Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 01 - The Sex Club (29 page)

It was a leg. A bare human leg.

“Holy shit. Check this out.”

Jeremy trotted down as Travis pushed some ferns aside for a better look.

“It’s a girl.”

“She’s naked.” Jeremy said.

“She’s dead.” Travis added.

“Are you sure?”

“Her skin is cold. I accidentally touched it.”

“Jesus. This is creepy.” Jeremy stepped toward the body. “Let’s roll her over and look at her tits.”

Travis pulled him away. “Don’t touch her, you retard.”

“Check this out,” Jeremy said, reaching down through a clump of ferns next to the body. He came up with a cell phone. “I’ll bet it’s hers.” He grinned. “Was hers. Now it’s mine.”

“That’s sick, even for you.” Travis just wanted to get out of there. “Let’s go. We have to tell the police.”

“No way. I’m not talking to the police. I’m too stoned.”

“I’ll call them when we get back into town.”

Monday, October 25, 2:07 p.m.

Jackson got the call as he waited to meet with Sergeant Lammers to discuss Nicole’s disappearance. The dispatcher tried to sound detached, but her voice was shaky. “We just got a call about a body in Edgewood Park,” she said. “The dead person is reportedly a young female.”

The city had never had back-to-back homicides of young girls. Jackson felt a little shaky too.

“Any ID on the caller?”

“He wouldn’t identify himself, and the call came from a cell phone with a blocked caller ID. He sounded like a high school kid. Maybe a little scared. Maybe a little high.”

“What exactly did he say about the location of the body?”

She hesitated, as if to read her notes. “It’s on the right side of the trail near Party Rock. That’s a place where–”

“I’ve heard of it. You know the drill: Get the ME and the DA’s office out there ASAP.”

Jackson left a message with Lammers, then went in search of his task force team. His afternoon coffee burned in his stomach. What in the hell was going on? If the body was indeed Nicole Clarke, then his theory that the mayor had killed his teenage girlfriend because she was pregnant might be shot to hell. He could be dealing with his first serial killer. Was Agent Fouts on the right track?

Schakowski and McCray had gone out to re-canvass the neighborhood around Jessie’s crime scene, but Evans was at her desk.

“We’ve got another one,” he announced.

“Another what?” She looked up, not understanding.

“A body in Edgewood Park. Another young girl.”

“Shit.” Evans was up and moving as she swore. They left the building without speaking again. By the time they hit the parking lot, they were moving at a run.

“Fieldstone was in custody last night,” Evans said, as Jackson punched the Impala out into the street.

“He may have an accomplice.”

Evans gave him a look. “That would be unusual.”

“But not unheard of.” Jackson suddenly felt defensive about his push to nail Fieldstone. The evidence had led him to a viable suspect, and he wasn’t ready to toss that out. But if a girl had been killed while the mayor was in custody…

Shit.

On that Monday afternoon in late October, there was only one car in Edgewood’s unpaved parking lot—a faded red Toyota Celica—and its owners were nowhere in sight. Jackson had drunk an occasional beer on Party Rock during his senior year at Spencer High. And he’d been up here once since, during his third year as a patrol officer, in response to a 911 call about a stabbing. They had arrested the remorseful drunk without incident.

Jackson grabbed his black bag from the floor of the back seat as Evans climbed out of the car. Before taking off, he called Sergeant Lammers again. This time she picked up, and he requested a canine unit. She respected his need for speed and refrained from asking too many questions. “Full report before the day is over,” she concluded.

Jackson hustled to catch up with Evans, who had already crossed the clearing and was standing at the head of the trail. As they hiked uphill, the cool damp pine smell brought back memories of camping trips to Silver Lake with his father and brother. Jackson missed those moments of stillness and crisp air. Why hadn’t be been camping in the last ten years? Oh yeah. His daughter hated to be away from her blow dryer and cell phone, even for a weekend, and Renee hated the outdoors. He had one of those rare moments when he wished he’d had a son. It came and went before he had a chance to feel guilty.

The trail was not a government-maintained hiking venue, so it was kept clear only by foot traffic. There were plenty of deep gouges in the dirt, and in places, fir boughs had to be pushed aside to pass. But overall, the path was well worn and clear of debris, except for the occasional cigarette butt. The distance to the rock was less than half a mile, so he kept looking down the slope side as he walked.

In a few minutes, he spotted a place where the ferns and other foliage had been trampled. From the trail, he could see patches of naked flesh among the greenery.

“There she is.”

Jackson hesitated before moving down for a closer look at the body. There was an opportunity—at this moment—to look around the whole area before it was overrun with investigative personnel and search dogs.

“Let’s look at the trail for a minute first,” he said to Evans without looking back. He started down the path again. Immediately, a pattern emerged in the dirt under his feet.

“This is interesting.”

Jackson stepped to the side of the trail, squatted down, and began to take pictures. Two faint, parallel lines ran lengthwise along the trail, stopping and starting between the footprints.

“It looks as if something has been dragged,” Evans said.

“Or someone.” Had the marks been made by the heels of the dead girl as she was dragged from further up the trail?

Keeping to the side so that they wouldn’t smudge the parallel marks, he and Evans moved down the path. Along the way, Jackson stopped to pull on latex gloves, then bagged and tagged a cigarette butt. It looked as if it had been exposed to the elements for some time, but it would be foolish to ignore it on that assumption.

As the trail reached the wide flat area that merged into the rock outcropping, Jackson took more photos of the drag marks. They were more distinct here but had still been smudged in places by shoe prints. The marks faded as the dirt turned to rock.

“Those look like skater shoe marks,” Evans commented.

“Probably the kid who called it in.”

