Little Girl Blue, a Seth and Ava Mystery Read online

  “Ava?” Bob asked. “You’re the tie-breaker.”

  “Until O’Malley gets here,” Ava said from her spot at the kitchen bar. She was sorting through the evidence files to get ready for their case conference.

  A tall woman, Ava was wearing her usual work uniform — jeans and boots. Her tops depended on the season — tank tops, always, under T-shirts or long-sleeved T-shirts. Today, she wore a long sleeved T-shirt the color of cinnamon. Her shoulder length dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a rose gold colored silicone ring on her left hand.

  Like everyone who knew him, Ava called her husband, “O’Malley.”

  “Where is O’Malley?” Fran asked.

  “He’s having physical therapy in the pool,” Maresol said. Her accent was Hispanic influenced, San Juan Valley Colorado. “I hired the woman he hated so much from the last time.”

  Ava’s team shot each other wincing looks. Maresol laughed.

  “He will be fine,” Maresol said. “It’s good for him to be around people who are immune to his charm.”

  No one said anything for a moment. Ava laughed.

  “She does a great job,” Ava said. “You’ll see when he gets here. He’ll be ready to work.”

  “If you say so,” Fran said.

  “I know from personal experience that the woman is a brute,” Bob said.

  “Yes, but you’re back on your feet again, aren’t you?” Maresol asked. “No pain? Full use of your knee without replacement?”

  “True,” Bob said.

  “You would hire her again, wouldn’t you?” Maresol asked.

  “Uh . . .” Bob said.

  Everyone laughed.

  “So, what do you say, Ava?” Nelson picked up right from where they’d left off. “Spiderman or Superman?”

  “Or Wonder Woman?” Leslie asked.

  Maresol shot Ava an ironic look. There was a sharp knock on their front door.

  “I think I should answer the door,” Ava said.

  Ava got up from her seat and went to answer their large, antique wooden front door. She flipped the deadbolt and hefted open the door.

  A familiar-looking woman was standing on the other side of the door. She gave Ava a wide, white-toothed smile. She was wearing a lovely hand-tailored red silk suit and a white silk shirt over her fit body. She had on expensive low-heels. Her tight, curly hair was cut to her head. Her chocolate-colored skin made the red of her suit look even more beautiful. She was holding a designer handbag. Her very presence exuded professional power.

  Ava felt like the woman’s dark eyes were boring into her very soul.

  “Hello?” Ava asked.

  “Let me get a good look at you,” the woman said.

  “Excuse me?” Ava asked.

  The woman laughed.

  “You don’t remember me,” the woman said. “That’s okay. You were pretty young when I saw you last. Did O’Malley tell you to expect me?”

  “If you know Seth, you know that’s life around here,” Ava said. “He likes people to get their own first impression of the people he likes. He must like you a great deal to let you come so unannounced.”

  The woman nodded. Ava thought the woman might be in her late fifties or possibly her early sixties. Not sure what else to do, Ava introduced herself.

  “I’m Ava O’Malley,” she said.

  “Amelie Vivian Alvin,” the woman said, speaking Ava’s birth name. “Nice to meet you, Ms. O’Malley. Again. I’m Dr. Joan Quincy.”

  The woman was the foremost expert on bone remains. Most recently, Dr. Quincy had run the bone lab for the FBI. Ava’s mouth dropped open.

  “I . . . uh . . . I . . .” Ava said.

  The woman continued to give her the broad smile.

  “O’Malley told me that there was a grant to look into rural cold cases in Colorado,” Dr. Quincy said. “He said that you were starting with a case in Kiowa County of particular interest to me.”

  Ava didn’t respond.

  “May I come in?” Dr. Quincy asked.

  “Of course,” Ava said. “Please. I’m just surprised. Excited. Thrilled, really. Would you work with us?”

  Dr. Quincy walked into the house and looked around.

  “You’ve remodeled,” Dr. Quincy said.

  “Maresol moved in,” Ava said.

  “Oh?” Dr. Quincy asked. “That is a surprise.”

  “Problems with her son,” Ava said.

