Page 6 of Dirty Looks

“Several?” I asked. “So he used multiple rocks to bash her head in?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Well, that’s different,” I said. “Any evidence of more than one killer?”

“Not that we’ve found,” he said. “The rocks were all lining that flower bed there. Maybe in the struggle he was just grasping for something to hit her with. Those rocks are covered with blood. They would have been slippery. So he loses one and then grabs another.”

“Wouldn’t have been much of a fight,” I said, looking at the wounds with my flashlight. “The first blow would’ve incapacitated her. She wouldn’t have been fighting back then.”

“Maybe he was just so caught up in the moment he couldn’t stop,” Martinez said. “What kind of man leaves his DNA and fingerprints all over the place?”

“A stupid one or one who isn’t in the system.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. Maybe a combo of both. This looks frantic. Not calculated. Maybe his first kill.”

I grunted in the affirmative. “What about a ligature? Find anything he could have strangled her with? Or whatever he’d bound her wrists and feet with?”

“Nothing so far, but I’ve got guys canvassing the area checking trash cans and dumpsters. It’s trash day in this neighborhood so it would have been easy for him to shove any evidence in a nearby bin. We would’ve been out of luck if the trashmen beat us to it. They usually start their rounds about this time. If he got rid of evidence we’ll find it. She’s covered in blood. He would be too.”

“She did put up a fight,” I said. “She’s got particulates and skin under her fingernails.” I carefully bagged both of her hands. “And she’s got defensive bruising along her forearms. See the pattern?”

I held my arms up in anXover my chest to demonstrate. “He hit her with something,” I said. “Not his fist. See how the bruising almost wraps around the arm. Like a whip, but wider.”

“Belt,” he said. “I’ve seen those marks before.”

“People tend to grab whatever is closest in a fight. If she surprised him and tried to escape out of a vehicle or house he would have grabbed whatever he could to make her stop. A child in her condition would draw notice if they were out in public. Looks like a couple of fingers are broken too,” I said.

“I knew I should have put in for vacation last week,” Martinez said. “I could be drinking margaritas in the Florida Keys and flirting with tiki bar waitresses. It sure would beat the hell out of this.”

“You probably have kids you don’t know about all over the country,” I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. It would be too easy for both of us to spiral down, and I knew from experience it was a lot easier to go down than it was to come up.

“Not me,” he said, shaking his head. “I took care of that a couple of years ago.”

My head snapped up in surprise. “Get out! You got a vasectomy?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet. “But you’re so young.”

“No regrets. My family is crazy complicated, and I’ve never wanted to add to the madness,” he said. “Besides, this job isn’t good for families. How many guys on the force are paying child support and never get to see their kids? It’s a rare woman who can put up with being married to a cop. Though don’t tell my abuela. She’s very Catholic, and she’d probably disown me if she knew there was no Mrs. Martinez or great-grandchildren in her future.”

I’d never actually met any member of Martinez’s family, so his secret was safe with me.

His phone rang. “Martinez,” he said. It was a short call and Martinez didn’t say anything else other than, “Thanks,” before he disconnected.

“That was the station,” he said. “No missing persons or abductions have been reported in the tri-state area in the last seventy-two hours, and there’s nothing in the system with a description matching our victim from previous filings. She’s a Jane Doe as of now.”

“She’s not a street kid,” I said. “She’s healthy and seems well nourished despite her small stature, and she’s got orthodontia. That doesn’t come cheap. It shouldn’t be too hard to find an identity.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” he said. “She’s not from Bloody Mary or we all would have heard about it by now.”

That was a true statement. Bloody Mary only had a couple of thousand people in it, and every one of them was a nosy busybody. Citizens in Bloody Mary knew enough about their neighbors to make the CIA blush. If one of our local kids had been missing we all would have heard about it.

“There’s not much more I can do here,” I said, packing my bag. “Let’s get her back to the lab.”

I gestured for Lily and Sheldon to come over with the transport board. The gurney would be too hard to roll throughthe grass and there were so many evidence tags along the ground I didn’t want them to disturb anything.

I stood up and took off my gloves, dropping them in my bag, and then I moved over to stand next to Martinez to make room for Lily and Sheldon. The sun was struggling to break through the heavy clouds, and I could tell by looking we were in for another wet day. If the crime-scene techs missed something while they were searching this morning, it would most likely be lost forever.

As if my thoughts had been projected aloud, a long, low rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.

“Great,” Martinez said, looking up at the sky. “Have I mentioned how much I hate this rain? I need the sun. Look at my skin. Does this look like the skin of a man who can do without the sun? This place is depressing.”

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