CHAPTER SIX

 

 

Baxter and Sterling ran off to investigate their growing suspicions, leaving Amanda and me to worry over unanswered questions.

She frowned. “If all this symbolism stuff is for real, then we have a really crafty psycho on our hands.”

“I agree,” I replied, watching as Dr. Berg and Kenny wheeled Jenna’s body, now zipped into a bag, out of the gazebo and toward their waiting van.

Amanda and I walked over to the entrance of the gazebo to get back to work. It was going to be a long night. Not only would I have to spend hours here at the scene collecting evidence, I’d then also have meetings to attend and lab work to do. Sleep would have to wait until tomorrow; not that I had a chance of falling asleep after everything that had happened in the past several hours.

Amanda and I put on respirator masks and new gloves, then went back into the gazebo. Our first focus was the concrete floor and anything the killer might have dropped. There was only one path of entry and exit, and out of necessity it had been used by several of us, so it was unlikely that we’d find anything that hadn’t been noticed already. Dividing the small space into imaginary quadrants, we each took a section and scoured it. We both looked over each section, so the floor was examined twice. For an outdoor area, it was fairly clean. Neither of us collected anything as evidence.

Realizing I’d forgotten a key part of my usual investigative process, I hurried over to the field kit and got out a voice recorder, which I switched on and started recording. I rattled off my name and the case information I knew, then I said, “The body of the victim, Jenna Walsh, was suspended inside the gazebo of Richards Park by a clear, thin material that looks to be fishing line. The body was found in a seated position on a bench, holding a bouquet of white daisies and a note. The note and flowers have been taken as evidence. The victim was found wearing clothing and shoes I believe not to be part of her normal wardrobe, and appears to have been redressed after death. No evidence found upon examination of the floor of the gazebo.”

Amanda, who had been scribbling in a notebook, pulled her mask down and gave me a smile. “Audio notes?”

“Yeah, I’m lazy. I’d rather talk to myself now and type my scene notes out later.”

“I tried that, but I remember things better if I write them down.” She shrugged. “To each her own.”

We both stood staring at the bench where the victim had been sitting, hoping for something to jump out at us. Aside from the fishing line still hanging from the wrought iron of the gazebo and the slats of the wooden bench, there seemed to be nothing for us to collect.

Amanda set out evidence markers by the places the fishing line was tied to the bench. I took photos and continued to mumble out my case notes. We collected the fishing line and placed it into evidence bags. We then photographed, cut down, bagged, and tagged the fishing line tied to the wrought iron supports.

I got out a flashlight and a magnifying glass and kneeled down in front of the bench. Shining the light on the bench’s seat, I looked for any kind of trace that could have been left behind by the killer, but found nothing. I examined the rest of the bench, again coming up empty-handed. I stood and pulled down my mask, frowning.

“Nothing?” Amanda asked.

“Nothing.”

“Well, now what? Do we dust the whole bench?”

I groaned. “A public bench? I don’t even want to know how many fingerprints are on this thing.”

She was studying the bench with a thoughtful expression. “Well, maybe we focus on dusting the areas around where the fishing line was tied rather than, say, on the arms of the bench where people might rest their hands. That should narrow it down.”

“Great idea.” I gestured to the ironwork supports holding up the gazebo’s roof. “You want to do that while I dust up there where the rest of the fishing line was tied?”

“Sure.”

The gazebo was gorgeous and had to have cost thousands of dollars to construct. It had a copper roof, and the supports weren’t simple posts. They were made of intricate, scrolled metalwork—perfect for wrapping yards and yards of fishing line around to hold up a dead body. I brushed gray fingerprint powder on the dark metal and used the magnifying glass and flashlight to search for prints. I saw nothing. I brushed on some more powder, this time fanning out to a larger area, but still got nothing from it.

I sighed. “I’m calling it—the killer wore gloves. It’s freezing out here, so maybe instead of being paranoid, he was just cold and had his hands covered up. Either way, I’ve got nothing.”

