Everywhere She Turns (5 page)

She lifted her gaze to the ME’s. “Did you find anything else?”

“Minor scrapes and tiny tissue tears along her shins and thighs, possibly indicating that she may have been running through the underbrush in the wooded area where her body was discovered.”

Running
. Fury bolted through CJ. “Have you even questioned Banks yet?” She glared at Braddock, wanted him to see the accusation in her eyes. He’d said Banks was on his suspect list, but that told her nothing. “You have to know he did this.”

“We’re still working on tracking him down.”

Was he kidding? That he remained totally calm and utterly rational made her want to scream. He wouldn’t be so damned unfazed if the victim had been a resident of the Twickenham District or the Ledges.

“Until we’ve confirmed cause of death, reviewed any evidence—”

“Banks has always been a bully.” Who did Braddock think he was talking to? CJ had known Banks since he was a snot-nosed kid. “I can’t even tell you the number of times he’s roughed her up. Long before you showed interest in her life,” she added pointedly. “I can see him chasing her down like an animal and then humiliating her by leaving the drug paraphernalia.” Sick bastard.

“CJ”—Braddock used that tone, the one a parent uses when gently scolding a child—“there are certain ordered steps in any investigation. Rest assured—”

“That bastard killed her.” CJ peeled off the gloves. “His arrest is the only step I care about.” With a final, aching look at Shelley, CJ promised to make sure Banks paid.

She was finished here. “Thank you, Dr. Dobbins.” CJ headed for the exit, tossing her gloves in the receptacle near the door. She would find Banks and she would make him tell the truth. He’d lived in the mill village his whole life. Finding him shouldn’t be that difficult.

“CJ,” Braddock called after her.

She didn’t turn around or slow her departure. She had nothing else to say to him. Unfortunately, she understood all too well how this investigation would go—the same way it had gone when her father was shot dead on the sidewalk in front of their house. The same way it went when her mother died of what was labeled an accidental overdose. No one would really investigate the case. Just another dead lowlife from the village.

Good riddance.

Braddock caught up with her in the corridor and fell into step beside her. “I will find and arrest the person responsible for this. But to do that, I need the autopsy results and evidence. Right now we don’t have either.”

CJ stopped and turned to glare at him. “There’s no evidence? What about fingerprints? Hairs? Fibers? You haven’t found anything?”

The resignation on his face gave her the answer even before he spoke. “Unless the body gives us something, we have nothing. No prints, no trace evidence from the scene at all. We’re in the process of a third sweep. We could get lucky. But I’ve never relied on luck to close a case.”

This was insane! “Wait.” CJ should have thought to ask this already. “How long had she . . . been there before she was found?”

“It’s been hot as hell. That escalates things. And, like I said, it rained before her body was discovered.”

CJ held up both hands for him to stop overexplaining. “Just give me the preliminary estimate.”

“Ten to twelve hours, possibly longer.”

CJ had gotten the call from Shelley around two Saturday morning. That meant her sister had been murdered later that morning—well before noon if the preliminary estimate of time of death was accurate.

She should have taken that call. Should have called Shelley back.

Those mental walls she had used to keep her emotions in check shrank around her now, making it impossible to breathe.

CJ couldn’t talk about this anymore. Braddock was saying something to her, but she couldn’t listen.

Not right now.

Right now full-on reality was throttling through her.

Her sister was dead.

The bastard responsible was out there . . . getting away with it.

3:30
PM

Braddock guided his Pontiac G6 onto the shoulder of the road. The strip of Triana Boulevard that ran between Johnson Road and Redstone Arsenal was deserted except for the white forensics van.

He sat there, his hands braced on the steering wheel, his gaze focused on the woods. Images from another wooded area . . . the river . . . another murder flashed one after the other through his mind. Female . . . only nineteen years old.

His fingers tightened on the wheel and his palms started to sweat.

No one fucks with me
.

He closed his eyes, exiled the painful visions.

Don’t look back . . . focus on the case
. His jaw tightened. Shelley deserved his undivided attention. He had to do this right for her and for CJ—no matter that she hated him now.

With one last glance at the street, he emerged from his vehicle.
Don’t let the emotions get in the way
.

All he needed was one piece of evidence to connect this homicide to the bastard he wanted more than he wanted to wake up tomorrow.

He wasn’t stopping until he nailed that low-life son of a bitch.

Where the hell was Cooper? Lines of frustration furrowed on his brow. His partner was supposed to be here with the techs performing the third sweep.

“Braddock!”

Speak of the devil.

Cooper materialized from the trees where the warning signs and yellow tape marked the area as officially off-limits to pedestrian traffic. She tramped from the underbrush and double-timed it across the ditch to meet him.

A tight-fitting blue tee was tucked into her equally tight jeans. She didn’t look a whole lot like a cop, much less a homicide detective. With long blond hair tucked into one of those ponytails that poked through the back of her baseball cap, she looked like a teenager who’d been up to no good.

Adeline Cooper liked to brag that she could shoot a flea off a dog’s ass from a hundred yards. Braddock couldn’t say she was quite that good, but she was tough as nails and never even flinched while cutting a perp off at the knees . . . or busting his balls.

He was going to need her to get through this. Would she have made the same decisions as he? He’d kept way too much to himself for far too long. If he’d been smart, hadn’t been so damned focused on his own selfish need for vengeance, he would have allowed her in all the way. Now things had gone to shit and she wasn’t going to be happy that he’d kept her in the dark to some degree.

