“Not much,” he told her. “I was waiting for you before going in. The one thing I did hear was that this scene is sloppier than the others.”
“That’s interesting,” Jessie said. “Let’s go check it out.”
Once they stepped inside, they were greeted by Sergeant Paul Delco. Jessie had worked with him before and always found himto be competent and professional. A rail-thin officer in his late thirties with crew cut brown hair, the man wore a permanent scowl that reinforced the sense that he was all business. She didn’t mind.
“Do you have questions to start off or do you want me to tell you what we know so far?” he asked without any preliminary greeting.
“The latter, if that’s okay with Detective Goodwin,” Jessie said. In her experience, Delco was good at cutting to the chase. Sam nodded that he was fine with that.
“The victim is Anastasia Williamson, 27 years old,” Delco said as he guided them down the hall. “Used to be Anastasia Volkov. Was a big-time model back in Ukraine, where she moved from three years ago.”
“Because of the war?” Sam asked.
“Actually, no,” Delco said. “She paid to transport a friend over here who needed surgery and she ended up staying. Married Dr. Marcus Williamson two years ago. He’s the one who found her body.”
“Where is he now?” Jessie asked.
“In the main bedroom,” Delco said, pointing to a nearby staircase as they passed through a large living room. “I’ll let him give you the details but he thinks he might have scared off the killer when he got home.”
“What kind of state is he in?” Sam asked. “Will he be up for questioning?”
“I think so,” Delco said. “He seems upset but not in shock. If I saw my wife in the state that she’s in, I might be. But he’s a heart surgeon so I guess that could have helped him deal with the scene. It’s pretty rough.”
“I saw that the medical examiner has arrived,” Jessie said. “Any preliminaries on that front?”
“Nothing yet,” Delco said. “But he’s only been here about five minutes.”
“He?” Jessie repeated. “It’s not Cheryl Gallagher? She handled the last two crime scenes.”
“Nope,” he answered, stopping where the living room met the kitchen and pausing there. “Maybe it’s a jurisdictional thing or an overtime issue? Regardless, it’s Kelvin Soto in there.”
Jessie knew Soto too, although she hadn’t dealt with him as often as Gallagher.
“Let’s see if he’s made any more progress since you were in there,” she suggested.
Delco led them into the kitchen. Jessie could immediately tell that this scene was different. Both Cain and Tanaka had been found in dining rooms. But based on the collection of people at the far end of the room, where the kitchen connected to the breakfast room, that was where the body was. What wasn’t different was the blood spatter that covered the floor and multiple appliances. It looked like someone had taken a Super Soaker water gun to the room, only one filled with blood.
A smallish Latino man in his forties with brown hair parted neatly to the side stepped away from the group in the corner and walked over to them.
“Sorry to see you again under these circumstances,” Kelvin Soto said.
“Likewise,” Jessie replied. “You’ve probably heard but this is our third scene like this today. Anything you can share so far?”
“Not a ton yet,” he conceded. “The only thing I can say for sure is that she died recently, like within the last hour. She’s still pretty warm.”
Jessie looked at her watch. It was 6:48 now. So Williamson had been killed no earlier than 5:45 P.M.
“You ready to go over there?” Sam asked.
Jessie nodded and followed him and Soto to the breakfast room. The officers and M.E. techs stepped off to the side to give them a clear view of the scene. Jessie inhaled deeply as she took it in.
Unlike the previous victims, who’d been found in their dining rooms, it appeared that Anastasia Williamson had been intentionally placed in the breakfast room, where she lay on the floor next to a chair. The blood on the back of the chair suggested that she’d been put there but had fallen before she could be tied to it. That reinforced the idea that her husband had come home before the scene could be properly set. Next to her head, in a pool of blood, was her green card. A bloody napkin lay beside it.
Jessie focused her attention on the victim. Even lying on the floor, it was clear that Williamson was tall, easily over six feet. Her long jet black hair contrasted with her pale skin. Even with her eyes scrunched tightly together, she was breathtakingly beautiful. She was barefoot and wore gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt that read:I wish I could help. Okay…not really.Both were soaked in blood.
There were deep gashes in her neck and chest, but also in her forearms and palms. One didn’t have to be a medical examiner to know that they were defensive wounds. Anastasia had fought back.
Jessie wondered if she had been on heightened alert. Had she heard about the other murders and been more prepared to protect herself? If so, it hadn’t worked, but Jessie found herself admiring the woman’s will to fight. She wanted to honor it, and there was only one way to do that: find her killer.
