“Did it work?”
“No.” They came to their feet when a woman knocked on Ian’s office door.
“Hi, I’m Val Lehigh. I’m looking for Detective Kane.”
“That’s me,” Kane said. “You’re our interpreter?”
She had a few streaks of gray in her hair and was firmly built, comfortably capable, and dressed completely in black. “I am. Have you ever worked with an interpreter before?”
“I have,” Olivia said.
“Yes, but a long time ago,” Kane said.
“Good. Then I’ll cover the bases quickly. I’m here in an official capacity and have taken an oath of confidentiality. Nothing I hear or see will be repeated. I will voice everything the deaf individual signs, even if it is an aside, meant only for me. I will sign everything you two voice, even if you mean it only for each other. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” Olivia said. “Have you done a corpse identification before?”
“Yes. Didn’t like it, but we don’t get to pick where we go, any more than you do.”
“Tracey Mullen’s body is in pretty good shape,” Olivia said and watched some of the tension leave the woman’s shoulders. “Except of course, that she’s dead at sixteen.”
Mr. Mullen jumped to his feet as soon as the three of them entered the waiting room. His face was haggard, his eyes red from weeping. His signing seemed frantic, but Val didn’t seem fazed.
“I’m John Mullen. I’m here to see my daughter. Where is she?”
“I’m Detective Kane and this is my partner, Detective Sutherland,” Kane said, glancing from the corner of his eye at the interpreter, then returning his gaze to the grieving father. “We are very sorry for your loss.”
“What happened?” he signed. “I need to know what happened to my child.”
“She was in a condo when it caught on fire,” Kane said. “We’re not sure why she was there. She was trapped inside and did not survive.”
“She didn’t burn,” Olivia added and Mullen’s shoulders sagged, as close to relief as one could expect under the circumstances. “She died of smoke inhalation.”
“She was alone at the time of her death,” Kane said gently, “but not before. We’re wondering if you might know of any boyfriends, anyone she knew living in this area.”
Bewildered, his signing slowed. “No, no one. She lived in Florida. She was supposed to be safe in Florida. Who was she with?”
“We’re trying to find that out, sir,” Kane said. “Can you tell us if your daughter wore a hearing aid, in addition to her cochlear implant?”
Still bewildered, he shook his head again.
Then the hearing aid belonged to the male she’d been with. “When was the last time you physically saw your daughter, sir?” Olivia asked.
“This summer for four weeks. I get…” He clenched his fists, then relaxed them to begin signing again. “I got every other Christmas, Thanksgiving, spring break, and six weeks in the summer.”
“But she stayed only four weeks?” Kane asked.
Mullen hesitated. “She went to camp for the other two weeks.”
Okay. “Which camp, sir?” Olivia asked.
“ Camp Longfellow, in Maryland.” His face crumpled as his steady stream of tears became sobs. “Please, please, let me see my daughter.”
Kane glanced at Olivia and she nodded. She had no more questions for now. They’d definitely check Camp Longfellow as soon as this ID was done. Olivia touched Mullen’s shoulder and led him to the family viewing room. The green light was on in the room’s uppermost right corner, the sign that the ME was ready on the other side.
Kane pulled the curtain, and it took only seconds for Mr. Mullen to numbly nod. Then he closed his eyes and cried, silently rocking himself. All alone.
Kane pulled the curtain closed while Olivia swallowed hard. There had been no viewings with Pit-Guy’s victims. There hadn’t been enough left of the victims’ bodies and DNA had been used for identification instead. Now, standing with Tracey’s father, she realized that had been the one positive in the entire nightmare. She hadn’t had to watch the impotent grief of the families as they gazed on their loved ones through a sterile window.
She touched Mr. Mullen’s arm again, gently, as she’d learned to do when Brie wasn’t wearing her processors. He struggled for control, then met her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she signed. It was one of the few signs she knew, a tightened fist rubbing over her heart, as if to soothe the pain. She signaled to Val. “I have a message from the firefighter who brought her out. He wants you to know that they’re very sorry. They tried to save her, but by the time they arrived, it was too late.”
“How long before they arrived?” Mr. Mullen signed, his chin lifted. Olivia would have taken it for belligerence if she hadn’t seen it before, on too many grieving parents. It was the rush of anger, the need to blame. It was human.
“Five minutes from the time they got the call,” she said. “The ME thinks Tracey was gone before the firefighters even got the call. The firefighter who brought her out risked his own life.” Olivia thought about the gaping hole that went four floors down. If David had stepped the wrong way when he climbed through the window to get Tracey… She couldn’t think about it. “Everyone did everything they could.”
“Thank you. When can I take her home?”
Val voiced his question and Olivia wanted to sigh. She hated child cases, but the heartache was made worse when there was shared custody of a minor child.
“Your wife will arrive tomorrow,” Kane said, stepping in. “You two will have to decide the final arrangements.”
Mullen’s face went as hard as stone. “I understand.” Then he marched from the room, his body trembling, from grief or fury Olivia didn’t know. Probably a mix of the two.
“Will you be available tomorrow?” Olivia asked Val. “We’ll want to ask the parents a few more questions, when they’re sitting together in the same room.”
“You can request me,” Val said. “I’ll let the office know.”
“We may need you all morning,” Olivia said, thinking of their visit to the deaf school. “We’ll have some interviews to conduct.”
“I’ll clear my calendar.” Val sighed heavily. “Now, if it’s all right, I’d like to leave.”
Olivia knew the feeling. The morgue was not her favorite place. “Sure.”
When they’d signed out both the interpreter and Mr. Mullen, Olivia turned to Kane. “She went to camp.”
“He hesitated before he told us that,” Kane said. “What is Camp Longfellow?”
“Let’s find out.” They went to Ian’s office and found him coming out of the cold room, having put Tracey’s body away. “Ian, can we use your computer for a minute?”
“Sure,” Ian said. “What’s up?”
Olivia slid into the chair at his desk. “Tracey Mullen went to camp this summer.”
Ian nodded. “Where she could have met a boy her parents didn’t know she knew.”
“Oh, the things parents don’t know their kids know,” Kane murmured.
“I know I gave my mom a million gray hairs,” Olivia said ruefully as she paged through the Google results for Camp Longfellow. “Here it is. It’s a camp for deaf high school students. I wonder why Mullen hesitated about that.”
“Maybe Mrs. Mullen didn’t know he’d sent Tracey,” Kane said. “Sounds like they didn’t agree about much when it came to raising her. Ian, how long ago were those fractures made and the damage you mentioned to her left hand?”
“Sometime in the last three months, I’d guess.”
Olivia sighed. “So it could have been dad, mom, mom’s new husband, anyone at camp, or anyone Tracey met on her way to Minneapolis. No help toward finding who beat her or in finding our eyewitness either. Tomorrow should be an interesting day.”
And tonight an interesting night. The day was finished. She’d been anticipating and dreading this moment in equal measures. Get up. Go. At least you’ll know.