“Tell me what happened, and the events leading up to finding the body,” I asked as we walked.
The chief held open the heavy oak door and waited for me to get inside before he closed it behind us.
The house still smelled new, too. As if there was still the scent of pine and fresh paint that was clinging to the walls.
“Call came through about nine last night,” he said, sounding tired. “Officers came and knocked on the door, but no one answered. The neighbor said that the guy who lives here hasn’t been home in at least a week. Left on a business trip the middle of last week they think. The only reason they knew was that they were heading to work when the guy was heading out with his suitcases. He said that as far as he knows, the guy is the only one that lives here.”
“Okay.” I paused. “Was it the guy who died?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
Then he walked me into the living room, right into a nightmare.
At first, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
I mean, obviously there was blood. A lot of it.
And the really bad thing was that the couches were white, so the blood showed up really well on all of them.
And I do mean all of them.
Every single couch—there were three of them in the room set up as a sectional type thing—was saturated in it.
Whomever it was that died here had to have been killed here.
That, or there were multiple victims.
“Shit,” I breathed.
“Big shit,” Chief Wilkerson agreed.
I shook my head and walked farther into the room, coming to a stop right where the blood was slowly coming out in an ever-widening pool.
That’s when I saw the vic.
“Woman,” I mused, still not quite processing what I was seeing.
The victim was a female with blonde hair that was very long.
That’s when my brain finally comprehended what it was seeing.
The woman was on her stomach, face down in the puddle of blood. But there wasn’t a single thing wrong with her—at least from the back.
“Did the crime scene technicians get in here yet?” I asked, my belly rolling now at the sight before me.
“Yes,” he answered. “Other than removing the body, we’re done with it.”
I grabbed a pair of the boot covers that the chief was holding out to me, slipped them on over my feet, and then made my way through the blood.
“Did you flip her over yet?” I asked.
The chief nodded. “Flipped her back over so that you could see what she looked like when we arrived.”
The chief knew how I liked to work.
The details of how the victim was found were always important.
“Okay,” I murmured as I slowly moved the victim onto her back.
Rigor mortis had already set in, meaning that she stayed exactly where she was when she was on her stomach, even though I’d rolled her onto her back.
That’s when I saw the wound.
One single solitary wound.
In the upper thigh on the inside.
“Severed her femoral artery,” I observed woodenly. “Knew exactly where to cut and how deep.”
“Yes,” the chief agreed.
“Shit,” I grumbled. “Was the victim identified?”
While the chief spoke about what was found—which wasn’t much—I stood up from my crouch and walked around the room, being careful to stay in only the bloodied areas so I wouldn’t track blood any farther into the house.
“So we don’t know who she is, why she’s here, or how she’s related to the man that owns this house,” I surmised. “There was almost zero evidence to be found, and the house was locked up tight on top of all that. Am I correct?”
Chief Wilkerson nodded his head. “About sums up what we know.”
I scratched my head, likely getting blood in my hair. “And the other murders. Are they all similar?”
“Other than the first was a redhead, the second a brunette, the third a black-haired one, and then this blonde.” He nodded.
I tilted my head. “All curly-haired?”
The chief blanched. “Yes.”
Had he not picked up on that?
I had.
But, granted, I did have a bit of insider knowledge on serial killers.
I mean, it’d been a long time since I’d had to deal with working on a case for one. Way longer than when the chief had started at the department.
“That’s all I have for you,” Chief groaned.
I nodded and moved to the edge of the saturation of blood on the carpet before pulling my booties off and tossing them into the trash that’d been erected in the middle of the room for the same exact thing I’d just used it for.
Then I went to the bathroom and washed my hands, my eyes taking in the bright blue towels that had likely just been bought as well.
Brand-new house. Brand-new towels.
Brand new dead girl.
My stomach flipped over but I held my cool, offering chief a jerk of my head to let him know that I was ready to leave as I headed to the front door.