CHAPTER NINE

 

 

I unlocked my office, thinking that when I’d done this only yesterday morning, I hadn’t had a care in the world. I hadn’t yet heard that Jenna was missing. I hadn’t seen Baxter and dredged up all those uncomfortable memories. I hadn’t seen sweet young Jenna dead at the hands of a mad man, and Jayne crumple in front of my eyes. When I walked in, my thoughts zeroed in on the fact that comfort was only feet away, hidden inside my desk. It might as well have been miles away with Baxter watching my every move.

Baxter had retrieved a crime scene kit from one of the deputies and brought it along. His eyes fell on the award sitting on my desk. “That the one?”

“Yes, that’s it. He purposely picked it up to look at it.”

Baxter set the case down on the floor and stepped back. “I’ll let you do your thing. Restroom is which way?”

Well, that was a stroke of luck in my otherwise shitty day. “Left and then another left.”

“Lock the door behind me.”

Gladly. I locked the door, and the first thing I did was to go for the vodka and take a long swig straight from the bottle. The burn in my throat was like a welcome friend, and I felt instant calm as it warmed my stomach. Now I could deal with anything. I swished and swallowed strong mouthwash and stuffed a handful of red-hot cinnamon candies in my mouth from an open bag in my desk.

Sufficiently relaxed, I opened the kit and donned a pair of gloves, then got out the magnetic fingerprint powder and applicator. Regular fingerprint powder was best, but in this case, it would make a giant mess all over my desk, and I would have to be the one to clean it. I picked up my engraved award and set a piece of clean paper under it to catch any errant powder, then got out a magnifying glass and a flashlight to look for fingerprints. Luckily, the clear glass this thing was made of showed even the slightest smudge, and because of that, I was forever having to wipe it down when anyone happened to pick it up. Hunter was the last person to have touched it.

I spotted a perfect latent thumbprint on the front of the award, almost as if he’d intended to put it there, which he probably had. It was again one of those unusual tented arches like the ones I’d found on the evidence from last night’s crime scene. He was our guy.

My stomach suddenly plummeted, and I broke out in a sweat. I’d had the killer in this office and hadn’t had a damn clue. How could I have sat and chatted with him and had no inkling he had a murderous dark side? I didn’t think I was going to be able to forgive myself for missing something like that.

Wiping my brow with my forearm, I managed to stop berating myself long enough to focus my energy on the task at hand. After brushing on some fingerprint powder, I was about ready to do a tape lift when a knock on my door startled me. I carefully set down the award and let Baxter in.

He took one look at me and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Hunter Parsons is our killer. I’m sure of it. I found his fingerprint on my award.”

“Don’t you have to do a little more than eyeball it to make that kind of blanket statement?”

I frowned. “Damn it, Baxter. I’ve stared at his prints all night long. This is it.”

He held up his hands. “Okay, I believe you.”

Turning my back on him, I returned to my task, smoothing the lift tape over the fingerprint. After making sure there were no air bubbles, I slowly pulled the tape off and secured it to the card. It was a good print.

I handed it to Baxter. “There you go. I hope you’ve got a brilliant idea up your sleeve as to how to find this guy. I feel officially outsmarted.”

“I think our next step is to go to the media. I’ve already set the Voice in motion, so if we can get the local media to run the photo, we might be able to find someone who knows him. Someone has to. By the way, I want you to sit down with a sketch artist this morning. That photo is all we have, and I’m afraid it’s too grainy to be of much use on TV. I want a composite sketch, too.”

I looked at my watch. “When? I have class in thirty minutes.”

He stared at me. “Seriously? We’re going to do this again? Get a sub or cancel.”

Frowning, I replied, “I’m sorry my career is getting in your way, Detective. Finals are next week, and I can’t be cancelling classes.”

Baxter wiped a hand down his face. “What’s your schedule like this morning?”

“I have an hour break at ten.”

“Okay, I’ll see if the sketch artist can come to you. You’re a real pain in the ass sometimes, you know that?”

“Back at ya.”

He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I meant what I said before about keeping an eye on you until we catch our killer. But I have things to do, so if you insist on staying here, I’m going to have to assign a deputy to you.”

