The Girl Who Was Taken

by Charlie Donlea

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Charlie Donlea, one of the most original new voices in suspense, returns with a haunting novel, laden with twists and high tension, about two abducted girls - one who returns, one who doesn't - and the forensics expert searching for answers.

Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are both high school seniors in the small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. When they disappear from a beach party one warm summer night, police launch a massive search. No clues are found, and hope is almost lost until Megan miraculously surfaces after escaping from a bunker deep in the woods. A year later, the bestselling account of her ordeal has turned Megan from local hero to national celebrity. It's a triumphant, inspiring story, except for one inconvenient detail: Nicole is still missing.

Nicole's older sister Livia, a fellow in forensic pathology, expects that one day soon Nicole's body will be found, and it will be up to someone like Livia to analyze the evidence and finally determine her sister's fate. Instead, the first clue to Nicole's disappearance comes from another body that shows up in Livia's morgue - that of a young man connected to Nicole's past. Livia reaches out to Megan for help, hoping to learn more about the night the two were taken. Other girls have gone missing too, and Livia is increasingly certain the cases are connected. But Megan knows more than she revealed in her blockbuster book. Flashes of memory are coming together, pointing to something darker and more monstrous than her chilling memoir describes. And the deeper she and Livia dig, the more they realize that sometimes true terror lies in finding exactly what you've been looking for.

Release date: March 27, 2018

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Why forensic pathology?

It was a question asked of Livia Cutty at each of her fellowship interviews. Generic answers might have included the desire to help families find closure, the love of science, and the craving to tackle the challenge of finding answers where others see questions.

These were fine answers and likely given by many of her colleagues who were now in fellowship spots just like her own. But Livia’s response, she was certain, was unlike any of her peers’. There was a reason Livia Cutty was so sought-after. An explanation for why she was accepted by every program to which she had applied. She had the grades in medical school and the achievements in residency. She was published and came with sterling recommendations from her residency chairs. But these accolades alone did not set her apart; many of her colleagues possessed similar résumés. There was something else about Livia Cutty. She had a story.

“My sister went missing last year,” Livia said at each interview. “I chose forensics because someday my parents and I will get a call that her body has been found. We will have many questions about what happened to her. About who took her, and what they did to her. I want those questions answered by someone who cares. By someone with compassion. By someone with the skill to read the story my sister’s body will tell. Through my training, I want to be that person. When a body comes to me with questions surrounding it, I want to answer those questions for the family with the same care, compassion, and expertise I hope to receive someday from whoever calls me about my sister.”

As the offers came in, Livia considered her options. The more she thought, the more obvious her choice became. Raleigh, North Carolina, was close to where she grew up in Emerson Bay. It was a prestigious and well-funded program, and it was run by Dr. Gerald Colt, widely considered in the world of forensics as a pioneer. Livia was happy to be part of his team.

The other draw, although she tortured herself when she considered it, was that with the promise of performing 250 to 300 autopsies during her year of fellowship training, Livia knew it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that a jogger somewhere might stumble over a shallow grave and find the remains of her sister. Every time a Jane Doe rolled into the morgue, Livia wondered if it was Nicole. Unzipping the black vinyl bag and taking a fast glance at the body was all it usually took to dispel her fear. In her two months at the OCME, many Jane Does had entered her morgue, but none left under the same anonymous name. They had all been identified, and none as her sister. Livia knew she might spend her entire career waiting for Nicole to arrive in her morgue, but that day would stay somewhere in the ether of the future. A moment suspended in time that Livia would chase but never catch.

Capturing that moment, though, was less important than the chase. For Livia, perusing a fictitious time in the future was just enough to lessen her regret. Soften the edges so she could live with herself. The hunt gave her a sense of purpose. Allowed Livia the feeling that she was doing something for her younger sister, since God knew she hadn’t done enough for Nicole when her efforts could have been noticed. Vivid dreams of her cell phone occupied Livia’s nights, bright and glowing and carrying Nicole’s name as it buzzed and chimed.

Livia held her phone while it rang that night but had decided not to answer it. Midnight on a Saturday was never a good time to talk with Nicole, and Livia had decided that night to avoid the drama waiting on the other end of the call. Now, Livia would live without knowing if taking that call the night Nicole disappeared would have made any difference for her younger sister.

So, imagining a time in the future where Livia might find redemption, where she might help her sister by using whatever gifts her hands and mind possessed, was the fuel needed to get through life.

