CHAPTER ONE - Washed Up
October 13, 2005. The woods outside NYC. 08:03 am.
Mac Taylor yawned, covering his mouth with one hand, while he carefully made his way down the muddy slope. It had been raining all through the past five days, and the ground was slippery and damp. He felt the drenched soil giving way under his feet, soaking his shoes, and had to set each step with care, lest he fall down and cover the remaining distance flat on his back. He could imagine much more dignified ways of arriving at a crime scene.
Aiden Burn and Danny Messer were already waiting for him. Mac couldn't help wondering how on earth they'd gotten here so fast. Probably Danny had given Aiden a ride; the detective was notorious for his fast driving.
"What have we here?" he asked when he'd safely arrived at the side of his colleagues.
"Rainy weather had something in store for us," Danny replied. "A hunter who passed this way saw something protruding from the ground, and when he took a closer look, this turned out to be a hand. He started to dig, and when he realized that it was an entire body that had been washed up by the rain, he called the cops."
Mac frowned. "Did he do much damage to the scene?"
Aiden wrinkled her nose. "Depends," she said. "There wasn't much left to damage, after all. The rain turned everything upside down, and moreover, I'd say this guy has been dead and buried for years. We'll have to identify him via his dental records."
Mac went into a crouch beside Danny and looked at the body for the first time.
Time, rain and soil had not been gentle to the man; in fact, all that Mac could safely determine was that the body indeed was that of a man. Decomposition had destroyed most of the tissue, and a few rags of indeterminable color and material were all that was left of his clothes. The reek was overwhelming, but Mac remained unfazed. After so many years spent in crime labs and autopsy rooms it took more than a corpse in an advanced stage of decomposition to unsettle him.
He slipped on rubber gloves and carefully examined the body, watching out for any recognizable indicators as to how the man had died. Clearly it hadn't been death from natural causes; the body would hardly have ended up buried in the woods outside New York City if that had been the case.
"He's broken a lot of bones," Aiden remarked.
Mac had already noticed that. Both calves, the left femural bone, pelvis and two ribs were practically shattered. Three teeth were missing, leaving dark gaps in the otherwise flawless set of teeth, and Mac was pretty sure that the spinal cord was damaged as well. The left ulna seemed injured in several places, too, and so did the wrist.
"Someone made sure this man would never stand up again," Mac said darkly.
"Do you think he's been beaten to death?" Danny asked.
Mac pondered for a moment. "Either that, or he was hit by a car."
"A hit-and-run?"
"Rather a hit-and-gotten-rid-of," Aiden said, her voice flat with anger. "We'll know more after the autopsy."
xxx
04:13 pm.
"Our John Doe was indeed run over by a car," Mac reported to Aiden and Danny. "Hawkes found some red splinters clinging to the remains of his pants. And thanks to the combined forces of the GC/MS and the national database, we could identify the paint. It's a special type called Velocity, and it's used exclusively for Corvette and Chevrolet. The rest was easy. We could reconstruct the height and scope of the car's bumper from the broken bones, and the computer told us that the measures matched those of a Corvette built after '97."
"How long has he been in the ground?" Danny asked.
"That's impossible to determine now," Mac said. "But Hawkes estimates that it's been longer than three years."
"So he must have died some time between '97 and 2002," Aiden summed up. "Great. Let's just hope his dental records tell us who he is."
Mac remained silent, quite obviously lost in thought. Then he straightened, just as obviously having made a resolution.
"Don't take offense, you two," he said, "but I'd suggest you go check with the Missing Persons Department of the FBI. They have other means; they'll probably be faster than we. If the man was called in missing, all it will take them is a mouseclick. Get the X-rays of John Doe's teeth to the FBI. Ask for Jack Malone."
Danny and Aiden exchanged a look. "Don't you trust us anymore, Mac, or are you out of your brilliant mind?" Aiden asked bluntly. "You've never before consulted the FBI at such an early stage. At least not voluntarily."
Mac stubbornly set his jaw. "The faster we find out who he is, the better our chances to find out who did that," he said. "I wanna catch that bastard!"