Smiling, Jenna shook her head. Carter was certainly a character. His laid-back nature covered what lay beneath thesurface. A Navy SEAL who’d suffered PTSD, he’d been dragged back into service as an FBI agent by his partner, Jo Wells. His two years off the grid had made him antisocial at first, but now he slid into the team and had become part of their family. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have it any other way. We look forward to seeing you all again.”
After disconnecting, Jenna made notes to organize the takedown of the drug distribution at the Withers ranch. The time had come for her to delegate responsibility. She had too many things to consider to take on any more burdens. Styles and Carter had experience in taking down drug cartels, and along with Kane as a backup sniper, they would work out a suitable plan. She needed to keep her mind on working with Kalo and Beth Katz on finding suspects for the murders. With her list of things to do sitting in front of her, she realized just how vast a task she had set herself. The leads to Ellie McBride being involved in Laney Prescott’s murder had all fallen away to dust with the death of Ellie. Without any solid leads to find the murderer, she would need to gather herself and literally start the investigation again. She stood and exchanged her shoes for boots and then glanced at Kane as he carefully placed the paperwork inside a manila folder. “We desperately need this search warrant. I want to find a tie between the murders. If we follow the usual psychopath pattern, we’ll be looking at someone who has problems with teachers and social workers. To me, this screams of a kid who has been placed in the system and maybe didn’t get the help that they wanted. I’m going to play toward that angle and hope for the best, because right now it’s all that I’ve got.”
“It sounds like a fine plan, Jenna.” Kane shrugged into his coat and, taking the gloves out of his pocket, pushed the folder under one arm and then pulled them on. “I figure we’ve got enough probable cause to sway the judge. He knows the severity of the problem we have in Black Rock Falls with serialkillers. He also understands our methods. We might get a list of names but we will also treat them in a sensitive manner.” He buttoned his coat. “One thing you haven’t considered is if the person we’re looking for isn’t a child who went through the system. There is a possibility they could be a parent or someone who’s had their child removed from their care and is carrying resentment toward the people who made it possible. If we get a bunch of names and Kalo and Beth can find matches with some of the other searches that we’ve been doing, we might strike gold.” He pushed on his hat and glanced down at Duke, who snored in his sleep. “Let’s go. Duke will be fine here.”
Smiling broadly, Jenna slid her arm through Kane’s as they left the judge’s office. Happiness blocked out the blast of freezing wind that threatened to cut through her thick clothes. Under her arm she gripped the signed search warrant. Kane had been amazing, giving his genuine concern about any clients but stressing the need to prevent more murders. Between them they’d convinced the judge but it hadn’t been easy. At last, they could move forward. The moment they were out of earshot, she planned to whoop and happy dance in the snow, but as she turned to look at Kane, she barely avoiding tripping over a woman pushing a stroller. Luckily, Kane had tightened his grip and she gathered herself and smiled at a red-nosed child peeking out from under a knitted blue bonnet and waving a teddy bear.
The toothless grin the little boy gave her shone out like a ray of sunshine. She suddenly missed Tauri and Jackson, although they would be thrilled with the arrival of the choppers. She’d made sure to call Raya to inform her they were coming and to tell Tauri about them right away as a chopper had landed in the yard previously and a notorious criminal had kidnapped him.She hoped the arrival of the FBI agents, along with Jo’s daughter, Jaime, would put a smile on his face.
“I miss them too.” Kane leaned into her as they strolled along the sidewalk. “I liked being the rancher for a year as well. It was relaxing.” He bent and kissed the top of her head. “I hate to admit it, but I loved the entire process. The late-night feeding, changing diapers. It was an experience I figured would never happen. I wish we’d had those important times with Tauri as well but just having him as our son and seeing him smile is enough.”
Glad of him beside her blocking the chill, she smiled. “Yeah, it was exhausting—still is—but I loved every second. I’d have had ten kids, but the job got in the way. I love being sheriff. I need to be useful and I figure I can have both: my kids and my job. It’s just as well. Most of the time, it’s a peaceful town and we get to spend time at home. We should be grateful the mayor allows us the time we need.”
“Talking about time”—Kane glanced at his watch—“we need to head to Wolfe’s office, or we’ll miss the autopsy.”
Increasing her stride, Jenna headed for the office. She needed to keep moving forward on the murders as fast as possible. “I’ll get Rio and Rowley to execute the search warrant. Raven will probably like to attend the autopsy. I’ll meet you at the Beast.”
TWENTY-FIVE
As they walked into the medical examiner’s office, Kane’s and Raven’s voices dropped to just above a whisper. Jenna found it strange how the smell of the morgue had the same reaction on everyone, as if they had walked into church. Maybe it was respect. Although Wolfe had a ton of respect for the victims in his care, he was the complete opposite. Maybe because he spoke into a microphone for most of the day and needed to lift the volume of his voice to make sure the recording came out clear and precise. Jenna shook her head trying to imagine why she had contemplated the reason behind the volume of people’s voices. Maybe she needed to squash the uneasy feeling of going to an autopsy to watch the dissection of two poor women. Jenna followed Kane and Raven to the alcove. She removed her coat, gloves, and hat and proceeded to pull on the scrubs and PPE. She looked at the others. “Ready?”
When they nodded, she led the way to the examination room with the red light outside, flashed her card over the scanner, and stepped inside. The terrible smell of decomposition crept through her face mask and crawled over her tongue like some alien being. She kept her mouth shut and breathedthrough her nose. Inside, bright lights shone on stainless steel gurneys and instrument trays set out alongside Wolfe and Emily. She immediately noticed a difference in the setup. Usually, Wolfe spoke into a microphone that he pulled down from an arm set above the gurney but this time they both wore headsets, the microphones tucked in underneath their face masks. The medical examiners had their backs turned to them, but the whoosh of the door caught their attention and they both turned at once to look at them.
