“Breaks my heart,” said Dr. Harper. She cleared her throat and touched the screen. “If you look here at the film I took, there is a whiter mark on this tooth. It’s a composite filling—a white filling—on her six-year molar.” Her cursor dragged the film next to one of Alison Hartlage’s films. “This film from Alison’s dentist has the exact same-shaped filling.”
Mercy held her breath. “Is that the only thing that matches?”
“No. There are two other composite fillings that match.” The dentist touched the screen again, pointing out the similarities. “And even if there weren’t any fillings, the shape of her first molars is distinctive. It’s clear to me that this is positively Alison Hartlage.”
“Even though he broke her front teeth?”
“Oh yes. In a child this age, the front teeth change the fastest anyway . . . the kids are constantly losing baby teeth, and the adult teeth are growing in. She wouldn’t have lost her deciduous molars for a few more years. Right here, you can see the adult premolars below the baby teeth. They wouldn’t have grown in until she was much older.”
“Can you tell how old she was?”
“Kids lose and grow teeth at different rates. Looking at the films, I can make an educated guess of her age.” Lacey smiled. “But her dentist gave me her date of birth. She’s six and a half.”
A sense of finality washed over Mercy. This was Alison. No question.
“What about her sister?” Mercy asked.
“Amy.” Dr. Harper brought up more films on her screen. “I’m also positive one of the other female skulls is Amy. She was fifteen.”
“Two people identified.” The accomplishment tasted sour in Mercy’s mouth.
“No doubt two of the others will turn out to be her parents,” said Dr. Harper.
“I’m not assuming anything,” said Mercy. “A neighbor said the brother-in-law who was living with them wasn’t Asian. So—”
“So either the brother-in-law or the father could still be alive.” Dr. Harper’s eyes opened wide.
“Maybe his skull washed down the bank.”
“I know they searched the area for a long time. They’ve brought in some more bones,” said Dr. Harper, “but I don’t know if they’re done. You know there was a creek way down the slope, right?”
“I heard that. I wonder if some bones made it that far. Is Dr. Peres around?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Did she find evidence that there were more than five skeletons?”
“Like more than ten femurs?”
“Exactly.”
“My understanding is that she’s annoyed so many bones are missing. She hasn’t mentioned finding too many.”
“A lot of bones could have been completely washed away.” Mercy sighed. “That would include skulls.”
“Very true.”
“It’s also possible none of those skulls are the parents of Alison and Amy.”
Dr. Harper nodded with sympathy. “Until I have dental X-rays to compare them to, we won’t know.”
“Hopefully one of your calls to a dentist will yield some results. It’s late, so I assume you won’t hear anything more until tomorrow. Are you sure you called all of them?”
“I called every one within thirty miles of Bend. It’s possible they traveled farther than that for dental care, but it’s not typical. Especially since their kids went to one in town.” She frowned. “I will say that the Asian skull has had some horrible dental work. He had two amalgam fillings done, and they have huge overhangs and decay underneath them.”
“What does that mean?”
“Someone didn’t know what they were doing . . . or they didn’t care if they did a decent job. He also has several teeth that should have been repaired. I imagine they were giving him serious pain.”
“Then it’s possible he avoided the dentist for several years. I’ll have to concentrate on another way to identify his remains.”
“Do you really think these are related to those cases from twenty years ago?”
Mercy made herself look at the destruction on the skulls. “We have to consider it. I’ve never seen abuse like this outside of those other two cases, and all of them happened in the same county.”
“But the bodies were left in their homes twenty years ago. These were moved.”
It was a primary difference between the old cases and new.
“Maybe the parents weren’t killed.” Dr. Harper’s sad gaze met Mercy’s, and she knew exactly what the odontologist was thinking. It was a possibility she couldn’t ignore.
Who would do that to their children?
TWELVE
The next morning Mercy yawned at her desk for the tenth time.
