The Dallas police station on Lamar in downtown Dallas was a fifteen-minute drive on I-35 from the medical examiner’s building out on North Stemmons. The female officer working the front desk called upstairs so Benson knew Jase was coming. He crossed the bull pen, waved to a couple of cops he knew on his way to Benson’s desk.
“Maddox.” The detective didn’t bother to stand. “Since when are you working a murder case?”
“The client’s a friend. The dead girl’s her sister.”
Benson grunted. “Kathryn Gallagher—the royal pain in the ass. It’s her, right?” Benson was one of those people who was always in a bad mood. It fit with his perpetually wrinkled suit, and the lines in his face that made him look like an English bulldog.
“It’s her,” Jase said, his own irritation growing.
“Figures.”
“Why? Because you know what a pain in your ass I’m going to be if you don’t give me what I need?”
“Take it easy. What do you want to know?”
“I’d like to look at the file.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Fine. I talked to the coroner. Cause of death was blunt force trauma.”
“That’s right, she was beaten to death. Probably a john who got carried away.”
“Maybe. She had a tattoo of a kiss on her neck. You ever seen one like it?”
“No.”
“ME says there wasn’t any semen so no DNA.”
“Nope.”
“What about prints?”
“Remains sat outside all night. It was rainy, muddy. Got nothing we could use.”
“Where was the body found?”
“Old East Dallas. Alley behind Mean Jack’s. You know it?”
“I know it. That the primary crime scene or was she killed somewhere else?”
“The body was moved. We haven’t found the primary yet.”
“What about her phone? Did you find it?”
“No. She had a webpage with a customer contact number. Number belonged to a burner.”
“Give me the number.”
Benson looked down at the file and rattled it off.
“Anything else? What about a john in the area who liked to knock girls around?”
“We’ve banged some doors, talked to a few people in the neighborhood, working girls, couple of pimps. Came up with squat. If they knew her, they aren’t saying.”
“She had ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. Maybe the girl was being trafficked. You find anything that points in that direction?”
“Look, Kathryn Gallagher might not want to face it, but her sister was a whore. She wasn’t tied up in some basement somewhere.”
