Page 7 of Dirty Looks

“More than forty-five percent of adults struggle with depression in Seattle because of the lack of sun,” Sheldon said. “There is a suicide every eleven minutes.”

“I can believe it,” Martinez said.

Sheldon’s Coke-bottle-thick glasses were fogged, and there was a thin bead of sweat on his upper lip. It was still chilly outside, so I could only assume it was nerves making him sweat like a racehorse.

Sheldon hated coming to crime scenes. Seeing a body so fresh after death and not on a cold slab in the lab didn’t sit well with him, though he hardly ever threw up anymore. Sheldon had spent his childhood reading random trivia as some kind of coping mechanism. He always had information to share that was in no way helpful for whatever our current situation happened to be. But I also knew spouting useless information was probably keeping him from tainting the crime scene with his own DNA.

“I used to like the rain,” Lily said, carefully lifting the small body so they could maneuver the body bag around her. It wasimportant to catch any particulates that might fall off in the bag so we could examine them in the lab. “It’s always helped me to focus and study. But after the last month I’m starting to change my mind. Cole and I drove down to Greenville for the weekend to see a concert and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when the sun came out.”

“Cole has terrible taste in music,” Martinez said. “All country, all the time.”

Lily’s mouth quirked in a half smile, her cheeks pinkened by the wind that had started to pick up. “I’ll admit I didn’t like it at first. I think it’s an acquired taste. But after I started listening to it for a while I figured it wasn’t any different than watching reality TV. Lots of drama going on in those songs. Think of it as reality TV for the radio.”

“I knew Cole would be a bad influence on you,” Martinez said, shaking his head. “You missed your chance. I would have treated you like a queen.”

Lily snorted and said, “I think there’s a country song that says the same thing. I’ll send it to you so you can drown yourself in your sorrows.”

She and Sheldon lifted the body bag and placed it on the board, securing the victim with wide yellow straps. When they shifted I saw a glint of something in the grass.

“What’s that?” I asked, grabbing one of the gloves from my bag and, without putting it on all the way, I used it to pick up a delicate heart necklace.

Martinez still had his gloves on and gently took the necklace from me, examining the simple gold heart on both sides.

“Daddy’s girl,” he said, reading the inscription on the back of the necklace. “The chain is broken.”

“It probably snapped while the killer was strangling her,” I said, furrowing my brow in thought. “She was still wearing thisnecklace at the time of her murder. What about her clothes? Where are they?”

“We’ve not found any,” Martinez said, brow furrowed. “I’ve got guys canvassing the streets and nearby dumpsters, but nothing has come back so far.”

“We did find a baseball cap,” Lieutenant Daniels said. “It’s an adult man size. About fifteen feet from the victim. I did find a trace of blood on the bill, so we’ll send it to the lab and see if it matches our victim.”

She’d been crouched down only a few feet from us, cataloguing items they were taking into evidence. Daniels and her crime-scene team were the best, and we’d worked several cases together. She was a short plump woman with dark skin and beautiful tawny eyes, and she’d recently added blond to her braids.

“Fifteen feet isn’t far,” Martinez said. “Wouldn’t have been hard for it to fly off in the struggle.”

“So she either ran to the park naked or he stripped her here before he killed her,” I said. “No matter which scenario you go with he was asking for someone to notice. Maybe he was in a hurry when he took her clothes and he didn’t notice the necklace. But you saw the blood spatter pattern across her body. She was naked before he killed her.”

“I see what you’re getting at,” Martinez said. “She’s got defensive wounds. She fought like a wildcat. He’s in the middle of the park trying to get her subdued, but she’s not making it easy for him. Taking her clothes and raping her at that moment would have been the last thought in his head. He would have been in panic mode. And in panic mode you make stupid decisions.”

“Like forgetting your baseball cap and leaving your DNA all over the scene.” I looked around the park, at the houses that surrounded the area. “Where did she come from?”

“He wasn’t worried about being sloppy,” Martinez said. “He kills her in the middle of a public park, violently, where anyone could drive by or walk by and see. Hell, one of the neighbors could have stepped outside for a cigarette and the killer would’ve been spotlighted. Not to mention, he left fingerprints on the rocks he used to bash her head in. The techs pulled several latent prints from them.”

“Maybe not stupid. Maybe just a complete psychopath and not concerned about consequences,” I said.

“Comforting,” Martinez said.

Regent Park was a small community park a few blocks from downtown and the funeral home. It was the first and oldest park in Bloody Mary, and the homes around it had been built in the last half of the 1800s. They were all narrow, two-story homes with red-brick chimneys, black shutters, and nothing but a stoop leading to the front door. If I had to guess the median age of the people living in the area I’d say anywhere from seventy to a hundred and twenty, plus or minus a few years.

“You think someone’s surveillance camera could’ve picked it up?” I asked.

“That’s the hope,” Martinez said, looking at the houses that were most visible from our location, but he didn’t sound hopeful.

Martinez held the locket up between two fingers and looked at it closer. And then he used his thumbs to open the heart locket. Inside was a small picture of the girl at my feet, though it seemed to be taken a couple of years prior. Her smile was bright and she sat on the lap of who I could only assume was her father, but they shared the same smile. They were both blond and blue eyed and on the verge of laughter. It was a sweet photo.

“Oh man,” I said, taking a closer look at the man in the photo. “Why does he look familiar?”

“I was hoping I was imagining things,” Martinez said. “Is that Councilman Lidle?”

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