Staal stepped closer to the body. Flashes of blue and red light from the patrol car’s roof beacons streaked across her prostrate form. He could see the purple and crimson marks at her throat where the killer had tied a belt. Her eyes bulged, and both the corneas and the skin around them were red with hemorrhage. The hemorrhaging, or conjunctive petechaie, was always present with ligature strangulation. The killer’s signature, a four-inch piece of branch, left jutting from her anus, brought a wave of anger and disgust. He shook his head.
In the sky above the lane, a Channel Nine news helicopter circled the area. Staal knew others would join the chopper in the next half hour. He wondered how many crime scenes had become destroyed, the trace evidence blown away by rotor wash.
Gooch began photographing the scene with her Canon Digital SLR camera. She took shots from all angles, medium and long shots and countless close-ups.
Staal stepped away and entered the diner from the back door. The vinyl flooring was worn to the concrete in the heavy traffic areas, and the Naugahyde booth seats were ripped and stained.
Staal found Dell sweeping behind the counter. The white apron tied around his waist was soaked with ketchup and grease. He was at least forty-five with a lazy left eye, and a Leno-esque chin. Staal introduced himself and said, “What can you tell me about Kimberly Walker, Mr. Dell?”
“Ah, well.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “Kim worked for me for about three years. She was okay; not great, but she did okay.” He turned away from Staal to wipe away a tear.
Staal got the feeling that Dell had romantic feelings for Walker; perhaps something had gone on between them.
“And tonight, she was out back in the lane...to dump the garbage?”
“No. She went out for a smoke. It was just before the post late movie rush started. Around eleven, I guess.”
“But you didn’t find her until after midnight, correct?”
“Yeah, yeah, about quarter after. Maybe half past.” He wiped his face again.
“She went out around eleven and you didn’t go looking for her until almost one AM?” Staal’s voice betrayed his anger.
“The—the rush hit, and I stepped out there and called for her.” Dell wiped his eyes once more. “She didn’t answer. I thought that she had up and quit. Kim was pissed at me for making her work on her birthday. I thought she just said, ‘Fuck it,’ and walked away.”
“So you had a restaurant full of customers and no help?”
“Yeah, it was a mess. I really got slammed.” He pulled out a chair and slumped into it. “Later, I closed up and when...and when I took out the trash,” he broke down. He crossed his arms, placed his elbows on the table, and put his face into them. “Christ,” he said. Then he straightened up. “I was cursing her for quitting, and she...and she was out there getting killed.”
“You couldn’t have known that, Mr. Dell.” Staal waited before asking his next question. “Around the time she was killed. Were there any customers, any that stand out in your mind?”
“There was a little guy, dressed in black. His jeans, jacket; all black. Ate a burger, a coffee, I think, paid and left, I guess.”
“You didn’t see him leave?”
“No, I was busy getting ready for the rush.”
“Could you describe him? Age, height, weight, build, any scars, birthmarks, or tattoos?”
“He was around thirty. He wasn’t that big; maybe five-six, a buck sixty. I didn’t pay him much attention.”
“Did you see him again tonight? Maybe near the end of the rush?”
“No, I didn’t see him after that.”
“Could you show me what table he sat in?”
“Sure.”
Jim walked Staal over to a booth close to the rear exit. He confirmed the table had seated numerous other customers and had been wiped down at least once since the guy in black left.
“Don’t touch this area, Mr. Dell. I’m sending in someone to dust it for prints.”
Dell nodded.
“Did you and Kim have a romantic relationship?”
Dell looked as if surprised by the question. “I...I liked her in that way. But she didn’t show no interest in me, so I never pushed for it.”
Staal thanked Dell for his cooperation and left his number in case he thought of anything else.
He returned to the alley to find that Jason Wong, the coroner, had arrived and Wilson Drummond from the FIS unit was with him. Both Wong and Drummond had their aluminum briefcases open and were checking the equipment.
Staal was glad to see Wong and not some assistant he didn’t know or hadn’t worked with. Drummond’s presence meant that the ‘Birthday Boy’ case had received precedence.
Wilson Drummond was in his late fifties with wisps of gray hair above his ears. The Sergeant was a large man, well over six feet tall with a linebacker’s build. Staal couldn’t think of anyone better to lead the three detectives and two civilian lab techs of the FIS unit than Drummond. Wilson had recently attended a 10-week training program at the National Forensic Academy in Tennessee. He was proficient in evidence processing, bloodstain analysis, burial recovery, bombs and booby traps, and arson investigation.
Jason Wong could boast a height of barely five feet and compensated for his vertical challenge with shoulder length bleached hair. The doctor was in his late thirties, but he was frequently mistaken for a teenager.
Staal scanned the scene for Gooch as two more sector cars parked at the mouth of the lane blocking news vans from channels three and nine. George Rollins, a uniform cop, ordered the growing crowd to keep back. Reporters barked questions across the crime scene barricade. One civilian, a young guy around nineteen, with long unkempt hair, yelled at Rollins.
“Why dontcha do something? Stead of just standin’ there?”
Rollins went to his patrol car, returned with a camera and began to photograph the mass of onlookers.
A dark blue Crown Victoria pulled up. Staal didn’t need to see the occupants; he knew it was Staff-Sergeant Maxwell Barnes, the Criminal Investigation Branch Commander, and possibly even the Deputy Chief Constable, Sandra McEwan. Staal almost smiled when he realized that Gooch, and not he, would have to talk to the brass.
Gooch found him and said, “Anything from Dell?”
Staal summarized the information he got from the cook.
He watched Drummond snap photographs from numerous angles and distances. Drummond frequently used an audio recorder to add notes to the photos. Later he would videotape the entire scene and processing of the body.
