Page 16 of The Whispering Girls (Detective Katie Scott #14)
FIFTEEN
Katie woke to Cisco standing on the bed panting and turning in circles. He wanted his breakfast and he wanted it now.
“Oh…Cisco…” said Katie. She rolled over and saw it was already after seven. Still exhausted, her body ached, and she wanted to cover up her head to stay warm and snooze for just another ten minutes.
Cisco whined and bounced back and forth on the bed.
Katie groaned some more. “All right…all right…” she laughed. “You goofball.”
Kate and McGaven had spent another couple of hours at the crime scene after Jack had finished with the photos of the body.
The scene had been documented, evidence was collected with the proper chain of custody attached, and the body transported to Jack’s large refrigerator, waiting for the county coroner to arrive sometime today.
They had brought the evidence back to the lodge, securing it in a safe place inside the closet before crashing out in order to get a few hours of much needed sleep.
McGaven bunked in the suite next to Katie’s.
The lodge was still without electricity and very cold when they arrived.
Jack had to buy a part this morning in order to fix the breaker box.
Katie sat up and realized it wasn’t as cold as it had been last night. Jack must’ve been able to find the part that was needed.
There was a soft knock at Katie’s door. Cisco barked and jumped off the bed to greet whoever was there.
“Come in,” she said.
The door opened slowly. McGaven stepped in, dressed in sweats and a baggy hoodie, and carried two steaming cups of coffee.
“Oh, coffee…”
“Wow, I think your room is bigger than mine,” he joked. He sat on the edge of the bed, handing Katie her cup. “The electricity went back on about an hour ago.”
“Fantastic,” she said, taking a large sip. “Jack fixed the problem.”
“Jack seems cool. He brought more wood for the fireplace and built a nice fire. It’s nice and toasty.”
Katie looked outside. It was overcast and dreary, and she hoped it was warmer than yesterday.
“Get up. We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said.
“I’m working on it,” she complained.
Cisco ran to the door and barked.
“I’ll feed him and take him out.”
“Thank you, Gav. That would be great.”
“No prob.”
Katie watched Cisco follow McGaven out of the suite. She needed to wake up and have a plan of attack for the day.
Katie took a quick hot shower and changed into warm clothes before she entered the grand common room of the lodge. McGaven had been busy organizing their working area .
“Thank you, Gav, for taking care of Cisco this morning.”
“It’s my pleasure. I love my Cisco time.”
McGaven had folded a large blanket near the fire for the dog to have his own relaxing space, and Cisco was taking advantage of the comfort by snoozing quietly.
“There’s some breakfast for you—it’s warming in the oven,” he said.
“Great. Thank you.” Katie hurried to the kitchen and found a plate in the oven with eggs, bacon, and two pieces of toast. After pouring herself another cup of coffee, she returned to the work area and sat down to eat.
The warmth of the room relaxed her. Not realizing how hungry she was, the breakfast was gone in minutes.
“So,” said McGaven as he pushed the whiteboard over near a wall. “We need to get started.”
Katie nodded. It felt strange beginning their murder board and killer profile in such a beautiful and comfortable room.
McGaven read some reports to make sense of what happened and pulled out photos and a map of the area.
“Let’s start with the first vic, Theresa Jamison.
Nineteen, strangled, and found hanging in a tree.
” He put up a photo of the young woman’s driver’s license and one from the crime scene. “What do we know about her?”
“Not a lot until we get an autopsy report and interviews back from Officers Clark and Banning,” she said. “Theresa was identified by her cousin, Shelly Jamison-Smith. She drove in from Pine Valley.”
“Did she live here?”
“According to some of the interviews,” she said, scanning the reports, “she had a small apartment on Spruce Street, Echo Forest, and worked evenings at the Sunrise Café . ”
“Okay, so it should be easy to track her last week or so,” he said .
“This is a very small town. I think someone must know something important to set us in the right direction.”
