The sun shone bright. It always seemed to be that way on funeral days. Her mind again wanted to go to John, to the closed casket, but again she fought it off. She walked down the street. She stopped at the corner, closed her eyes, and tilted her face toward the sun. Her watch read eleven AM. It was time to meet Sheriff Walker at the medical examiner’s office.
Located on a depressing stretch of Norfolk Street in Newark, the medical examiner’s office handled Essex, Hudson, Passaic, and Somerset counties. Newark had indeed enjoyed some revitalization of late, but that was a few blocks east of here. Then again, what would be the point of putting an ME office in a trendy spot? Sheriff Walker met her on the street. He always looked a little uneasy with his size, slouching his big shoulders. She half expected him to crouch down and speak to her, the way you would to put a small child at ease, and this somehow made him more endearing.
“Been a busy few days for us both, I guess,” Walker said.
The death of Haley McWaid had exonerated Wendy and then some. Vic rehired her and promoted her to the weekend anchor spot. Other news agencies wanted to interview her, to talk about Dan Mercer and how she, the heroic reporter, had brought down not only a pedophile but a killer.
“Where is Investigator Tremont?” she asked.
“Retired.”
“He’s not finishing up the case?”
“What’s there to finish up? Haley McWaid was murdered by Dan Mercer. Mercer is dead. That pretty much ends the case, don’t you think? We will continue to look for Mercer’s body, but I have other cases too—and who wants to try Ed Grayson for stamping out that scumbag anyway?”
“You’re certain Dan Mercer did it?”
Walker frowned. “You’re not?”
“I’m just asking.”
“First off, it’s not my case. It’s Frank Tremont’s. He seems pretty sure. But it’s not totally over. We’re digging into Dan Mercer’s life. We’re looking at any other missing-girl cases. I mean, if it wasn’t for Haley’s phone found in the room, we’d probably have never tied her to Dan. He could have been doing it for years, with many girls. Maybe other missing kids crossed his path, we just don’t know. Still, I’m a county sheriff—and the crimes weren’t even committed in my jurisdiction. The feds are on this.”
They entered the rather pedestrian office of Tara O’Neill, the medical examiner. Wendy was grateful that they were in a room that looked more like a vice principal’s office than anything having to do with human corpses. The two women had met before when Wendy covered local murders. Tara O’Neill was dressed in a sleek black dress—much better than scrubs—but what always surprised her about Tara was that she was shockingly gorgeous, albeit with a Morticia Addams vibe. Tara was tall with long, straight, too-black hair and a pale, calm, luminous face—a look that could be described as sort of ethereal goth.
“Hello, Wendy.”
She reached from behind her desk to shake hands. Her grip was stiff and formal.
“Hi, Tara.”
“I’m not exactly sure why we need to talk privately like this,” Tara said.
“Consider it a favor,” Walker said.
“But, Sheriff, you don’t even have jurisdiction here.”
Walker spread his hands. “Do I really need to go through those channels?”
“No,” Tara said. She sat down and invited them to do likewise. “What can I do for you?”
The chair was wood and designed for anything other than comfort. Tara sat with her back straight and waited, ever the consummate professional with a bedside manner that clearly worked best on the dead. The room could use a paint job, but as the old joke goes, Tara’s patients never complained.
“Like I said on the phone,” Walker said. “We want to hear all you have on Haley McWaid.”
“Of course.” Tara looked at Wendy. “Should we start with the identification process?”
“That would be great,” Wendy said.
“First off, there is no doubt that the body found in Ringwood State Park belonged to the missing girl Haley McWaid. There was serious decay, but the skeleton was intact, as was the hair. In short, she looked very much like herself but with the skin gone. Would you like to see a photograph of the remains?”
Wendy flicked a glance at Walker. Walker looked like he might be sick.
“Yes,” Wendy said.
Tara slid the photographs across her desk as if they were dinner menus. Wendy braced herself. She did not have a strong stomach when it came to gore. Even R-rated movies made her queasy. She risked one quick glance and turned away, but even in that second, horrible as it was, she could still see Haley McWaid’s features in the horror of decay.
“Both parents, Ted and Marcia McWaid, insisted on seeing their daughter’s body,” O’Neill continued in a perfect monotone. “They both recognized their daughter and gave us positive identifications. We took it several steps further. The height and size of the skeleton matched. Haley McWaid had broken her hand when she was twelve—the metacarpal bone below what we commonly call the ring finger. The injury had healed but we could still see signs of it on an X-ray. And of course, we ran a DNA test from a sample provided by her sister, Patricia. The match was made. In short, there is no doubt about identification.”
“How about a cause of death?”
Tara O’Neill folded her hands and put them on her desk. “Undetermined at this juncture.”
“When do you think you’ll know?”
Tara O’Neill reached across the desk and took back the photographs. “In truth,” she said, “probably never.”
She carefully slid the pictures back into the folder, closed it, put it to her right.
“Wait, you don’t think that you’ll ever determine a cause of death?”
“That’s correct.”
“Isn’t that unusual?”
Tara O’Neill finally smiled. It was radiant and sobering at the same time. “Not really, no. Our society unfortunately is being raised on television shows where a medical examiner can work miracles. They look through a microscope and find all the answers. Sadly, that’s not reality. For example, let’s ask the question, was Haley McWaid shot? First—and this comes more from the crime scene technicians—no bullets were found at the scene. No bullets were found in the body either. I also ran X-rays and visuals to see if there were any unusual nicks or marks on the bones that might indicate a bullet wound. There were none. If that isn’t complicated enough, I still can’t definitely rule out a shooting. The bullet might not have struck bone. Since most of the body had decomposed, we wouldn’t necessarily see any sign if it just passed through tissue. So the most I can say is that there is no evidence of a shooting and that a shooting is unlikely. Are you following me?”