Blindsighted (Grant County #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,103

to make sure no one was coming up the drive.

In the kitchen, plates were stacked in the sink, crusted and foul-looking. The floor was sticky, and the whole room felt wet from something other than water. The bedroom was the same way, a musky odor clinging like a wet washrag against Jeffrey’s face. On the wall over the stained mattress was a large poster of Jesus Christ, a halo behind His head. Like the poster in the living room, Jesus held His palms out to show the wounds on His hands. The crucifixion motif continued around the periphery of the bedroom, but these were larger crosses. Standing on the bed, Jeffrey could see that someone, probably Wright, had used red paint to exaggerate Jesus’ wounds, dripping the blood down the torso, enhancing the crown of thorns resting on his head. Black X s were across the eyes on every Jesus Jeffrey could see. It was as if Wright had wanted to stop His eyes from watching him. What Wright was doing that he felt needed to be hidden was the question Jeffrey needed to answer.

Jeffrey stepped off the bed. He looked through some of the magazines, taking the time to put on a pair of latex gloves from his pockets before touching anything. The magazines were mostly older editions of People and Life. The bedroom closet was stacked floor to ceiling with pornography. Busty Babes sat beside Righteous Redheads. Jeffrey thought of Sara and a lump came to his throat.

Using his foot, Jeffrey kicked the mattress up. A Sig Sauer nine millimeter was resting on the boxspring. The weapon looked new and well cared for. In a neighborhood like this one, only an idiot would go to sleep without a gun handy. Jeffrey smiled as he pushed the mattress back. This could help him out later on.

Opening the dresser, Jeffrey did not know what he expected to find. More porn, maybe. Another gun, or some kind of makeshift weapon. Instead, the top two drawers were filled with women’s underwear. Not just underwear, the silky, sexy kind that Jeffrey liked to see Sara in. There were teddies and thongs, French-cut panties with bows at the hips. And they were all extremely large; large enough to fit a man.

Jeffrey resisted the urge to shudder. He took out a pen to go through the contents of the drawers, not wanting to get stuck with a needle or anything sharp, not wanting to get a venereal disease. Jeffrey was about to close one of the drawers when something changed his mind. He was missing something. Moving aside a pair of dark green lace panties, he saw what he was looking for. The newspaper lining the bottom of the drawers was from the special Sunday section of the Grant County Observer. He had recognized the masthead.

Pushing aside the clothes, Jeffrey took out the sheet of newspaper. The front page showed a slow news day. A picture of the mayor holding a pig in his arms beamed back at Jeffrey. The date put the paper at more than a year old. He opened the other drawers, looking for more Observers. He found a few, but most of them carried innocuous stories. Jeffrey found it interesting that Jack Wright subscribed to the Grant County Observer.

He went back into the living room, checking out the stacks of papers on the floor with renewed interest. Brenda Collins, one of Wright’s other victims after Sara, had been from Tennessee, Jeffrey remembered. A copy of the Monthly Vols, a newsletter for University of Tennessee graduates, was tucked in with some newspapers from Alexander City, Alabama. In the next stack, Jeffrey found more out-of-state papers, all from small towns. Beside these were postcards, all from Atlanta, all showing different scenes around town. The backs were blank, waiting to be filled in. Jeffrey could not imagine what a man like Wright would be doing with the postcards. He did not strike Jeffrey as the type of person to have friends.

Jeffrey turned around, making sure he had not missed anything in the cramped room. There was a television set tucked into the old fireplace. It looked fairly new, the kind you could buy on the street for fifty bucks if you did not ask too many questions about where it had come from. On top of the set was a cable converter box.

He walked back toward the front window to leave but stopped when he saw something under the couch. He used his foot