Goddard was a churchgoing man, with a good-sized family and a sweet little wife who adored him. Criminals came in all shapes and sizes, though. Perry knew from many years on the force that attending church every Sunday didn’t mean a man wasn’t capable of murder.
“You got an extra pair of gloves?” Perry asked the officer squatting next to the body.
She glanced at Perry and then straightened, interest or at the least acknowledgment that she liked what she saw registering on her pretty face. “Sure. I know you, don’t I?” she asked, standing and making a show of smoothing her uniform before walking over to the forensics kit sitting on the asphalt not too far away.
Perry noticed how she bent over, took her time pulling out a spare pair of latex gloves, and how she straightened. She had a nice ass, narrow waist, and mousy brown hair cut short in a pageboy. Although she wasn’t his type with her tomboy figure, small breasts, and petite frame, another time Perry would take time to talk to her. He wasn’t sure he’d seen her before, but she wasn’t ugly and Perry never discriminated against a lady just because she didn’t meet his definition of a perfect 10.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” he said, accepting the gloves and donning them, then turning back to the body.
“Gracie Pierre,” she offered, making a show of offering her hand to shake but then laughing and pulling back her gloved hand, which was soiled with blood.
Something about the fact that she could make jokes and be so carefree and flirtatious while the two of them squatted over a mutilated, murdered teenage girl’s body didn’t sit right with him.
“Nice to meet you, Gracie,” he said, but then turned his attention to the body. “Any speculation on the cause of death?”
“Oh,” she said, squatting next to him, her leg brushing against his as she leaned forward and lifted the girl’s arm, which had been over her face. “I just gather any evidence off the body. I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV.” Again laughing easily, obviously finding herself very amusing.
“Regardless of your role in this crime scene, you’ll learn what evidence to gather if you focus on the whole picture,” he snapped, wondering how long she’d been on the force. “The evidence you seek out would be different if someone was attacked by a dog than if they were brutalized and murdered.”
He didn’t bother checking out her reaction to his biting her head off. But the silence that grew between them told him she probably thought him a little less attractive than she had a few minutes before.
“I might just be a rookie,” she finally said, sounding more hurt than mad. “But I looked at the big picture well enough to suggest to Goddard he contact you after tagging the picture that was rolled up in her hand.”
Perry did look at Gracie then. She frowned at the dead teenager, her lips pressed into a thin line. He would guess Gracie was in her early twenties, younger than Kylie, and not as well built. It wasn’t just that her breasts were smaller; everything about her was smaller. Possibly that made her look younger. If anything, he thought, returning his glance to Lanie Swanson and reaching with his gloved hand and attempting to cover her exposed breasts with her torn and dirty shirt, Gracie didn’t look much older than their victim.
“What was rolled up in her hand?” Perry asked. “And which hand?”
“Why does it matter which hand?”
He didn’t take the question as sarcastic, even if that was how she meant it. “I don’t know if it matters or not. Was her other hand always here?” he asked, sticking his index finger into her curled fingers resting at her side.
“Yes, and her right hand was above her head, her forearm resting over her face. I’m sure it was just the position she was in when she finally gave up on life.”
“Or how she stopped moving after being tossed out of a car.”
“Tossed out of a car?” Gracie asked, standing when the medics walked over to them with a gurney.
“Why would she die up alongside a building like this?” Perry stood as well, facing Gracie and watching her chew her lower lip and study his face. It was as if he could see her brain churning, struggling to come up with a believable answer that might impress him.
“Well, maybe she couldn’t walk very well from her injuries and started walking alongside the building, using it to hold her up.”
“Good.” Perry nodded. Maybe Gracie wasn’t as self-centered and cold to the line of work she was in as she first appeared. “If your theory is right, though, with the amount of blood covering her body, if she walked along the building there would be blood on the bricks. Have you checked?”
“No. Do you think I should?”
“Yup. If your theory is right, it would tell us which direction she came from. If there aren’t any blood trails on the wall, then my theory might be right.” He decided Gracie had a pretty smile, although he missed the glow that Kylie would get in her eyes when challenged.
“I’ll check,” Gracie said, as if she’d just decided she would do so. “If I’m right, though, you have to take me out for a drink,” she added, winking at him. She didn’t take his comments as instruction but almost as a game.
“We’ll see,” he said, watching when she again walked to her case and pulled out what she needed to search for blood samples on the brick wall. “What was this picture you mentioned?”
Gracie stood over Lanie’s body, facing the wall. She looked over her shoulder, grinning at him, her gaze traveling down his body shamelessly, and the sparkle he had missed in her eyes when he challenged her was there now as blatant interest brought out color in her cheeks.
She licked her lips and arched her back slightly, reminding him of a hungry feline, or possibly a feline in heat. “I’ve already tagged it as evidence,” she said, and turned from the wall and walked up until she stood close enough that she needed to tilt her head to look at his face. “It was a picture of another girl. It looked like it was taken with a camera phone possibly and blown up and printed. But I think I’ve seen the girl in the picture before down at the station. You might know her.”
Taking his arm, Gracie wrapped hers around his and escorted him to Goddard’s patrol car. Perry freed himself, frustrated with her unprofessional behavior, and the curious look Goddard gave him when he and Gracie rounded the car to the trunk.
“Where is that picture?” Gracie asked Goddard. “The one the girl had in her hand?”
“You didn’t see it already?” Goddard frowned at Perry but then sifted through the evidence bags and pulled out a piece of typing paper in a bag with a picture printed on it. Then grabbing his flashlight, he turned on the beam and handed the picture to Perry.
If the thing were alive it would have bitten off his hand. Perry gawked at the picture, his stomach churning so furiously while bile moved to his throat. He stared, his hand shaking, at the picture of Dani, taken in the dark, with her staring slightly above the camera, as if possibly she didn’t know the shot had been taken. Over the picture, written in block letters with a red marker, it said:
“Fucking son of a bitch,” Perry roared, needing to hit something worse than he’d ever needed to before.
“What’s wrong?” Gracie asked, once again touching his arm.
He didn’t try to prevent her from touching him this time. If she wanted to mess with his boiling outrage, that was her own stupidity at work.
“It’s a goddamn picture of my niece,” he roared, turning from both of them and staring at the dark parking lot. It took him a minute to register what he saw, but he did a double take on the car turning in the parking lot and heading toward the exit.
It was Kylie’s hybrid.
Chapter 25
“Okay, I think we’re ready.” Paul walked around the conference desk and looked at the recorder in the middle of the oblong table. “Next time you want to record something, though, let me know. I can hook you up with much better equipment than this.”
“It was a consensual recording. I wasn’t worried about trying to determine back-down noise, or anything like that.” Kylie rubbed her left temple, where a dull throbbing headache had been nagging her since she woke up this morning. It hadn’t surprised her that Peter was a no-show the night before. She hadn’t talked to him or seen him on-line since he’d suggested they meet Thursday night. The media had spooked him, putting her back to square one. At least she had Dani’s testimony to offer.
