The victim’s neck was bruised with a pattern that led Kate to believe the rosary wrapped around the hands could have been the strangulation weapon. The vic’s blonde braid was tied with a blue elastic band, the kind you’d find on broccoli. Faded and oversized, the nightgown looked out of place on the vic’s petite body, as if she’d borrowed it from her grandmother.
There was no blood at the scene.
No sign of struggle.
Her nightstand was orderly, holding a reading light and a photo of the vic and a handsome young brown-haired man who appeared to be in his early twenties. Kate knew that man. She’d just seen him outside the house, secured in a squad car. He was the boyfriend, the one who’d broken into the house and discovered the body. The first one to see her dead.
But was he also the one who’d killed her?
Only the evidence would say once they’d analyzed it all.
“Scorfosi, did you take a photo of her hands?” Kate asked the photographer.
“Yep. Got all of it. I’m done with the body.”
Turning to the medical examiner, she asked, “Is it okay if I just lift the end here?”
Dr. George Cooper shrugged, a paper bag in hand. “Go ahead. I was just about to seal her extremities.”
Kate used a pen to lift the cross at the end of the rosary off the vic’s hands. Her brightly colored manicured nails didn’t seem damaged at all. “You’ll retrieve whatever DNA you can from under her nails?” she asked, even though her hopes weren’t high based on their immaculate state.
Kate turned to Detective Rosebud when he re-entered the room.
“Where did you go?” she asked him.
“Out. You’re the lead. Do you need me here? I’d rather be downstairs.”
“Tell me what you think. Doesn’t look like there’s been any struggle in here.”
“Or anywhere in the house, really,” Rosebud added.
“So what do you think about the religious theme?”
“Which part? The golden crucifix above the bed looks like it belongs here. Lots more religious items downstairs. The small cross around her neck looks like it could be something she’d wear. We’ll check with the parents. As for the rosary wrapped around her hands? It could be hers.”
“I don’t think so. It’s blue.”
“Hate to break it to you, Murphy, but girls normally go past the monochrome tones you seem to limit yourself to. They can have blue things. Times have changed.”
“I’m not being sexist here. Just look around the room. Everything here is peach, salmon, magenta, or some other shade of pink. If you look in her closet, she doesn’t own anything blue, except for jeans. Why would she have a blue rosary?”
“Maybe you have a point. We’ll just ask the parents,” he said heading to the closet to open it. “Did you notice that?” he asked Kate.
“What?” she asked, heading toward him, her feet sinking into the plush carpeting.
“I’d say this girl has some sort of OCD or very strict parents.”
“The evenly spaced hangers?”
“Yeah. And everything is hanging the same way, from longest to shortest outfits.”
“And look at her desk,” Kate said without bothering to finish her thought. Rosebud had undoubtedly noticed how the chair had been put in its rightful place, resting flush against the edge of the desk. The books’ spines perfectly aligned, their backs flushed with each other. Three pencils, all of which were freshly sharpened and spaced evenly, perfectly parallel to each other. The purse had been aligned perfectly, too, but it no longer was after she’d gone through it.
“But there’s one thing that’s not perfect,” Kate said after the medical examiner and his team had finally bagged and taken the body out of the bedroom.
“Other than the stench and the dead woman?”
“Look by the bed. The marks on the carpet. The murderer, he must have sat next to her.”
Kate looked at the desk again, then the marks by the bed. Since both the photographer and medical examiner had cleared the area, she considered moving the chair to prove her point, but decided to shine her Alternate Light Source LED on it. With her gloved hand, she touched as little as she could to drag the chair back away from the desk so she could have a better look.
Sure enough, the back, the sides, and the underside of the chair were littered with visible prints. Many smudged but some as clear as day.
“Scorfosi! Get back in here, please!” she yelled out.
The photographer came back into the room. “What’s up, Murphy?”
“Did you take photos of all those prints?” she asked, her blue light with the orange filter now illuminating the back of the chair.
He shook his head. “Fuller had me take photos of the nightstand and the Bible that rested on the vic, but not the chair. We already dusted for prints on the nightstand and took photos of those.”
“I think we may have hit the jackpot. Loads will be the vic’s, but if my guess is right, that chair was where the killer sat next to the victim when she died.”
By now Rosebud had relocated to the side of the bed, a tape measure in hand, comparing the distance between the sections of flattened fibers and the legs of the chair. Kate was still illuminating the chair while the photographer recorded the evidence.
“Looks right to me,” Rosebud said. “But who’s to say these marks weren’t from before?”
“I don’t think so,” Murphy said. “Look at the rest of the carpet. The lines. Other than our own footsteps, it looks freshly vacuumed. I doubt she would’ve left her chair there. It probably would have bothered her to see it out of place.
“So the killer sat next to her?”
“And for quite a while,” Kate added, noting how flattened the carpet fibers were. Turning to the photographer, she asked. “Did you get a few good shots of the carpet before we stepped all over the crime scene?”
“A few. I’ll share them with you when we get back, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”