Rebecca lay on her side. Her yellow-blonde hair was loose and covered her face—which was fine with Jason. He did not want to see her face. The photos would be bad enough and couldn’t be avoided. Her skin was gray, and there was darker mottling around her face and shoulders. There was bruising and discoloration on her buttocks and hips.
Kennedy pulled out a pair of thin blue latex gloves and squatted down facing the body. Unhurriedly, he put on the gloves, took his pen and gently lifted the girl’s upper jaw.
Jason opened his mouth to ask what Kennedy was doing, but he stopped at an unmistakable sound.
Something had fallen out of the girl’s mouth. Dropped out and was rolling on the wooden floor. Jason knew it even if he couldn’t see over Rebecca’s shoulder.
“Fuck.” Kennedy’s voice was low and…there was a note. He sounded stricken. Recognition raised the hair on Jason’s neck.
“What?”
What the hell could make you—you—look and sound like that? That’s what Jason meant.
Kennedy didn’t answer. It was doubtful he even heard Jason. His
face looked like stone. No, chalk. Even in this poor light, Jason could see Kennedy was white.
He heard the pound of footsteps approaching fast. It sounded like an army. He called out, “Watch the floor! It’s giving way in sections.”
He heard splintering wood and Boxner swearing. “Shit! You could have warned us!”
More voices and more footsteps. More alarms about the floor. Within a minute or so, Chief Gervase, flanked by his officers and Simpson, entered the shark room and picked his way through the broken branches, making his way toward Jason and Kennedy.
“What kind of freak would leave her in a place like this?” Officer Dale’s voice floated from the rear of the procession.
No one answered.
Gervase stopped a foot or so from Kennedy. “What have we got?”
Kennedy held up a small brown ball between his index finger and thumb. At first Jason thought Kennedy was showing them a marble. On closer inspection the small sphere looked detailed, carved.
There was a short silence.
Gervase said thickly, “The same kind of freak as before.”
* * * * *
“So we’re looking at a copycat,” Jason said.
He and Kennedy were back in their makeshift command center with the door closed. They had returned to town ahead of Gervase and most of his team while the crime scene was being processed—a slow and painstaking operation given the general inaccessibility of that remote location.
Arriving back at the Kingsfield police station, Kennedy had requested all the case files including autopsy reports and crime scene photos from the original Huntsman investigation.
“Possibly.” Kennedy, back to his normal taciturn self, was sorting through the files quickly. He was obviously looking for something specific. Something he had not chosen to share with Jason.
“Possibly?” Jason repeated. “What are the other possibilities? Pink wasn’t acting alone?” We didn’t get the right guy?
No. He didn’t believe it. And, despite what Gervase had said at the crime scene, Jason didn’t think the chief believed it either. The evidence against Pink had been overwhelming.
Kennedy had paused in his search. He didn’t answer Jason.
“Okay.” Jason repeated, “What about the persisting rumor that Pink wasn’t acting alone? Is there any basis for it?”
Kennedy said absently, “I already told you there was no evidence to support that theory.”
“Hey,” Jason said.
Kennedy looked up, frowning.