Wong tested the air temperature and humidity. Then he knelt and got out a long chemical thermometer, slid it through a rip in Walker’s blouse, and secured it under her right arm.
“Hey, Jack, you look like I feel,” Wong said.
“Wong, watch out for that rat, man!” Staal pointed.
“Rat, Fuck! Where?” Wong leapt to his feet.
“Oh, my mistake. It’s just a rag.”
Wong had had his arms elbow deep in the nastiest, messed up corpses in town over the last eight years, but somehow he let rodents and spiders frighten him. Staal shook his head.
“What’s the word?”
“By her temperature and the level of rigor in the small muscles, I estimate she’s been dead about three hours—four, tops.” Wong said.
Staal knew what would come next. After emptying her pockets, Wong would comb out her hair—both head and pubic—and collect any alien hairs. Then her nails would be cleaned for skin samples or detritus. She would be wrapped in cotton, then in plastic, and loaded in the van for transport.
Staal respected Wong’s practice of searching a body in the field and then completing a second thorough work-up in the lab. This double-check helped to prevent trace evidence being lost when the body was moved. He stepped close enough to take four photographs of his own, but was careful not to get into Wong or Drummond’s way. He placed the developing pictures in his inside pocket.
Staal watched Barnes move in front of the crowd of reporters. A cop stood a few feet to Barnes’s left and another to his right. Barnes didn’t have a prepared statement for the media, so he hurried through an impromptu speech.
“At this time,” he began, “we cannot confirm nor deny that this is the work of a serial killer, or if this murder is in anyway related to the two previous homicides by the so-called Birthday Boy killer.” He waited for his words to sink in, and the questions to commence. “Any further questions should be directed to members of the Integrated Team.”
Staal wasn’t interested in his Staff-Sergeant’s presentation to the media sharks. He stepped back and had opened his note pad, when one of the uniform cops interrupted him.
“Detective, there is a Lisa Harden inside, says she’s the victim’s sister.”
Staal nodded and was about to head into the diner when he heard a familiar voice calling his name. He turned to see detectives Lesley Degarmo and Nicolas Murdocco walking toward him, each with coffees. Both were assigned from HPS Major Crimes to IHIT
“Hey, you guys are just in time to start a canvass,” Staal said.
“Saved the shit job for us, huh?” Murdocco said. “You guys wanna help with that until the rest of the team gets here?”
Nick Murdocco was about 55 years old, less than six feet tall, and his waist-line had suffered from twenty years his wife’s Italian cooking. Lesley Degarmo was 43, married with two kids. She had a medium build and stood about five and half feet tall. She had spent her entire police career of eighteen years with Hanson.
Murdocco and Degarmo glanced across to where the body lay and then left the alley to start a door-to-door investigation in the surrounding buildings.
Staal looked around for Gooch, saw her talking to Barnes, and then he moved inside the diner. Dell and a female cop, Elizabeth Dawson, were consoling a woman in her late 30’s with reddish-brown hair, white jeans, and a tight, baby-blue top.
Dawson
said, “This is Lisa Harden, Walker’s sister.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Harden. Can you answer a few questions? I know it seems cruel of me to ask at this time, but it is important,” he said.
She nodded, still sobbing. “I went to Kim’s apartment at 11:30. She was supposed to be home by then. We were...we were going out for a drink.” Dawson helped her sit down at a booth. “I called Jim, here. He told me that Kim had quit, and just left. I knew something was wrong because Kim liked her job and needed it to support her kids.” She wiped her face and blew her nose. “I just don’t believe it. She’s had such a hard life; now this.”
“Did Kim have a boyfriend or an ex that may have been bothering her?” Staal watched her closely.
“She has a common law, piece-of-shit-husband who didn’t pay any child support. He’s pretty much out of the picture now.”
“Could you write down a name, and if possible a number or address for this guy?”
She nodded and wrote: ‘Ronny Matheson,’ and, ‘call me tomorrow at home for more info,’ and left her number.
“This is unbelievable,” she said. “I only met Kim a year ago at a funeral. I knew she existed, but had never met her in person before. We have different mothers, but we shared the same experience with our father.” She paused, looking away. “So we had a lot in common.”
Staal guessed that the experience she spoke of was abuse, most likely sexual. “Any chance I could get your father’s number?”
“No; Kim and I met at his funeral. His third wife killed him when she caught him touching her eleven-year-old daughter.”
Shit!
“If there’s anything else you can think of, feel free to call me.” He handed her his card. “I’m very sorry for your loss.” He left the diner for the alley once more.
Gooch caught his attention and said, “Guess we should get going on the canvass. I heard something about a sister?”
“Yeah, she gave me a husband to look out for. Sounds like nothing. Murdocco and Degarmo get anything?”
“Nothing substantial yet.”
“I’m done down here. Let’s head on up and knock on a few doors up there.” He looked at the building across the lane, a three-story brownstone apartment block.
Staal called Murdocco on his cell phone and found that the two detectives had finished with the main floor of The Regency Apartments and were heading up to talk to tenants on the second floor where the suites overlooked the lane.
“All right,” Staal said to Murdocco. “I’ll meet you on two.” He pushed the intercom button for the manager at the front door of the apartment complex and they were buzzed inside. They skipped the elevator and jogged up the flight of stairs. Halfway down the hallway, Staal spotted Murdocco about to knock on a tenant’s door.
Murdocco, Degarmo and the rest of their eight-member team had begun the original investigation in Discovery Park. Shortly after the Haywood murder, a second IHIT team joined the hunt. Now that there was a third victim, the suspect would officially be considered a serial killer and Staal expected at least one more team would be assigned to the case.
“Yo, Docco. Anything tasty?” Staal asked.
“Nope. All, ‘Heard no evil, saw no evil,’” Murdocco said.
Staal saw Degarmo talking to a guy through an apartment door that was still chained.