Somebody to Hold (Tyler Jamison #2) - April Wilson Page 0,1
of a bar. “A janitor carrying trash out to the dumpster found the body and called it in.”
The victim is dressed in a white blouse, black mini-skirt, sheer black stockings, and short black boots with silver buckles. Her stockings are shredded, and her underwear is on the ground next to the dumpster. I have little doubt she was sexually assaulted.
After pulling on a pair of latex gloves, I crouch beside the body to do an initial assessment and take some pictures. I carefully brush her hair back from her face and gaze down at one lifeless blue eye. The other eye is bruised and swollen shut. There are cuts and abrasions on her cheeks and forehead. Similar wounds are visible on her arms and legs. There’s blood under her nails—she fought back hard. Forensics will have no trouble securing a DNA sample.
A wave of nausea sweeps through me as I gaze down at a young woman who reminds me so much of my sister. They’re close in age, and they have the same build and the same fair complexion.
I stand and peer around the scene. Since it’s dark back here, Officer Clements sweeps a high-powered flashlight across the area.
“There’s her purse,” he says, shining his light on a small black leather bag lying beside the dumpster.
I pick it up and perform a quick search to discover a university student ID, but no driver’s license, cash, or credit cards. I have a name, but no address. It will be difficult to identify her next of kin until I can talk to someone at the university in the morning.
It looks like she was robbed, in addition to being sexually assaulted and murdered. I stare down at her identification. Addison Jenkins, twenty-two years old. I estimate her to be about five-foot-four, one hundred twenty pounds.
And now she’s deceased.
Dead before she really had a chance to live.
Clements, who is a grandfather many times over, shakes his head. “Poor kid. What a damn shame.”
I take a picture of her college ID so I can begin canvassing the local bars and restaurants tonight to see if anyone remembers seeing her. This part of town is home to a slew of bars and nightclubs, so there’s no shortage of people for me to interview.
Plenty of late-night activities take place in these back alleys—the homeless staking out spots for the night, drug deals, drunks passing out. But this girl? Based on her attire, I doubt she was a user, and there’s nothing here to make me think she was doing tricks. It’s more likely she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She might have been followed as she left one of the local clubs.
Perhaps she fought back—hard—and wound up getting her head cracked against the wall in the process.
I continue my initial visual exam, making notes about both the scene and the victim while I wait for the forensics team to arrive.
Once forensics arrives and starts their investigation, I head back to my car. I’ll visit the university in the morning to establish the victim’s next of kin, but in the meantime, I can visit the clubs up and down the street to talk to the staff to see if anyone remembers seeing her.
* * *
It’s almost midnight when I finally walk through my front door, after nearly five hours of interviews that got me pretty much nowhere.
As he often does, Ian’s waiting for me at the front door. His eyes are red.
“Is everything okay?” I ask him.
He nods. “I was watching a documentary about polar bears and how their ecosystem is disappearing. It got to me.” He laughs as he wipes his eyes. “You know me—I cry at everything. Puppies, kittens, and now I can add polar bears to the list.” His expression falls as he gets a good look at me. “What about you? You don’t look so good.”
“I’ve been better.” It’s not often I’m this shaken by something I see in my line of work, but tonight’s definitely an exception. The victim reminded me too much of my sister, Beth. I shudder when I think about how close I came to losing her years ago, when she was just a kid. I know how fleeting life can be, how fragile.
That poor girl I saw tonight might be someone’s sister. She’s certainly someone’s daughter. As soon as we identify her next of kin, a family is going to be heartbroken.
The downside to loving someone is that you have so much to lose.