“You find something?” If she had, Braddock would gladly wash her big-ass truck for the rest of the summer. His partner drove a two-decade-old Ford Bronco, four-by-four, lifts and seriously large tires included. She washed it once a week, by hand. She swore it was the closest thing to a baby she would ever have. She’d hit thirty this year. He was beginning to believe her.

“Damn straight I found something.” She jerked her head toward the woods. “Follow me, Little Red Riding Hood, and I’ll show you to Grandma’s house and why I’m a detective and those dudes back there are just evidence techs.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear.” Anticipation lit, searing
away some of the anxiety ripping through his gut as he slogged through the overgrown path behind his partner.

The uniform posted to protect the immediate scene gave Braddock a nod. The central search area was under guard and cordoned off until this final sweep was completed. Before crossing that cautionary yellow line, Cooper stopped and turned back to him. She liked setting the stage for her reveals. Over the past two-plus years, he’d gotten used to her need to dramatize her revelations.

“Since it hadn’t rained in forever before Saturday evening,” she began, “we didn’t find any tire tracks on the roadside. We couldn’t determine what route had been used by our perp when he brought the victim to this location or when he split.” She rolled her eyes. “In part because those kids and their friends trampled the area like a herd of elephants before the uniforms got here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he reminded her, “I know that part.”

“Anyway,” Cooper said with a pointed look, “so we have no tire impressions. No shoe imprints, not even the vic’s. Except,” she qualified, “for the sneaker treads of adolescent boys. The perp left no trace evidence behind—at least nothing we’ve found so far.” She gave a little shrug. “To the less experienced, less dogged detective, it might seem that this investigation was a wash.”

He motioned for her to get on with it. “You are aware that I was here for the first and second evidence sweeps. Or did you sleep through those?”

“Just bear with me, partner.” A twinkle of you’ll-see in her eyes, she turned to the yellow tape boundary. “But what our killer did leave was all the needles and crap we understand was relevant to the vic in some way. As if he was showing us a snapshot of how she lived her life.”

Braddock’s fingers tightened into fists as those snapshots flashed across his retinas, one stark view at a time. Shelley Patterson with dozens of hypodermic syringes dangling from her skin. And that wasn’t the worst of it. The idea of just how far the piece of shit had gone with his this-is-your-life theme made Braddock’s gut clench even now.

Self-disgust expanded in his chest.

That young woman was dead because of him.

That was true only in part. Shelley Patterson was dead, he reminded himself, because of her association with a total scumbag.

That scumbag was going to pay . . . for at least two of his crimes. Braddock wouldn’t stop until he’d gotten the job done.

“He was staging,” Cooper offered, her whole face gleaming with that I-think-I’m-on-to-something glow.

“Staging, huh?” Braddock surveyed the scene. The two techs were almost finished with the third sweep. It wasn’t routine, but he’d pushed for this, called in a number of markers. An initial sweep had been done when the body was discovered. A second one early this morning just to make sure they hadn’t missed anything in the rain. Now, a third and final recheck by different techs for a fresh perspective.

Braddock turned to his partner. He’d been thinking along the same lines about the perp’s heinous presentation. “To send a message?” He knew all about the messages this bastard liked to send. Sounded like his partner was on the same track.

Cooper nodded, her pleased-with-herself smile stretching into a full-fledged grin. “He even signed his work.”

“Are you serious?” How had the techs missed something like that? His partner had to be speaking in figurative terms.

Cooper shoved a pair of shoe covers and gloves at him. “Hurry, I can’t wait for you to see.”

Protective wear in place, he lifted the tape for his partner, then ducked under it himself. The nylon rope that had been secured to a limb more than ten feet off the ground had been removed and taken to the lab with the body. The perp had apparently used lower limbs to climb high enough to hoist up the vic, then secured the rope since there were no markings to indicate a ladder had been used. Shelley Patterson wouldn’t have been able to climb into that tree without a ladder, even if Braddock had had any notions of labeling this a suicide. The plastic garbage can placed on its side a few inches from where her feet had dangled wouldn’t have provided the needed height. It was just another part of the staging.

Then again, the ground had been hard as a rock after the long weeks without rain. A ladder might not have left indentations. That was a hell of a lot of gear to haul to a scene. Had the bastard been completely unafraid of being caught?

Of course he had. He owned this territory.

For now.

Even more remarkably, Shelley’s wrists and ankles showed no ligature marks. Had she stood by and allowed her killer to prepare the noose for her own neck?

The tox screen had revealed no drugs in her system.

The other choice was that she’d been dead already. Braddock leaned toward that scenario. The bastard had killed her and then he’d staged this scene to send the cops—to send Braddock—a message.

Until the autopsy was completed they wouldn’t know which one of the two was the most viable possibility. But considering the details he’d opted not to release to Shelley’s sister, Braddock hoped like hell the vic had been dead when this sick bastard did his dirty work.

Her death was already on Braddock’s conscience. The idea that she may have endured immeasurable suffering . . . well, he hoped that wasn’t the case.

Focus, pal
. “Let’s see this amazing find,” he said to his partner.

She motioned for him to come closer to the tree. “Right up there.” Cooper adapted a Vanna White pose, directing his attention to the tree.

Braddock removed his sunglasses and tried to see what the hell she was talking about. It was the perfect hanging tree, that was true. Lots of nice, sturdy branches accessed reasonably easily from the ground without the aid of a ladder by someone tall enough and with enough upper-body strength.

“You can’t see it like that,” Cooper huffed. “You have to climb up there.”

Braddock shot her a look. “You climbed up there?”