Amanda stood and placed the fingerprint paraphernalia back in the kit. “Same here. Since this isn’t the primary crime scene, we’re not going to find much. We’d do a lot more good by getting started examining the victim’s clothes and the flowers and note. We could stay all night and look for stuff that isn’t here, or we could go work on actual evidence. Jason said he’d have a couple of deputies take care of searching the parking lot and paths leading to the gazebo, so I think we’re good to go.”

“Let’s complete a rough sketch. Then we can pack it up.”

***

After we measured the dimensions of the gazebo and made a sketch of the scene, notating where the body and our evidence had been found, Amanda drove us to Noblesville to the sheriff’s station. We checked in our evidence with the evidence clerk and then took it down the hall to the lab.

As she shrugged on her lab coat, Amanda said, “Well, at least we’re in from the cold. And I’m glad I’m not the one who has to inform Jason and Nick at the pre-autopsy meeting that there’s pretty much no evidence. Good luck with that.”

I smiled. “Oh, come on, now. We have three whole items to process. No, wait—make that two. I forgot we’re sending the fishing line to the state lab for DNA processing. Do you want the flowers or the note?”

“I’ll take the pretty flowers. You take the weird note.”

Chuckling, I grabbed the envelope containing the note and took it to a workstation. I donned gloves and a mask and pulled the document out of the manila envelope and the plastic sleeve. Positioning the bench magnifier over it, I gave the note a good once-over. It was handwritten in black ink, the penmanship messy but nondescript. I studied its eerie message.

 

An innocent man went to jail that night

Because you decided what was wrong and right.

You thought you knew. You were so sure.

She died; he died. How much must a child have to endure?

A tooth for a tooth. Are you catching on?

It won’t be long before the next one’s gone.

 

I was glad Baxter had sent the poem over to the FBI for their crypto people to take a crack at deciphering it. I certainly didn’t want to have to delve into it to figure out any hidden meanings it held.

Since we knew the message was from the killer, there was no reason for the item to be sent to the Questioned Documents examiner. It wouldn’t help us to know what brand of paper it was written on or what kind of ink was used, or if there had been any alterations made to the written message. Satisfied that the only thing left to do would be to process the paper for fingerprints, I took several photos of the note. I then went to the cabinet where the chemicals were kept and got out a spray bottle of DFO, a solution that was used to develop fingerprints on paper. I sprayed the front and back of the paper, then took it to the fume hood in the corner of the lab to dry.

As I waited, I wandered over to Amanda’s station. She said, “I’m loving this plastic sleeve the flowers came in. I’ve already swabbed some smudged prints for DNA and pulled two partials.”

“Good for you. I’ve—”

We turned when the door opened and Baxter walked in, carrying my purse. “Ellie, Dr. Berg is ready for us at the morgue, and then we have to hurry back and meet with the team here.”

“Okay,” I replied, removing my lab coat. “You know, that purse does not go with your outfit.”

He chuckled. “Right. You left this in my vehicle.”

I took the purse from him and said over my shoulder, “Amanda, can you take over processing the note for me? I’ve made one application of DFO, and it’s drying now.”

“Consider it done,” she said, grinning. “Don’t have too much fun, now.”

As Baxter and I walked down the hall, he asked, “Why did she tell you not to have too much fun?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Because I get the task of informing you and Sterling and the Sheriff that we found little to no evidence at the park. We have the poem, the flowers, and the fishing line. That’s it. No fingerprints, no trace, no nothing.”

Shrugging, he said, “That’s how it goes sometimes. Maybe Dr. Berg will have something for us. Oh, and by the way, there have been new developments.”

“Good or bad?”

He held the front door open for me. “One of each. After we left Ashmore, one of the search groups came back with news that two students they spoke to had seen Jenna Walsh get in a silver Toyota Corolla that pulled up near her dorm around six on Saturday night.”

