In the Belly of Jonah (13 page)

Jinkies, Velma,
maybe
? I was so out of my league with Lisa.

Lisa cocked her head to one side. “Possibly. But it’s not likely we’ll find a letter from the killer stashed in Jill’s belongings stating he intended to murder her or anything.”

“Oh, don’t be a dullard. I know that. I’m just saying that maybe there’s a name on that letter of someone close to Jill who can help answer some questions.”

Lisa pulled on some gloves she had stuffed in her pocket.

“You carry latex gloves in your pocket? Damn, this girl’s prepared.”

Lisa chuckled. “They’ve been there since this afternoon. From when we were out at the crime scene.”

“How was that?”

“Interesting. Strange. Sad.”

“I’ll bet.”

“And helpful.”

“Good,” I said. I looked at the clock. Eight twenty. “Want me to make you some dinner, or have you already eaten?”

“That would be great,” she said, her fingers delicately unfolding the penned letter.

I washed my hands and got to work. I diced some onions and peppers, tears streaming down my cheeks. “How about stir-fry and rice?”

“That sounds perfect,” she said. “Mind making some for Streeter too?”

“He’s coming back?” I wiped the tears from my face and tossed the peppers and onions in the frying pan I’d coated with some olive oil. “I just assumed he went back to Denver when you said he’d left.”

“No, he went to interview Jill’s little sister, Julia. It was the first chance he’d had.”

“So he’s planning on staying here?”

“Hope that’s okay. Still no hotel rooms.”

“I’m thrilled to be able to help.”

I pulled some precooked and shelled shrimp from the freezer and ran cold water over the bag. I poured a box of instant rice into a bowl, added the butter and water, and popped it in the microwave. I opened a bottle of white wine and poured some in two glasses, taking one to Lisa. She was still reading the letter, her brows furrowed.

“What is it?”

“Sounds like a love letter. Kind of,” she said, flipping to the next page.

She read quietly for another few minutes, so I retreated to the kitchen to stir the sautéed vegetables and the rice and to check on the thawing shrimp. I grabbed my glass of wine and returned to the living room. She set the letter on her lap.

“Ever hear Jill mention someone by the name of Jonah?”

I shook my head and sipped my wine.

“It sounds like this Jonah character overstepped a friendship boundary with Jill and made a pass at her or something. It’s kind of like an apology; a please-give-me-another-chance letter.”

“Nothing unusual about that. So why the concerned expression?”

“I don’t even know the guy, yet he freaks me out with the way he’s gushing about her and pleading for her to get to know him better. It goes on and on about what a great guy he is and how his father worked so hard to provide for his mother, and how he wants to care for her in the same way.”

“Think they were dating?” I asked.

“No.” She picked up the letter again and scanned through the pages until she found what she was looking for. “Here. It says: ‘Not that it was a real date, but I thought it was proper to give you a good-night kiss when I dropped you off. My intention was just a kiss, and I see my mistake now. Hindsight is a great teacher! I am so sorry. I should have waited until we went on our first date to make such a bold move,’ and it goes on and on.”

“Do you suppose he tried more than a kiss?”

“Don’t know,”Lisa said, laying the letter carefully on the desk. “Thanks for this, Liv. It may be a clue after all. And if we need to lift some prints from this, you did the right thing by not touching it.”

“Why would she be carrying the letter around with her? Was it dated?”

“No, but it did say ‘Midnight Friday,’ as though it mattered what time he wrote the stupid blathering.”

“If he wrote it the night before her last day of work, Jill would have had to be at work Saturday morning at six. And Saturday was her last day of work. Is it possible she saw this Jonah guy sometime between midnight and five thirty?”

Lisa cocked her head to one side. “Or he left it for her somewhere to find as she left for work: in her car, under a wiper blade, against the door of her dorm room. Somewhere so that she grabbed it and took it to work with her.”

“Or he could have given it to her some other Friday, an earlier week.”

“Let me call Streeter so he can add that to his list of questions as he interviews Julia Brannigan and Kari Smithson.” She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and started punching numbers.

“Who’s Kari Smithson?”

“Jill’s roommate.”

I finished making dinner while also eavesdropping on Lisa’s call with Agent Pierce. I’m such a competent multitasker. She relayed the information about the letter and suggested he ask the girls if they knew a Jonah.

“Tell them we found Jill’s necklace.” Lisa offered me a smile. “Liv did, at work. In Jill’s locker along with the letter.”

From Lisa’s comments, it sounded like Agent Pierce was in the middle of talking with Julia and Jill’s parents, who had arrived from Wisconsin. Poor bastard. Lisa mentioned I was making dinner for them, and she fell silent for several minutes before closing her cell phone and shoving it in her pocket. She took a drink of wine, draining half of her glass.

I handed her a plate and offered to refill her glass, only to be waved off.

“I have to finish my profile while Streeter’s gone. He won’t be back for quite some time. He said he had his hands full with the Brannigans, and he had told Kari Smithson he wanted to talk with her later tonight when she got off work at ten.”

“Too bad. Well, go ahead and eat his share. You need to keep up your strength, right?”

“Do you mind making him a plate for later? He told me to tell you thank you for dinner. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast.”

“No problem.”

We both shoveled our food as fast as we could chew. Lisa talked around each bite. “This Richardson press conference is really going to screw up our investigation. The only one that his stunt helped was the de Milo murderer.”

