The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,37
never breaking his word, then took his time looking around the bedroom. “Brooks checked in about eleven, according to the front desk. No reservations. Appeared to be alone.” He got down on hands and knees and picked up the wineglass with an ink pen from his pocket, examined it, and returned it to the same spot on the floor. “That’s pretty late for a check-in. Maybe they went out first, had dinner, and then came here.”
“ME’s report on stomach contents should tell that story.” I looked around at the drawn curtains, the radio set to a local jazz station, the bottle of wine. “This was definitely a date. It was on someone’s appointment book or at the very least there are calls on his cell. This wasn’t spur-of-the-moment. It was planned.”
“I agree,” Rauser said just as someone called for him from downstairs. When he returned, he told us, “Williams interviewed the desk clerk who found the body. She noticed the door open, stuck her head in, and called out. When no one answered, she got worried, came upstairs and walked into the bedroom, found the body, then ran like hell. Swears she didn’t touch anything but the door and the railing.” Rauser thought for a minute. “He left the door open. Bastard wanted to make sure the scene was discovered right away. How come?” He paused, and then answered his own question. “So he could hang around and watch us pulling in, lights going, all of us falling over ourselves to clean up his mess. Probably took off as soon as we started filming. But let’s hope not, huh?”
Two and a half hours passed before Jo Phillips let us know she’d gotten her measurements and was ready to have the sheet pulled back. Ken Lang slid brown paper lunch sacks over David Brooks’s hands and secured them with rubber bands to reduce loss of evidence when the corpse was moved and eventually transported to the morgue. Evidence is hard to come by in fingernail scrapings. On television, scientists get loads of DNA cells and fiber evidence from under fingernails. In life, what you usually get is so much dirt and gunk you can’t distinguish real evidence.
Rauser peeled the sheet away and Jo Phillips stiffened when we saw for the first time the signature stab wounds on the dead man’s legs and buttocks.
“Guess that answers that,” Rauser said quietly. “Somebody turn off that damn radio.”
Another scene tech had arrived and taken over the videotaping of the scene. Ken Lang spoke into his recorder as he snapped stills. “Sharp-force injuries, incised stab wounds to the buttocks, back of the thighs, sides, and lower back. Minimum blood and bruising there. Probably postmortem. Bite marks back of neck, shoulders, buttocks, lower back, and inner thighs.”
All the signature elements were in place. The stabbing and the bite marks were in the same areas as on the previous known victims, and the positioning of the body, the scene staging. This was Wishbone all right, but this victim was different. I was certain of it. There were no abraded ligature marks. No struggle, I thought. Why? I had a feeling knowing that would answer a ton of other questions.
“Jesus,” Rauser said, when Lang had finished examining Brooks’s back and the body was finally turned over. An ugly stab wound appeared in the area of the jugular notch. That explained the amount of blood that had soaked the mattress. Brooks’s expression told us nothing, gave away no secrets. He looked as if he’d fallen asleep. There were multiple stab wounds around the groin and deep bite marks on the fleshy areas on both the right and left side of his body between the ribs and pelvic girdle.
Someone called for Rauser from downstairs again, and this time I followed him. I needed air. I wanted to get out of that room. One of the detectives had found Brooks’s car unlocked in the parking lot, which told us that David and his killer had taken separate cars or the killer had left on foot or—if we were lucky—by cab or bus. Rauser opened Brooks’s suit coat and slid a wallet out of the inside breast pocket with his gloved hands as lovingly as a pickpocket. “And what do you know: business card says he’s an attorney.”
Our eyes met as we made the connection. A moment later I was on my phone waking Neil up. David Brooks was not the first lawyer to be among the Wishbone victims. My heart beat