“Did they see who was driving or get a plate number?”

“No.”

“Then how is that a good development? Silver Corollas are a dime a dozen in the US. It’ll take days to go through the BMV records for Hamilton County alone.” I was referring to Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

He smiled. “Even mediocre developments are good when you have nothing. Ready for the bad one?”

“Maybe not, since you don’t seem to know the difference between good and mediocre.”

Baxter’s boyish face grew serious. “Judge Richards’s twenty-four-year-old granddaughter is missing.”

I sucked in a breath. “What?”

“She went to a late movie with her coworkers, but never made it home. Her cell goes directly to voicemail, and worse, we can’t find the signal to track the phone. She was last seen at eleven-thirty at the movie theater in Castleton Square Mall. Right around the time we got the call from a “concerned neighbor” about there being a dead girl in Richards Park.”

That poor woman. Shaking my head, I got into his SUV. Then I had a thought. “Wait. There are no houses around the park. It faces the back side of a golf course. How could there be a ‘concerned neighbor’?”

“Exactly. When we ran the phone number, it was to a pay phone—”

“Please don’t say at the mall.”

“At the mall.”

“I told you not to say at the mall,” I complained.

He gave me a rueful smile as he started his vehicle. “We’re dealing with a grade-A sociopath, here. I’m afraid it could get worse before it gets better. But to tackle the situation at hand, we’ve got two missing persons detectives working on Michaela Richards’s case and a civilian search underway, plus every law enforcement official in the county is on alert. And of course the media has caught wind of this, so it won’t be long before they’re comparing the victims and developing conspiracy theories of their own.”

Another young woman’s disappearance was a lot to process. I rubbed my temples. “I’m not sure I wanted to know all that.”

“I’m only trying to keep you in the loop like you asked.”

“Right. Well, at least you’re treating me like a member of the team this time instead of some stupid civilian.”

“You are a civilian, though.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean.”

***

When we arrived at the morgue, Baxter and I went inside to suit up in surgical gowns, masks, and gloves.

He asked me, “Are you ready for this?”

I tied my gown at my waist. “Considering how much the DA likes to yell when you guys have no leads on a case, not really.”

Hesitating, he said, “I meant for seeing Jenna again.”

By this point, I’d been around Jenna’s body enough that I’d been able to disconnect the lifeless shell from the vibrant girl I’d known. That didn’t mean I’d worked through my feelings about it, though. Or that I wanted to talk about it—especially with Baxter. “I’m good,” I replied, and pushed past him to open the double doors to the room where the autopsy would be conducted. Sterling and District Attorney Wade McAlister were already there with Dr. Berg.

The morgue had a considerably more somber atmosphere than the last time I’d been here, which I was sure Dr. Berg preferred. He thought of the morgue as a sacred place, but during the last investigation everyone had been at each other’s throats. This time, everyone seemed shell-shocked and sad. With a young woman we all knew lying there on the slab, the morgue felt especially bleak and oppressive.

Dr. Berg said, “We’ll begin. The autopsy for Jenna Walsh will be at ten o’clock this morning. Detectives, as usual, one of you will need to be in attendance. As we discussed at the scene, I believe the preliminary cause of death to be exsanguination.” He pointed to the three-inch gash on the left side of Jenna’s neck. “Notice the laceration on the victim’s neck, which did indeed sever a jugular vein. It’s the only major wound on the body.” He pulled back her top lip to reveal a gaping hole where her right front tooth should have been. “Her upper right central incisor was removed postmortem.” He raised one of her arms to show us the underside of her wrist, which had a band of reddish discoloration. “But note that there are a few defensive wounds on the victim’s hands and arms, plus some ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. She was held against her will for a time before she was killed.”

His voice grave, Baxter said, “Jenna went missing Saturday night. It’s possible that she was bound and held for nearly two days before she was killed.”

