It took her about half an hour to arrive at Granger Park in Hartley, the first crime scene, where Tracy Holloway had been discovered. It was overcast today and made the park setting seem eerie and menacing. No one was around, but people were likely to be in work and all the kids in school. Just as well because it would make her task easier if she wasn’t disturbed.
The first thing she wanted to do was establish the likely entry point since the park had three different routes. One entrance, to her left, was via a long path, covered in brambles. Although it was accessible and led out to a road, it was unlikely that the killer would have chosen this path while carrying a body. She ruled it out.
The next entrance was slightly to the right of her and had limited parking but did come from the direction of town. It would have been a straight enough route to come in this way, until the killer reached the pond. He would have had to walk around and potentially leave a lot more footprints because the ground was softer in that area. There was also the rock garden to contend with.
That left where she was standing. The road she herself had come down led straight to a dual carriageway. She looked up and noticed very few streetlamps – those that were present were far apart and therefore this was the more secluded entrance compared to the one to her right. She began to walk towards the tree where the body was found. She estimated about one hundred steps. She turned around and looked back the way she’d come, took out her mobile phone, and snapped a picture.
She believed she’d found the killer’s point of entry. Maggie jogged back to the car and entered the GPS coordinates for the next crime scene forty minutes away.
A thought entered her head; she’d check it out after the next scene, and if she was correct, she may be able to pinpoint the killer’s location and stop him before he chose his next victim.
***
With traffic being so light, she arrived at the second crime scene earlier than she’d expected. Looking at her watch, she realized that schools would be letting out soon so, in order to avoid attracting unnecessary attention, she’d need to get on with things quickly.
Rose Park in Kirby was like an island dropped into the middle of the village and this would make things trickier to deduce. The killer could have entered at any point; however with only two viable ways to drive into the area, Maggie had a fifty-fifty chance of guessing which it would be. She walked over to where the victim had been found. Flowers adorned the ground, with cards and candles placed as a memorial. A lump formed in her throat. She always tried to remain objective in her cases, but when they struck close to home, it was hard not to feel something.
Recalling the crime-scene photos in her mind, she saw Kelsey Gilbey on the ground before her. Given the position in which she had been arranged, it was more than likely that the killer would have come from the right, as he would otherwise have needed to turn around, and logically that didn’t make sense. Armed with the information, she returned to the pool vehicle and headed back to Stafford Police Station.
Time to make the murder map.