Page 69 of Pretty Broken Dolls
“True. But she might not have been telling the truth—there were some things she said that seemed deceptive and hesitant.”
Katie took another long look at the tattoo. “I wonder if we can find out more about it, like the artist. It was probably done when she was in the army. It’s blurry and amateurish, so I don’t think it was a professional, but you never know. It might have looked better when it wasn’t partially removed.”
“Maybe a friend? Army buddy? Boyfriend?” suggest McGaven.
“What about the necklace and the makeup?”
“Now it gets interesting,” said John. He brought up photos of the necklace. “No prints or fluids were found, but…” He smiled for dramatic effect. “It’s not the necklace but the ribbon.”
“The ribbon?”
“Look at how it’s tied.” He zoomed in on the loop. “That is a nautical knot. See how it’s a figure eight and the two ends are pulled through? There are many nautical style knots—this one is the more basic.”
“It also looks like the beginning of a macramé knot,” said Katie. “Why would the killer do that? Why not just tie a regular knot or double knot?” She wondered aloud to herself.
“Maybe the killer is trying to tell us something?” said McGaven.
John wheeled smoothly in his office chair over to a table and took out some rope and cut about three feet. He tossed it to McGaven as he expertly wheeled back to his station. “So you can practice tying knots.”
Katie nodded. “We’ll have to look at the first two cases to find out if there’s anything to the ribbon-tying.”
John moved to various photos of Jeanine Trenton’s face where the makeup was blurred and clownish, in ghastly colors. The effect was deeply disturbing, like a horror movie. “So, since the makeup was so prominent for the staging of the body, there were tests run and I agree with not only the tests but the findings and the conclusions. The makeup was connected to one of the major cosmetics companies that can be found in any department store, drug store, online store selling makeup—you name it. There was nothing foreign mixed in the makeup used, just the typical ingredients you would find, like pigments for color, waxes, petrolatum oil, lanolin, cocoa butter, aluminum, manganese, and BAK—benzalkonium chloride—for preservative purposes.”
“Wow, I’m going to rethink my makeup choices,” said Katie with a distinct frown. “So you’re saying they were fairly generic, cheaply made makeup items that can be found just about anywhere.”
Katie became quiet, rolling scenarios in her mind—preparing herself for what they would pursue next. McGaven and John waited.
“Well, I do have some more thoughts,” John said with an upbeat tone cutting through the silence. “I always go the extra mile—you know that.”
Katie’s hopes raised a few levels as she waited patiently.
“Now, remember how the body looked, posed like a possessed doll from a horror show?” He clicked through several angles of the body. “There was nothing in the crime scene report about the body pose, so…I started searching through covers of horror movies and books with certain specific parameters: body posed, heavy makeup like clown, legs broken, etc.”
“And?” she said getting excited.
“I’m afraid that I haven’t found anything but the typical slasher movies, but I’m still searching with key words in the database. There were some movies that had scenes that resembled the poses but they were from eighties and nineties. Maybe trying to recreate a time or incident?”
“Oh,” she said, remembering those horrible slasher films and hoped that wasn’t the inspiration for the crime scenes; again, it was too vague and not specific enough to be a lead.
“I should have some preliminary information about the Jane Doe case soon,” McGaven said.
Katie and McGaven returned to their office.
McGaven turned to Katie and said, “What are your instincts saying? What first comes to mind?”
“I don’t want to go in the wrong direction.”
“C’mon. First thing that comes to mind,” he stressed.
“Well, the killer doesn’t seem to like the army. It could mean that they don’t like the K9 unit or the army in general.”
“Keep going.”
“The nautical knot could mean that the killer has been trained in navigating boats and it’s just a habit to tie a knot like that.”
“Good,” he said as he made a few notes. “This is fun. You usually make the notes.”
Katie imagined the crime scene in her head and everything they knew from the reports as she read the notes McGaven wrote. It suddenly hit her like a sledgehammer. “Why haven’t I seen it before? I don’t know…It could be possible.”