McGaven wrote on the board everything they had. “Okay, we need to fill in some blanks here. How did a local girl who worked a few blocks from her apartment end up in the woods dead and hanging?”
Katie studied the crime scene photos, which were good. Jack had been diligent and taken more than enough to tell a story. She frowned, looking at a close-up of Theresa’s hand. “It looks like there’s foreign stuff under her palm and fingers—like maybe paint? But her pink fingernails are perfect.”
“Not like they would be if she had been painting something,” he said.
Katie stared at the totem. The sense of urgency became more intense. They had to work fast with what they had before there was another body.
“I think there’s something that belonged to Theresa included in this totem,” Katie said.
“What makes you say that?”
“I noticed the second victim, who we know only as TJ, was missing her face and ear piercings—and they seemed to be included in the other display last night.”
McGaven looked at photos of both victims. “You know…they do look like they’re related. It’s not just a slight resemblance.”
Katie joined her partner. “I agree. Maybe not sisters, but cousins perhaps?”
“Though I’ve seen best friends without any family relation look like they could be.”
“It’s just a theory at this point until we get an ID on TJ,” she said.
The moment the girl had come to her door was still vivid in Katie’s mind.
“There’re quite a few missing pieces until we get reports back.
But there are things that tie Theresa and TJ together.
” Katie went to the whiteboard and began to write: age, resemblance, physical build, hair color, strangulation marks on their necks. Crime scenes elaborate and staged.
“The body poses are completely different, one hung from a tree and the other laid out in an open area,” said McGaven.
Katie sighed. “I have so many basic questions from both scenes…but we have to wait and work with what we have.” She paused. “It appears that each victim had her own specific display, how the bodies were posed, and the different totems.”
“Does this tell us more about the victim or the killer?” he said.
Katie looked at her partner. “The killer.”
“Why?”
“This is how the killer sees them. It’s as if the killer was trying to use them to represent another crime site.”
“Which also means the killer probably knew them somehow. If he was choosing them for a particular scene.”
Katie nodded. “Yes. I think it means it’s likely the killer lives or lived here in Echo Forest or in close proximity, hunting down his victims where he feels more comfortable. Yes, I believe the scenes mean something to the killer.”
Katie and McGaven separated everything for both Theresa and TJ. Katie began to piece together the crime scenes and the evidence they had, while McGaven jumped into computer searches about the victims’ backgrounds.
Katie found a rolled-up map of the town and the close surrounding areas that Officer Clark had brought them.
It showed the dense parks and the neighborhoods along with businesses.
It gave the detectives a better sense of the community.
She taped it to the wall where they could pinpoint the crime scenes along with access.
She turned to McGaven. “One thing that TJ kept saying at the first scene was about ‘the Woodsman.’ ”
“The Woodsman?”
“Yes. She was extremely afraid and about ready to jump out of her skin, and she kept repeating the words to herself.”
McGaven seemed to ponder. “Did you try to look up anything about a woodsman?”
“I just found things from recent culture like movies, but it all seemed to revolve around urban legends and folklore beliefs where if you’re caught alone or camp in the wrong place you would be visited by the Woodsman. Stuff like that. Maybe you could see what you can come up with?”
“Sure. Anything about this town I should know?”
“Not really, except the last murder was fifteen years ago, and there’s not much about it. No name, cause of death, or any more details. But…I did see a memorial bench on a hiking path that said, ‘Carol Ann Benedict.’”
“Interesting,” he said. “But people die all the time from illness and natural causes. I wouldn’t immediately think it was a murder victim.”
“True. So there are a few ways we can begin because of what we have at our disposal right now: we can track down more information about Theresa; we can begin to examine the evidence results once we get them back; and…”
“Let’s start with Theresa and build from there,” McGaven said. “Talk to people around town and…visit the crime scene in daylight.”
“With Cisco?”
“You read my mind.”
Katie stared at the driver’s license photo of Theresa. Her long blonde hair and dark eyes stared back at her. She wondered who she had known or when she had come into contact with the person who led to her untimely death.