“It’s really another de Milo murder?”

She nodded. “The coroner has concluded that the strange cuts on the couple found at Platteville were the same as on Jill’s body.”

Curiosity getting the better of me, I asked, “What happened at Platteville?”

She lifted a file from her satchel, flipped through some pages, and pulled out the glossy eight by tens, splaying them across the coffee table. I would have thought my stomach would have lurched at the sight or my appetite for dinner would have been spoiled, but miraculously, neither happened. Mental note to self: Avoid gruesome details about tragic events involving loved ones and friends. Objectivity is possible when strangers are involved.

As I scanned the photos, some close-ups of the victims and some of the areas surrounding the crime scene, depicting roads and farmhouses nearby, my eyes locked onto one particular photo. The tall grasses along the riverbank were matted down around the man and woman. The woman had no arms, no legs, no clothes. Her wavy red hair was splayed behind her head, which was turned to the left. Her lips were painted ruby red and nearly touched the groin of the man lying next to her. He had no arms, no head, and his legs were cut off at mid-shin. His chest was hairless, his stomach cut with six-pack abs. He was wearing nothing but tight white cotton briefs that revealed his bulge. Surprisingly, there was not as much blood as I would have expected.

“She’s young,” I said.

“Seventeen,” Lisa said. “He was eighteen. They were high school sweethearts.”

“What’s this?” I pointed at the spot where the girl’s genitals should have been.

“A locust.”

“What? Like a grasshopper locust?”

Lisa gave a nod.

“And is this a cat?” I pointed to the chunk of meat between her left shoulder and his right thigh.

“A cat’s head and tongue. We found the cat’s body in the weeds nearby.”

“And this?” I pointed at the girl’s right hip.

“A fishhook.”

“Shit. He sank it into her flesh.” Like that was the worst of this girl’s problems. I could imagine having a fishhook sunk into my flesh and knew it would hurt like hell. The rest of it was too mortifying for my mind to comprehend.

“He’s sick, Liv.”

“That’s an understatement,” I said, studying the array of photos.

Lisa finished her dinner and took her dish into the kitchen. “He’s what we call an organized murderer. Jill’s situation confirmed what I already knew. He’s probably a white male between the ages of twenty and thirty-five and of above-average intelligence; the first born, he was most likely subjected to inconsistent discipline as a child, had a father who worked in a stable job; this guy is very controlled, works in a professional capacity, and is probably married or living with a partner. Our perp has dramatic mood swings but keeps a tight rein on them. Evidence suggests he’s extremely controlled during the murders. And he was probably soaking up all of the news today like a sponge. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of the bystanders out there on the road watching Detective Brandt work the crime scene yesterday or at Chief Richardson’s press conference today.”

“You got all that from these photos? Damn, you’re good.”

“If I was good, I could give Streeter this creep’s name and we could bust the guy and go home,” Lisa remarked.

“Anything new you learned from Jill’s murder that changed your profile from the Platteville murders?”

“Well, I was thinking he might have a sexual neurosis of some sort, but now I’m not so sure.”

“You mean he can’t perform?” I asked.

“No, not really. People with one or more sexual neuroses often have normal sexual experiences. But at times they have unusual or abnormal fears or concerns that may or may not affect their performance. I suspect this guy is quite sexually competent.”

“Did he rape Jill? Or the girl from Platteville?”

She shook her head and I breathed, not realizing I had been holding my breath.

“This guy is playing with us. He thinks he’s smarter than we are. Brilliant, actually. And he’s sure he won’t get caught. I’m afraid if we don’t get a line on him, the murders will become more frequent. And possibly more bizarre.”

“Any clues?”

“Not at this point. He’s smart enough not to leave any body fluids so that we can check DNA, no fingerprints, no boot prints, nothing. We were able to lift some tire treads at Horsetooth that will come in handy to link the murderer to the scene once we find him. Forensics are following that lead and trying to match them with the treads we lifted in Platteville.”

She lay back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. I cleared the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, making a plate for Agent Pierce and putting it in the refrigerator for later. Stir-fry was never better the second time around, particularly when it was made with shrimp. Satisfied that the kitchen was clean and having made sure there were fresh towels in Lisa’s bathroom, I turned my focus on straightening up my bedroom and bathroom. I had decided to give Agent Pierce my room and I’d sleep on the basement couch. I’d fallen asleep there a time or two, and it was comfortable enough. My treadmill, a television set, my shelves of books, and a three-quarter bath were down there, so I had everything a girl could need. I put fresh sheets on my bed and fresh towels in my bathroom, tidying the counter. I was a neat freak anyway, so surprise houseguests never ruffled me much. I threw some clothes in a duffle and slung it over my shoulder.

I took the duffle downstairs and tossed it near the couch. I glanced around the room, and my eyes landed on a shelf full of my favorite classics. I pulled Fyodor Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
off the shelf and flipped through some pages to refresh my memory on what the story was about. It came flooding back to me. The young college student who enacted in the real world his theory that a community would turn a blind eye to a crime if the murder victim was so abhorrent that they deemed they would be better off without that individual. Turned out that the young man killed a second person in order to conceal his identity as the murderer; the result was he suffered a self-induced illness that nearly killed him. The cause of his illness was his own remorse, guilt, isolation, and paranoia after the crimes.