When I got back to my office, Benedict was waiting.
'We matched prints off the third Jane Doe. Army record. Reserves. Her name was Nancy Marx. You up for it?'
'Let's go.'
We took the elevator because I wasn't anxious to start bleeding again. Benedict drove. Nancy Marx had lived in a townhouse on Troy, off Irving Park Road. Herb already had a search warrant, should there be a need to break in.
There was no need.
'May I help you?'
A woman answered the door. Elderly, gray, wrinkled, someone's grandmother. My heart clenched.
'I'm Lieutenant Daniels. This is Detective Benedict. Does Nancy Marx live here?'
'Did you find her? I called this morning, but I was told I couldn't fill out a missing person report until she'd been missing two days.'
'Are you related to Nancy?'
'I'm her grandmother. What's going on? Where's Nancy?'
In less than two sentences I destroyed this woman's life. If there was one part of my job I hated the most, this was it. Herb and I stood there, awkwardly, while she went from shock, to denial, to hysteria, and finally to depressed acceptance, moaning like a ghost haunting an old love.
We took turns trying to comfort her.
After the initial outpouring of emotion, they always wanted to know how and why.
We told her the how. We didn't know the why.
'She didn't suffer,' was all we could offer.
The autopsy report had confirmed this. Nancy Marx died from a broken neck. How the ME figured that out from examining an array of body parts amazed me.
'But who did this to her?'
'We don't know yet, Miss...'
'Marx. Sylvia Marx. Nancy's parents, my son and daughter-in-law, died in a car accident seven years ago. She was all I had left.'
We lost her to sobbing again. Benedict made some coffee in the kitchen, and I sat with the old woman on the couch, holding her hand.
'Mrs. Marx, did your granddaughter have any enemies?'
'None. Not one. She was a good girl.'
'How about a boyfriend?'
'No one steady for a while now. Nancy was popular, she dated a lot, but there hasn't been anyone serious since Talon.'
'Talon?'
'Talon Butterfield. Didn't really care for him much. He fooled around on her. They were engaged too. Lived together for a while, and then she moved in with me earlier this year, after she broke up with him. It was nice to have her home.'
Her gray eyes began to blur again.
'Did Nancy know anyone named Theresa Metcalf?' I showed her a picture.
'No. Can't recall. Is she dead too?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'Pretty thing, like my Nancy.'
I had her look at other pictures, of the first Jane Doe, and of the recent composite of our perp.
'I'm sorry, but no. I don't know any of them.'
'Do you have an address for Talon Butterfield?'
'No. I don't think Nancy does either. When she left, he moved out of town. They haven't been in touch, as far as I know. Do you think Talon was part of this?'
'That's what we're trying to figure out, Mrs. Marx.'
'I never liked the boy, but he wasn't a killer. He loved Nancy. He just couldn't keep his drumstick in his pants.'
Benedict brought us coffee, and we asked a few more questions. After they yielded nothing, we got permission to search Nancy's room.
It was small, modest, and neat. Her drawers held no secrets. There were no letters, no appointment books, no bills, no canceled checks, nothing at all.
It occurred to Herb that maybe Nancy's things might be somewhere else. Not too many people did all of their paperwork in the bedroom. We decided to ask Sylvia. She was in the den, petting a white cat, staring at a framed picture of her dead grandchild. The cat jumped off her lap and fled when we approached.
