Page 29 of The Whispering Girls
“Great. Thank you.” Katie hurried to the kitchen and found a plate in the oven with eggs, bacon, and two pieces of toast. After pouring herself another cup of coffee, she returned to the work area and sat down to eat. The warmth of the room relaxed her. Not realizing how hungry she was, the breakfast was gone in minutes.
“So,” said McGaven as he pushed the whiteboard over near a wall. “We need to get started.”
Katie nodded. It felt strange beginning their murder board and killer profile in such a beautiful and comfortable room.
McGaven read some reports to make sense of what happened and pulled out photos and a map of the area. “Let’s start with the first vic, Theresa Jamison. Nineteen, strangled, and found hanging in a tree.” He put up a photo of the young woman’s driver’s license and one from the crime scene. “What do we know about her?”
“Not a lot until we get an autopsy report and interviews back from Officers Clark and Banning,” she said. “Theresa was identified by her cousin, Shelly Jamison-Smith. She drove in from Pine Valley.”
“Did she live here?”
“According to some of the interviews,” she said, scanning the reports, “she had a small apartment on Spruce Street, Echo Forest, and worked evenings at the Sunrise Café.”
“Okay, so it should be easy to track her last week or so,” he said.
“This is a very small town. I think someone must know something important to set us in the right direction.”
McGaven wrote on the board everything they had. “Okay, we need to fill in some blanks here. How did a local girl who worked a few blocks from her apartment end up in the woods dead and hanging?”
Katie studied the crime scene photos, which were good. Jack had been diligent and taken more than enough to tell a story. She frowned, looking at a close-up of Theresa’s hand. “It looks like there’s foreign stuff under her palm and fingers—like maybe paint? But her pink fingernails are perfect.”
“Not like they would be if she had been painting something,” he said.
Katie stared at the totem. The sense of urgency became more intense. They had to work fast with what they had before there was another body.
“I think there’s something that belonged to Theresa included in this totem,” Katie said.
“What makes you say that?”
“I noticed the second victim, who we know only as TJ, was missing her face and ear piercings—and they seemed to be included in the other display last night.”
McGaven looked at photos of both victims. “You know…they do look like they’re related. It’s not just a slight resemblance.”
Katie joined her partner. “I agree. Maybe not sisters, but cousins perhaps?”
“Though I’ve seen best friends without any family relation look like they could be.”
“It’s just a theory at this point until we get an ID on TJ,” she said. The moment the girl had come to her door was still vivid in Katie’s mind. “There’re quite a few missing pieces until we get reports back. But there are things that tie Theresa and TJ together.” Katie went to the whiteboard and began to write:age,resemblance, physical build, hair color, strangulation marks on their necks. Crime scenes elaborate and staged.
“The body poses are completely different, one hung from a tree and the other laid out in an open area,” said McGaven.
Katie sighed. “I have so many basic questions from both scenes…but we have to wait and work with what we have.” She paused. “It appears that each victim had her own specific display, how the bodies were posed, and the different totems.”
“Does this tell us more about the victim or the killer?” he said.
Katie looked at her partner. “The killer.”
“Why?”
“This is how the killer sees them. It’s as if the killer was trying to use them to represent another crime site.”
“Which also means the killer probably knew them somehow. If he was choosing them for a particular scene.”
Katie nodded. “Yes. I think it means it’s likely the killer lives or lived here in Echo Forest or in close proximity, hunting down his victims where he feels more comfortable. Yes, I believe the scenes mean something to the killer.”
Katie and McGaven separated everything for both Theresa and TJ. Katie began to piece together the crime scenes and the evidence they had, while McGaven jumped into computer searches about the victims’ backgrounds.
Katie found a rolled-up map of the town and the close surrounding areas that Officer Clark had brought them. It showed the dense parks and the neighborhoods along with businesses. It gave the detectives a better sense of the community. She taped it to the wall where they could pinpoint the crime scenes along with access.
