Her Silent Cry

Fifty-Eight

The Denton City Morgue was located in the basement of Denton Memorial Hospital, windowless and drab with a lingering odor that was half chemical and half biological decay. The walls of the long hallway had originally been white but hadn’t been painted in so long that they were now a dull gray, and the floor tiles had become jaundiced long ago. It was also the quietest place in the hospital—maybe even the city. Usually the silence made Josie’s skin crawl, but given the chaos of the last twenty-four hours, it was a welcome relief. She saw Oaks as soon as she stepped into the exam room, his suit streaked with mud, his face haggard. He stood several feet away from the stainless-steel table which now held the woman Josie had found shot to death in the cave. Dr. Feist leaned over the woman’s face, holding what looked like a driver’s license up next to the woman’s head.

“You okay?” Oaks asked when he saw Josie.

“I’m fine,” Josie said. “What’s going on? You’ve got an ID?”

Oaks nodded. “We found a backpack in a third-floor room in the old mill with a wallet inside of it. We pulled the license. We’re running prints now to see if they match the unknowns from the Jaclyn Underwood scene and Lucy’s room, but we believe it belongs to her. Dr. Feist is making the comparison now. We’ll also take DNA from her body and try to match it from the hair on the pillow found in Jaclyn’s closet.”

“Who is she?” Josie asked.

Dr. Feist walked over and handed Josie the license. “Natalie Oliver. Twenty-four.”

The woman in the driver’s license photo stared back at Josie, a challenging tilt to her chin, brown eyes penetrating. She looked as though she’d been trying to appear tough for her photo, but to Josie she just seemed vulnerable. “She’s from West Seneca, New York,” Josie said. “What’s she doing here?”

Oak said, “We don’t know yet. I’ll have my people do a background check on her now that we’ve got a positive ID.”

Josie handed the ID to Oaks and took out her phone, searching Google Maps for West Seneca, New York. “This is pretty close to Buffalo,” Josie said. “There has to be a connection to Tessa Lendhardt.”

“The field agents in Buffalo haven’t found anything yet,” Oaks said. “There are some Lendhardts but they’re all men.”

“I heard that,” Josie said, hoping that Trinity was getting somewhere with her interviews. “Did Hummel stop by?”

“To swab her hands for gunshot residue?” Dr. Feist asked. “Yeah, they should have those results back any minute.”

Josie looked at Oaks who said, “I think we should have a briefing in one hour. At mobile command. There are a lot of things developing right now.”

“I agree,” Josie said. “But first, I want to talk to Violet Young.”