for these many hours. She could hardly blame men like Lumley who looked at her as if she were a ghoul.
“ We're ready to roll, Jess,” said Otto, who'd come from the cdr with her overcoat, placing it over her shoulders. “You're shivering,” he said.
“ Thank you. Didn't realize just how cold it was.”
In a moment she was leaning into the soft, clean upholstery in the back of Stowell's squad car. Stowell reached into his glove compartment and offered her a pull on a Jack Daniel's bottle, which she hesitantly took only after Otto gave her a nod.
Sheriff Stowell turned the car around, nearly throwing them into a ditch, before righting the car onto the overgrown dirt road which would take them to the highway. Otto took the whiskey from her, pulling on it twice before returning it to Stowell with a “thanks.”
“ Sheriff Stowell has agreed to keep a lid on the more gruesome aspects of the crime, Jess,” Otto was saying, while all she wanted to do was drift off with the soft slumber reaching out for her, the car gently rocking now over the dirt road.
“ Good,” she managed.
“ But I promised something in return.”
She blinked, her expression turning to curiosity, before she said, “He'll get a full report, soon as we have-”
“ He wants to know if she was or was not sexually molested before the mutilation.”
Stowell spoke for himself. “Candy wasn't a bad person. She didn't deserve dying like this.”
“ You knew her?”
“ She had an arrest record.”
“ Prostitution?”
“ Yes.”
“ Is that how you knew her?”
“ I spent some off-duty time with her; got her a job; got her to clean up her life. Now this…”
Stowell filled her in on the details concerning Annie “Candy” Copeland's life. At the age of eighteen and three-quarters, she'd been a waitress for all of two months at a diner in Wekosha. Before that she had been working the streets and living with her pimp. Before this, as an idealist still in high school, she had been a volunteer at the local hospital, a candy striper, from which she had derived the nickname, Candy.
“ What about her family life?” asked Jessica.
Stowell's voice had the grit of a man who had seen a great deal of sorrow in his professional life. “She was what you'd call a throwaway kid. Stepfather abused her, mother looked the other way, and when she tried to fight back… came to me… they booted her onto the streets. System didn't begin to work for this kid, so I did what 1 could, which wasn't much.”
“ Stowell and I'll be talking with the pimp soon,” Boutine said.
“ And the stepfather.”
“ Co-workers at the diner, all that,” Otto added.
She knew the routine. First check with those who knew her, those who came into routine contact with her; who had last seen her alive, when and where, and with whom? Suspect the relatives, the friends, the co-workers, and work from there. Question each and from each gain a new insight and a possible new lead or clue to her demise.
“ So, tonight, you want me to tell you if she was sexually molested?”
“ Best guesstimate, Dr. Coran,” said Otto.
“ My best estimate should await lab analysis, Otto, and you of all people should know that.”
“ Best guess, Jessica,” Otto said in his most commanding voice, squeezing her hand as if to impress her as to the importance of his deal with Stowell.
She breathed deeply, allowed a sigh to escape and said, “My guess is-and it is only a guess-that this guy didn't have any interest in her sexually, that is in a normal sexual sense.”
“ Normal sexual sense?” asked Stowell, whose knuckles had turned white on the wheel. She could tell that he had more than just a fatherly interest in Annie Copeland. Had he been carrying on an affair with her?
“ Intercourse.”
“ But I saw you taking a semen sample.”
She knew what he was fishing for. “Yes, I found semen, but-”
“ Semen's evidence of-”
“- but it hadn't penetrated beyond the cervical-”
“ You can tell that from just looking?”
“ It was cold in there, and the semen I found was jellied, almost as if…” She trailed off.
Otto squeezed her hand again and urged her on. “As if?”
“ Like the blood on the wounds, smeared on, after the girl was dead, as if intended for us to find.”
“ Sonofabitch,” muttered Otto.
Stowell sat in abject silence for a moment before saying, “So whoever did this wanted only one thing from her?”
“ That's right, Mr. Stowell,” she said. “He just wanted her blood.”
“ Thank you, Dr. Coran,” he said before falling into a well of silence again, the green dash lights alone illuminating the wounds on his face.
Jessica looked across at Boutine where they sat in the rear. Boutine bit his upper lip before speaking. “Stowell's going to do what he can to keep the vampire aspect frozen. At least no leaks for twenty-four hours.”
She realized that Boutine had bought a little time, and they both knew that the sensationalism of the case would soon overpower the small-town police force, the troopers and Stowell's county office within that time frame.
“ You look like hell, Otto,” she said in a whisper, not believing that the thought escaped her lips. “I'm sorry; I didn't mean to be so blunt. Guess I must look wrecked, too.”
He had continued to hold onto her hand and now took both of them in his own, massaging them. “Fact is, you look fine, just fine.”
“ Perjury before a witness, Otto?” She pulled her hands away, glancing at Stowell's eyes in the rearview mirror.
They both needed sleep. Neither of them had had any rest for well over twenty-four hours. She leaned back into the cushioned seat again, closed her eyes and recalled the telephone call at her home that placed her on standby status. God, had that been just yesterday? At the time Otto hadn't a clue as to where they would be flying, except to say that it was likely to be a Midwest destination. He had given her a pep talk about how the Bureau wanted her to get experience in the field and that he wanted her on his team. He spoke of consolidating his team with a clinician, someone who could put the pathology back into a psychological-pathological report on a serial killer.
So he had put her into the rotation, and after hours of standing by and standing down, she was told to stand to when Boutine had called back and cryptically said, “You ever been to Wisconsin in springtime?”
“ No, never,” she'd replied.
“ Lots of mud, what with the winter thaw.”
“ Is that right?”
“ Got any boots?”
“ Sure, I got boots.”
“ High-tops?”
“ High-tops, low, anything that's required. Is it a go?”
“ Be at the academy gates in half an hour.”
An army jeep was waiting for her at the gate, and when she got in, it swung out to the airfield, where she was given help with her gear to board a sleek Leaijet with engines piercing the stormy black sky, and her eardrums. In a matter of two hours they'd touched down at a remote airstrip facing a farmer's bean field. She was told they were on the outskirts of Wekosha, Wisconsin.
The entire way. Otto spent time filling her in on the case as he understood it. As it happened, however, he