She’d slept poorly, unable to get the small skull and broken teeth out of her mind. She’d woken up too early and paced in her home. The cat had curled up with Kaylie in the teen’s bed, and Mercy hadn’t held back her smile as she watched them both sleep. The cat was affectionate and had immediately attached herself to Kaylie. The thought of the sweet animal shivering alone during the winter made Mercy want to cry.
I hope no one claims her.
She checked the time. Her phone call with Grady Baldwin was in one minute. She cleared some papers off her office desk and mentally ran through the questions she wanted to ask the convicted mass murderer.
Her desk phone rang. She answered, identified herself, and was soon connected with Baldwin.
“What does the FBI want with me?” Baldwin bluntly asked without exchanging pleasantries. He sounded as if he’d smoked cigarettes for the last twenty years in prison.
Mercy eyed the old mug shot of Baldwin on her screen and wondered what he looked like now. In the mug shot, the tendons stood out on his thick neck, and his glower made her shudder. He looked as if he had spent a decade lifting weights. Or was the muscular build from his physical work? Grady was now in his fifties, and she pictured him with softening jowls and graying hair.
“I have questions about the Verbeek and Deverell murders.”
“Doesn’t everybody? I’ll tell you the same thing I tell everyone else. I got nothin’ to say because I wasn’t there.”
Mercy had expected the statement. “You’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Who do you think did it?”
“Do you have a suspect?” A faint glimmer of hope was in his tone.
“No.”
“Then why the fuck are you talking to me?”
She and Jeff had discussed whether or not to tell Baldwin about the new victims. The discovery of the skeletal remains had already made the news, but the empty Hartlage house and the identification of the Hartlage children had not. They’d agreed to only tell Baldwin the information that was already public.
“Is this about those remains found on March Mountain?” he asked.
How did he instantly connect that case to my phone call?
“You heard about that?”
“I’m popular recently. A reporter tried to schedule a visit with me yesterday. I turned him down, but I looked up what he’d published recently.”
“Who was the reporter?” asked Mercy through her teeth.
“Something Winslow.”
Chuck Winslow. How did he connect the dots to Grady Baldwin?
Probably the same way she had. Her memory had recalled a common factor between the cases. No doubt Chuck had talked to a local who also remembered.
“The remains have raised some questions,” Mercy admitted. “There’s a few similarities between the new case and the two old ones. Enough to make us take a second look at the old murders.”
“Probably because whoever murdered the Verbeeks and Deverells is still walking around. Drinking beer. Going fishing. All the shit I used to do.”
The bitterness in his tone struck Mercy deep inside. So many freedoms were taken for granted. Until they were taken away.
“Take a look at the Verbeek girl,” Baldwin suggested. “I think she’s hiding something.”
“Britta? She was unconscious.”
“So she says,” he snapped.
“She was a child.”
“She had eyes, didn’t she? She’s still scared of something.”
Mercy gripped her phone, Britta’s description of the anxiety she lived with echoing in her head. She was scarred for life. “What do you mean, she’s still scared? How would you know?”
Baldwin was silent.
Suspicion filled Mercy. “Mr. Baldwin, do you know where Britta is now?”
“I know she’s moved back.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have a little bird on the outside.”
Mercy briefly closed her eyes. “Why would you bother keeping tabs on Britta Verbeek?”
“She goes by the last name of Vale now. I’ve got nothing better to do with my time. I’ve always thought that girl knew something. Her behavior tells me she’s nervous.”
“You have someone following her?”
“Nah, nothing like that. My brother Don keeps tabs on her movements through the internet.” His tone turned coy. “She’s moved around a lot, hasn’t she?”
Mercy was stunned into silence. Does Britta know he’s watching her?
Maybe she has a reason to feel paranoid.
She moved Don Baldwin’s interview up her to-do list.
“Mr. Baldwin,” she finally said, “are you saying you’ve been watching her for over twenty years? Don’t you think that’s a bit . . . abnormal?”
“If there was one thing that might lead to your release from prison, wouldn’t you keep tabs on it?” he said angrily.
“But twenty years—”
“It feels like seventy to me. I don’t belong in here, and I have the right to keep my eyes and ears open. We’re not doing anything illegal.”
“Have you contacted her?”