“Can I see the photos of the body?” Zoe asked Detective O’Donnell.
O’Donnell frowned, contemplating it for several seconds, as if the request was unreasonable. Finally, she asked the photographer to show them the images.
He stood up, straightening his wide-framed glasses with a thin finger. He then began fiddling with his camera, frowning as he scrolled through the images.
Tatum stepped into the living room. “There are some bloodstains in her bedroom.” He pointed at the doorway over his shoulder. “More footprints and some bloody finger smears on her night table and on the wall.”
“Fingerprints?” Zoe asked.
“I don’t think so, not anything I could see with my naked eye—just smears. The forensic guy in the room said it looks like whoever left them wore gloves.”
“Gloves indicate planning, but this mess looks like a complete blunder,” Zoe said.
“There are also bloodstains on the bathroom sink and floor.”
“He washed himself there?”
“Looks like it.”
Zoe was trying to imagine the events unfolding, when the photographer said, “There we go.” He walked over to them and showed them the screen on the back of the camera.
For a second Zoe had difficulty understanding what she was looking at. “Is that the body?” she asked. “Was it covered?”
“Yeah,” O’Donnell answered behind her. “She was covered in a blanket.”
“Who found the victim?” Tatum asked.
“Her father, Albert Lamb,” O’Donnell said.
“Was he the one who covered her?”
“He said he didn’t, that he found her that way,” O’Donnell answered. “And the evidence corroborates it. See those stains on the blanket?”
The photographer flipped through the images, finding a close-up of two large brown spots.
“Bloodstains.” O’Donnell pointed. “She was covered when the blood was still fresh. But the body was in advanced rigor mortis when we got here and the blood dry. She’s been dead for a while. Whoever covered her did it soon after she died.”
Did O’Donnell contemplate the alternative? The father could be the killer. He might have covered her body and called the police hours later.
“So he found her covered and just left her like that?” Tatum asked in disbelief.
“No. He took the cover off, saw she was dead and stiff. He still tried to wake her up, according to his initial statement. Then he covered her again and called nine-one-one.”
The photographer scrolled through a few more shots of the covered body from various angles. Then he paused. The image on-screen displayed the body without the cover.
It was easy to see why the father had covered her again.
The woman’s body was folded, her knees bent backward, her skirt pulled down to her ankles. Her shirt was torn, her left breast exposed. She wore no underpants. Even if the father had wanted to protect his daughter’s modesty, he would have found it hard to pull up the skirt, the way the legs were bent.
Zoe glanced at the torn bra that lay on the floor, marked with an evidence marker. “Did you find her underpants?”
“Not yet. We’re still looking through the trash.”
“If they weren’t here, you probably won’t find them,” Zoe said. “He took them. It’s a trophy.”
She examined the picture closely. The body’s arm was covered in blood, and the woman’s face was spattered as well, clumps of her hair clinging to her bloody cheek. Blood was smeared on her left leg, but it looked like it didn’t originate from a wound. At a certain point, the victim’s leg had probably brushed against the blood on the floor. Bruises marred the woman’s neck—possibly ligature marks, but it was hard to be sure on the small screen, particularly in that wide angle.
The photographer kept scrolling through the pictures, speeding the pace, as if he found it hard to look at them, which Zoe found strange. He had taken the pictures himself.
“Wait,” she said. “Go back one.”
He scrolled one picture back. It was a close-up of the marks on her neck. They really did look like ligature marks, but Zoe still wasn’t entirely sure. What had caught her attention was a delicate silver strand on the woman’s neck.
“Did she wear jewelry?” she asked.
“A silver necklace with a cross. Her father said she wore it all the time,” O’Donnell answered.
“Why didn’t he take that as a trophy?” Zoe muttered.
“Maybe he’s not into jewelry,” Tatum suggested.
Zoe nodded. It was possible, though serial killers who took trophies usually took jewelry. Especially if, like in this case, she was strangled, and the necklace was on her neck. Surely the killer would have noticed it. Could he have used it to strangle the girl? She examined the image closely. It didn’t seem likely. The necklace would have snapped. It was much too delicate.
“You said there were finger smudges on her night table,” Zoe told Tatum. “Any jewelry there?”
“I don’t know.”
“There was a jewelry box there,” O’Donnell said. “With two bracelets.”
“Two bracelets and a necklace,” Zoe asserted. “The killer probably searched through her stuff, got the necklace, and put it around her neck after she died.”
“I doubt it,” O’Donnell said. “Her father said she always wore it. Much more likely that the killer was simply looking for anything valuable he could take. The bracelets were cheap trinkets, so he left them. We’ll ask the father if she had any valuable jewelry.”
Zoe felt a flash of irritation, but she didn’t argue the point. She kept looking as the photographer scrolled through the rest of the images, perhaps observing Glover’s handiwork again for the first time in a while.
When she and Tatum had found Glover’s alias, they’d traced his steps. They already knew he’d lived in Chicago for the past few years. They found his old apartment in McKinley Park, where a couple of students now stayed. They also traced his old job as a support technician, a position he’d lost six months before. They spent a few days just talking to his old coworkers and managers, trying to glean any piece of information. Most of his coworkers said he was a great guy. Always happy to help, quick with a joke or a laugh. His manager had actually used the phrase full of teamwork spirit.
Two of his female coworkers had thought there was something creepy about him. But they couldn’t put their finger on the reason.
Zoe knew the feeling. She’d experienced it herself when she was fourteen years old, and Rod Glover was her neighbor. At first he seemed like a nice guy, charming and funny. Then, strange, unsettling behavior patterns began to emerge. And around that time, young women began to die.
“That’s the last one,” the photographer said, lowering his camera.
“Any signs of the weapon?” Tatum asked, turning to face O’Donnell.
“Well,” O’Donnell answered. “I’m assuming there were two weapons. The marks on her neck look like ligature marks, so he used some kind of rope or a belt. And the bleeding came from an ugly cut on her arm. So some sort of blade was involved as well. Also, her shirt looks like it was partly cut with a blade. But we found nothing that fits either of those.” She pointed at the footprints. “It looks like the killer crossed the room to pick something up from the floor. See how the prints stop just before the wall? I’m betting he stopped to crouch there.”