After morning rounds with Dr. Colt and the other fellows, Livia settled into the single autopsy assigned to her for the day. A straightforward junkie who died of an overdose. The body lay on Livia’s table, intubation tubes spilling from his gaping mouth where paramedics tried to save him. Dr. Colt required forty-five minutes to complete a routine autopsy, which ODs were considered. Two months into her fellowship, Livia had brought her times down from more than two hours to an hour and a half. Progress was all Dr. Colt asked from his fellows, and Livia Cutty was making it.

Today, it took one hour twenty-two minutes to perform the external and internal examination of the overdose in front of her, determining the cause of death to be cardiac arrest due to acute opiate intoxication. Manner of death: accident.

Livia was wrapping up paperwork in the fellows’ office when Dr. Colt knocked on the open door.

“How was your morning?”

“Heroin overdose, unremarkable,” Livia said from behind her desk.

“Time?”

“One twenty-two.”

Dr. Colt pouted his lower lip. “Two months in, that’s good. Better than any of the other fellows.”

“You said it wasn’t a competition.”

“It’s not,” Dr. Colt said. “But so far, you’re winning. Can you handle a double today?”

Supervising physicians routinely performed multiple autopsies in a day, and all the fellows would be expected to increase their caseloads once they brought their times down and got the hang of the overwhelming paperwork that went along with each body. With her fellowship running twelve months—from July to July—working five days a week, with stretches of time away from the autopsy suite observing other subspecialties, two weeks dedicated to ride-alongs with the medicolegal investigators, plus days spent in court or participating in mock trials with law students, Livia knew that to reach the magic number of 250 autopsies the program promised, she would eventually have to log more than a single case each day.

“Of course,” she said without hesitation.

“Good. We’ve got a floater coming in. Couple of fishermen found the body out by the flats this morning.”

“I’ll finish my paperwork and get on it as soon as it comes in.”

“You’ll present your findings at afternoon rounds,” Dr. Colt said. He pulled a small notepad from his breast pocket and jotted a reminder as he walked out of her office.

The Girl of Sugar Beach is the most watched documentary in television history—a riveting, true-life mystery that unfolds over twelve weeks and centers on a fascinating question: Did Grace Sebold murder her boyfriend, Julian, while on a spring break vacation, or is she a victim of circumstance and poor police work? Grace has spent the last ten years in a St. Lucian prison, and reaches out to filmmaker Sidney Ryan in a last, desperate attempt to prove her innocence.

As Sidney begins researching, she uncovers startling evidence, additional suspects, and time line issues that were all overlooked during the original investigation. Before the series even finishes filming, public outcry leads officials to reopen the case. But as the show surges towards its final episodes, Sidney receives a letter saying that she got it badly, terribly wrong.

Sidney has just convinced the world that Grace is innocent. Now she wonders if she has helped to free a ruthless killer. Delving into Grace’s past, she peels away layer after layer of deception. But as Sidney edges closer to the real heart of the story, she must decide if finding the truth is worth risking her newfound fame, her career … even her life.

Gros PitonJalousie PlantationMarch 29, 2007

The blood was a problem. I knew it as soon as I felt it spit across my face. It streamed from his hairline and ran along his jaw until it dribbled onto the granite bluff, first in sporadic red blots like the leading raindrops of a coming storm, and then in a continuous stream as though into the spot on his head where I had struck him a spigot had been plugged and opened wide. It was an error in judgment and strategy, which was a shame because up to now I had been perfect.

A moment earlier, the soft soles of my shoes had squished through the mud on the final turn of my arduous hike up the Piton. My system was rich with adrenaline, which made my journey nearly effortless. The endorphins would serve me well. I would need their analgesic and energy-producing powers to get back down the mountain as quickly as I’d made it up. To kill someone required perfection, timing, and luck. I hoped all three were with me this evening.

He came into view. Staring out over the bluff, the setting sun cast his shadow toward me like a black panther painted over the ground. He stood next to the blanket he had laid over the granite, a bottle of champagne and two flutes waiting. In the backdrop the sun was approaching the horizon, casting its glow across the calm Caribbean waters and interrupted only by a sailboat whose bright spinnaker was bloated with the evening breeze.

It was one hundred feet to the water. A straight drop, and shallow at the base of the mountain. No way for the sea to substantially break his fall. I’d confirmed this the day before. I had put much thought into this evening. Besides the depth of the water, I calculated the time it would take for me to reach the bluff and return to my cottage. I plotted my route back through the resort. I factored in the unexpected, a necessity to any proper strategy. And most importantly, I considered the amount of time I would spend with him on the bluff. It wouldn’t be long.

