detectives if he didn’t have a suspect in the next twenty-four hours, but he wanted to start with his core team.
“They’re next on my list.”
“I’m on my way.” Jackson stood and gave Kera a tight-lipped smile.
“A homicide?” She grabbed her coat and slid out of the booth.
“I’m sorry. Happy Valentine’s Day.” Jackson kissed her. “You probably won’t see me for a week or so.”
“Thanks for letting me know up front,” she said. “Do you need help with Katie?”
Kera was trying to befriend his fourteen-year-old daughter, but Katie was not responding. The girl still had hopes that her parents would get back together, so she figured being nice to Dad’s new girlfriend was not in her best interest.
Jackson put his arm around Kera. “Thanks, but I’ll probably let her stay with Renee for a few days.” His soon- to-be-ex-wife had managed to stay sober long enough to earn visiting privileges. Jackson had no faith it would last, but Katie might as well get what quality mother time she could.
As they left the restaurant and moved toward his lovingly restored, midnight blue ‘69 GTO, Jackson began to process the homicide’s possibilities. An angry boyfriend or a drug deal gone bad were the most likely scenarios. Jackson felt himself hurrying. As much as he hated the sight of a dead young female, the need to find her killer stirred his blood and made him forget his other needs.
Chapter 3
The wildlife observation point was a small parking lot overlooking twenty acres of preserved wetlands on the edge of town. Before the environmentalists took over Lane County, most locals thought of the area as the west Eugene swamp. Jackson thought the
Two dark blue patrol cars and the forensics van were already on the scene when Jackson pulled in. Rain arrived with him, so he considered calling for the mobile command post, a big white RV that gave detectives at a scene a place to keep dry while they interviewed witnesses and suspects. A quick look at the situation changed his mind. The only civilian car in the lot was an old forest-green Volvo. The only likely witnesses were in the comfy dry homes on the hill across the road. There wasn’t much he could accomplish here, and his gut instinct told him this was a secondary scene, a dump zone, not the kill spot.
Jackson grabbed his crime scene bag and rain jacket from the back of the Impala and climbed out. He had stopped by headquarters, four blocks from the restaurant, to trade vehicles. He never took the GTO to crime scenes or anywhere it could get damaged. Two patrol officers stood guard near the Volvo. The young male officer stepped forward and said, “I’m Officer Chang, and this is Officer Whitstone.”
Whitstone, forty-something and too cherub-faced to look like a cop, nodded and said, “I checked for a pulse even though she looked deader than anyone I’ve ever seen. Other than that, we haven’t touched anything but the door handle. And I wore gloves.”
“Good work.” This was why he taught the crime scene protocol class—so patrol officers didn’t ruin the only prints he might get from a scene.
“We didn’t put up yellow tape,” Whitstone said with a slight hesitation. “It seemed like it would just get in the way. And there aren’t any onlookers here.”
Jackson nodded. “Who reported the body?”
“A woman who lives over there,” Chang said, pointing to the lights on the hill across the road. “She saw the car here this morning, then again when she got home from work. It made her suspicious, so she called it in.”
“I was the first one on the scene,” Whitstone reported.
“Did either of you talk to the woman who called it in?”
They both looked sheepish. “We thought it best to stay with the body,” Whitstone offered.
The door on the white forensics van swung open and Jasmine Parker glided out. Jackson was relieved. Tall, thin, ageless, and mostly expressionless, Parker was the best tech in the department. She had an uncanny knack for zeroing in on the little details and objects that turned out to be important. She also never lost anything. None of the other techs could make that claim.
Jackson lifted his hand to acknowledge Parker, then strode toward the Volvo. The witness on the hill could wait. He quickly zipped his jacket. Why were his crime scenes always dark and wet? Sergeant Lammers never assigned him the bodies in the dry apartment buildings with the roommate standing by with a bloody baseball bat.
As Jackson pulled on gloves, floodlights illuminated the area. Parker was already making his job easier. “Thanks,” he called over his shoulder. A small dent near the front of the car on the driver’s side caught his attention. It looked recent, and close examination with a flashlight revealed tiny flecks of orange paint. “Bag and tag this dent,” he called to Parker. He would look over every inch of the car tomorrow in the evidence bay, but right now, the body called to him.
Jackson stood and moved to the driver’s side door. A dark blood smear at the top of the car made him rethink his assessment that this was not the primary crime scene. Had she been killed right here? Right where he stood? He pointed to the smear. “Tag this blood for DNA analysis.”
The victim was in the back, on the floor. The green plaid blanket covering her body had been pulled back to reveal her face. In the glare of the floodlights, her skin seemed luminescent white. Jackson tried to see past the dead, slack flesh and lifeless eyes to what the girl had looked like on a good day. She had been pretty in a pixie-like way. Dark curly hair, upturned nose, cupid lips. Then he saw the scar, a long pink ridge that paralleled her hairline on the left of her face. It was old news for this young woman, but he was curious nonetheless. He jotted down a note to ask her family about the scar.
Jackson pressed a gloved finger to her throat out of habit. The gruesome bloody dent in the side of her head screamed
Who was she? Jackson needed to know right now. This young woman had a name; she was not just another dead body. He leaned farther into the car and lifted the blanket to see if she had a wallet in her pants pocket. She
