The Girl Who Was Taken Page 2

  Megan stopped herself from rolling her eyes. She had many adjectives to describe the process that created her book. Therapeutic was not one of them.

  “It was.” Megan smiled with her lips pressed together. It was her new smile, the best she could do and so different from the beaming pictures she saw the other day when she paged through her senior yearbook. Back then, her smile was wide, with straight, bright teeth filling the space between her curved lips. She tried at first, but it was too hard to fake that big smile so she came up with this new one. Lips together, edges turned up. Happy. People were buying it.

  “What can people expect from reading your book?”

  Megan wasn’t completely sure, since she hadn’t written much of it—that distinction went to her shrink, who snagged a byline on the cover.

  “It, uh, you know, covers the night it happened.”

  “The night you were abducted,” Dante clarified.

  “Yes. And the two weeks I spent in captivity. A lot of it is stuff in my head that I thought about while being held. About where I was kept, and all my failed attempts to get away. And then about the night I, you know, ran out of the forest.”

  “The night you escaped.”

  Megan hesitated. “Yes. The book documents my escape.” The thin smile again. “And a whole chapter about Mr. Steinman.”

  Dante Campbell also smiled. Her voice was soft. “The man who found you on Highway Fifty-Seven.”

  “Yes. He’s my hero. My dad’s hero, too.”

  “I bet. We had Mr. Steinman on the show, not long after your ordeal.”

  “I saw, and I was happy that he got the recognition he deserves. He saved my life that night.”

  “Indeed.” Dante looked down at her notes before smiling again. “It’s no secret the country has fallen in love with you. So many people want to know how you’re doing and what’s next for you. Will they get any of that from the book? About your plans for the future?”

  Megan pulled her hand from under her thigh and rotated it in the air to help her think. “There’s a lot about what’s happened since that night, yes.”

  “With you and your family?”

  “Yes.”

  “And with the ongoing investigation?”

  “As much as we know about it, yes.”

  “How difficult is it for you to know your abductor is still out there?”

  “It’s hard, but I know the police are doing everything they can to find him.” Megan made a mental note to thank her dad for that answer. He fed it to her the night before.

  “Before this all happened, you were on your way to Duke University. We’re all curious to know if that is still an option for you.”

  Megan rubbed her tongue around the inside of her sandpaper lips. “Um, I took a year off after this happened. I was trying for this fall but that didn’t work out. I just . . . couldn’t get things organized in time.”

  “It has to be hard, of course, to get back to normal. But I understand the university has extended an open invitation for whenever you’re ready?”

  Megan had long since stopped questioning people’s fascinations with her abduction, and the public’s unquenchable thirst for the morbid details of her captivity. And now, their lust for her to proceed as though nothing happened. She stopped questioning all of these things when she finally understood the reasoning behind them. She knew attending Duke University and carrying on a normal life would allow all those who feasted on the morose details of her ordeal to feel good about themselves. Her normalness was their escape from sin. Otherwise, how could they or Dante Campbell yearn so badly to hear the disturbing details of Megan’s abduction if she were still reeling from that event? If she were a broken girl whose life was a wreck and would never be the same, their vigor for her story would simply be unacceptable. They couldn’t allow themselves to be so attracted to her narrative if it ended any way but beautifully. If she were healed, however, if she were moving on with her new, therapeutic book and taking a shiny seat in the freshman class at Duke University, and if she were a success . . . well, then they all could burrow like maggots into the meaty flesh of her disturbing story and fly away clean and pearly as though no metamorphosis had occurred.

  Megan McDonald needed to be a success story. It was as simple as that.

  “Yes,” Megan finally said. “Duke has given me many options for next semester or even next year.”

  Dante Campbell smiled again, her eyes soft. “Well, I know you’ve been through a lot, and you are an inspiration to survivors of abduction everywhere. And we know this book will certainly be a beacon of hope for them. Would you come back and talk to us again sometime? Give us an update?”

  “Of course.” Thin smile.

  “Megan McDonald. Good luck to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  After repeating where Missing could be purchased, Ms. Campbell sent things off to commercial break and the studio was again loud with voices from the dark area behind the cameras.

  “You did really well,” Dante Campbell said.

  “You never asked about Nicole.”

  “It was just a timing thing, hon. We were running late. But we’ll put a link about Nicole up on the website.”

  And with that, Dante Campbell was up and past her, offering a gentle pat on Megan’s shoulder. Megan nodded, alone in the studio chair. This, too, she understood. Today’s interview could only include the pretty details. The inspiring parts. The heroic escape and the bright future and the girls who were sure to be helped by the book. This morning’s interview was a conclusion to the Megan McDonald drama and it had to end with success. It could include none of the ugly elements that still lingered about that summer. Especially about Nicole.

  Nicole Cutty was gone. Nicole Cutty was not a success story.

  PART I

  “A life might end, but sometimes their case lives forever.”

  —Gerald Colt, MD

  CHAPTER 1

  September 2017

  Twelve Months Since Megan’s Escape

  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.

  CHAPTER 2

  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 ki
ds. 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.