”
Chief Dawson shook his head. “Unlikely. At least, not initially. I imagine we can extract DNA from the bone marrow, or even some of the hair that was found with the skull. But unless the victim had a reason to have his DNA in one of our national databases, that won’t be how we figure out who he is. Dental records, same story. Unless we have something to compare to, they won’t help us ID anyone early on in the investigation. It will require old-fashioned door-to-door knock-and-talks to see if anyone in town has a friend or relative they don’t see or hear from often and don’t even realize could be missing. They can check, see if they can contact him. If not, we’ll add that name to a list to research. Hopefully, if the guy’s not a local and went swimming on his own without anyone knowing, he’ll be listed in a missing-persons report in a neighboring county. The medical examiner will give us information like height, race, age range. It will likely take quite a bit of time, unfortunately, to figure out his identity.”
The sad look on Shanna’s face had Kaden wondering how she dealt with investigating other disappearances without it crushing her spirit. Maybe those weren’t the types of cases she was normally involved in.
As if noticing her sadness as well, the chief added, “Don’t give up hope. We’re only getting started. Chattanooga PD has agreed to send over some forensic divers tomorrow morning to sift the lake bed near where the remains were found. They might find a wallet or a phone, something to help us figure out who this guy might be.”
He motioned toward the glass-walled conference room where O’Brien was waiting. “If you two are ready to give your formalstatements about what happened yesterday, that will help get things rolling.”
Kaden motioned for Shanna to precede him.
Instead, she looked up at Dawson. “May I assume some quid pro quo? Once we provide statements, can you help us by handing over anything you have on Tanya Jericho’s investigation?”
His eyebrows raised but he nodded. “I’ll get one of our officers to print out everything we can share.”
“We need the whole—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “Ms. Hudson, there are some things that I can’t turn over. Not a lot, nothing that will impede your investigation. But there are a few details we’ll keep confidential to help us rule out false confessions in the future, in the unlikely event that her disappearance was sinister in nature.”
She blinked. “So you have considered it could be murder. I’m surprised to hear that. Cassidy said your office dismissed the possibility.”