  “Ah, yes. Those boys were always a handful,” Dr. Quincy said. “Children. They break your heart sometimes.”

  Not sure what they were talking about, Ava simply nodded.

  “Is Maresol here?” Dr. Quincy asked.

  Dr. Quincy pointed to the kitchen. Ava had the presence of mind to nod. Dr. Quincy touched Ava’s arm as she passed on her way to the kitchen. Ava heard Maresol fondly greet Dr. Quincy.

  A little stunned, Ava stood at the open door. She shook herself, closed the door, and turned the deadbolt to lock it. She heard Maresol introducing Dr. Quincy to the team and her team fawn over Dr. Quincy. The team greeted Seth as he came in from the back. Ava was on her way to the kitchen when Seth told her team that Dr. Quincy was joining them on a pro bono basis.

  “Yes!” Ava said in a low voice.

  Her first thought upon hearing that Dr. Quincy might work with them had been that there was no way she could pay the woman. Ava looked up to whatever God might be listening.

  “Thank you,” Ava whispered.

  She went into the kitchen to get this project started.

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  Four

  “Okay, what do we know?” Ava asked.

  Intoxicated by coffee and pastries, her team was chatting about nothing. With her words, they turned their attention to her. They were situated at the large formal dining-room table so that they could look at evidence, photos, and computer imagery.

  “Ava, would you like me to go over the old case?” Seth asked.

  “Sure,” Ava said with a smile.

  “Briefly,” Bob said. “We don’t want to take too much of your energy.”

  “Duly noted,” Seth said with a nod and a grin. “I got a call in the middle of the night. It was dumping rain. I was high and more than a little drunk. The file says it was May 17, 1992, but I don’t actually remember the date.”

  “That’s unusual for you,” Leslie said.

  “I was like that a lot then,” Seth said. “Anyway, it was dumping rain. A body had been found in Kiowa County by a Deputy Sheriff, Pete Cabrón, Junior.”

  “That’s the guy who’s the sheriff now?” Leslie asked.

  “He is the current sheriff of Kiowa County,” Seth said with a nod. “Anyway, he’d called the station and they gave him my number. He said that he’d read that Mitch and I were working cases in rural areas. He asked if we could come out.”

  Seth shrugged.

  “The rest is in the file,” Seth said. “It rained the entire time we were out there and for the next couple of days. They weren’t able to find any really useful evidence on the body or around it.”

  “You said something about the Sheriff not wanting Kiowa County to be a dumping ground for Denver psychopaths,” Ava said. “What was that about?”

  “Deputy Cabrón had a witness who said that a black limo pulled up to the lot and two men in tuxes threw the girl’s body out of the vehicle,” Seth said. “The witness thought that he recognized one of the people as being the state legislator for that area.”

  “The state legislator would know about the field,” Ava said.

  “Exactly,” Seth said. “There’s a few hundred miles between Denver and Chivington. Plenty of space to dump a body.”

  “Why dump it there?” Nelson asked.

  “Exactly,” Seth said. “We never figured that out.”

  “What do we know about the victim?” Leslie asked.

  “Not a lot,” Seth said. “She had just turned seventeen. She’d finished high school but had ye
t to graduate. There were people who said that she’d been working as a prostitute for a few years. But we never had any real confirmation of that. She lived with her grandmother. Mother was dead. The grandmother thought her daughter went to school, studied, and came home. She didn’t think she even had a boyfriend. She spoke of her daughter as a serious, quiet student who got straight A’s and wanted to be a doctor.”

  “Did you ever find a boyfriend?” Bob asked.

  “We never found anyone who really knew her,” Seth said. “She seemed to be kind of invisible. People told us what they thought of her, but no one could ever back it up. We looked for a friend or a boyfriend, but . . .”

  Seth shook his head.

  “So, her grandmother might have been right,” Dr. Quincy said.

  “It’s possible,” Seth said. “The post-mortem said that she wasn’t a virgin. So there must have been someone at some point in her life.”

  “Long before the incident that led to her death?” Dr. Quincy asked.

  “Precisely,” Seth said.