From my spot in the foliage, I took a few silent steps forward until he was accessible, close enough to touch. But physical touch would be limited this evening. Physical touch would leave clues and fibers and forensics. My weapon allowed me to stay at a safe distance. I lifted it, pausing slightly at the peak of the arc when my hand was raised high above my head, then brought it down in a sharp rap against his skull. The connection was solid. A direct strike that he didn’t anticipate and likely never felt. Besides a quick synapse that radiated through the neurons of his central nervous system, he likely felt nothing at all. No pain, no suffering. Unless, of course, he was still conscious when he went over the edge. I try not to dwell on that.

I knew immediately that I had been too aggressive with my assault. My goal was to stun him and render him incapable of defending himself. Instead, my strike nearly killed him. He reflexively reached for the back of his head and fell to his knees. I waited and watched, unsure how things would progress. He seemed to recognize the blood as it poured onto the granite, and gained enough wherewithal to stagger back to his feet. Before he could turn around, my shoe met the back of his pants and he was gone. I didn’t hear him land, never heard a splash. I dared not venture to the edge of the bluff for fear that someone had spotted his body tumbling toward the ocean, like a skydiver whose chute had failed, and would subsequently look to the source of the fall and see me peering over the ledge.

I assessed the bluff now and worked to figure out the best way to fix my blunder. The blood would tell a different story than I had hoped to draw tonight. It took only a fraction of a second to make my decision. The carnage on the bluff was impossible to hide. The splatter across my face, however, needed to be addressed. On closer inspection, the spray of blood streaked down my chest and onto my left hand. Another collection of red, I noticed, had speckled my weapon. It was an unfortunate error—unforced and brought on entirely by my eagerness. There was no way to solve all of these problems. I chose the most pressing—the blood that was covering me—and settled on a solution. I turned from the setting sun and the blood-covered bluff, and ran down the Piton, stomping over dirt and through brush and down the manmade staircase of boulders and bamboo on a beeline to the cottage.

The body arrived at one p.m., which gave Livia two hours to perform the autopsy, clean up, and gather her notes before three o’clock rounds. Afternoon rounds were the bewitching event each day, when the fellows presented the day’s cases to the staff at the OCME. The audience included Dr. Colt and the other attending MEs under whom the fellows were training, the subspecialists in pathology who assisted in nearly every case, visiting medical students, and pathology residents. On a given afternoon, thirty people stared at Livia as she presented.

If fellows were confused about the details of the cases they were presenting, it was painfully obvious and very unpleasant. There was no faking it. Hiding was impossible when you were in the cage, as was termed the presentation room where afternoon rounds took place. Surrounded by ugly metal chain link that belonged in someone’s 1970s backyard, the cage was a feared place for all new fellows. Standing in front of the large crowd was meant to be stressful and challenging. It was also, throughout the course of the year, supposed to get easier.

“Don’t worry,” one graduating fellow told Livia when they swapped spots in July. “The cage is a place you’ll hate at first, but later love. It grows on you.”

After two months on the job, the love affair had yet to blossom.

Livia finished her paperwork on the heroin overdose and headed back to the autopsy suite. She gowned up in a disposable blue surgical smock over her scrubs, triple-gloved her hands, and pulled a full shield over her face as the investigators rolled the gurney through the back door of the morgue and parked it next to Livia’s autopsy table. In a sterile operating room, the surgical dressings were meant to protect the patient from the doctor. In the morgue, the opposite was true. Cotton, latex, and plastic were all that stood between Livia and whatever disease and decay waited inside the bodies she dissected.

With one at the head and the other at the feet, the two scene investigators lifted the body—zipped in the standard black vinyl—onto the autopsy table. Livia approached as the investigators gave the scene details to her—male floater discovered by fisherman at just past seven a.m. Advanced decomposition, and an obvious broken leg from wherever he’d jumped.

“How far is the closest bridge from where the body was found?” Livia asked.

“Six miles,” Kent Chapple, one of the scene investigators, said.

“That’s a long way to float.”

“He’s ripe enough to suggest a long swim,” Kent said. “Colt’s giving this to you, huh?”

Water leaked from the body bag and dripped through the holes of Livia’s table, collecting in the basin below. A body pulled from salt water was never a pretty sight. Jumpers usually die on impact, and eventually sink. They were termed floaters only after the body began the decaying process where intestinal bacteria fester and eat away the insides, releasing noxious gases captured within the abdominal cavity that, literally, raise the dead. This process could take hours to days, and the longer the body sat underwater before floating to the surface, the worse condition it was in when it finally arrived at the morgue.

