Jack pushed the doorbell, and we could hear the major third echoing through the house, but there was no sound of footsteps coming toward us. Jack rang it one more time, and Cole went back down the stairs and looked to the side of the house.
“There’s a black SUV parked in front of the garage,” Cole said.
“Maybe the police make them skittish,” I said. My phone buzzed and I looked down to see a text from Doug, and my lips twitched. “Doug did a deeper background check on the Burketts. He said he couldn’t help himself. Richard Burkett passed away about three years ago, so it’s just the wife living here now.”
There was something in my gut that screamed not everything was as perfect as it appeared on the outside. Jack rang the bell again and then followed it up with a knock, and I walked over to one of the windows and looked inside.
It was a jolt to the senses, and I couldn’t help but gasp at the wide and bulging eyes that stared at me through a clear plastic bag. I could only assume the woman displayed before me was Jody Burkett.
“Jack,” I said. “She’s dead.”
Whatever he heard in my voice had him pulling his weapon, and Cole and Martinez peeled off to move around the side of the house toward the back.
Jack turned the doorknob and found it locked, and then he looked at me and motioned for me to get behind him. His boot made contact with the door and wood splintered as it fell open.
The smell of death and decay greeted us.
Chapter Twelve
“Stay here,” Jack said, and started making his way toward the back of the house, clearing the rooms as he went.
I heard the back door open and Jack’s voice as he spoke to Cole and Martinez, but I was already moving into the formal living room. The house was immaculate—well taken care of—just like the outside. The room was feminine with dark hardwood floors and the rug and furniture a mix of cream, rose, and moss green. There was a wood-burning fireplace and it was built high with ash and the remainder of a burned log.
The placement of the furniture in the room was off somehow, as if everything had been pushed back just a little bit to make room for what sat at the center.
The killer had staged her so she’d be seen from the windows on the front porch. He’d opened the blinds and placed a hard wooden dining chair with arms in the center of the rug, and he’d faced it toward the windows. The woman’s clothes had been removed and her wrists and ankles had been zip-tied to the chair.
There were contusions and abrasions around the neck, and not from the plastic bag that had been zip-tied around her throat. It looked like rope burn or something similar, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I got her into the lab.
I looked around on the ground and found no signs of debris or rope he might have used to torture her—the only thing on the rug was what the body had released in death.
I didn’t want to touch her yet—not until crime scene could come in and document—but I moved around her cataloging what I could see with the naked eye.
“You okay?” Jack asked, coming back into the room.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, not taking my eyes off the victim. “Any sign of him?”
“No, he’s long gone,” Jack said. “We found his hole up in the third-floor tower. There’s a telescope up there, and it’s pointed straight at our windows. Fortunately, it’s only the front entryway you can see from that angle.”
“She’s been dead for a while,” I said. “Look at the lividity in her feet and along the bottom of her thighs and buttocks.” I pointed to the purplish bruising where the blood had pooled. “That puts time of death at minimum around ten to twelve hours, but I’m guessing more. I’ll be able to tell you more once I can get a temperature read.”
“I called Chen and she’s on her way over with your bag,” Jack said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Look at the strangulation marks around the neck.”
“What about them?” Jack said.
“There’s different striations. Different angles. He strangled her several times.”
“What?” Jack asked. “And then brought her back and did it again?”
“That’s what it looks like,” I said. “Torture.”
“Sexual assault?” he asked.
“It’s definitely sexual in nature,” I said. “He took the time and trouble to undress her.” I took a UV light from my bag and turned it on, pointing first at the victim and then on the floor surrounding her. There were three different areas that lit up. “Seminal fluid. Does this crime scene look familiar to you?”
“As callous as it sounds, the killer didn’t use an original idea,” Jack said.
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, my brow furrowed. “I need to think on it. But there’s something.”
“Come upstairs with me while you’re waiting on CSI to finish up,” Jack said.
I wanted to tell Jack there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I would go upstairs with him. I didn’t want to put myself in the killer’s shoes. Look through the same telescope he’d had his eye pressed against while he looked in our windows.
I must have hesitated too long because Jack said, “You don’t have to.”
“No, I’m fine,” I said.
I took off my leather gloves and shoved them in my pocket because my hands were hot and sweaty, and I took out a pair of latex gloves from my bag, donning them instead.
The carpet runner was worn and the wooden stairs creaked beneath our feet as we climbed higher to the third floor. I didn’t realize until we got there that the tower was actually a fourth, more narrow flight of stairs.
“Yikes,” I said, as the walls seemed to close in. “Hello, claustrophobia.”
“It doesn’t last long,” Jack said, and pushed open a wooden door at the top of the stairs. He went in first, because there was no room for me to go in before him. “Brace yourself.”
I didn’t know what he meant until I walked inside and got a good look of the room. “There’s not a lot of things in this world that give me nightmares,” I said.
“I know,” Jack agreed.
Masks lined the walls—clown, phantom, jester—all shapes and colors and sizes. There were framed posters of plays and a collection of Playbills. And there were a dozen or more Styrofoam heads with wigs on them.
“If there are creepy dolls I’m out of here,” I said. “You can just ship all my clothes to Aruba.”
“I haven’t seen any dolls yet,” he said, smiling. “But if I find any we’ll go to Aruba together. We don’t even need clothes.”
There was a single window in the room and there was a padded bench seat beneath it. But the window was open, and the cushion had been soaked through. I looked down at the floor and saw the wood and rug were wet.
“It’s been open for a while,” I said. “Lot of water collected in here.”
I took note of the rocking chair pulled close to the telescope. “Wanted to be comfortable.”
I stopped just short of the telescope and held my breath, feeling the pulse throbbing in my neck. I could see the structure of our house lit up by the lights around the perimeter and on the inside. I put my eye up close to the telescope, careful not to touch it, knowing exactly what I’d see.