Her Last Day (Jessie Cole #1)(45)

Jessie looked closer. The cat-eye sunglasses were lined with tortoise shell. Zee definitely appeared to have a unique fashion style.

Olivia picked up the picture. “Look at that! You can see a reflection of a guy in her sunglasses. Do you think that’s Zee’s boyfriend?”

Jessie frowned. She hadn’t seen anyone but Zee in the pictures. “What guy?”

“The guy taking the picture. Here. Look.”

Jessie examined the photo. The man’s reflection was hard to see at first glance, but it was there. Her heart thumped inside her chest. Olivia was right. It looked like a young man holding the camera. “With the sun shining on him,” Jessie commented, “his reflection is sort of distorted, and his face looks kind of blurry.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“What is he wearing?”

“Looks like a pair of jeans,” Olivia said. “And a short-sleeved blue-collared shirt.”

“No, not a short-sleeved shirt, but long sleeves rolled up to his elbows,” Jessie amended, her face pressed close to Olivia’s as they both stared at the picture. “I’d say his hair is light brown and short.”

Olivia agreed. “He could be anybody,” she said. “I mean, there’s nothing about him that stands out. We can’t see his eyes or his nose. It’s almost impossible to tell how tall he is. Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“It’s a place to start.”

“What do you do now?”

“I’m going to have this image blown up, and then I’m going to show it to people living in the Gatleys’ neighborhood and see if anyone recognizes him. But first I need to show it to Zee’s father.”

“Cool. Why don’t you make two copies? That way we can show twice as many people in the same amount of time.”

“We?”

“I want to go with you. I’ll have plenty of time later to work on my report. Please?”

Jessie thought about leaving Olivia at home, but then she was reminded of the look on Colin’s face the last time she’d seen him. Only a few blocks away, a woman had been taken from her home. Olivia was coming with her.

“Fine,” Jessie said. “I’m going to get ready. Then we’ll take Higgins for a walk around the block before we go.”

“I can take him.”

“No. I want to go with you. We’ll go together.”





TWENTY-FOUR

When Colin walked into the crime lab, Evelyn Klein, longtime friend and forensic pathologist, was waiting for him. They both wore blue, ankle-length, long-sleeve surgical gowns, shoe covers, and latex gloves.

On the steel table in front of Evelyn was Garrett Ramsey, his pale, ashy flesh stretched tautly over bone. His feet were swollen, blackening; his eyes were bulging, marked by severe trauma; and his throat stretched and circled with a reddish-purple welt.

“His expression says it all,” Evelyn said.

Colin nodded as he continued his own examination. The burn marks on Garrett Ramsey’s legs were easy to identify, same with the markings made from a whip or belt across his abdomen. He pointed to the bloody holes in the man’s hands. “Any idea what caused those?”

“Looks like nails.” She picked up a hand to show him that the hole went clear through. “This man was tortured in every way imaginable. These stab wounds,” she said, her gloved finger following the path along the length of his arm, “were made postmortem.” She sighed. “This is what I do every day. I thought I’d seen it all. But this nonsensical mutilation after a body has already begun to decompose is beyond comprehension. Plainly put,” she went on, “we’ve got one sick fuck out there roaming the streets, and I’ll be sleeping with one eye open.”

“What about the twins?”

“One of them was hung by the feet. That would have been a slow, painful death. The other girl looks a lot like this man. Poked and prodded, burned and mutilated with multiple objects. We’ll know more later, but it’s my opinion the twins have been dead over a month. Some of the injuries had time to heal; others were newer, which tells me, based on the dates they were reported missing, they were tortured continuously during their captivity. Once they passed, their bodies were preserved in cold storage before the final staging.”

“How could you tell?”

“The photographs taken at the site of disposal show surface ice crystals and condensation on the skin. By the time the bodies got to me, the bodies had thawed, but some of the organs were still hard. The freezing didn’t hide the mutilation or torture, but it does make it more difficult to calculate time of death.” She gestured toward pictures clipped to a corkboard. “I was using pictures to see if I could make comparisons between the twins and Garrett Ramsey. You can see that the girls’ skin, after thawing, is red, fading to a leathery brown instead of yellow. Nose, ears, and tips of fingers on both girls are blackened.”

He walked that way to examine the pictures. Sure enough, the areas mentioned looked like freezer burn. Feeling nauseated, he went back to his place on the other side of the dead man and decided not to absorb the information until later. To think about what those girls had been put through would not help him move forward. “What about sexual abuse?”

She shook her head. “Hymens are intact—both girls. No signs of sexual abuse on any of the three victims.”