Page 41 of Made of Steele
“No question in my mind.” She looked up, the gravity of the situation lodged in her tight expression. “We’ve located human remains.”
At the discovery of the skull, Teagan wanted to take a moment to process. Acknowledge that a person had lost their life here. Respect the dead. Maybe get her head around the fact that she was staring at a skull.
Drew took it in stride. Or at least he seemed to. He’d been in law enforcement longer than she had, but she’d likely seen more homicide victims in her career. Never had she seen a skeletonized body, though. Or a skull peering up at her from the ground.
Had he become too jaded while undercover to be shocked at this? If so, what had he seen? And could he ever reenter life again or would his past year haunt him?
Kelsey seemed detached too. Maybe not inwardly but on the outside. She would have to be. Her job involved recovering skeletonized bodies all the time. She’d taken over and ground everything to a halt, telling her assistant to call Ainslie Houston, the Veritas photographer, then start toting needed tools from the van for an excavation.
Kelsey looked at Teagan and Drew. “We have to document the scene before we do anything, and Ainslie’s our crime scene photographer.”
“Is she available?” Drew asked.
“Murder trumps most everything else, so she’ll make herself available. I can begin taking photographs now, but she’ll take over when I start to excavate the remains.” Kelsey got out her phone. “We’ll also need the ME on scene as well as notify the local law enforcement agency.”
“That would be Clackamas County.” Teagan stepped back from the skull. “No need to call them. I’ve been sworn again to handle this investigation, and I can represent their interests. My family doesn’t know that, so I would appreciate it if you kept it between us.”
Kelsey raised an eyebrow but said nothing and made the phone call to the ME, who promised to come straight away.
Kelsey’s assistant returned with a camera dangling from his skinny neck, several small trowels and brushes, and two blue tarps.
Kelsey helped him shake out the first tarp but looked at Drew and Teagan before placing it on the ground. “The prep work and dig will take some time so you might not want to hang around.”
“Time, like a couple of hours?” Drew asked.
Kelsey shook her head. “Likely all day. I have to remove the soil layer by layer so I can sample each layer and then put it on a tarp to be screened for evidence.”
“Layers?” Teagan asked, as she’d never seen this process unfold.
“Soil is made up of layers or horizons.” Kelsey pinned down the corners of the tarp. “I won’t bore you with the details. Just know a grave will have distinct layers on the edges, but the person who dug the grave will have mixed up the fill soil.”
From Drew’s questions so far, Teagan figured he wouldn’t mind if Kelsey did bore him with the details.
“The layers show me the edges of the grave,” Kelsey continued. “If I know the boundaries, I won’t miss any evidence.”
“But the skull is on the surface,” Drew said. “How can that be?”
Kelsey peered at the ground. “Looks like this area was washed away during all of our recent rain, exposing a portion of the skull. We’re lucky scavengers didn’t carry it off or we might not be able to identity this body.”
“You mentioned evidence,” Drew said. “If the body has been here since 2016, can you still recover any useful evidence?”
Kelsey unfurled the second tarp on the other side of the staked space. “Some evidence doesn’t degrade so if any exists, we’ll be able to capture it. The soil is unique too. Like a fingerprint. We can hire a soil scientist if needed. They can compare the soil to a shovel or any soil found on a potential suspect’s shoes, in his car, his house, et cetera. That will place them not only on this property but specifically in this grave.”
“Would that be useful after so many years?” Teagan asked.
“You’d be surprised at what we still find. Killers who used a shovel only once. Dropped their shoes or boots in their trunk and never vacuumed it out. Toss boots in a garage. Things like that. So we have hope for finding and convicting this killer. It could take some time, though.” She turned away and put her attention on her work.
Teagan took this as a dismissal and looked at Drew. “Now what?”
His forehead furrowed. “As much as I would like to watch Kelsey’s process, there’s really no point in hanging out here all day when we have so little time left to bring my op to a conclusion.”
“We’ll need a deputy or agent to babysit the location as the officer of record.” Teagan got out her phone. “I’ll ask Gutierrez to assign someone.”
“And I’ll notify Harris of the discovery.”
She dialed, and he stepped away, pulling out his phone as he moved. He continued to exude that masculine confidence. The power that radiated from his stride. She tried to ignore it. Should ignore it. She knew better than to let it get to her, but it was there in each step as he strode away as if he owned the ground he walked on.
Gutierrez answered on the first ring, and she had to look at the ground to concentrate.
