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Authors: Jonah Paine

Little Girls Lost (3 page)

BOOK: Little Girls Lost
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"You heard what happened to her?" Sam asked, watching Billy's face closely for the boy's reaction.
 

Billy looked down at the pavement for a few moments, his hands on his hips, before he looked up again. "Yeah, I heard."

Bud snorted. "You don't seem too broken up about it, sport."

Billy took half a step forward. "What the fuck do you know, pig?"

Sam held up his hands in reassurance. "Take it easy. No one's accusing you. But you understand that we need to find out who did that to Jasmine. And we hoped that, since you and she were close, maybe you'd want to help."

Billy looked off to the side, out into the night. "I would like nothing more," he said, sounding out every word carefully. "Actually, that's not true," he added, looking back at Sam. "There's one thing I'd like better, and that would be to take a gun and stick it in the mouth of the motherfucker who did that and pull the fucking trigger!" When he finished he was breathing hard, and Sam thought he might even be close to tears. He wondered when Billy Monroe had last shed a tear for anyone or anything.

"You don't know anyone who had it in for her? Did she say anything about someone who was giving her trouble, or maybe someone who creeped her out?"

"Nah," Billy said, looking away again. "Nothing. Everyone liked Jasmine. I can't say the same for her, she could be a bit of a bitch sometimes. But she had this way of getting people to like her and want to do things for her."

"Do things for her, or do things to her?" Bud asked.

Billy's face clouded, and for a moment Sam thought that he would throw a punch. "Fuck you," he snarled.

Bud took a step forward, but Sam stepped between them before the situation escalated further. "Billy, we're going to need to know where you were three nights ago."

Billy took a few breaths to calm himself, then looked away. "I was in Portland. My band played a roadhouse down there, five days straight. We got back yesterday."

Bud snorted. "That's convenient. You were out of town right when someone was cutting up your girlfriend."

Billy grinned defiantly back at him. "The truth is convenient sometimes."
 

"We'll need to check that out. Do you have anyone who can vouch for you?"

"My whole band."

"Other than your friends and other people who would be willing to lie for you."

Billy stared at him for the space of two breaths. "There's the staff at the roadhouse. It's called Jimmy's, and it's on the edge of town on ... shit, what street was that ... Fairview I think it was called. Fair something, anyway. The manager and the waitresses will remember I was there."

By this point Sam was sure that Billy was pretty much the last person he'd want to date anyone he cared about, but he also was starting to believe that the kid was telling the truth. If so, that was bad news for the investigation, because, with the exception of the deadbeat dad, it put them back on square one.

They went through the usual routine—telling Billy that he was a material witness in a homicide, that he shouldn't leave town, that if he thought of anything that might help the investigation he should contact them at the station—and then they walked back to the car. Sam was mostly lost in thought when Bud interrupted him.

"Did you see his arms?"

"Hmmm?" Sam asked.

"His arms. More tracks than a train station. The guy's doing heroine, I'll bet."

"Yeah."

"Yeah? That's all you've got to say? He's a junkie!"

Sam knew where his partner was going with this, and he knew from experience not to try to shut him down, but he was too tired to pretend enthusiasm. "It doesn't matter. We have no reason to think that Jasmine was using."

"Doesn't matter. Drugs means drug-dealers and drug addicts, and wherever you have dealers and addicts you have a need for money. There are two reasons people kill: for sex and for money. I bet it was a robbery gone bad."

"We'll check it out," Sam said, but his gut told him that it was a dead end. If it was a robbery, then Jasmine's murderer got as much money as she was carrying and no more. That didn't make much sense as a motive, and it didn't explain the multiple stab wounds. Those spoke of anger, and obsession. Those spoke of a different killer than the suspects they'd seen so far.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

Sam liked to think of his desk as a refuge, though it sat in the middle of the room and offered no privacy to speak of.

