The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,42

the screen. He reached for the remote, but even before he got the sound turned up, he knew they had found her body.

Sure enough, the shaky video footage showed the shrouded figure being carried from the same spot where the McElvoy girl’s body was discovered. Then Halloran was again giving a news conference, flanked between the police chief and another detective Joel hadn’t seen. Right now there was no conclusive evidence that the two murders were connected, but he was urging the public to come forward with any information that might help the investigation.

He shook his head. What would he find now if he went back to the mayor’s basement? Would there be a new set of newspaper clippings added to the first? And what would he find if he looked around a bit more?

For a few breathless moments, he seriously contemplated going back. He could always say he was checking something with the cable. Then, if he was sure he was alone, he could do some snooping. Check out the red room some more, look for anything out of the ordinary that might link the mayor to either girl. But he knew he couldn’t do that. He’d already left a message for the mayor at his office yesterday; showing up on his doorstep might be a bit much. He didn’t want Mayor Carver to think he was a stalker.

No, he told himself. He’d gone to the police. He’d told Lieutenant Halloran everything he knew. He’d done all he could. It was up to the cops now. Whatever happened was out of his hands.

* * *

6:25 PM

Halloran sat at his desk, the freshly-processed photos of the body dump site spread before him. They were eerily similar to the pictures in Sarah Jo McElvoy’s file.

He stared at them, studying every object, as he had the others. There was no sign of any struggle at the water’s edge, so Carmelita had obviously been killed somewhere else and dumped at the landing. Surely she had been brought there intentionally; the odds were just too great that her body had simply drifted downriver to rest in the exact spot as Sarah Jo’s. But there were so many shoe prints and so much contamination of the scene from the last investigation that anything new would be hard to spot. He blew out an exhausted sigh and stacked the photos.

Mrs. Santos had not taken the news of her daughter’s death very well. As soon as she spotted Halloran and Chapman at the door, she began wailing. It was a hideous sound, a cry of grief that seemed to emanate from her very womb. Other women in the house had led her away, eyeing the detectives as if they were demons. Halloran told Mr. Santos what they had found, and the man only nodded grimly, saying nothing, tears sliding silently down his cheeks. Finally, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Halloran and Chapman had left.

Halloran was devastated, knowing there was a murderer in town and that the department had been unable to stop him from killing again. He felt powerless, impotent. Would any more girls disappear? He hoped not. But how many more times would he uncover a young girl’s body? How many more times would he have to stand before a mother and tell her that her daughter was dead?

He pulled out the photographs again, studying the dirt around the body. If Carmelita had been placed there deliberately, she had been carried; there were no tracks to indicate the body had been dragged. That would mean whoever they were looking for was an extremely strong individual; Carmelita was not fat, but she was fairly stocky, and an average-sized man would have a difficult time carrying her down the rocky bluff to the landing.

He looked at the river behind the body. Could she have been dropped there from a boat? The water was relatively shallow at the landing, and many years ago a sightseeing boat used to moor there. It would not be easy to dump a body from a small boat without danger of capsizing, but it could be done. The nearest boat ramp was about ten miles upstream at Caneyville, so a person would have to haul a boat there and cast off from a public fishing area, an act certain to attract attention in the middle of the night. If a boat had been used, it was likely something small that could be launched off the riverbank. And if that were so, a