“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Roderick is asking. “I’m not just talking about the way the body is displayed like this with all the candles and everything. I mean finding her dead back in her bed nearly a year after she was taken.”
I shake my head.
We’re next to the bed, looking down at Magdalene’s little body.
The medical examiner and FDLE are on the way.
We have already taken pictures and video of every inch of the room and the body and have just finished extinguishing the candles.
Magdalene looks as if she hasn’t aged a day, as if we’ve come in here on December 23 of last year and found her like this. Not only this, but there are no signs of violence, no obvious cause of death. It’s as if she’s merely sleeping peacefully in her own bed.
It’s obvious her body has been recently bathed and her hair washed, and the gown she has on is spotless, pristine.
“But . . .” Roderick is saying, “for her to look like this—like she did when she was abducted—she’d have to have been killed back then, ten months ago. How is that possible? How can she look so . . . She looks like she just died. Of course, maybe she did. But if she did, how did she not age in the past year?”
“I’m sure the autopsy will tell us,” I say. “But either way I’m pretty sure it needs to be performed as quickly as possible.”
“Medical examiner should be here in a few.”
“Good.”
“But why?” he asks.
“If I had to guess, I’d say she was killed shortly after the time she was taken.”
Even as I say it I try not to think about whether Taylor has already suffered the same fate.
My first priority is finding Taylor, but with so many people out looking for her and the roadblocks in place, I’ve made the calculation that the best way to do that is to keep investigating Magdalene’s disappearance and death. It could be the total wrong choice. I have no way of knowing. I’m trying to block everything out and just concentrate on the crime scene before me, but I’m finding it extremely difficult.
“The most likely reason is that she’s been frozen since then,” I continue. “I’ve read about cases and seen crime scene and autopsy photographs where the victim had been frozen. That would explain why she appears not to have aged. I could be wrong about any of this. It has been a while since I’ve read about it. But if that’s what has happened, her body will thaw from the outside in, so there might still be frozen areas and ice crystals inside. Since cells are mostly water, when they freeze ice crystals are formed and fracture the cells in a recognizable pattern. Depending on how long her body has been thawing . . . how much of the tissue is still intact and not decayed, the ME should be able to tell if her body has been frozen. And hopefully be able to determine cause of death, but the longer it takes to perform the autopsy the less likely any of that becomes. Especially toxicology.”
He nods and lets out a little whistle. “Wow. If you’re right . . . then she’s been kept in a freezer somewhere for nearly a year.”
I nod.
“So we need to look at freezers,” he says. “Who has a freezer big enough to hold a body and not be seen for almost a year?”
I frown and my eyes sting. “Small body,” I say. “It wouldn’t require a very big freezer, but restaurants have large walk-in freezers that a body could easily be hidden in.”
“The Samuelsons?” he asks.
“I’m not saying it’s them. I’m just trying to answer your question. A lot of these places around here are rentals. Nobody thinks twice about a lock on a cabinet or a closet or a freezer.”
“That’s true. But no matter where the body was stored . . . why take the risk of . . . putting her back in her bed? And why now?”
“The answers to those two questions could very well be the keys to close the case,” I say.
“Any ideas?”
I shake my head. “Not really. But you’re right about it being an enormous risk. Must be a good reason.”
“Wouldn’t be a risk if she was—if her body was already in the house,” he says. “Did it strike you as suspicious that they led us right to her? Christopher can’t help us look anymore . . . so he supposedly sits in the parlor. But that means he was the only one not being watched at the time. He could’ve come back here and lit the candles during that time. Why did they wait to bring us back here until last thing? Why didn’t they tell either one of us about all the rooms having access to the secret passageway? Think about it . . . he sat down on the side of the table where he was looking in the right direction to see her room. We’re in here less than five minutes and he’s yelling he sees light and movement in the room.”
I nod. “I agree. It’s all suspicious. No one else could have taken her out of her room originally or put her back into her room tonight more easily than the two of them. And you’re right about the other things being suspicious. The only thing I’d say is that I don’t think the candles were lit during the time Christopher wasn’t with us. Doesn’t mean he or they didn’t light them, but they had been burning a while. Most of the candles were burned about halfway down, and I’d say they could have been lit before and just relit recently, but the heat that came out of the room makes me think they were lit a lot longer this time.”
He purses his lips and thinks about it. “You’re probably right. But like you say, that doesn’t mean they didn’t do it earlier.”