‘Longer ago than a year, but no longer than five years, if I had to guess. Her blood tests are within normal levels for all the major vitamins. Her body weight is normal for her height, so she was not nutritionally deprived – but again this is fairly recent. The X-rays show low bone density in her legs and arms.’
Deacon frowned. ‘She was malnourished as a child, but her captors have been feeding her well?’
‘I can only tell you she ate well,’ Carrie said. ‘It’s your job to figure out where she got the food.’
‘Did you find any evidence of drugs in her system?’ Scarlett asked.
‘Urinalysis came back clean for the usuals, but I’ve sent blood to the lab for a more detailed screening. I should have that tomorrow.’ Gently she drew Tala’s hand from beneath the sheet. ‘Her hands are rough but her nails and cuticles are well kept. She has calluses on all her fingertips and her knees. She’s done manual labor, but someone wanted her hands to look nice. The skin on her face is also smooth. Outwardly – and clothed – she appears the picture of health.’
‘But?’ Deacon asked.
‘But she was beaten. Not enough to break any bones, but enough to leave bruises.’ Carrie pulled the sheet to Tala’s waist, exposing her torso.
Scarlett sucked in a breath. ‘Fucking hell,’ she whispered. Nasty dark bruises covered the young woman’s entire torso. ‘What’d they hit her with?’
‘Fists would be my guess, at least for these bruises. Somebody knew what they were doing, hitting her hard enough to cause pain but not enough to require a doctor to set a broken bone or stitch cut flesh.’
‘And hitting her where no one would see,’ Deacon said quietly. ‘Her shirt hid the bruises so that when she walked the dog no one would suspect.
‘What did you mean by “cut flesh”?’ Scarlett asked, not wanting to hear the answer. Carrie gently turned the body, and Scarlett winced. Beside her, Deacon hissed a curse. Tala’s back was a mass of bruises, welts and open cuts.
‘It appears to have been done by the buckle end of a belt. Nothing fancy or unique.’ Carrie’s voice was toneless as she resettled the body and pulled the sheet back over it, her hands briskly capable. But her breath hitched a little as she pulled the drawer out the rest of the way, her swallow audible in the quiet of the morgue.
‘You okay, Carrie?’ Scarlett asked softly.
Carrie’s smile was thin. ‘Yeah, sure. It’s just that the ones with bruises . . .’ She blew out a breath, cleared her throat. ‘The welts continue down the backs of her legs, but again, they were hidden by her jeans. Which also hid this.’ She pulled the bottom of the sheet up to Tala’s knees, revealing a strip of skin worn red and raw, scattered with lesions. A few inches above her ankle, the strip was about an inch high and extended all the way around her leg. ‘She was wearing a tracking device, the kind that probationary prisoners wear.’
Scarlett blinked, her thoughts scrambling. ‘You cut it off her?’ she asked carefully, keeping the without telling us? accusation from her voice.
Carrie nodded. ‘It was still transmitting when my assistant started processing her. He called CSU, who got here about the same time I did. CSU cut it off and took it with them to the lab. They said they’d contact you about it.’
Scarlett pursed her lips, annoyed. ‘They didn’t. I would have liked to have known about that.’ She glanced up at Deacon. ‘Did they contact you?’
He shook his head, clearly equally annoyed. ‘Nope. We’ll deal with it when we’re done here.’ Then he turned back to Carrie. ‘If they cut it off her and it was still transmitting, it would have sent a tampering alarm to whoever was monitoring it. I might have wanted to time that alarm to our advantage.’
‘Depends on the style of tracker they used,’ Scarlett said, shoving her annoyance aside for the moment. ‘If it detected a pulse or body temp, it would have alarmed the moment she died, or at least as her body cooled. When and where they cut it off her might not have mattered.’
‘The lab will tell us what kind of tracker it is, so we’ll at least have an indication of when her captors knew she was gone, assuming they weren’t the ones who killed her.’ Deacon frowned down at the body. ‘Either way, the tracker makes no sense. If she knew she was being tracked, why would she arrange to meet Marcus in an alley? She had to have known they’d follow her.’
‘She did,’ Scarlett murmured, the look in Tala’s eyes the split second before she was shot making more sense now. ‘She knew who shot her. She knew they’d come after her. Maybe she thought that by leaving in the middle of the night they wouldn’t notice for a while.’
‘But they watched her at night,’ Deacon said. ‘She walked the dog at night.’
Scarlett bit at her lip, thinking. Something was off, a detail either missing or perhaps not noticed or understood, but she wasn’t sure what it was. ‘Not every night. There were a few nights Marcus sat for hours and she didn’t show up. Now I’m wondering why that was. It wasn’t like they knew she was stopping to listen to him in the park, or they wouldn’t have let her return night after night. Why the sporadic schedule?’
‘Maybe they had someone else walk the dog those nights, somebody who picked a different path through the park. And maybe they did finally figure out she was stopping to listen to him. Maybe that’s what triggered this beating. Didn’t Marcus say she was limping the last time he saw her in the park, and that it was at a different time of the day?’
‘Yeah, he did. It was what pushed him to leave his card on the bench.’ Scarlett turned to the ME. ‘Carrie, did you see any evidence of other beatings in the past?’
‘No. Her back and legs are too torn up for any scars to be visible to the naked eye, but I might be able to see older subdermal scarring with an ultrasound. How important is it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe not at all. I’d just like to know what we’re dealing with here.’
‘I’ll do the test this afternoon.’ Carrie pulled the sheet down to cover Tala’s legs, gently smoothing it with a light swipe of her gloved hand before pushing the drawer closed. Her gentleness had Scarlett’s throat tightening, just as it did every time she’d witnessed it. Apparently reserved for victims of violence, it was motherly in its own way. Almost as if Carrie were tucking a child into bed at night.
I couldn’t leave her alone in the dark. The words Marcus had spoken in the alley hit Scarlett’s mind with a hard slam. He’d sounded bleak and . . . lost. And Scarlett wondered why. Was it simply the shock of seeing a girl gunned down in front of him? Somehow she didn’t think so. He’d served in the military, and as bad as Tala’s shooting had been, he’d likely seen things far worse.
‘Scarlett? Hello? Yo, Earth to Detective Bishop.’ She blinked as Deacon’s hand waved in front of her face. He was hunched forward, staring at her with eyes narrowed in concern. ‘You okay?’
Cheeks heating in embarrassment, she squared her shoulders. ‘Yeah. Sorry. My mind wandered for a second.’
Deacon straightened to his full height. ‘Or ten,’ he said warily. ‘Did you even hear what I just said?’
Scarlett barely resisted the urge to drop her gaze to her shoes. ‘No, I didn’t. Could you repeat it?’
‘I asked Carrie if the victim had been sexually assaulted,’ he said, still frowning.
That was a good question, Scarlett thought. I should have asked it myself. Instead, she’d been daydreaming about Marcus O’Bannion’s emotional state. Get your brain back in the damn game, Bishop. ‘And was she?’ she asked evenly.
‘There’s no evidence of recent physical trauma per se. No vaginal bruising or fluids present. But she has been sexually active. She has gonorrhea and genital warts, vaginal and anal. They’re not visible, so she might not have known she had them. I’ve sent a culture to the lab to determine what strain is present.’
‘Not surprising,’ Scarlett said quietly. ‘I’m more surprised you didn’t find evidence of repeated assault.’
‘So was I,’ Carrie admitted, ‘especially after seeing the bruises and welts. I’ll report this to the health department – they’ll want to be informed after you’ve identified her and found her captors. Anyone who’s had sexual contact with her is potentially infected.’