He would sit in his standard-issue office chair, fill the space before him with papers, and allow his mind to drift off into the facts of the case and the speculation those facts inspired. Sam had never been the gregarious sort, and often the parts of police work he found most draining were the ones out on the street, where he was forced by the requirements of the job to talk with one person of interest after another when he would far preferred to be sitting alone and thinking things through. His desk was where Sam could do what, in his own mind, defined his one true talent.

Other times, the person of interest came to him. That morning, Jasmine Martin's father had paid a visit. When Sam heard that the man was waiting for him downstairs, for a brief instant he fantasized that the killer was here to turn himself in. In fact, he was here to help. Sam had rarely seen a man so traumatized. Mr. Martin was struggling not only with the death of his daughter, but also with the thought that maybe, if he hadn't skipped out on his family, he would have been there to protect her somehow. Sam took his statement and asked him about his whereabouts, but unless the man was a brilliant actor, he had nothing to do with the death of his daughter.
 

Before him lay a stack of manila folders. Each contained a stack of papers that were, at best, hard to read. These papers detailed the sad and brutal end of one woman after another at the hands of sadistic monsters who had been caught, tried, sent to prison, and in some cases set free to haunt the city's streets once again. Sam had been reading files like this for more years than he could count, but he never grew numb to their contents. Every case was an outrage. Every case represented a family destroyed by sorrow. He read through the details, looking for what he needed, and did what he could to float on the surface of the sea of rage without getting sucked down.

One part of Sam's mind held the details of the damage that had been inflicted on Jasmine's body, and he flicked through pages looking for a match. The report had come in from the M.E.'s office that the wounds were post-mortem, which made them meaningful. They were not the product of some desperate struggle. They were not an accident. They were inflicted when the killer had time to think, prepare, and enact the pattern he carried in his mind. Sam knew that, if he looked closely enough, he could always see the face of the killer in the damage he inflicted.

The pattern of Jasmine's stab wounds was not absolutely distinct. It did not spell out the name of a neglectful mother, nor did it form a swastika or any other recognizable pattern. There was something about it, though, that caught Sam's eye, something in the way that three wounds clustered around her navel in a way that seemed deliberate. He knew that it was a small thread that he was following, but it was the best he had. Following the thread meant he was still in the office as the clock ticked toward midnight, reviewing the many ways in which women had died at the hands of men who loved and hated them.

His eyes were tired and his back was sore. Sam leaned back with a sigh and drew a hand through his hair. Bud had long since left for home. His partner was still convinced that the boyfriend, some random junkie, or the Colombian drug cartel were somehow responsible, either because of the weight of the evidence or because it made for a good story.

It was late, and Sam was feeling particularly tired, when something caught his eyes and set his pulse to running a little faster. The case file was for a sexual sadist by the name of Jesse Wayne Rasmussen, who had been captured and sentenced ten years before. He was a very nasty man, Sam could see. He started out with sexual assault but soon graduated to murder, where he found his signature in the serial murder of three prostitutes who he raped, murdered, and threw into the same river they had recently fished Jasmine from.
 

That much was no more than a coincidence. The photos of his last killing, though, showed a cluster of three stab wounds around the victim's navel. Sam held the photo up to the light, his fingers gripping it tightly. He wasn't sure that it would hold up in court, but to his eyes it was clear: Jasmine's body bore the same wounds.

But could it be the same man? The case file left off with the conviction of Rasmussen. If he was still behind bars, Sam's theory would be no more than that: a theory. He woke his computer from sleep and navigated to the court records database. Punching up Rasmussen's record, Sam read with a mounting sense of excitement. Rasmussen had been tried and convicted on multiple counts of sexual assault and murder, and sentenced to three consecutive life terms. But then his counsel challenged the convictions on the basis that the DNA evidence linking Rasmussen to the crimes had been compromised.

Sam's eyes landed on the fateful line in the updated report. Rasmussen's conviction had been overturned on appeal, and he had been released six months ago.
 

