Page 32 of The Family Cross

The burned body lay in charred weeds and bushes between the lip of the ravine and the gravel parking lot of a tool-rental place. On one side was the Avid Eyeball, a strip club, and on the other was a vape store.

“Who found the body?” Sampson asked.

“The late-night manager at the Avid Eyeball,” Rowland said. “She says she exited the back door and was about to lock it when she saw flames and then the body and called 911.”

“When was that?”

“Call came in to dispatch at three forty-four.”

“Where is the manager now?”

“Home,” Rowland said. “Sleeping. I have all her contacts and a picture of her ID.”

“There have to be security cameras on all these places,” I said to Sampson as we greeted Lillian Danville, an excellent criminalist, who was examining the victim.

We put on nitrile gloves and bent down closer to the body.

“What can you tell us so far?” I asked.

“Victim is female and young,” Danville said. “I’m guessing mid-teens?”

A teenager? I couldn’t help thinking of my own kids. I bowed my head and said a quick prayer for the victim.

Whatever accelerant was used, it had not fully done its job. Though her body was fireplace-black from her lower neck to her toes, the skin on her face was bubbled, more purple than red, and crisscrossed with livid fissures from the heat. Single tufts of shriveled, stubby blond hair jutted out from her head. The scalp beneath those tufts was blistered and beet red but not charred the way the skin on the body in the Audi had been.

Her mouth was wide open, her lips and mouth singed black.

“She had to have been alive when she was set on fire. Her tongue and the roof of her mouth are charred,” Danville told us.

“She breathed it in.” I shivered, hating the idea.

“So she wasn’t shot,” said Sampson.

“She was,” the criminologist said. She crouched down and gestured to a tuft on the right side of the victim’s head, about three inches above her ear. Danville moved the hair aside with a tongue depressor and showed us the wound.

“Maybe she was shot after she started burning,” Sampson suggested. “Could have been to put her out of her misery.”

“Somehow I don’t think our perp is big on acts of mercy, John,” I muttered.

“Detectives?”

I looked up to see Officer Gayle Rowland approaching.

“Found a handbag over there in the bushes,” she said, gesturing behind her. “Looks too fancy for the folks living in the ravine.”

“I’ll go look,” I said. The officer brought me over to a scrubby bush. I spotted the black and red bag, photographed the purse with my phone from several angles, then pulled it out.

“Fairly heavy.” I opened it and saw a cell phone, three lipsticks, three condoms, a billfold containing a wad of hundred-dollar bills, and an Ohio driver’s license belonging to Corey McGovern. The photo showed a bright-eyed young woman with dirty-blond hair.

“Twenty-two?” I said, looking at the dates on the license and then at the picture. “And the ID was issued two months ago? Nah, this is a fake. I guarantee it. She’s no more than fifteen.”

Officer Rowland peered at the ID and nodded. “Unless she’s like one of those actresses in their twenties who look young enough to play high-school students.”

I studied the photo, feeling haunted all of a sudden and not knowing why.

“You all right, Detective Cross?” Rowland asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like I’ve seen Miss Corey McGovern somewhere before, but for the life of me, I can’t place her.”