Livia smiled from behind her clear plastic face shield. “Lucky me.”

She slid the zipper down and watched as Kent and his partner slipped the bag gently away. She saw immediately the body was badly decomposed, worse than any floater she’d seen before. Much of the epidermis was missing and, in some areas, the full thickness of the integumentary system gone entirely with only muscle and tendon and bone visible.

The investigators took their dripping body bag and placed it on the gurney.

“Good luck,” Kent said.

Livia waved her hand but kept her gaze on the body.

“I see it every year, Doc,” Kent said at the door. “Around September it starts. They break you in with drunks and overdoses. Then the ugly ones come. Decomps and kids. Doesn’t let up until January or so. Colt does it to all the fellows to find out what you’re made of. You’ll get some juicy homicides eventually. I know that’s what you’re all after. A nice gunshot wound or strangulation. But you’ll have to wait until winter. Deal with the messy ones first. Prove you can handle them.”

“That’s how it works around here?” Livia asked.

“Every year.”

Livia lifted her chin. “Thanks, Kent. I’ll let you know how this one goes.”

“Don’t bother.”

The investigators wheeled the empty gurney out of the morgue, shaking their heads with suppressed smiles and sideways glances at the mess they’d left on the table that would surely make most people vomit, and would be a challenge for even a seasoned ME to get through. They knew Dr. Cutty would be at it for a while. Lots of work and trouble, and likely a few dry heaves, all to scribble on a death certificate that internal organ damage or aortic dissection was the cause of death; suicide the manner.

The back door to the morgue closed and with the investigators gone Livia was the only physician in the autopsy suite, just her and the jumper, still dripping on her table. Mornings saw most, if not all, of the autopsy tables crowded with pathologists garbed up and in various stages of examination. Others milled around as well, subspecialists weaving between the tables and around the autopsy suite to offer their expertise. The morgue was not a sterile environment and all that was required for entry was an OCME badge or a police shield. Detectives routinely peered over a pathologist’s shoulder, waiting on a crucial nugget of information that would either set them off on an investigation or give them clearance from one. Technicians wheeled away bodies for X-ray or picked up specimens for neuro-path or derm-path or dental-path. Other technicians completed the autopsy process by sewing closed the gaping incisions made by the physicians. Scene investigators came and went, sometimes delivering new bodies to empty tables. Overseeing it all was Dr. Colt, who strolled the autopsy suite, hands clasped behind his back and cheaters hanging at the tip of his nose. Mornings were organized chaos.

But today was Livia’s first double, the first time she was in the autopsy suite during afternoon hours. This was the time of day usually spent on paperwork, gathering notes and preparing for three o’clock rounds in the cage. With just her and the body in the quiet morgue, Livia sensed the eeriness of the place. Every sound was amplified, her tools clanking off the metal table and reverberating in the corners, the body dripping like a leaky faucet into the basin below. Usually, bone saws from adjacent tables or conversation from her colleagues overwhelmed these noises. But today her movements were magnified and obvious, and it made for a most unpleasant experience as she manipulated the body in front of her and listened to the sucking and sloshing of tissue. It took some time to adjust to the solitude, but when she got deeper into the external examination, the hollowness of the morgue faded and soon skepticism was all that remained.

Suicide jumpers typically presented with internal organ bleeding. The impact of the fall, depending on the height of the jump, brought death in a number of ways. Oftentimes, a broken rib impaled a lung or pierced the heart, and exsanguination—bleeding to death—was the cause of death. The impact could dislodge the aorta from the heart, or shear another vital vessel to cause the bleeding. In these cases, Livia would open the abdominal cavity to find pooling blood trapped in one of the compartments surrounding whichever organ had suffered the damage. Other times, the body was in decent shape with the internal organs having been protected by the skeletal shell. When Livia saw this presentation, she knew to look at the skull and the brain, which would likely show fractures and subarachnoid bleeding.

