Page 25 of The Creekside Murder (Pacific Northwest Forensics #1)
A chill rippled down her spine as Jessica double-clicked the next message and the next and the next, all sent by The-Hunter, all implicating him as the Kitsap Killer, all pointing to him as Tiffany’s killer.
“Slow down.” Finn encircled her wrist with his fingers. “What is he saying here?”
Jessica took a big breath and clicked on the first message, sent four days earlier. “This one asks what I thought about the card. The next one asks about the doll.”
“Is there any information on the message board about the card or the doll?”
“I-I’m not sure.” She clicked away from The Hunter’s personal messages back to the board. “I think the easiest way to find out is through a search. I can search the different threads.”
She entered the word doll in the find field and clicked on the magnifying glass. Her stomach knotted when several threads popped up. “Oh my God. That information is being bandied about here. I swear I haven’t even been on this website since the current murders.”
Finn, trying to be the voice of reason, said, “The-Hunter just might be referring to the rumors on this message board.”
“But why is he private messaging me? He calls himself The Hunter. Tiffany’s last name was Hunt.”
“Are you a frequent visitor to this board? Maybe he…or she sent private messages to other posters. The Hunter is just asking about those items, not claiming he left them. The Hunter could be referring to hunting clues or the truth.” He nudged her fingers off the keypad.
“Can we see who first mentioned these items?”
What Finn said made sense, but how would anyone on this website know about the card and the doll? As Finn searched, Jessica wrapped her hand around her cup and took a sip of lukewarm coffee.
“Here we go.” Finn tapped on the screen.
“A user by the name of Queenie posted something four days ago about a sympathy card mentioning Tiffany and a rag doll that you recognized as Tiffany’s left at Morgan’s memorial site.
The Hunter probably just got the info from the boards, but what about this Queenie person? ”
Jessica smacked her hand on the table, rattling all the leftover breakfast dishes. “Queenie is Ashley King. Because of her last name, Tiffany used to call her Queenie. I told her and Denny about the card and the doll, and she turned around and blabbed about it on here.”
Finn forked the last piece of French toast into his mouth. “There you go. Not optimal but not the killer.”
“I’m not that easily convinced. I’m going to go comb through these message boards and find out what else Queenie and The Hunter have had to say in the past. Maybe Denny is the The Hunter.”
“Before you do that, maybe you should read your boss’s emails.” He circled a finger around a message at the bottom of her screen. “That’s about the third email notification from your boss that’s popped up since we’ve been sitting here.”
She sighed. “Why doesn’t he just call me?”
“The sheriff’s department has your phone, remember?”
She clicked on the three emails from Michael in succession, each plea for her to call him more demanding than the previous one.
“It sounds like he really, really wants you to call him.” Finn slid his phone toward her. “Knock yourself out.”
“I don’t even have his number memorized.
” She hunched over the phone and tapped in the personal cell phone number at the bottom of Michael’s email.
“Voicemail. Hey, Michael, it’s Jessica. I’m calling from a friend’s phone, as you know very well mine was confiscated last night. You can call me back on this number.”
She placed Finn’s phone on the table and turned her attention back to the message board. “I’m going to go out and see Ashley again and ask her what the hell she’s playing at. I’m pretty sure I told her not to tell anyone about what I’d found.”
Finn’s phone rang. “That was fast.”
Stepping away from the computer to stretch, Finn said, “Help yourself, but you’re going to need to get yourself a temporary phone.”
“Hello, Michael. Before you rip into me about last night, I did call 911 on my way to the Art Garden, and the sheriff’s department grilled me thoroughly. I gave them everything I had—including my phone.”
“It’s not about that, Jessica. Detective Morse relayed all that to me.” He cleared his throat. “It’s about that DNA sample, from the red fiber.”
She waved one arm in the air to get Finn’s attention, and then tapped the speaker icon on his phone. “Is there a match? I thought we weren’t sending it through CODIS yet.”
“We’re not, but there’s an internal match.”
Jessica’s mouth dropped open. “Internal? You mean like someone in law enforcement?”
“The sample was a partial match to your sister’s DNA—Tiffany Hunt.”
“What?” Jessica put her hand on top of her head just in case it exploded. “The DNA is a match to Tiffany’s? How can that be?”
Michael groaned. “I said partial match, which means it’s yours, Jessica. You contaminated the evidence. You’re off this assignment. You’ve been too distracted by this whole thing. You’ve insinuated yourself into this investigation, and now you’ve compromised it.”
“That’s not possible, Michael. I handled all the evidence with care.”
“Really? Like the card and that doll? Those could’ve been important to this case, but no attorney worth his or her salt would ever allow that in a court of law.
” Michael’s voice softened. “I know this has been hard on you, Jessica, but you need to take a step back for the integrity of this case and…your own safety. Take a few days off.”
Michael wouldn’t listen to her weak denials or excuses, so she ended the call with a half-hearted apology.
She rapped on her forehead with her knuckles.
“I can’t believe I did that. Michael’s right.
I’ve been treating these cases like my own private investigation.
I’m doing a disservice to those young women. ”
Finn rubbed a circle on her back. “Don’t beat yourself up. Your boss is wrong. You didn’t insinuate yourself into these crimes, the killer dragged you into them. Like you told Plank last night, you didn’t ask for this. Anyone would be rattled.”
“Ugh, I can’t believe I left my DNA on crime evidence. That’s Forensics 101.”
“That’s also why your DNA, and that of other CSIs and some law enforcement personnel’s, is in a local database outside of CODIS. Those checks have to be run first to rule out the people who may have handled the evidence.”
“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.
* * *
W HEN F INN HAD been 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 trees brightened 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 third time. “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.