All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [61]
“Was she raped?”
“I don’t know if I can say ‘rape’ definitively, but look what I found in her.” He held up a petrie dish with a small clear fragment of what looked like translucent skin in the center.
“Part of a rubber. It’s torn off the rolled edge. Got lost inside her. Doesn’t look to have semen on it, though of course we’ll get it sent for testing. She had some lateral bruising, too. I’m not much for speculation, but it could be he lost it and had to go searching, you know? They aren’t as strong as they look, a fingernail could rip it easily.”
“I wonder…” Baldwin stepped away, his eyes unfocusing. Could the killer have realized the condom had slipped off, and that’s why he punished Marni’s body so severely? It was a possibility. He could have been desperate to retrieve the condom quickly and unable to find it. A simple issue for a normal couple. For a killer trying to hide his identity, a whole different matter. A failure of any kind would be enough to set him off. Another rung up the escalation ladder.
“Care to give me an estimate on time of death?”
“Well, the buffet line had been open for a day at least.”
Baldwin shook his head. “Haven’t heard that one before. Buffet line? Where do you guys come up with this stuff?”
“Think I heard that one on Law and Order. But in all seriousness, she’d been dead at least eighteen to twenty-four hours when you found her. Maggots in the wrist area, plenty in her other orifices, some hatchlings from the blowflies. It was hot out there and they got moving quickly. Add the sun and you’ve got yourself a virtual party.”
“She’d only been missing for two days.” Baldwin didn’t add the rest of his thought. He hadn’t wasted a lot of time before he killed her. This one he’d grabbed, killed, taken for a drive and dumped. He’s got another jump on us. “Anything else?”
“Naw. I’ll get more after tox comes back.”
“Okay. Thanks, Doc. Let me know if there’s anything else good.”
Another one down, he thought as he left. Better go find Grimes, get him filled in.
Twenty-Four
Metro had drawn ranks around Betsy Garrison. The buzz was nearing epic proportions. Many officers still didn’t know the identity of the latest Rainman victim, but almost all of them knew it had been someone on the force, and Betsy’s name had come up more than once. After repeated threats, the media had agreed not to release Betsy’s identity to the public, but they were having a grand time with their reports. The national cable outlets had gotten on board, as well; all the majors were carrying the story. Speculation was rampant, true-crime aficionados were calling for interviews and the entire department was bogged down. The Rainman was getting as much attention as he could ever possibly want, and Metro was paying the price.
With implicit instructions to step up the pace of the investigation, Lincoln Ross and Marcus Wade were chasing down leads and rumors as fast as they came. The most important was interviewing the previous Rainman victim, the one who had intimated to Betsy that she knew who her attacker was.
Lincoln pulled the unmarked up in front of a small, 1940s bungalow. The paint was peeling, the window screens were torn, the yard dusty and grassless.
In this neighborhood, where the houses started selling in the high 800s, this home was one of the few bungalows left. The trend in Nashville real estate was to buy up the smaller homes on the pricey land, then raze the house and build a monstrosity. Value-added real estate, and it was an overwhelmingly popular choice.
Marcus looked around and voiced Lincoln’s thought. “She doesn’t really fit the profile of the others, does she?”
Lincoln shook his head silently, still staring at the house. Six of the victims lived in beautiful, well-maintained homes in gated communities. Even Betsy Garrison’s house was in a trendy, up and coming neighborhood. It was part of the fear-mongering