The outcropping was about thirty feet wide and fairly flat. A pocket in the gray and red rock contained the remnants of a freshly smoked joint and several not-so-fresh cigarette butts. Evans took notes, while Jackson put each of the evidence pieces into its own small brown bag.

“I’m surprised there are no empty alcohol containers,” Evans said with genuine surprise. “I thought kids came up here to drink.”

“There’s probably enough empty cans and bottles in the brush below to keep a transient happy for life.” Jackson wondered what else was down there in the brush. A murder weapon? The girl’s clothes? He would leave that search for the canine unit.

“Let’s go look at the body.”

To preserve the footprints so the evidence tech could make casts, they kept to the side of the trail by stepping in the foliage. Evans expressed gratitude that the recent rain hadn’t turned the area into a mud slough. Jackson wondered about the killer’s activities. Why had he dragged the body back down the trail instead of dumping it off the rock? Because there was less chance of it being seen here?

When he spotted the pale flesh among the green, Jackson took three long strides down the slope, being careful not to step on exposed dirt and leave footprints. He kept his feet on the short ferns that had already been flattened by the killer, the victim, and/ or the person who had found her. Or had the killer called in the body himself? A psycho might do that as part of the game. Evans followed him, taking giant steps to stay in the same areas.

The girl was face down, nude, and unbruised. A couple of small scratches on her back and legs looked postmortem, probably made when she was dragged or rolled down the slope. Jackson snapped a few photos. Her long dark hair was bunched around her head but was surprisingly free of twigs or leaves. He took a close-up shot of her heels, which were darkened with dirt, supporting his theory that someone had held her by the armpits and dragged her along the path.

Jackson gently rolled the body onto its side. Nicole’s dark brown eyes stared up at him. He tried to remember what she had looked like that day in the school office, before death distorted her pretty face. Nicole had been grieving for Jessie and nervous about talking to him.

Now she’d been dead long enough for blood to pool in her face, giving her skin a purplish tint. A spider had chewed its way across her left cheek, leaving a series of nasty red bumps. And maggots were feeding in her ears. Jackson pressed a gloved finger against her face. When he pulled away, the color didn’t change. The lividity told him three things: Nicole had been killed out here at least six hours ago, and had been left lying on her face soon after her death.

After a moment, he said, “She looks like Jessie did, naked but with no obvious abrasions or trauma.”

“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Evans mused.

He knew what she meant. The girls’ unmarred bodies didn’t seem to be the handiwork of a sexual predator, but what else would explain their deaths? The fact that the two girls were friends indicated that the killer identified his victims through the school or church and probably knew both girls, at least superficially.

Jackson thanked God that Katie no longer hung out with that group. But that did not mean she was safe. She would not be safe until this sicko was in permanent custody. Jackson could feel a stress headache coming on. Was he completely wrong about the mayor? Had Fieldstone screwed Jessie but not killed her? None of it fit together.

He heard voices coming, so he gently lowered Nicole back to her face down position and moved up the embankment to the trail. Evans stayed with the body.

Sergeant Brian Riggs came down the path leading a German shepard. Jackson had worked with Riggs before, sometimes cooperatively, sometimes not. They shook hands.

“This is Daisy,” Riggs said, scratching the dog’s head.  “So what’s the situation here?”

“We have a dead girl, most likely a homicide victim. I need you to search the area for her clothes or anything that may have been left by her killer.” The dog whined with impatience.

About then, a young female evidence tech, dressed in dark blue coveralls, came up the path followed by the county ME. Gunderson, who had processed Jessie’s body at the scene, asked Jackson, “Do we have a serial killer?”

“Maybe.”

Gunderson glanced at Jackson’s gloved hands. “Did you touch the body?”

“I rolled her up on her side to see if I recognized her.”

Gunderson gave him a look. “And?”

“I believe it’s Nicole Clarke, our missing person. I need the time of death ASAP. I need to know if she was killed before or after I arrested Fieldstone.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Gunderson and Riggs moved down to where the girl lay. The evidence tech introduced herself as Jasmine Parker, then began to make casts of the shoe prints on the path.

Jackson thought about Nicole’s parents, anxious and upset and waiting to hear something—anything. Jackson believed it was his responsibility to tell them, but he didn’t want to leave the scene or make them wait until he returned. He called Zapata and asked him to break the news to her parents. Ultimately, the Clarkes would have to look at the body and confirm that it was Nicole. He could not imagine how horrific that moment would be. Jackson hoped God would spare him from ever having to go through that. Then he felt guilty for the thought. He didn’t deserve any special treatment.

After a minute, Riggs came back up with Daisy, who was straining on her leash, anxious to follow a scent. Then the two were off toward the rock outcropping. Jackson moved down the slope, so he could listen to Gunderson as he examined the body.

“She’s still in full rigor mortis,” the ME was saying as he lifted her limbs. “So she’s been dead at least twelve hours, but less than thirty.” He looked up at Jackson. “So that means sometime between 9:30 yesterday morning and 3:30 this morning.”

“Her parents saw her at six o’clock last night,” Jackson said.

“So that narrows it down even further.” Gunderson shoved a long thermometer into the girl’s rectum. After a moment, he said. “Body temp is sixty-one, only five degrees warmer than the air, so she’s had about twenty-one hours to cool, give or take an hour on either side.”

Jackson calculated the time in his head.

“Between 7:30 and 9:30 last night.” Gunderson said it out loud a moment before Jackson reached the same conclusion.

Jackson groaned. “I arrested Fieldstone at 8:36. And this park is only a ten-minute drive from his house on Blanton Heights. So he could have done it and been home by the time I showed up to arrest him.”

“Don’t get worked up yet,” Gunderson said. “I’m not done. Some of these bugs crawling out of her nose might narrow the time down even further.”