  He held up a high school graduation picture of a young girl. Her skin was clear and dark. Her eyes sparkled with intelligence. She had no make-up on except for a trace of lip gloss on her lips. She looked as if she had the entire world before her.

  The room became very still as everyone felt the loss of this bright young woman. Fran cleared her throat.

  “Let’s take a moment to introduce ourselves to Dr. Quincy,” Ava said.

  “I’m Fran DeKay, lab mom, general bossy person — not about work, mind you,” Fran said. “That’s Ava’s job. Just about life, personal stuff. You know, what lab moms are like.”

  “I do.” Dr. Quincy nodded and smiled.

  “I am a lab tech,” Fran said. “If we need more lab techs, we can easily get them. I usually manage the lab techs. Leslie is classified as a lab tech, too, but she floats a little more, and she does a variety of things, not just lab work.”

  “There’s a broader range in pay in lab techs,” Leslie said with a nod.

  Dr. Quincy smiled.

  “As for this case, the official case file was destroyed,” Fran said. “No one is sure why or how that happened or even when.”

  “I have a copy of the file and all of our notes,” Seth said. “I gave it to Bob.”

  Robert “Bob” Parrish held up a thick file.

  “Good. That will help,” Fran said. “O’Malley and Delgado, however, painstakingly created two boxes of physical evidence.”

  “How did that miss the purge?” Dr. Quincy asked.

  “We labeled it differently,” Seth said.

  “Why did you make a copy of the file?” Nelson asked.

  “We made copies of every unsolved case,” Seth said. “While Mitch was still well, the brass would loan us out to other police agencies. We’d take the files in case these other jurisdictions had similar crimes. That was before computers, of course. We caught more than a couple guys that way.”

  “Good idea.” Nelson nodded.

  “It worked,” Seth said.

  “I have been through the boxes of physical evidence. They contained our victim’s clothing, including her underwear,” Fran continued as if she had not been interrupted. “One shoe. They took the time to scrape under her fingernails and toenails. There’s even a vaginal swab. They thought to take some of the dirt around where she was buried. There are also photographs of everything. I won’t know the condition of the physical evidence until I get into it.”

  “Why?” Ava asked.

  “For all the care in taking and preserving the physical evidence, the boxes themselves were stored in a variety of locations and temperatures,” Fran said. She gestured to Seth. “O’Malley says that the evidence room had a fire.”

  Fran nodded.

  “It’s just been a long time for some of these samples,” Fran said. “But if there is something to find, we’ll find it.”

  “Can we exhume the body?” Nelson asked Ava. “Do you want me to start on the paperwork?”

  Ava pointed to Dr. Quincy.

  “Please do,” Dr. Quincy said.

  “Okay,” Nelson said. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Quincy. I’m Dr. Nelson Weeks. I’m an MD. Emergency Medicine. I work on the technical side of things in the lab.”

  “I’ve read your papers on gunshot wounds in victims — both living and dead,” Dr. Quincy said. “Fascinating. And the methods you recommend? I believe they are in use now.”

  “There’s a trial at Denver Health,” Nelson said. “Luckily, they don’t get a ton of victims, but so far, the results have been positive. The protocol extends life and we, in the forensics community, have been able to better identify some of the more perplexing gunshot wounds. After this year, we’re looking at moving the study to New York or Los Angeles, somewhere where there are more gunshot victims.”

  “You’re still involved?” Dr. Quincy asked.

  “I hold a position at Denver Health in conjunction with the University of Colorado Anschutz,” Nelson said. “It’s fairly common here for advanced medical professionals.”

  Embarrassed by the attention, Nelson cleared his throat.

  “I’m looking forward to learning from you,” Nelson said. “I have read your book and have followed your work. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to meet you. I am excited to learn from you while you are here with us.”

  Dr. Quincy nodded.

  “Everyone calls me, ‘Nelson,’” he said. “I grew up in a French-speaking household, so, sometimes, I slip into French.”

  “Good to know,” Dr. Quincy said with a smile.

  “As for this case, I took a look at the satellite images of the scene,” Nelson said. He looked at Ava and then at Seth. “Have you seen them?”

