Dr. Jones leaned in to examine the bone. “No jagged saw marks. That was a very sharp edge.”
Sam nodded. “Something like shears or bolt cutters would be my guess.”
Next to Bree, Matt swore softly.
“We haven’t found any finger bones from the female that were cut. Yet.” Sam put down the finger bones and picked up two halves of a long bone. “We have a femur and several ribs from the female victim that were broken perimortem.”
“So, at or around the time of death,” Bree clarified.
“Correct.” Sam indicated the broken ends. “Clearly, the break had no time to heal, so it didn’t occur antemortem or before death. Postmortem breaks tend to be more splintered because bones dry out and get brittle after death. This break is clean. Anyway, that’s all I can tell you for now.” Sam removed his hat and wiped his forehead before resettling it on his head.
“Thank you for your help,” Bree said.
The two doctors went back to their work. Bree and Matt turned away from the dig.
“This is going to be a complicated case.” Bree led the way toward the trees. The graves unsettled her, and not just because they were in her childhood backyard. There was more to this case than murder—as if murder weren’t bad enough. At least one of these victims had been tortured.
CHAPTER TEN
Matt fell into step beside Bree. He glanced sideways at her face. She was composed as usual, but under her poker face, her skin had paled. Worry lines bracketed her mouth and eyes. She was more upset by the discovery of the remains than she would admit.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“My father lived here until he died in 1993.” Bree’s voice was matter of fact.
“These bones could have been buried any time after 1989,” Matt said. “Unfortunately, I agree that your father is a valid suspect, but we can’t assume he did it. That property has been vacant for almost three decades.”
“At least we have some information to start an investigation.” Bree strode through the woods. They emerged at the barn.
“Do you want me to stay at the scene?” Matt asked.
“No. I’ll leave the deputy on-site. We need to update Todd and make a game plan, and we need that damned warrant for Shawn Castillo’s residence.”
Bree called her chief deputy from the vehicle. After Bree and Matt arrived at the station, the three of them set up in the conference room with laptops and file folders. They ordered lunch, and Matt started two binders that would serve as the murder books. Every interview, report, and piece of evidence relating to the case would be recorded in the binders.
Bree began, “We have two initial suspects: Shawn Castillo and my father, Jake Taggert.”
Todd said, “I obtained Shawn Castillo’s financials. There isn’t much to look at. He has a couple of bank accounts that don’t see much activity. Same with his credit card.”
“He lives rent-free on his brother’s property,” said Bree.
Matt summarized the anthropologist’s findings. “We have two adult victims, one male, one female. Both were between the ages of twenty-five and fifty when they died. They were buried sometime after 1988 but before last year. The female’s name could have been Jennifer, and June 20, 1985 was a significant date for her. The male’s name could be Frank Evans.”
Matt opened his phone. He’d taken a picture of the driver’s license. He read the address and date of birth. Then Bree described the snipped fingers and the downward trajectories of the bullets. She showed Todd a photo of the bracelet she’d snapped at the scene.
“Who cuts off people’s fingers?” Matt asked. “And why?”
“Maybe to keep the bodies from being identified through fingerprints,” Todd suggested.
Matt shook his head. “The fingertips were buried in the grave with him.”
Todd asked, “What about the mob as punishment or an interrogation technique?” He paused, his eyes widening with excitement. “Serial killers.”
Bree opened her laptop. “Let’s focus on identifying the remains for now.”
Todd cleared his throat. “Normally, we also investigate the property owner . . .” His voice trailed off, as if he didn’t know how to complete his thought—but this time it’s the sheriff’s brother.
Matt gave Bree credit. She allowed no awkward silence.
Bree nodded. “You’re right, Todd. Thank you for speaking up. We need to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. Please get a background check on Adam for the file.”
“The property tax records show Adam purchased the land a few years ago at auction.” Todd slid a paper out of a manila file. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did he buy it, considering what happened there?”
“He wanted to preserve the family property.” Bree’s tone said she didn’t like the way Todd was zeroing in on her brother. “Adam has only owned the property a few years. Before that, it was taken by the county for back taxes.”
Todd opened his mouth as if he wanted to ask another question, but then he changed his mind and closed it.
She typed on her computer. “I’ll put out a press release. We will not give any names to the public until the ME officially identifies the victims. We don’t want Frank Evans’s family to be notified via the media. You two can tackle missing persons reports. Focus on missing women named Jennifer and a man named Frank Evans. Start local and work outward.”
Matt and Todd would be spending most of the afternoon researching records and making phone calls.
Bree said, “I’ll show a photo of the bracelet in the press release. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will recognize it. It’ll go out on our social media page as well.”
Bree typed up the press release while Matt started a missing persons query through NamUs. The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System was a nationwide information clearinghouse used to expedite resolution of missing persons cases and identify unclaimed remains. The database was searchable by various filters.
He began with Frank Evans and got a hit immediately. The date of birth was a match to the driver’s license found in the grave. “Frank Evans disappeared from Grey’s Hollow in June 1990, but his online file is incomplete. There isn’t even a photo. The contact is listed as Deputy Simmons from the Randolph County Sheriff’s Department. Simmons died, like, ten years ago.”
“The case is thirty years old. The older cases always have less info.” Bree rubbed her temple. “But there should be a physical case file.”
“I’ll have a deputy dig through the archives in the basement,” Todd volunteered. “The file should be there.”
Matt entered the known data on the female victim. “There are no missing women named Jennifer reported in Randolph County. If I expand that search to all of New York, there are four missing women named Jennifer, all adults, all under age fifty. All four of those women fit our very basic physical description.”
“Any of them look promising?” Bree asked.
Matt lifted a shoulder. “Hard to say. I’m going to expand my search to include surrounding states.”
On the eastern side of New York State, Randolph County was in close proximity to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.