Draper rose to his feet, looking older and wearier than he had just half an hour earlier, when they’d first walked in. Even when the grief is not your own, merely being in its vicinity can drain the soul, and Draper had probably seen many lifetimes’ worth of it. “Let me walk you out.”
“May we view the remains?” asked Gabriel.
Draper frowned at him. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“But I think it needs to be done.”
Jane almost hoped that Draper would refuse, would spare her from the ordeal. She knew what Maura had looked like alive; once she viewed what Maura had become, there’d be no erasing that image, no turning back the clock on the horror. Looking at her husband, she wondered how he could stay so calm.
“Let me show you the X-rays,” said Draper. “Maybe that will be enough to convince you of my findings.”
Gabriel said to Brophy: “It’s better if you wait here.”
Daniel nodded and remained where he was, his head bowed, alone with his grief.
As Jane and Gabriel followed Draper to the elevator, she felt dread bubbling like acid in her stomach. I don’t want to see this, she thought. I don’t need to see this. But Gabriel kept striding ahead purposefully, and she was too proud not to follow him. When they stepped into the morgue, she was relieved to see that the autopsy table was empty, the cadavers safely stored out of sight.
Draper shuffled through a bundle of X-rays and clipped several films onto the viewing box. He flipped a switch, and skeletal images appeared against the glow.
“As you can see, there’s ample evidence of trauma,” said Draper. “Fractures of the skull, multiple ribs. Impaction of the left femur into the hip joint. Because of the fire, the limbs have contracted into a pugilistic posture.” His voice assumed the matter-of-fact drone of a professional conveying data to colleagues. As if, by the act of entering this room and seeing the cool gleam of stainless steel, he had stepped into the uniform of a coroner. “I e-mailed these images to our forensic pathologist in Colorado. He concluded that this is a female between thirty and forty-five. Her estimated height is five foot five or five foot six. And judging by the sacroiliac joint, she was nulliparous. She never gave birth.” He paused and looked at Jane. “Would that describe your friend?”
Numbly, Jane nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.
“And she’s had very good dental care. There’s a crown here on the lower right molar. Several fillings.” Again, he looked at Jane, as though she was the one with all the answers.
Jane stared at the jaw glowing on the light box. How would I know? She hadn’t studied Maura’s mouth, hadn’t counted her crowns and fillings. Maura was her colleague and her friend. Not a collection of teeth and bones.
“I’m sorry,” said Draper. “That was probably too much information for you to deal with. I just wanted you to feel confident about the identification.”
“Then there won’t be an autopsy,” said Jane softly.
Draper shook his head. “There’s no reason for one. The pathologist in Colorado is satisfied with the ID. We have her luggage tag, and the X-rays match a woman of her age and height. These injuries are consistent with what you’d find in an unrestrained passenger subjected to high-speed deceleration.”
It took a few seconds for Jane to register what he’d said. She blinked away tears and the X-ray hanging on the light box suddenly came back into focus. “An unrestrained passenger?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Are you saying she wasn’t wearing a seat belt?”
“That’s correct. None of the deceased was wearing a seat belt.”
“That can’t be right. Maura would never forget to buckle her seat belt. That’s the kind of person she was.”
“I’m afraid this time, she neglected to do so. At any rate, wearing a seat belt probably wouldn’t have saved her. Not in an accident this traumatic.”
“That’s not the point. The point is, something’s wrong here,” said Jane. “It’s completely out of character for her.”
Draper sighed and flipped off the viewing light. “Detective, I know it must be hard to accept the death of a close friend. Whether she was belted in or not, it doesn’t change the fact that she is dead.”
“But how did it happen? Why?”
“Does it really make a difference?” Draper said quietly.
“Yes.” Again, she felt tears prickle her eyes. “It doesn’t make sense to me. I need to understand.”
“Jane,” said Gabriel. “It may never make sense. We’ll just have to accept it.” Gently he took her arm. “I think we’ve seen enough. Let’s go back to the hotel.”
“Not yet.” She pulled away from him. “There’s something else I need to see.”
“If you insist on viewing the remains,” said Draper, “I can show them to you. But you won’t be able to recognize anything. There’s not much except charred flesh and bone.” He paused and said softly: “Trust me. You’re better off not seeing her. Just take her home.”
“He’s right,” said Gabriel. “We don’t need to look at the body.”
“Not the body.” She took a breath and straightened. “I want to see the crash site. I want to see where it happened.”
21
A LIGHT SNOW WAS FALLING THE NEXT MORNING WHEN GABRIEL and Jane stepped out of their car and walked to the edge of the road. There they stood in silence, staring down into the ravine where the burned hulk of the Suburban was still lodged. A path of trampled snow marked the winding trail that the recovery team had hiked down the day before to retrieve the bodies. It would have been an exhausting climb back up to the road, carrying the stretchers up switchbacks, boots sliding on icy rocks.
“I want to get closer,” she said, starting down the trail.
“There’s nothing down there to look at.”
“I owe it to her. I need to see where she died.” She kept walking, her gaze focused on the slippery path. Beneath the fresh dusting of powder, the snow was icy and treacherous, and she had to move slowly. Her thighs soon ached from the steep descent, and melting snowflakes, mingled with her sweat, trickled down her cheeks. She began to spot debris from the crash, scattered down the slope: a fragment of twisted metal, a lone tennis shoe, a scrap of blue cloth, all of it starting to vanish now beneath fresh powder. By the time she finally reached the blackened vehicle, it was covered by a light coating of snow. The scent of fire still hung in that cold and pristine air, and she could see the scars left by the fire: the charred bushes and the scorched pine branches. She thought of the Suburban’s terrifying trajectory as it plummeted off the cliff. Imagined the shrieks as the last split seconds of life flashed before Maura’s eyes.
She halted, releasing a shaken breath as she watched falling snow slowly erase the ugly evidence of death. Footsteps crunched closer, and Gabriel came to a stop beside her.
“It’s so hard to believe,” Jane said. “You wake up in the morning, thinking it’ll just be another day. You get in a car with some friends. And suddenly it’s over. Everything you knew and thought and felt, in an instant, it’s all gone.”
He drew her close beside him. “That’s why we have to enjoy every minute.”
She brushed snow off the vehicle, revealing a streak of blackened metal. “You never know, do you? Which little decision will end up changing your life. If she hadn’t come to this conference, she wouldn’t have met Doug Comley. She wouldn’t have climbed into his truck.” Abruptly she lifted her hand from the Suburban, as though the touch of it burned her. Staring at the ruined truck, she imagined the last days in Maura’s life. They now knew it was Comley whom they’d seen with Maura on the surveillance tape. They’d viewed his photograph on the staff physician website of the San Diego hospital where he’d worked as a pathologist. Forty-two years old, a divorced single father, he’d been an attendee at the same medical conference. Attractive man spots equally attractive woman, and nature takes its course. Dinner, conversation, all sorts of possibilities swirling in their heads. Any woman would be tempted, even a woman as levelheaded as Maura. What kind of future, after all, could Daniel Brophy promise her, except a lifetime of furtive meetings and disappointments and regrets? If Daniel had given her what she needed, Maura wouldn’t have strayed. She wouldn’t have joined Douglas Comley on his doomed excursion.