  Ava shook her head. Seth’s attention turned to Nelson.

  “I have it here on my laptop,” Nelson said. “Now, we don’t have great resolution because there isn’t really anything out there.”

  He looked up at the team and saw blank expressions.

  “Google or whoever buys these satellite images from anyone who will sell them, including the military. Since the public pays for the satellites . . .” Nelson took a breath, looked at his audience, and shook his head. “There aren’t any military installations or targets in this area, so the resolution on the satellite imagery is a little blurry. It’s likely that this pattern is more obvious because of the lack of detail.”

  Nelson turned his laptop computer around for everyone to see.

  “What are we looking at?” Seth asked.

  Seth held up a tablet computer. Nelson held out his hand, and Seth slid the tablet across the table to him. Nelson poked around on the tablet and slid it back to him. Seth moved the tablet away from him on the table so that Leslie and Dr. Quincy could lean over to see the computer image while the rest of the team looked at Nelson’s computer.

  For a moment, everyone silently looked at the satellite.

  “What is this, Nelson?” Ava asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Nelson said. “That’s the thing.”

  “What did you want us to see here?” Fran asked.

  “Oh, right,” Nelson said, blushing slightly. “I guess the first question is — what are we looking at here? This is the field where our victim was buried. It’s about a hectare, which is 2.47 acres, a little more, maybe three acres.”

  His finger went around the edges of what looked like a field.

  “This field.” Nelson pointed to the field next to the burial site. “And this field.” He pointed to the field on the other side of the burial site. “They are the same soil, same prairie grass, and yet . . .”

  “Look at that,” Leslie said.

  The field where the body was buried had evenly spaced square or rectangular demarcations in the ground. These demarcations could be seen despite the wild prairie and grass. The empty fields on either side of the burial site had the same vegetation, and the ground was even, with little variation.

  Nelson looked up at
Seth to see him shaking his head.

  “We didn’t see this,” Seth said. “I mean, I’d have to go back to the site to be sure, but . . .”

  “There’s nothing like this on the crime-scene photos,” Fran said.

  “You might not be able to see it from the ground,” Nelson said. “Do you have any idea what this field was used for?”

  “No,” Seth said. “When we were there, it was up for sale. The land was part of an historic estate. The last heir was elderly. They were selling this lot and the others you indicate, as well as most of the land in the area. They needed to pay something like fifty years of back property taxes.”

  Seth looked up at the investigators at the table.

  “We looked into the sale in case it was a motive for the murder,” Seth said, with a shake of his head. “The two events seemed unrelated.”

  “The county owns the property now,” Bob said.

  “Introduce yourself,” Ava said.

  “Hi, I’m Bob Parrish,” he said to Dr. Quincy. “You know me. I have a fascination for blood splatter and other puzzling things.”

  “What I don’t know is why you didn’t retire,” Dr. Quincy said.

  “Ava, mostly,” Bob said. “She spent a few summers in my lab and went through the training. She was such a bright star that, when she was given the chance to set up this lab, I had to help.”

  Bob grinned at Ava.

  “That’s not to mention that I was driving my wife completely nuts by being at home all the time,” Bob said.

  Everyone laughed.

  “To continue,” Bob said, “this property is within the boundaries of the old railway town of Chivington.”

  “Someone named a town after Colonel Chivington?” Ava asked.

  “Apparently,” Bob said.

  He opened his mouth to continue but was interrupted.

  “Who was Colonel Chivington?” Leslie asked.

  Bob nodded to Ava.

  “It’s kind of complicated,” Ava said.

  “What isn’t?” Nelson asked.

  Ava took a breath and launched into a brief synopsis of a particularly ugly part of Colorado history.

  “Territorial Governor John Evans got it in his head that ‘Indians’ were stealing cattle. He took a hard line against the native population here in Colorado. He wound up Colonel Chivington, a Union Colonel, and his cruel team of wackos, and they massacred and mutilated hundreds — no one is sure how many — of Cheyenne and Arapahoe, mostly women and children. Showed their ‘trophies’ — male and female genitalia, scalps — at a theater here in Denver.”