I hated to have an officer of the law waste time babysitting me when there was a young woman in real danger. “I don’t think it’s necessary if I’m only going to be here on campus. Hunter isn’t going to show his face at Ashmore once the Voice starts running his photo. It’s too risky.”

“I’m not putting anything past this guy. But more importantly, your safety is non-negotiable to me.”

I didn’t quite know how to respond to that, so I busied myself with bagging up the award and scribbling information on the evidence tag. “Oh,” was my noncommittal response. I handed him the bag. “I guess if you’re going back now, you should take this to evidence.”

“Sure. Now stay put and lock the door. A deputy will be here shortly.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“When you’re done with your classes, you’ll need to come back to the station.” He frowned. “We all have to meet individually with the Fed today.”

I let out a disgusted snort. “Talk about a pain in the ass.”

With a wry grin, Baxter said, “I’ll see you soon. Stay safe, please.”

***

The class I had fought so hard to teach didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. It was supposed to be the first part of the final review for my Intro to Criminalistics class. I had everything I was going to go over on a PowerPoint presentation, but for some reason I couldn’t keep my mind on the material.

I wasn’t the only one. My students were not much better off than I was. Some looked haggard, I assumed from participating in the late-night search. Some were downright distraught—pale and sickly-looking. Jenna Walsh’s death had hit campus hard, especially on the heels of the last string of student deaths these poor kids had had to deal with. It was all too much, and it was dredging up old fears. It also didn’t help that there was a Hamilton County sheriff’s deputy sitting in the back of my classroom.

About halfway through the review, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Guys, I feel your pain. Jenna Walsh was a close friend of mine and of my sister’s. She was like family to us. I know this is hard, especially since it’s probably also bringing up bad memories from earlier in the semester. I understand that your heads are somewhere else.” I sighed. “Unfortunately for you, this couldn’t have occurred at a worse time. Finals are going to happen, whether we’re ready for them or not. And I don’t want you to ruin the grades you’ve worked so hard for all semester with one test. Please, if you’re grieving, scared, or upset in any way, get help now. Go to your RAs, and they’ll point you in the right direction. Work through it as well as you can. Get your mind healthy so you can get through next week. Most of you are freshman, and you’re probably already overwhelmed at the thought of your first round of finals. It’s going to be a difficult week. But it’ll be much more difficult if you don’t make the effort to pull yourselves together so you’re clear-headed enough to study. Like I always say, emotional control is one of the most important skills you can have as a criminalist. This is one of those times when it’s essential.”

I heard some murmurs and groans, and one student raised her hand. After I called on her, she asked, “How do you develop emotional control? Don’t you have to be born with it, at least a little?”

I shrugged. “I suppose it helps to have some natural tendencies to keep your emotions in check. Not everyone has the self-control to stay calm in difficult situations. I would say that you should first find a thought that centers you. Focus on something that makes you happy or comforted and try not to let the negative thoughts take hold.”

She replied, “But isn’t that basically pushing your real feelings aside? Isn’t that unhealthy?”

My young millennial students never seemed to shy away from showing how they really felt about a situation, which I often found grating.

“Yes and no. Part of being a functioning adult is not letting every little problem derail your walk through life. At the same time, you shouldn’t always bottle up your feelings. Emotional control is about picking and choosing the times to be strong and the times it’s okay to let go. When you’re on the job, you do what you have to do to stay strong, even at your own psychological expense. Otherwise, you’re doing a disservice to the victims, their families, your fellow law enforcement officers, and the law itself.”

Another student raised his hand. “Did you work Jenna’s…the murder scene last night?”

“Yes.”

“If she was so close to you, how are you even functioning this morning after doing that?”

I hated to ever speak about personal matters with my classes, but this was one that pertained to their future professions, and they needed a dose of real-life experience. “I know you’re going to have mixed feelings about this, but I’m going to tell you the truth. The Sheriff, Jenna’s aunt, is one of my closest friends. She asked me to work the scene because she trusts me. I couldn’t let her down, and I couldn’t let Jenna down.” I blew out a breath. “So, I detached myself from my relationship to Jenna. I tried to only refer to her and think of her as ‘the victim’ while I was on the scene. I focused on the science of the case, not the emotional side. I did the job—that’s it. My co-workers knew better than to give me too much in the way of condolences. They went on like it was business as usual, which helped me to stay focused. When my job is done, I will allow myself to grieve. But until then, I owe it to Jenna and her family to put my feelings aside so I can do my part to catch her killer.”