Rasmussen was back on the street, and he had a M.O. that perfectly matched Jasmine's wounds.

Sam exhaled in a long hiss and leaned back into his chair. This was it! There was still work to be done, but in his mind it was clear. The case was solved, and the murderer was a scumbag by the name of Jesse Rasmussen.

Just then his phone rang. "Yeah," Sam said, lifting the receiver from the cradle.

"Yo buddy, I knew you would still be at your desk," Bud's voice called.

"Where you at?" Sam asked.
 

"I'm home, but don't worry—I'm still working. I've been making calls, checking to see if that kid played the clubs in Portland like he said."

"And?" Sam asked, knowing the answer already.

"And he's on the level. Which pisses me off. I was looking forward to wiping that smug smile off his face."

Sam couldn't remember Billy smiling much while they were talking to him, but he knew Bud was like that. Once he decided that he didn't like someone, he'd create all the memories he needed to justify the feeling. "I guess he didn't do it, then," he said.

"Yeah. We still got the Colombian cartel, though. Or maybe the Mexicans. If those fuckers didn't kill the girl, you can bet they're guilty of something else. I'm going to ask around."

"You do that, but you might want to know what I just found in the files."

"Yeah?" Bud asked, not sounding eager to hear the news.

"I would like to introduce you to Jesse Wayne Rasmussen, rapist and killer of three girls. The last one he stabbed in the same way that Jasmine was killed—same pattern of wounds on the body."

"And what's the punch line?"

"He was released six months ago."

"Hot damn. Sounds like our boy."

"Sounds like. I'm going to put it out on the network, see if we can bring him in. In the meantime, though, feel free to investigate the cartel. That sounds like a really promising lead."

"Fuck you, funny man."

"Good night to you, too." Sam hung up the phone and relaxed for a moment, enjoying the feeling. He always started to feel better once they had a good, solid lead. He looked forward to giving Jasmine's mother the news.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

It was a small church but a nice one, he thought, and he liked the way the choir's voices filled the entire building, even where he was sitting in the back row.

It was a Tuesday night and he didn't have a lot of company in the pews, but the choir director didn't seem to mind if people came to listen to the practice.
 

Most visitors' eyes would have been drawn to the large rose window above and behind the choir, which set out the figure of the cross in various shades of blue with highlights in red and orange. He glanced at it coming in, but he didn't really care. He only had eyes for Betsy.

He thought she was a good singer. From where he was sitting he couldn't pick out her voice from the others, but there was something joyous in her face that told him she was singing from her heart. He believed that it was impossible to sing poorly if you truly sung from your heart. His mother had sung from her heart. His mother had been an excellent singer.

Betsy had an open face, and he liked the way her brown hair hung in a tangle past her shoulders. Betsy seemed like a regular person. She seemed like the kind of girl you could take to lunch and just talk about things, everything and nothing. She wouldn't be stuck up or cruel, like some girls were. She would be kind. He felt sure that Betsy would listen to him when he talked, and that they would laugh at each other's jokes. They might have been friends, if things had been different. They might have been more than friends.

He felt the familiar sadness then, as he thought about what he had to do. He fought against the feeling. He forced it down. There was no time for sadness. No time for anything but to do what he had to do. He had a mission. It was bigger than him, and it was bigger than his feelings.

It would be soon, he knew, but for tonight Betsy had her choir practice and he watched her sing.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Sam was at his desk when the phone rang. Jesse Rasmussen was proving to be an elusive target. He had met with his parole officer a couple times following his release, but after that no one seemed to know where he was.

Sam was reviewing every piece of information they had gathered on the man, in the hopes of finding some detail that might help them locate him.

He picked up the phone. "Yeah?" he said, feeling bone-tired.

"Detective, this is Paul Riley. Officer Riley? We talked at the Christmas party last year."

BOOK: Little Girls Lost
6.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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