Page 5 of Dirty Looks

Martinez grunted and shifted his feet, his expensive dress shoes beaded with water. “Ms. Sandborn said she always runs this route. She and her husband live in one of the new condos on the square. She takes Anne Boleyn all the way down to Jane Seymour, and then cuts across the empty lot on the corner to get to the park. She would have had a direct line of sight of the vic as she jogged around the corner, but it’s pretty misty this morning,so she was almost directly under the park light before she saw her. Sandborn said it was like the girl was being spotlighted.”

“Pretty ballsy of our killer,” I said. “To leave her right under the park light like he did.”

Martinez grunted in agreement. “Seems to me like he didn’t care about being seen and didn’t care how fast she was found. There are plenty of trees in this park, so he could have dragged her out of the way. But he left her on the perimeter where anyone driving or jogging by would see her.”

I looked at my watch and calculated the time. It was a few minutes past six. “I’d put time of death somewhere between nine and midnight,” I said. “Bloody Mary is all tucked into bed at that time of night. Especially on a Monday. All of the local restaurants are closed. There are no sporting or church events.”

“Almost like he knew that,” Martinez said. “What about sexual assault?”

I sighed, trying to focus my attention away from the trauma her skull had sustained. “There’s evidence of blood and semen. We’re not going to be short on DNA evidence.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Martinez said, and I could hear the anger in his voice. “She’s so small. You think you’ve seen the worst of things, and people still manage to surprise me.”

“She is small for her age,” I said, carefully massaging the rigor out of her jaw so I could stick my finger in her mouth. “But she does have upper and lower molars, so she’s probably close to twelve at the least.

“Blunt force trauma to the head,” I continued. “Overkill. There’s a lot of rage in those blows. Significant trauma to the skull. But she was also strangled. Look at the bruising around her neck and the broken capillaries in her eyes. Contusions and abrasions cover most of her body. Ligature marks around the wrists and ankles signify she was bound. Even her heels are raw.”

“Indicating she was dragged,” Martinez said, taking notes.

I looked up and around the playground area—a place that should have been filled with children and laughter—noting the wood chips at the bottom of the slides and the loose pebbles under the swings.

“I’ll take samples to send to the forensics lab in Richmond and see what comes up,” I said. “But she’s got particulates embedded in the skin. Probably gravel or sediment from the sidewalk. She hasn’t been moved since she was killed. Livor mortis has set in.”

I lifted her body slightly so Martinez could see the purplish hues of her skin where the blood had settled along her back and thighs. The human body always told a story. Flesh and blood and bone were as descriptive as the pages of a book.

“Any idea what did this kind of damage to her skull?” I asked, but Martinez didn’t respond.

His gaze was scanning the crowd that had gathered on the outside of the police barricade. Then he looked toward Officer Plank and gestured him over.

“Yes, sir,” Plank said, hurrying to us and standing at attention.

We all had a soft spot for Plank, even though he was still a rookie. He was the boy next door, and all of us were a little baffled at how he’d ended up in uniform instead of coaching Little League or settling down with a wife and living the picket-fence life.

But that rookie shine was beginning to tarnish, and he’d proven himself when the bullets had started to fly. Gone was the naïvety in his eyes, and in place was a harder outlook on humanity that had taken away some of his approachability—cop eyes. I grieved a little for that.

Despite the cop eyes, he was still fresh faced and pink cheeked. His hair was freshly cut and his uniform starched so stiff it could have stood up by itself.

“Let’s check out the crowd that’s gathered to watch us work,” Martinez told him. “Get names and contact information. Several of them are still in their nightclothes so I’m guessing they live close. Start with that tall guy standing at the back. He’s giving me the creeps.”

I couldn’t see who Martinez was talking about while I was kneeling down, so I stood up to see over the privacy partition that had been erected.

My gaze scanned the crowd of older people, at first not seeing the man that Martinez had singled out. There was still a hazy mist in the air and it was the time between dark and light when everything was in shades of gray. But then the man came into partial focus. He stood next to a tree, dressed in black and blending in with the tree bark. I couldn’t clearly see any of his features, but he was a head taller than those standing around him.

“Yes, sir,” Plank said, and headed off to follow orders.

I knelt back down by the victim and Martinez came with me and sighed.

“I kind of miss the old Plank,” he said. “This job really sucks.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t do anything else,” I told him.

“Isn’t that the truth,” he said, shaking his head. “What does that say about me?”

“That you’re the perverse creature we’ve always known you to be,” I said. “Besides, somebody has to catch the bad guys. Better us than letting all hell break loose.”

Martinez snorted out a laugh and rubbed his hand over his face. There was a resoluteness about him, a determination to face the horror of what one human being could do to another. He made himself look at the victim, to not shy away fromthe atrocities. The girl deserved that much. But I knew from experience we’d all pay for it later. In our marriages. In our dreams. In sex or thoughts of suicide. In the bottles of alcohol that awaited some at the end of a hard day. First responders all dealt with trauma differently. Whatever vice they chose, I noticed it usually wasn’t the healthiest way of dealing with things.

“We found several large rocks covered in blood and brain matter,” Martinez said, pointing to the yellow numbered evidence tags spaced along the ground.

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