Spider's Web Read Free Page B

“Unfortunately, I couldn’t recover any fingerprints. I did find a root canal which seems to be quite old. Probably from childhood. If we do have a suspicion for a match, we can check against dental records.”
    Jacob and Mitchell both nodded. This was helpful, though they had hoped for more.
    “Anything else?” Mitchell asked.
    “I think she was abused as a child,” Annie said.
    “What makes you say that?” Jacob asked.
    “See here?” Annie said, and walked toward one of the walls where some X-ray images hung. “Two old fractures on the third left rib, and one additional fracture on the fourth. Her left hand was broken twice, and there were several fractures in the fingers as well.”
    “Maybe she was involved in some sort of accident,” Mitchell suggested.
    Annie shook her head. “The fractures occurred at different times. No, this was a case of someone who for some reason got her bones broken over and over. I see this sometimes with people who do extreme sports, but these are really old fractures, so she had to be about ten or eleven when some of them occurred. This makes me doubt the extreme sports theory.”
    “Okay,” Jacob nodded.
    “Is there a way to know if she was sexually assaulted before she was killed?” Mitchell asked.
    Annie shook her head. “No way to know for sure, but I didn’t find any traces to indicate she was. And her shorts and underwear were mostly intact.”
    “Okay,” Jacob nodded, “Thanks, Annie.”
    So far their Jane Doe remained anonymous.
     
     
    As soon as they returned to the squad room, Mitchell made his way to the filing cabinet. He was not interested in anything inside; these days almost all their files could be accessed digitally. But the file cabinet held the important position of pedestal for the coffee maker. He made a pot of strong, black coffee and poured two cups, handing one to Jacob, who was already typing furiously on his keyboard. The coffee maker, a ridiculously expensive model bought a year before by Captain Fred Bailey, was the squad’s most treasured possession. As far as Mitchell was concerned, it was more important than any of the detectives.
    He leaned against Jacob’s desk, one of four desks in the room. The Glenmore Park police department had four detectives and a captain. They’d once had a lieutenant as well but, due to budget problems, the chief had decided they could do without, a decision that still inspired controversy and criticism.
    “Once you’re done writing the report, send it over to me and I’ll submit it to the system,” Mitchell said.
    Jacob sent him a look overcome with gratitude. His relationship with the department’s internal report program was fraught with distrust and downright hatred. He sometimes reminded Mitchell of his mother, who called him regularly with complaints like, “The internet won’t play the song I clicked on the desktop,” or “I wrote an e-mail but then the computer made it disappear, and now I can’t find my pictures.”
    Mitchell crossed the room to one of the whiteboards. The room had two of them, used for brainstorm sessions or to collect info on major cases. Both were currently covered with doodles, mostly of ducks. He erased all of it, ducks included, and wrote at the top: Jane Doe Murder - Buttermere Park . Then he headed to the captain’s office, to see if he was in and give him an update.
    The captain’s office was adjacent to the squad room, separated by a rickety wooden door that was always on the verge of collapsing, due to the captain’s tendency to slam it when irritated. Mitchell knocked on the door several times, then went to sit by his computer. They could update Captain Bailey later.
    Mitchell opened NAMUS, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, on his computer. He searched for missing females in Massachusetts, and received five results from the past year. Two of those were aged forty six and eighty nine. Mitchell ignored those and focused on the rest. Of the