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“It was so promising.”
“But not surprising. The Kitsap Killer hasn’t left his DNA yet, but he’ll mess up at some point. He’ll make a mistake. They all do.”
“Yeah, remind me again how long the Green River Killer was at large?” Jessica fell across the bed, her legs hanging over the edge.
“More than twenty years, but you just visited his current domicile.” Finn put away his laptop and stacked up the dishes on the tray. “I’ll leave this out in the hallway on my way out. If you’re okay, I need to get home and collect Bodhi and finish my grading.”
“I’ll be fine. Didn’t you hear Michael? I’m on vacation.” She propped herself up on her elbows. “Thanks for staying with me last night, even though…”
“There was nowhere else I wanted to be, even though… .” He hitched his bag over his shoulder and strode toward the bed. Leaning over, he kissed her, just like he did this morning.
And just like this morning, the touch of his lips sent butterflies swirling in her stomach.
As he stopped at the door with the tray in hand, he turned and said, “Get yourself a temporary phone and call me later.”
When the door slammed behind him, Jessica scrambled from the bed. She may be on forced vacation, but that didn’t mean she had to stop working on this case. She’d been doing her best work on her own, anyway, and as far as she could tell—she was the closest person to catching the killer.
* * *
WHENFINN HADbeen gone almost an hour, Jessica pulled on a sweatshirt and grabbed her purse. She didn’t have a phone to call Ashley and alert her to her visit, but maybe that was a good thing. Ashley acted as if she wanted Jessica to accept Plank’s guilt in Tiffany’s murder, but she hadn’t moved on herself.Queenie.
Luckily, she remembered the way to Ashley’s mobile home park. Did Denny have a username on the website, too? Were they both poking their noses into the investigations—past and present? She’d handed them two clues. Why didn’t they tell her they were looking, too? Ashley pretended it was a done deal.
Michael hadn’t mentioned any other DNA but hers on the red fiber, but maybe they couldn’t separate anything else from hers. She’d messed up. Jessica sent a silent apology to Morgan, Missy and Gabby. And then she let out a not-so-silent scream in her car.
She hadn’t been on the CSI team collecting evidence in the Art Garden. Detective Morse didn’t want her there. Once the detective found out that she’d compromised the evidence in the other two cases, he would probably congratulate himself on the decision to keep her away. That was going to be a bitter pill to swallow in front of her colleagues at the forensics lab.
Jessica wheeled into the mobile home park and waved at a child on a tricycle. Pots of flowers and decorative treesbrightened the yards of many of the mobile homes, which made Ashley’s drab homestead stand out at the end of the row.
The inside of Ashley’s place may be as chaotic as the place she’d shared with Tiffany, but Tiffany loved bright colors and beauty. If she lived with Ashley now, she would’ve turned the place into a charming, bohemian hideaway.
Jessica sniffed and parked the car in the same place as last time—behind a small white Toyota that had seen better days. At least she’d find Ashley at home this Sunday afternoon, unless she’d gone out with Denny. Jessica hadn’t noticed Denny’s car when she was here before.
She clomped up the two steps to the door. The mesh on the screen seemed to gape even wider than it had a few days ago. Ashley wasn’t going to keep out many bugs, or even critters, with that thing.
The screen door protested when Jessica cracked it open to knock on the door. She stepped back and waited, listening for Ashley’s heavy footfall on the floor inside. Instead, the tinny sound of the cheap TV chirped behind the door.
Jessica knocked again, harder. “Ashley? It’s Jessica, Jessie, again. I need to talk to you.”
She cocked her head, trying to filter out the background noise of the voices on the TV. “Ashley?”
Icy fingers trailed across her cheek, and she spun around. The kid on the trike had vanished, leaving her tricycle overturned in front of a mobile home with a swing set in front, one wheel spinning. A curtain twitched at the window of a home across the way, as a breeze rustled the crunchy leaves in Ashley’s messy front yard and gave a silent push to the empty swing.
Jessica smacked her dry lips and knocked for a thirdtime. “Ashley, are you home? We need to talk about your posts on Cold Case dot com. I know you’re Queenie on there. I’m not even mad. Please open the door.”
Her last words came out on a desperate whine as her fingertips started to go numb. The hair on the back of her neck quivered as she crept down the porch steps and shuffled through the dead leaves to the front window.
“Ashley!” Jessica banged on the window, causing it to quiver. One half of the curtains were pulled too far to the middle, leaving a gap on the side.
Jessica sidled toward the edge of the window, cupped her hands over the glass and peered inside. She could see the end of Ashley’s drab sofa. As her gaze focused, she could just make out Ashley lying on the floor of her living room, her head in a pool of blood. So. Much. Blood.
Chapter Sixteen
Finn careened toward the Fairwood Flats Mobile Home Park and slammed on his brakes outside the gates as he met a phalanx of emergency vehicles and a huge crowd of people. He’d never get through all of that, would never get to Jessica.
He spied the red hair of Detective Morse and threw his Jeep into Park as he scrambled out of his car. He’d been elbow-deep in grading all afternoon, but his buddy Zach had given him the heads-up about another dead body—once again discovered by Jessica Eller.
She was supposed to be on vacation.