11th hour

Chapter 12

I found my best friend, chief medical examiner Dr. Claire Washburn, inside the tent wearing a size 16 bunny suit and booties, what she called a full-body condom with a zipper.

She greeted me, said, “Fine mess we have here, girlfriend. No, don’t hug me. And don’t touch anything. We’re trying to hermetically seal whatever kind of crime scene this freaking obscenity is.”

She kissed the air next to my cheek, then stepped aside so I could see her worktable.

Four heads were lined up, three of them as clean as the proverbial whistle, and as the head numbered 104.

The fourth skull showed some traces of scalp.

“The hounds just got another hit,” Claire told me. “Another skull. Of the six I’ve examined so far, all were severed with a ripsaw.”

The tent flap opened and Charlie Clapper came inside. Man, I was glad to see the chief of the Crime Scene Unit. Clapper is a former homicide cop, my friend, and SFPD’s own Gil Grissom. He was as dapper as anyone could possibly be in a bunny suit, and I could see comb marks in his hair.

Clapper was carrying a heavy brown paper bag that he handed to Claire, and he held a small glassine bag in his gloved fist.

“Hey, Lindsay. I hear Brady tossed you this hot potato.”

“I self-tossed it. It’s either work the case or lie awake wishing I were working it.”

“I feel the same way. Don’t try to take this once-in-a-lifetime mind-bender away from me. It’s mine. Hey, I’ve got something here for us to ponder.”

“Hit me with it.”

“I found blood in one of the holes, made me think that was our fresh Jane Doe’s grave. If I’m right, this necklace was probably hers.”

He held the baggie up to the light.

“A trinket,” he said. “A necklace. But no neck to hang it on.”

The necklace was made of glass beads on a waxed string with a cheap metal clasp, the kind of costume jewelry commonly found at street fairs. What made this one special was that Jane Doe had handled it. There was a slim chance we might be able to lift her fingerprints from the beads.

Maybe her killer had left DNA on them too.

Charlie Clapper was saying, “I found other doodads. This one,” he said, holding up a baggie. “It’s a pendant. Could be an amethyst set in a gold bezel. The rest of the artifacts have been moldering in the ground too long for me to say what they are or to get anything off them.

“But they are trophies, wouldn’t you say?”

A lightbulb went on in my mind. I was finally getting the picture.

“What if the heads are the trophies?” I said to Clapper. “I think this place is a trophy garden.”