Here’s the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
—Shakespeare, Macbeth
The next day, the Burning Man investigation broke wide open.
By eight o’clock, Cat had her answer. Jane Doe was no longer Jane Doe but Melanie Garrett, a seventeen-year-old runaway from Flagstaff, Arizona. Even on the swollen corpse, the girl’s parents recognized the star-shaped freckles on their daughter’s chest.
Cat flew them in from Arizona. She figured word would get around soon enough who they were, and she wanted to spare them the agony that additional media attention would bring. “Bring them in quietly,” she told McGregor. “I don’t want them rattled by the press first.”
“Will do.” McGregor seemed rejuvenated, as if the new leads were like fresh blood pumping through his veins. Even Craig Gray’s tagging along couldn’t bring him down.
Before long, Melanie Garrett’s parents were at FBI command headquarters in Irvine. McGregor escorted the man and woman, both in their late forties, inside.
“Glad to meet you, Mrs., uh, I mean Dr. Powers,” the man said, pumping her hand aggressively.
“There is no need for that,” Cat reassured him. “You can call me Cat; everyone else around here does.” Melanie Garrett’s father seemed genuinely awed by the scene. To Cat’s right, a team of detectives worked the phones—calls coming in from all over, from people who thought their friend, neighbor, relative could be the Burning Man. In another room, to Cat’s left, an expert team was poring over the crime scene photos. On the first two cases, the team had to work from photos. Exhumations of both bodies at this point would cause far more problems than it was worth, angering both girls’ families and possibly alienating the media support they had.
Cat simply didn’t have any proof thus far that the first two girls had been poisoned. Although she suspected it.
Lidocaine administered in lethal doses, over time, could easily have been missed by medical examiner Dr. Conrad James. Administered via IV, given the brutal nature of the killings, there was every indication that the needle pricks could have been missed. And the girls would have gone quietly to sleep, only to wake to the sound and smell of acid eating their own flesh.
There was no doubt these killings were bizarre. But they pointed to something other than poisoning. Given the situation, Cat may well have missed the finding herself. But she had suspicions.
Mrs. Garrett was teary eyed, red faced. “Thank you for finding our little girl. Melanie’s been gone awhile. I never thought I’d find her. Then sometimes I knew we would, but I never thought it would be like this.” She wept openly.
“I know it’s hard, Mrs. Garrett.” Cat took her hand, squeezing it. “It’s always difficult at a time like this. But even in death, Melanie is a brave girl. She is showing us things we would not have known. She is a guide to her killer, a roadmap…”
“I hope you find the sonofabitch and he fries,” Mr. Garrett said, his anger pouring out.
“If we catch him, you can be damn sure he will,” Cat reassured him with her eyes as much as her words, then turned her attention back to his wife. “Melanie’s showed us how brave she can be.” She squeezed the woman’s hand again. “Now, I need something from both of you. I need for you to be strong for Melanie, for me.” Cat implored them with her eyes, and they understood.
“I’ll take you then.” Cat led them down to the morgue where Melanie Garrett waited to say goodbye to her parents. McGregor followed just in case the sight was too much for either of them. “Melanie did not die a pretty death.” It was a stupid thing to say, but Cat couldn’t think of anything else more appropriate as she led them down a dark cold hallway. Entering a brightly lit room, she walked to a row of stainless steel doors, each door holding death’s minion. The Garretts knew what they were going to see. McGregor positioned himself behind the couple, square in between them, in case either should fall.
Cat opened the vault and pulled the stainless-steel slab out.
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” Carlton Garrett said. He started to swoon but then locked his knees and held himself firm. For Mrs. Garrett, the horror was far less perceptible. She simply stood. After a few minutes, the Garretts moved closer to their daughter’s body. Mrs. Garrett touched her girl’s hair tenderly, as if she were still alive. “My baby,” she muttered over and over.
Melanie’s dad took a closer look at the sternum. “It’s her,” he said, walking away in disgust. He couldn’t bear the sight any longer.
“Dammit, can’t they give us more?” McGregor cried, a vein popping out of his forehead.
“They haven’t seen her in over nine months. She’s a runaway. Don’t you get it,” Gray said angrily. “They don’t know where she’s been and they don’t know who with.”
McGregor whirled on his heels, crushing a cigarette into the floor. “They must know something! Sonofabitch, how come he gets away so clean?”
“He’s smart and cunning. Stays far away from anyone who can possibly ID him. To those he knows he appears normal. And if you see the other side of him…”
“What?” McGregor shouted.
“Then you’re already dead.”
“Christ. They got to know something. Maybe there’s something they overlooked. A doctor, pastor maybe, that took a special liking to the girl.”
Gray shoved McGregor into a chair. “What the hell are you talking about?” He tried to remain calm, although he was getting steamed.
“There’s got to be some aspect we’re missing. A boyfriend, something…”
“Get it through your thick skull. This is another random killing. Random victim number three,” Gray shouted.
McGregor was in Gray’s face suddenly. “She’s not number three, she’s their kid.” He looked at the Garretts, visible through glass in another room. “She’s not a toe tag number, not a Jane Doe, not a runaway. She’s Melanie Garrett, seventeen years old, senior at Grover High School, home of the Indians…” McGregor felt hot tears on his cheeks. “Someone from her community. A man, maybe took a liking to her…” He realized how pathetic he sounded but would not back down.
Gray was suddenly angrier. “So what’s the angle you want me to take? You want me to sit her parents down and interrogate them? And what should I ask? Was your daughter a whore? Was she a slut? Did she screw around with older men in town? She doing drugs? Maybe a little prostitution on the side? Is that what you want me to ask them?”
“I do.”
“Think about it, make real sure. What else should I ask them? Any incest in the household? Dad, you ever get your rocks off watching Melanie undress?” Gray spoke from years of experience investigating these types of crime. He knew runaways were abused, usually in more ways than one. “You want me to ask, ‘Mom, you been negligent all these years pretending nothing was going on?’” He looked across the room. “What do you want me to ask them, McGregor?”
McGregor’s head was in his hands.
“You want me to ask Pop if he ever screwed her? You want me to get details? How many times? You sodomize her too?”
McGregor exploded off the chair, fists swinging.
“Shut up, Gray. Shut up.” Words came through tears.
Gray grabbed the bull of a man and held him for a second. McGregor pulled away.
“Don’t ask them nothin’, man. Just let it go.”
Arrangements were made for Melanie Garrett to receive a decent burial that day. Her corpse had been out of the water now for three days. Her family wanted to put the whole thing behind them as soon as possible. Take time to rebuild their lives. Move on with things. Cat knew in her soul that they never would.
No family ever “recovered” from something like this.