One of the students in the front row raised his hand. “Isn’t this way of thinking what turns so many law enforcement workers to substance abuse? And doesn’t it also cause astronomically high statistics of depression in the field?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Then why has no one come up with a better way of managing the psychological impact of violence?”

“I’d love it if someone would, but I don’t know if it’s possible given the millions of different ways human beings deal with stressors. In the meantime, when we are tasked with processing a brutal, gruesome death scene, we get through it any way we can. If you’re going to work in law enforcement, you have to make a commitment to put the safety and welfare of others before your own—physical and emotional. If you’re more worried about yourself than about others and the greater good, this profession isn’t for you. Honestly, if you can’t manage to put aside your personal feelings in order to get through your finals—which is your ‘job’ as a student—maybe it’s time to start thinking about a new major.”

That comment got me a lot of grumbling. They always hated it when I said it, but why waste four years and over a hundred thousand dollars only to find out that you can’t stomach the only thing you’re qualified to do? I knew from experience that it was heart-breaking to give up the career you’d built your life around. If I’d known at eighteen what I knew now, I might have chosen a different path.

I glanced at the clock. “We only have a few minutes left, so let’s try to get through the review of the chapter on trace evidence.”

***

The sketch artist was waiting at my office when I finished class. Called in from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, Officer Charlotte Mains was an older woman about Jayne’s age. She reminded me of Jayne quite a lot in her rigid stature and determined expression. But once we got inside my office (with my assigned deputy staying outside to guard the door), she was as kind and soft as she could be, taking time to introduce herself and get to know me.

After asking me a few general questions about Hunter’s appearance, she began sketching a generic face. It was amazing to watch her hand as it moved quickly across the paper. I’d never had any dealings with a sketch artist before, but she made it a painless experience.

“What was the one facial feature that stood out about him?”

I thought for a moment. “I guess his eyes. They seemed big and…soulful, for lack of a better word. He was wearing glasses, though, so maybe they were magnified or something.”

“Was the iris part of his eye large or was it his entire eyeball that you thought was large?” Charlotte asked.

“The iris. His eyes are dark brown, and the iris seemed to take up most of his eyeball. Eyes you could get lost in…if he weren’t a deranged sociopath.”

“That’s a good description,” she replied, her hand again zipping across the page, making seemingly random strokes that suddenly came together as a set of deep, bewitching eyes.

I stared at her drawing. “No, you’re good. That’s really close.”

“What do I need to tweak?”

“His eyes are a little farther apart. The bridge of his nose is kind of wide in between.”

She made that change. “Better?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then. Let’s move out from there. Glasses, eyebrows, and nose are next.”

I kept describing Hunter’s features, and Charlotte kept drawing. She never seemed to mind when I’d make a mistake and had to have her erase and redraw.

Once she had the facial features pretty well finished, she asked, “How about his hair?”

“Dark brown, curly. Kind of longish, I think. It stuck out a good couple of inches all around the beanie hat he was wearing.”

She nodded and kept sketching. After a few minutes she said, “You said something about a beard. Short or long?”

“Probably about an inch long. Not too well groomed.”

Charlotte made a few more strokes, then began shading in areas of the face. Suddenly Hunter Parsons came to life on the page.

“Oh, shit,” I breathed.

She smiled sympathetically. “I take it I got him?”

I nodded. “Spot on.” It was creepy to see our killer staring back at me, looking like the seemingly sweet kid he’d pretended to be when I met him.

She put her pencil down. “If you’re happy with this, I’ll get it to Detective Baxter. Then we can only hope that between this sketch and the photo that someone will recognize who he really is.” Standing, she held out her hand. “It was nice to meet you, Ellie. I hope your investigation goes well.”

“Thank you, and thanks for your help.” She left me alone with my thoughts, haunted by the big soulful eyes of Hunter Parsons, murderer.