J. Black - Laura Cardinal - 01 - Darkness on the Edge of Town

Raina Hughes carried little besides a wallet. A hairbrush, lip balm, a packet of tissues, and a small notepad with a short list of things to do: schedule haircut, study for psych exam, drop off/Shelter Care. Jackson looked for names and phone numbers but didn’t see any. Where was her cell phone? Where were her pants?

A rap on the window startled him, and he looked out to see Detective Lara Evans. On most occasions she was an attractive woman, but tonight was not one of them. She was scowling, had no makeup on, and her short, light-brown hair was tucked under a wool cap. Jackson joined her in the cold parking lot. “Thanks for coming out, Evans. You okay?”

“I’m fine, but I think I’m catching a virus. What have we got?”

“Twenty-year-old female with a major head injury and possible sexual assault. She’s on the floor in the back seat, covered in a blanket, but naked from the waist down.” Jackson tucked Raina’s purse into a brown paper evidence bag. Where was Schak? And the assistant DA who usually came out on homicides? Had they turned off their phones because it was Valentine’s Day?

“Let’s go see if Gunderson has anything to tell us.”

The medical examiner was laying a tarp on the asphalt beside the Volvo. Parker had climbed into the backseat and positioned herself for the lift. There was no easy way to do it. Her end of the body transfer would be challenging.

“Can I assist?” Jackson asked, hurrying over.

Gunderson grunted. “Maybe support the middle as she comes out.” He handed Parker a large flat brown bag. “Fold it gently, please.”

“Always.” Parker didn’t look up or smile as she carefully removed the plaid blanket and placed it in the bag.

As Gunderson lifted and pulled under the victim’s shoulders, Jackson slid his arms under her buttocks, careful not to touch her with his hands. He wore gloves, but still, he didn’t want to dislodge any potential evidence. Parker quickly let go, unable to squat and crawl from the car while holding the weight of the body. Jackson held the bulk of her weight as they laid her down.

The sight of her small pale figure against the black tarp gave Jackson another bad moment. Ever since he had seen one of his daughter’s friends lying dead in a dumpster, he kept visualizing and internalizing Katie’s death. Now all he could think was, Oh God, it could have been Katie.

“Jackson?” Evans nudged him. “Where would you like me to start?”

After a moment, he said, “Find the car’s registration, insurance information, anything of interest. Search the glove box, under the seat, everywhere. I want her cell phone.”

As Gunderson plunged a sharp thermal probe into the girl’s hip flesh in search of a core temperature, Jackson looked away. He spotted a pair of faded jeans on the floor of the Volvo’s back seat. The pants had been under the body. A quick check revealed nothing in the pockets, except a gas receipt. Jackson jotted down the day and time, February 13, 4:45 p.m., and made note of the station, which was just down the road on the corner of Greenhill and Highway 126. The jeans had no stains, no semen that he could see. Jackson put each piece of evidence into its own bag, filled in the preprinted labels, and handed both to Parker. All the evidence, except DNA, now went to the new forensics building for processing. He remembered the blood on the girl’s inner thighs and turned to Gunderson. “Was she raped?”

“Violently.” Gunderson shuddered and clenched his jaw. “But I don’t see any semen. I think he used an object. Look for it in the car.”

Jackson shut down the horrific images of what had happened to this young woman and tried to be clinical. Just looking for evidence, he told himself again and again, like a mantra. As he searched under the Volvo’s seats, he thought he heard a faint whisper of Raina’s cries.

Evan’s voice broke through from her search of the front seat. “The car is registered to Raina Hughes and Martha Krell.”

So the car belonged to the victim, Jackson reasoned. Did her attacker follow her here? Or did he come with her? A date perhaps? If so, a very bad date, indeed. In that case, the killer walked away from the scene. Or was his first instinct correct, that she had been killed elsewhere and brought here.

He poked his head out of the car. “Parker, get prints off the steering wheel, please.”

“I tried. It’s been wiped down,” she called back from her photographic examination of the trunk. “I’ll do the rest of the inside of the car tomorrow in the big evidence bay.”

As Jackson processed that information, he found a bloody vibrator under the driver’s seat, wedged between a multiple-CD case and a tire jack. Making minimal contact, he bagged and tagged the hard pink shaft. He wondered if there was any chance of locating the retailer that had sold it. In addition to the several ‘adult’ stores in town, there had to be hundreds of Internet sites where anyone could buy sex toys. Hell, people could buy vibrators at parties with their friends, like they were handy kitchen appliances.

“I found a bloody vibrator,” he said as he squatted down next to Gunderson.

“Impotent freak,” Gunderson muttered. “She was dead or near dead when he used it on her.”

“When was that?”

“Her body temp is only thirty-eight, so she’s been dead, out here in the cold, for at least twenty-four hours. But her skin hasn’t started to discolor yet, so it hasn’t been much longer than that. I’d say your window is roughly between 5 and 8 p.m. last night. The pathologist might be able to narrow it down. But don’t count on it.”

So Raina had been out here all night and all day, and no one had seen her. In February, even the most devoted birdwatchers took a break. High headlights briefly illuminated the parking area. Rob Schakowski’s top-heavy body climbed out of his truck. Schak, as everyone called him, could be obnoxious at times, but he was dedicated and thorough. He would complain about how tedious an assignment was, but he never took shortcuts.

“Shit, it’s cold out here,” Schak grumbled as he pulled on latex gloves. “Why do you always get the outside, winter victims? Lammers must still be pissed at you.”

“You think so?” Jackson meant to be flippant but his voice fell flat. He could participate in crime scene humor when the victim was an adult male, but not with a woman or child. Was that sexist? Or just human? “In summary, what we have here is a twenty-year-old female, sexually brutalized and bludgeoned to death. I need you to interview the people across the road to see if they saw or heard anything.”

“Do you think it might be the serial rapist Quince is tracking?”

“Could be. But we have new elements, one being that this victim died from the beating. If it is the same perp, his anger is escalating and his MO is changing.”

Evans backed out of the Volvo and said, “Nothing interesting in the car. A few photos in the glove box, most of the same young woman. The name Jamie is written on the back of one.”

“No cell phone?”

“Sorry.”

Damn. A person’s entire social life was often in their cell phone. Especially young people, who liked to text-message, take photos, and listen to music on their phones. Jackson hadn’t moved to that tech level yet. Occasionally he responded to his daughter’s text messages with a cryptic no or call me , but that was it. Talking was way easier than typing.

“Track down next of kin for me, please. Start with Martha Krell, the car’s co-owner.” Jackson reached out to take the pictures in Evan’s hand. “Raina’s wallet is in a bag in my car. There may be contact information there.”

Jackson felt his stomach tighten—as if he had swallowed something he couldn’t digest. This scene was off kilter; the crime had layers that would need to be peeled back one at a time. With these kinds of cases, the whole truth didn’t always emerge. Sometimes he had to settle for simply finding the perpetrator. He hated settling. Once he had examined a crime scene, he wanted to know every detail of what had transpired.