Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [96]
“The coroner fit the autopsy in before end of day yesterday,” she said. “I’ve got the report on my BlackBerry here, and no matter how it was staged, this was not a suicide.”
“That would confirm what Drew Prescott said.” Cell phone in one hand, Trent turned away from the loft and climbed back down to the stables.
“But you suspected as much, right? You pointed out the signs of petechial hemorrhaging. Looks like the hanging was just for show. The victim died from asphyxiation.”
“Someone strangled her,” Trent said.
“Bruises on the neck consistent with fingertips,” she said. “Also, a few broken ribs. You put it all together, and it looks like a strangling. Someone got on top of her and squeezed her neck until she died.”
“Son of a bitch,” Trent said, wanting a cigarette now more than ever. “Son of a goddamned bitch.”
CHAPTER 25
Jules stood at her window drying her hair with a thick towel while she watched opaque clouds roll over the mountains. Though the night had been as quiet as death, this morning the storm was back with a vengeance. Those mountains would be impassable. For today, at least, they would be trapped here without the support from law enforcement.
Trapped with a killer on the loose.
The howl of the wind, as forbidding as Satan’s laugh, shrieked through the canyon before licking the icy edges of Lake Superstition and roiling the center of the lake, which was too deep to freeze through. Steely clouds collided overhead, and snow fell in tiny, hard flakes of ice that clicked frantically as they hit the window.
After the nightmare, Jules had slept poorly, her mind filled with images of death. The dream with her father lying in a pool of blood had been followed by a nightmare in which the naked body of a young woman swung from a noose in a dark stable. Poor Nona.
As for her fears that someone had been in her room or lingered in the hallway, she saw no evidence of anything out of place. Apparently her vivid, macabre imagination had been working overtime again. “Paranoid,” she whispered under her breath as she walked into the bathroom. “That’s what you are.” She plugged in the dryer and finished with her hair, then added lipstick to her pale face. She made herself a cup of orange pekoe and dialed Mrs. Dixon, an early riser who answered on the first ring, saying, “You’ll never get him back.”
“What?”
“I saw it was you on the caller ID, and I’m just warning you, I’m in love with this cat. You’ll have to pry him out of my arms!”
“You’ve had him what, two days? Let’s see how much you love him in a week or so, after he’s brought you headless mice as trophies, then clawed your drapes and hissed at any friends you have over.”
“Sweet little Diablo?” the older woman said with a laugh.
“He has that name for a reason, you know. He earned it.”
Mrs. Dixon chuckled, and they chatted for a few minutes while Jules sipped her tea and Agnes Dixon regaled her with cute stories of the cat. When she hung up, Jules felt a little more grounded. The hot tea had warmed her from the inside out, and any concerns she had about her pet had been quieted by her neighbor in Seattle. Diablo, that little traitor, appeared to be doing just fine without her.
After she bundled up against the cold, she set out to explore the campus on her own, trusting that she was safe navigating on her own in the light of day. She tried to memorize the location of buildings and the way paths connected them. A walking trail that cut through the campus led past the barns and into the wooded slopes in one direction and followed the shoreline of the lake in the other. This, she decided, would become her jogging path when the weather broke. If she was here that long.
Right now it was impossible to run due to the icy conditions, but she figured she could work out in the gym, where, according to all the literature she’d read, there was plenty of exercise equipment.
Even