Supreme Justice

Chapter Twelve

Daphne Haggard had grown up in New England. Then she’d moved to Chicago and Wisconsin. She should have been used to the cold, but she hated it. If the temperature had been in the eighties while she was standing in this land of majestic trees with its coat of sparkling white snow, she would have appreciated the forest’s serene beauty. But each time she tried to lose herself in the picture-postcard landscape, a gust of wind would whip through the trees and lacerate her cheeks. If she had half a brain, she told herself, she’d be living in San Diego or Miami.

What was she doing out here supervising the search for more body parts? How likely was it that the search teams would find anything? Daphne hunched her shoulders, pulled her navy blue watch cap more firmly over her ears, and took a long sip of steaming hot coffee from the thermos she clutched in her gloved hands. She should be home in front of a fire instead of freezing her butt off on a fool’s errand. Still, this might be their only chance. The storm that had prevented a search when the thigh had been discovered had lasted several days, but the weather had warmed and a lot of the snow had melted. It was getting cold again, but no more snow was predicted until the weekend, which meant they had a narrow window to blanket the area and pray for a miracle. Once the bad weather came in earnest, the search would have to be suspended for months. Of course, by the time they could resume, a match with a missing person would probably have been made from the DNA taken from the tissue sample that had been forwarded to NamUs and all of this suffering in the cold would have been for nothing.

Daphne was working herself into a deep depression when two Explorer Scouts crashed through the trees.

“We found a leg!” one of the boys shouted.

“It’s on the other side of the stream,” the second boy chimed in.

“Show me,” Daphne said.

The two scouts raced to a place where the stream narrowed, and Daphne hurried to keep up. The water was high because of the runoff from the snow and moving fast. Daphne almost unbalanced on the slick stones that covered the streambed, but she caught herself before she fell into the freezing water. The bank on the other side was a gentle incline, and she made it to the top in time to see the scouts disappear into a copse of birch trees. The limbs were bare, and she kept her eye on the red ski parka one of the scouts was wearing. By the time Daphne entered the forest, the two boys had stopped.

“You’re going to love this,” said Patty Bradford, the county medical examiner, a tall, heavyset woman with dirty blonde hair and lively blue eyes, who was always upbeat despite the gruesome nature of her work. She and Daphne were standing over a stainless steel table on which lay a section of a decomposed leg.

“See this scar?” Bradford asked as she pointed to a strip of scar tissue that started beneath the kneecap and stopped about an inch above the stump. “Someone operated on this person. We X-rayed the leg as soon as we saw the scar, and this is what we found.”

Bradford held up an X-ray for Daphne. She stared hard and noticed a straight dark line.

“That is an orthopedic appliance,” Bradford said. “This person broke his or her leg, and this stainless steel rod was used to stabilize the fracture. When I take it out, we should find a maker’s mark and a serial number. If we’re lucky, the manufacturer will be able to tell you where this rod was shipped, and if we’re luckier, the hospital that received it will be able to identify the patient.”

“How long should the whole thing take?” Daphne asked, excited by the breakthrough but anxious about the speed with which the discovery of the victim’s identity would occur.

“That I can’t tell you. It will depend on how long ago the operation was performed and if all the records exist, but the rod will definitely give you something to work with.”