“You’ll have to ask Pete.” Vera sniffed.

“You want me to interrupt Pete’s work with a question about a boy’s fever? Surely he has more important things on his plate. I think this is the kind of decision he wanted to delegate to someone in charge of medical. He said yesterday he’d have the quartermaster section out the medical supplies. I’ll get something for Noah from him.”

Eden’s eyes were sharp as she followed the exchange.

Mercy knew she’d overstepped. “I’m not challenging you, Vera,” she said in an earnest voice. “I’ve got a soft spot for kids, and when you combine that with an illness, it will make me jump into action.”

Vera’s stubborn expression didn’t falter.

Mercy tried again. “Every successful group needs to be healthy. I’m here to help keep everyone performing at their peak. We don’t want to be known as that group that denied health care to children,” she emphasized.

The older woman’s cheek twitched.

Over the past decade, several notorious cases had rattled the Northwest in which parents had denied basic health care to their children, leading to their deaths. The public uproar and subsequent legal battles had filled news headlines for months.

“Leave this one to me,” Mercy said. “If someone gets in trouble for medicating Noah, it falls on me. Not you. It’s a chance I’m willing to take. My commitment is to the group as a whole.” She deliberately repeated Vera’s words from earlier.

A small measure of respect flickered in the woman’s eyes. “As you wish.” She turned to Eden and inspected the basket of eggs. “Now. That looks like a good haul. Are the counts still going up?”

Mercy took a deep breath as Eden and Vera discussed the eggs. Is this how it’s going to be? I have to argue for basic needs? She gave a half smile to Olivia as the child openly studied her.

“I like your hair,” Olivia said in all seriousness. “I’ve always wanted long, dark hair. Like Princess Jasmine. I like your pink hat too.”

“Thank you.” Mercy smiled, wondering how long ago the child had watched Princess Jasmine on TV. “Would you believe I always wanted blonde hair? Like Cinderella? It seems like we always want what we don’t have.”

The child’s forehead wrinkled as she pondered Mercy’s words. “I guess that’s why I want so much.”

Mercy’s heart shattered. She pulled off the knit cap and exchanged it for Olivia’s brown one. The girl’s face lit up, and she dropped Noah’s hand to touch the cap with both of her own.

“It’s mine?”

“Yes. I have another hat.”

Olivia immediately spun to Noah and started chattering to him about the hat. The boy listlessly nodded, and Mercy knew he needed medication sooner than later.

What he needs is a doctor.

One fight at a time.

Mercy looked around at the animal pens, taking in the patched fencing and poor shed construction. Now a dozen goats watched her group with great interest. There was a peace to being near the livestock. One that reminded her of her family’s farm. She moved her gaze to the woods around them and froze as a movement caught her eye.

She was being watched. The lieutenant from the drill.

He met Mercy’s gaze and stepped out into the open, not caring that she’d spotted him. He leaned against the trunk of a tree, his rifle on his shoulder.

They’ll watch every move you make for the first month.

Chad’s words ricocheted in her head.

She’d assumed Vera had been assigned to watch her. Apparently Pete felt she deserved another set of eyes.

I’ve got to watch my step.

ELEVEN

Truman appreciated the invitation from Detective Bolton to attend the medical examiner’s review of the body found on Britta’s property. As a thank-you, Truman had grabbed a cup of coffee from Kaylie’s Coffee Café for the detective. Surprise filled Bolton’s eyes as he accepted the cup. “Your niece brews the best coffee. Beats any coffeehouse here in Bend.”

Your niece. Officially Kaylie wasn’t his niece—yet. But it sounded nice.

“I agree.”

The men drank in awkward silence as they waited for Dr. Lockhart in her office. Her messy office. Truman had visited enough times in the past to no longer be surprised by the disorganization. The doctor piled files and books and boxes on the shelves, floor, and chairs, while her huge desk with its two computer monitors was crowded with dozens of cat figurines. Various diplomas and accolades hung on the wall. Several of them crooked.

Truman had no doubt the examiner could find whatever she wanted in the office within a split second.

“Nothing in the missing person searches?” Truman asked to break the silence. He knew the answer. He’d done his own searching last night, and he knew Bolton would have told him first thing if he’d found a possible match. At the scene yesterday, Dr. Lockhart had given them a height and approximate weight to search with. She’d been vague on the age, suggesting between thirty and fifty as a place to start. Truman hoped she had more precise numbers today.

“Not yet. I started local and kept expanding until I covered the western half of the United States.” Bolton grimaced. “Not looking forward to sifting through the rest of the US.”

Truman had done the same. “Plenty of missing men.”

“Exactly. But none that resembled our John Doe.”

“Sorry Britta wasn’t a lot of help during her interview yesterday,” Truman said.

“No need to apologize for her. She did fine. She didn’t have much information to supply anyway. All she did was come across the body and hear some barking in the middle of the night.” His mouth lifted on one side. “She’s an interesting one. I don’t know if I’d function as well as she does if my family had been murdered when I was a child.”

Dr. Natasha Lockhart bustled in, and the room lit up with her energy. The men automatically stood. The small woman was a dynamo, her long, black hair pulled back in her usual ponytail, making her resemble a perky yoga instructor. In scrubs. She grabbed a white lab coat from a hook on the back of her door and slipped it on as she approached.

“Truman. Evan.” She shook both their hands and gestured for them to sit as she rounded her desk to her own chair. A slightly unpleasant odor of chemicals followed in her wake. “Thanks for coming in.” She sighed as she sank into her chair. “It’s been a long morning already.”

“What do you have on our John Doe?” Bolton got straight to the point, leaning forward in his seat, his hands clasped between his knees.

Dr. Lockhart raised a brow. “To start with, I have fingerprints for you. Do you have some possible candidates to compare them to?”

“No. I’ll start with a database search.”

“Bummer.” The examiner started to tap her keyboard, typing rapidly with only her first fingers. “I will send you my report when I finish writing it. The height I gave you yesterday was accurate, but the weight was light by two pounds.”

“Impressive,” mumbled Truman.

Dr. Lockhart grinned. “I like to see how close I can guess the weight. It’s hard to narrow the age range, but I’ve adjusted it to between forty and fifty-five. It’s very subjective. He has gum disease, which has led to minor bone loss in his jaw, half of his hair is gray, and there’s a loss of elasticity in his skin in a few places. But all those things can happen early or late in life. I took into account that he exhibits all three when I made my age estimate.” She squinted at her screen. “As you probably noticed, he’s Caucasian. And even though his belly was very bloated from decomp, he’s actually quite thin.”

“Was he . . .” Bolton paused. “Assaulted?”

“You mean sexually? No.”

“Why remove his clothing?”

Dr. Lockhart shrugged. “That’s your part of the investigation.” Her eyes moved back and forth as she read her screen. “Nothing in his stomach.”

“He hadn’t eaten?” Bolton asked. “You said he was thin. Was he being starved?”

The doctor tapped her chin as she thought. “I need lab results. His serum proteins will be off if he’s suffering from malnutrition. The labs aren’t definitive on their own. I have to consider the physical signs, and I’d say he wasn’t getting enough to eat. Or chose not to eat enough.”

“He was being held captive and not fed?” Bolton wondered out loud.

“No abrasions on his wrists or ankles to indicate he was restrained,” the doctor said. “We removed the dirt from under his nails for evidence, but his hands didn’t show signs of defensive wounds or have the broken nails that I’ve seen when someone is trying to escape out of something.”

“Did the evidence techs find fingerprints anywhere on the body?” Truman asked. Human skin was tough to print, but he knew it could be done.