Page 42 of The Whispering Girls

“Things seem off. Like it’s all orchestrated. It’s weird. I feel like I’m on the outside looking in. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

McGaven stared at her for a moment.

“Follow me,” she said. She showed him the unusual hidden door in the kitchen and the stairs that led down to the veterinary office.

“I see what you’re saying, but doesn’t it seem normal that this two-story warehouse had inside stairs?”

“Okay, fine.”

“Wait,” he said. “Let’s still seal it up temporarily or put a lock on it.”

Katie looked around the kitchen. “Sure. We can do that later.”

“And if you think we should have the murder board somewhere else, like one of our suites, then let’s do it. We can move the files and table too.”

Katie and McGaven walked back into the main area. Cisco was stretched out on the large sofa.

“Hey,” Gav said. “Whatever is bothering you—let’s take it out of the equation. We have a lot to deal with. Okay?”

Katie thought about it and nodded. “Okay.”

“That’s my partner. What do we have for Theresa Jamison?”

Katie felt a little bit better. She hated feeling vulnerable, trying to explain why things were bothering her, things that didn’t seem to fit.

“I can’t believe the autopsies were done so quickly,” he said. “I guess they didn’t have many others ahead of them.”

To Katie, that seemed like another incident that was unusual.

“Most likely it had to be a priority with it being a homicide,” she said. “Okay, according to the county medical examiner, Dr. Kylie Baxter, cause of death was strangulation, and manner of death homicide. There were indications of sexual assault postmortem.”

McGaven took to the board and began listing things.

“Theresa Jamison, nineteen years old, good health, no scarring from any apparent operations, all four wisdom teeth had been removed, there were scars on her left upper arm and right knee,” recited Katie.

“That’s thorough. I’m not sure if it’s important or not,” said McGaven.

“It may give an indication to her lifestyle.” She kept reading. “They did a toxicology report and it was clean. No medications. No illegal drugs.”

“Okay,” said McGaven as he continued the visual list.

“And…”

McGaven turned. “And what?”

“I’m looking for fingernail scrapings.” Katie skimmed through some forensic papers. “It seems that human skin and tiny glass particles were found underneath her nails.”

“DNA?”

“No, this was preliminary from the Sacramento County Forensic Laboratory… It’s going to take some time for DNA testing. And the glass fragments also had blood…human…which will take some time too.” Katie looked up and marveled at how neat McGaven’s printing was.

“So far…” he said.

Katie stared at the list. It seemed vague, but the DNA and glass were interesting. “Theresa obviously struggled with her killer, but what were the glass particles from?”

“Don’t forget if the killer isn’t in the system or we don’t have a suspect, we may not know who left behind blood and skin.”

“It says there wasn’t any semen, so the killer wore a condom,” she said. “And like I said, it was postmortem.”