River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(65)

“Did you run it through the system?” He hated how he sounded, fresh, new, hopeful, and as excited as she was. He imagined the seasoned investigators in his troop would take the call in stride and not get too worked up over a partial print.

“Not yet. I wanted to call you first,” she said. What they didn’t tell you in the TV crime shows was how tedious a forensic scientist’s job really was. They could go days, weeks, months running tests, examining evidence, and still not come up with anything conclusive. Not to mention being shut in a laboratory all day and sometimes all night. And in Mara’s case, sometimes all weekend too.

“Thank you, Mara. You’re the best.”

“Aw, shucks, go on. No, seriously, go on.”

He laughed. Mara was smart and young and, like Parker, a newbie in her field, but already she’d made a name for herself, bringing knowledge of the latest technology from one of the best schools in forensic science. She was also engaged, not that Parker was interested. “Find me a match,” he said.

“I’m on it,” she said and hung up the phone.

Parker pulled himself out of the chair and went into the kitchen. The original river body case was in a box on top of the table along with his notes and the files from his own recent case. He settled into a chair and flipped open a manila folder. He started pulling out reports, the medical examiner’s report, Candy’s statement, the tampered-with police report from Toby on the Scions. Lastly, he pulled a photo of the victim’s body. He spread everything out on the table, trying to put the pieces together in his mind, forming a timeline of the events that had led up to the crime.

He stood and paced the room. There was stubble on his chin from not having shaved since the day before, or maybe it had been the day before that. He scratched it absently. He continued pacing, only stopping to use the bathroom. More than once he considered packing it up and driving over to headquarters. It would be easier there, where he had access to bulletin boards, where he could hang the evidence he’d collected and re-create a better visual of the sequence of events. Also, it would help if he had another set of eyes on it, maybe two more sets. He was sure Bill and the other detectives expected him to come to them. They would give him shit, but they would help without hesitation. Parker liked the camaraderie, the trust the men in his troop developed that said, I’ve got your back. All he had to do was ask.

And yet, he couldn’t go to them. He was alone. The case was his because it was his hometown, the crime having taken place in his backyard. And now with Becca’s involvement, it had become even more personal. He thought about his father. And then he thought about Rick, how he couldn’t seem to move past the original case. Parker wondered if he would end up like Rick had, living his life haunted by the river bodies.

He opened the box containing the files on the original case and began sorting through them, pulling out the reports and statements and laying them on the table next to the others. He laid the photograph of the first victim next to the other one. What did these two men have in common? Both victims died of a single gunshot wound to the chest, both shots fired from a .30-06 rifle. Both were stripped of their clothes, gutted, and their bodies dumped into the Delaware River, only to turn up twenty-four hours later. The crime scenes were twenty yards apart. And both victims had rap sheets and were known to have connections with motorcycle gangs, indirect connections with the Scions. The motive for the killings looked to be gang related, but nothing jumped out at the crime team handling the OMGs (outlaw motorcycle gangs). The rifle used in the latest shooting had been the only weapon found.

The suspect in the first case, Russell Jackson, had been a hunter. His son, John, was a hunter. Both men would know how to field dress. Russell had been the enforcer in the club. Now, John was the enforcer. Was John just following in his old man’s footsteps, imitating his old man’s crime? After all, there’d been two different kinds of knives used in the field dressings. One was a five-and-a-half-inch large-blade knife, and the one in the most recent case a hunting knife with a gut hook. He’d been looking at each case as though they were together but separate, each having a different suspect.

Parker thought about his own father again, remembered a conversation he’d had with him after Russell had shown up at the house, the back of Russell’s arm slit open from a knife wound, his knuckles busted on both hands.

“He fought in Vietnam. Did you know that?” his father had asked.

Parker had shaken his head.

“He was trained to be violent. I’m not sure that can be turned off so easily, not without help anyway.”

His father’s words struck him now, the psychology of it, how violence was thought to be a learned behavior.

Russell had been a violent man. And John had been raised by him.

But still, something about it wasn’t right. He picked up the photos of the victims again, studied them. He reread the medical examiner’s reports. He stood, paced around the kitchen table. Something nagged at him in the back of his mind.

The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced the gutting wasn’t just a pure act of violence carried out by two separate individuals. It was too personal. It had meant something to the killer. Otherwise, why not just walk away once the victim had been shot? Perhaps the killer was satisfying some kind of perverse compulsion or need? Or maybe it was a scare tactic to keep the other members of the club in line?