The sight of the bodies made Jenna’s breakfast solidify in her stomach. She would never get used to seeing a body cracked open for examination. After so many crime scenes and autopsies, she’d hoped that one day she would become hardened to the sights, but in truth, most times she became saddened and angry. Kane and Raven moved closer to the examination tables, but she leaned against the counter, positioning herself below the air-conditioning duct, hoping the flow of air would reduce some of the smell. She nodded to Wolfe. “Morning. I see you’ve already started. Have you discovered anything of significance?”
“It’s good to see y’all.” Wolfe’s gaze moved from one to the other and settled on Raven. “How are the ribs?”
“Fine if I don’t laugh, sneeze, or cough.” Raven met his gaze. “Em is keeping an eye on me.”
“So I see.” Wolfe turned his attention back to Jenna. “We’ve conducted preliminary examinations as you know. Some interesting information came to light from Ellie McBride. Under her fingernails we discovered small traces from black leather gloves, but that’s not all. We discovered samples of saliva, which carried DNA. I ran it through the sequencer right away and we got a match for Laney Prescott. As these women have never met, this is absolute proof that the same person murdered both women.”
“I have something too.” Emily placed instruments back on the tray and turned to look at her. “I found a few dog hairs onthe back of Laney Prescott’s clothes. She doesn’t own a dog, as far as I’m aware. I can tell you that the dog is black and white, but I would need to go into further DNA analysis to pinpoint the breed, but likely it’s a crossbred animal.”
Intrigued, Jenna pushed away from the counter and moved closer to Emily’s examination table. “That could be a very important clue.”
“There’s more.” Wolfe winked at her. “The garrotes used on both victims are identical. The small pieces of wood came from a pine tree, which as we are surrounded by them, makes it a bit difficult to identify and the green twine used is exactly the same. I conducted research into the twine and it’s a generic brand that’s easily obtained in a wide variety of stores. So basically, the killer used untraceable items. I found no foreign DNA, trace evidence, or other particles on the garrotes.”
“I assume that both victims were strangled from behind.” Kane moved from one gurney to the next. “This is a very up-close and personal way to kill someone. Surely the killer left trace evidence behind, apart from a few dog hairs.”
“We have more samples to examine.” Wolfe crossed his arms. “It will take time to run them all through the DNA sequencer machine. Of course, there were other DNA samples, but most of them are likely to belong to the victims. We can’t tell just by looking at them. The scrapings from the fingernails were a priority, so we did those right away. The others will take a little longer. The problem is, with all the information available about DNA and crime scenes, we’re finding killers are being very particular about what evidence they leave behind. This makes our job a whole lot more difficult. It’s the small pieces of evidence they miss that come to light that usually give us a lead.”
“The injuries look identical.” Raven walked around the gurneys examining the victims. “Did you find anything else?”
“They both have bruises between their shoulders.” Emilyfrowned above her face mask. “We both found this quite unusual, and we assumed that the perpetrator rendered the victims unconscious while he stood close to the body, and when they dropped, he used his knee between their shoulder blades to increase the pressure on their necks. As you can see, there are two main grooves in the flesh on the necks of both victims. This would indicate that the killer moved the twine during the attack. The first groove is lower and crushed the larynx and the second groove comes up under the chin.” She indicated to one of two red welts on Laney Prescott’s throat. “This I believe is the second attempt to suffocate her. It, in fact, crushed her hyoid bone.”
“Normally I would say that this killer knew exactly what he was doing or he’s done this before.” Wolfe shrugged and his gray gaze moved over Jenna’s face. “In this case, I can’t be one-hundred-percent sure. One thing he does know: that it takes at least four minutes to strangle someone; and I have to assume that he knew breaking the hyoid bone would be an advantage. The problem is this information is readily available on the internet. The other thing: it takes a reasonable amount of strength to strangle someone, especially when they’re kicking and gouging your hands. So we need to assume that the killer is bigger and stronger than the women involved. This makes me believe, the perpetrator in this case is male.”
“Strangulation makes it personal.” Kane stood hands on hips, feet apart, shaking his head. “I believe this guy has an ax to grind. He needed to feel the life leaving his victims’ bodies.”
The link between the victims would be crucial but Jenna needed a determination of cause of death to proceed. Jenna looked at Kane and nodded in agreement. “And he’s escalating, so there may be more victims we haven’t discovered yet.” She moved her attention back to Wolfe. “So going on what you’ve discovered so far, what would you consider to be the cause of death?”
“The heart, lungs, and other organs are oxygen deprived in both victims.” Wolfe cleared his throat. “Unless the drug analysis or further investigations prove otherwise, I’d say asphyxia due to strangulation, but I’ll likely be adding anoxia due to the interruption of blood flow to the brain.” He glanced at Jenna. “I’ll send a preliminary report tonight and upload the complete doc in a few days.”
Glad she didn’t need to be present for the entire autopsy, Jenna nodded. “Thank you for not prolonging this examination for us. Currently, Rowley and Rio are collecting evidence from the Department of Social Services. Just before we left to come here, we managed to get a search warrant from the judge. We’re hoping that we can link possible suspects with the victims. I’m eager to head on down there and see what’s been found.”
“Don’t worry.” Wolfe’s eyes twinkled over the top of his mask. “If I find anything to help with the case, I will call you directly.”
Smiling, Jenna gave him a wave. “I know you will. Thanks for everything, we’ll catch you both later.”
