CHAPTER FIVE
Laura stretched her arms above her head, getting out of the car and then rubbing the aching muscles in her shoulders. There was something about sitting in a car for hours that made you feel cramped and sore in ways that just sitting in a chair for hours didn’t. Maybe it was the lack of freedom, the knowledge that you couldn’t get up and move even if you wanted to.
Or maybe it was the tension that had simmered in the air between Laura and Nate for the whole journey to Mariesville that had her feeling stiff and sore.
“This must be it,” Nate said, nodding a short way down the road. It was unmistakable: crime scene tape across the entrance to the alleyway, a police officer in uniform standing against it with sunglasses covering his eyes and his arms crossed over his chest, and at least three marked and unmarked vehicles that Laura would have bet a lot of money were law enforcement.
Laura shaded her eyes for a moment and nodded in the same direction. “Guess we’ll have to head inside the alley to see if we can spot some kind of chief around here.”
Nate nodded in response, already starting to lead the way. They had their badges out and ready to show the cop guarding the tape by the time they had walked over to him, and he nodded them through with only a spark of interest at the FBI insignia. He must have already heard the FBI were on their way.
It was obvious as soon as they entered the alley that the person in charge was standing right in the middle of the long, narrow space, looking down at something on the floor with his hands on his hips. He was talking with what looked like someone from the forensics staff in white overalls, both of them gesturing towards a spot on the ground a few times as Laura and Nate walked over.
Before they were in earshot of the quietly-spoken conversation, the Captain turned and looked at them. He wore the blue uniform of the police force, the insignia of his rank clearly visible and his hat tucked under his arm. He was probably in his fifties, with black hair that was graying at the temples and piercingly sharp blue eyes that made Laura shiver involuntarily. He was not the kind of detective she would have liked to go up against if she was a criminal, herself. She imagined he would be quite effective in the interrogation room.
“Agents,” he called out, obviously clocking them before they had the chance to introduce themselves. “We’re just looking over the scene. I’m afraid you’ve missed the body.”
“That’s alright.” Nate came to a stop in front of the Captain first, holding out a hand to shake. “Special Agent Nathaniel Lavoie.”
“Special Agent Laura Frost,” Laura added, when Nate made a slight gesture in her direction to prompt her instead of saying the words himself.
The Captain nodded, shaking Nate’s hand and then Laura’s. “Captain Ortega,” he said. “I take it you’re here to see what we already know about the victim.”
“Yes, please,” Nate said agreeably. He and Laura turned when Ortega did, looking down at the empty space in the alleyway which had clearly been home to a body not long before, conspicuous by its absence.
“Well, I can say it’s not much,” Ortega sighed, in a matter-of-fact way. “We’ve already processed the body and the mannequin through the lab – it’s been top priority. There’s not a lot of physical evidence that we can use. The mannequin was wiped totally clean, probably cleaner than it even was in the factory after it was made. There aren’t any marks on it indicating where it was manufactured either, so we’re not able to use that to track down the source. Looks like the killer wore gloves – we haven’t found any fingerprints or DNA traces on the body or anything else that we could definitively narrow down to the killer. Of course, the public nature of this spot means it’s tough to use much of what’s here – any defense attorney worth their name would be able to argue that someone might have walked through here and touched those crates or those garbage bags for any reason.”
Laura nodded. “What do we know about the cause of death? Our report says blunt force trauma. You have anything more specific than that yet?”
Ortega shook his head. “We haven’t found a weapon or any indication from the wound itself as to the shape of the weapon,” he said. “Just blunt object is what they’re telling me. But there is one interesting thing about the head wound.”
“Oh?” Laura asked.
Ortega pointed to the scene left behind in the wake of the body. “You see the blood? That would have pooled out from the head wound. There isn’t any evidence of a blood trail or any drips that we’ve found coming into or out of the alley, and due to the amount of blood here, what I understand is that the victim cannot have been killed very far from here. In fact, it’s possible or even likely that she was killed right here in the alley and then laid down. If she was killed elsewhere and then moved here, we’d see a lot less blood.”
“But no spray pattern,” Nate said, glancing around.
Ortega nodded. “That about sums it up. Lots of reasons why there might not be a spray pattern, of course. Something to do with the nature of the blunt object. Maybe the spray hit the killer and so their body blocked it from landing on other objects around them. Maybe the impact of the wound did not actually cause an initial blood spray, so to speak, but the blood began to pour out in earnest when she was then immediately laid down and gravity got to work. The first victim has a similar story – no blood spray, no indication of where the crime was committed.”
“This is a meticulous kind of work,” Nate said thoughtfully. “The whole scene with the mannequin had to be thought out carefully, especially to make sure there was no forensic evidence left behind. It looks to me as though he would have had to bring the victim here specifically, with everything already set up and waiting for her. That’s the only way it would make sense to me.”
Laura nodded in agreement. “Having to set all this up, maybe dragging a mannequin out of a parked car and bringing it here, would be a big risk if you were having to rush because the body was already in position. Stressful. I would imagine someone facing those circumstances would probably make more mistakes, leave something behind. The cleanliness of the scene itself suggests that rushing wasn’t much of an issue. I think you’re right. This was all in place, waiting for her.”
“So, then, the question is whether she was the intended victim all along, or just the first person to walk into his field of opportunity,” Nate said. “What do we know about her – the victim?”
Ortega gestured vaguely towards where the body would have been. “Kenya Lankenua. You’ve seen the pictures?”
Nate drew out the file from his pocket, unfolding it from the way he’d had to make it fit the space. He pulled out the photographs they’d seen during their briefing with Rondelle and showed them to Ortega. It was a grotesque scene, the mannequin posed as if holding her from behind.
“She’s a single, unmarried woman, early twenties, working as an office administrator for a local firm here. Neither her workplace nor her home were at all connected with the alley and there’s no reason for her to walk through here for either of them, but that doesn’t rule out leisure activities. Obviously we’ve only made a few inquiries so far, but we haven’t got an account of her movements last night before she was killed. Since she lived alone and wasn’t in a relationship, and didn’t seem to tell her family she was planning to go out, we don’t yet know what she was doing. Whether she was lured here or came here by coincidence.”
“Very unhelpful,” Laura said with a sigh, then flashed Ortega a wry smile so he knew it wasn’t him she was annoyed with--just the data. “Alright, so this positioning is very clearly meant to send a message. She’s spooning with this mannequin. What’s the meaning behind that? The killer made a very strong choice to use these mannequins, meaning there was a reason behind it.”
Nate looked down at the empty scene as though he could still see the victim lying there, instead of just the remnants of the pool of her blood soaked into a flat cardboard box. “Spooning suggests something romantic,” he said. “There could be an element of love in this – like a spurned lover or maybe a jealous one.”
“This kind of rage could point to a perceived wrongdoing on her part,” Laura suggested. “She cheats, so he hits her over the head and poses her in the alleyway in an incriminating position, imagining her with the other man.”
“Who’s the other man?” Nate asked.