As she looked at the body in front of her, which had been presented as a floater found drifting in Emerson Bay, Livia knew it wasn’t so. First, in order for this body to reach such a level of decomposition—there was barely a flap of skin present, and what was there was rancid and black—it had to have been in the water for months or longer. If that were the case, it would not have been floating, as Livia was certain this body had not been. The intestinal gases that float a body need to be contained in the abdominal cavity, and this body had no such cavity. All that was left of the gut was a wall of muscle and tendon that held the organs in place but certainly was not airtight to hold gases. Second, the broken leg the investigators had documented was not typical of a jumper who landed feetfirst. Those bodies showed impact injuries and upward compression of bones, sometimes with the tibia rising past the knee and into the thigh; and the femur displaced into the pelvis. The body in front of Livia held a horizontally fractured femur that suggested localized trauma, not full-impact trauma of a body landing sideways on water and definitely not a feetfirst landing.

Livia jotted notes on her clipboard and then started the internal exam, which showed a lack of any damage to the organs. The rib cage was in full working order. The heart was healthy, with the aorta and inferior vena cava well apposed. Liver, spleen and kidneys showed no damage. The lungs were empty of water. She was meticulous with her documentation and careful as she weighed each organ. An hour into the autopsy, perspiration covered her brow. She felt her scrubs sticking to her arms and back as she checked the wall clock—just past two p.m.

Moving to the head, she checked for facial fractures and inspected the mouth and teeth. If an ID were made on this body, it would come from dental-path since this John Doe possessed no skin for fingerprints. And with no dermis present, there were no distinguishing tattoos that might aid in the identification.

It was during the examination of the head that Livia noticed them, the circular holes poking through the left side of the skull. She counted twelve holes randomly seated through the bone, and she racked her mind for a potential etiology. No obvious answer came to mind, besides an atypical bacterial infection that had reached the bone. But surely, had this been the case, there would be peripheral damage to the surrounding skull and some mass loss or erosion. This skull looked perfectly healthy but for the holes, which Livia quickly determined could not be from bullets or shrapnel, but might be blamed on pellets from a shotgun.

She went back to her pad and made more notes. Then, with the aid of the bone saw, she performed the craniotomy and removed the top of the skull the same way she’d do to a pumpkin at Halloween. The brain was soft and syrupy and had not been vibrant for some time. Much of working on a decomp was more difficult than a tradition autopsy. Removing the brain was the exception. If still intact, it usually came out of the skull without much effort, the dural lining no longer enclosing it. After severing the spinal cord, Livia placed the brain onto a rolling metal cart next to the autopsy table. The brain, normally laced with an intricate network of blood vessels, was usually a red mess that pooled blood beneath it when placed on the scale. This one was different. The vessels that ran through it had long since bled dry, and now the tissue was sloppy only from the water in which it had been submerged.

Examining the brain closely in the area underneath the skull piercings, Livia located corresponding holes in the tissue. Rooting deeper into the left parietal lobe, Livia was convinced after ten minutes of exploration that no shotgun pellets were present. She wiped her brow with the back of her forearm and looked up at the clock. She was due in the cage in ten minutes and didn’t have a prayer of finishing the autopsy by then, let alone being prepared to stand against the assault of Dr. Colt and her supervisors.

In front of her was a body pulled from the bay that had no internal injuries besides a non-jumper’s femoral fracture and piercings through the skull. Despite the panic Livia felt, she had the urge to call Kent Chapple, the scene investigator, and tell him he had things wrong. Not just about the body—this clearly wasn’t a jumper. But also about Dr. Colt’s timing. He’d dumped a homicide in front of her and it was technically still summer.

It was close to four p.m. when Livia completed the autopsy. Rounds in the cage had been running for an hour. Currently, she was both tardy and ill prepared, and Livia had seen the consequences of wearing these qualities into the cage. An unexcused absence bore less wrath than a poor performance, so in lieu of rounds Livia dropped off her specimens for further analysis by the dental- and derm-path labs, then picked up the X-rays she had ordered and headed upstairs. She skated past the cage, where the lights were dimmed and Jen Tilly was presenting. Dr. Colt and the other attendings had their backs to the entrance and their attention trained on the screen, making possible Livia’s stealth escape behind them. She took the stairs to the second floor, where the neuropathology lab was located, and found Maggie Larson behind her desk and busy with paperwork.

Dr. Larson ran all things in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner that dealt with brains. She had a single neuropath fellow assigned to her for the year, who was likely down in the cage listening to Jen Tilly.

“Dr. Larson?” Livia said from the doorway.

“Livia,” Dr. Larson said, eyes squinted. “No rounds this afternoon?”

“They’re going on right now but I was assigned an afternoon case and I need some help before I get murdered down there.”

Dr. Larson lifted her chin, noticing the transport container Livia carried by her side like a pail of water.

“What’ve you got?”

The woman had a sixth sense for brain tissue. . .