At the thought of Jenna being tied up by a crazy person, tears welled in my eyes before I could stop them. It was sickening to imagine what she might have had to endure in those two days. She would have been terrified and defenseless, hoping for someone to rescue her. But help never came. Based on the horror evident in their eyes, everyone in the room was thinking the same thing I was.

DA McAlister pulled down his mask and wiped a hand over his face. “This sick bastard has to be stopped. And soon. If we don’t find this guy and lock him up, there’s no telling who he’s going to target next.” I wondered if the DA was beginning to fear for his own family’s safety.

Dr. Berg said, “I agree. Moving on, I’ve just sent the victim’s clothes to the lab, so they should be there momentarily. As I believe I overheard some of you discussing at the scene, the victim was indeed cleaned and redressed after death. Ellie, you’ll see this when you examine the clothing, but I wanted to point out that I found pieces of straw in the victim’s boots when I removed them from her feet. That could help us pinpoint where the killer may have taken her before her death.”

I nodded, afraid that if I spoke my voice would waver.

Sterling said, “If you found straw, it sounds like she may have been in a barn or on a farm. Unfortunately there’s no shortage of those in the northern half of this county.”

The DA grunted and turned to the detectives. “You know if you don’t get a handle on this now, before another body turns up, the Feds will step in. And that will be a nightmare for all of us.”

He was right. Three related deaths (especially with ritualistic elements) would bump our killer into the territory of serial killer. The FBI tended to take notice at that. It was possible they already had, considering that family members of local law enforcement were being targeted specifically.

“We’re well aware of that, and we’re doing everything we can,” Sterling replied, his tone tight.

Dr. Berg cleared his throat, bringing our attention back to his report. “We’ve established that the park wasn’t the primary crime scene. To further support that, I’ve noticed some lividity on the victim’s back, which means she was lying flat for some time after her death. I’m assuming it was when the killer was cleaning and redressing the body. There was also some blood pooling in the feet and legs, which means she was moved to the park and posed in a sitting position within six hours of her death, when livor mortis would become fixed. Based on what I’ve found so far, I’m putting the time of death window between four and six PM.”

Sterling had begun pacing the room as Dr. Berg was speaking. “We can’t know whether the killer will keep the same timeframe from abduction to time of death that he did with Jenna Walsh, but it’s safe to assume that if we don’t find Michaela Richards within at least forty-eight hours, it could be too late for her.”

DA McAlister spat, “Well, then why are you standing around here like an asshole? Get to work!”

Ripping off his mask, Sterling stopped pacing and faced the DA, stone-faced.

Dr. Berg cut in, “Wade, that’s enough. If no one has any other questions, we can reconvene in the morning.”

Sterling stalked out of the room. Grumbling, the DA followed him out.

Dr. Berg sighed and turned to Baxter and me. “You two be safe out there.”

Baxter nodded. “Of course we will. See you soon.”

“Goodnight, Doc,” I said, feeling his troubled eyes on me as I exited the morgue.

As we removed our protective coverings and disposed of them, I noticed the same concerned look in Baxter’s eyes. He said, “You okay?”

“I will be.”

We exited the cold, dreary morgue, only to be hit with a biting wind as we hurried across the parking lot to Baxter’s SUV. From the look of consternation on his face, I could tell he was struggling to come up with a way to insert some kind of normalcy into our situation.

“Do you feel like eating?” he finally asked.

I had a strong stomach around death, but the situation had me somewhat nauseous. However, knowing that I’d be stuck at the station the rest of the night, I figured I’d better get some food while I could. It was helpful for energy and focus to eat every few hours when pulling all-nighters.

“I guess.”

He smiled. “Good. Because I lost my dinner out at the park.”

I nodded knowingly. “Still got that nasty gag reflex at death scenes, huh?” Baxter vomited at first sight of a dead body. As soon as he lost the contents of his stomach, he was fine, and you’d never know he’d had a problem.

“You know me well.”