glasses with a thin finger. He then began fiddling with his camera, frowning as he scrolled through the images.
Tatum stepped into the living room. “There are some bloodstains in her bedroom.” He pointed at the doorway over his shoulder. “More footprints and some bloody finger smears on her night table and on the wall.”
“Fingerprints?” Zoe asked.
“I don’t think so, not anything I could see with my naked eye—just smears. The forensic guy in the room said it looks like whoever left them wore gloves.”
“Gloves indicate planning, but this mess looks like a complete blunder,” Zoe said.
“There are also bloodstains on the bathroom sink and floor.”
“He washed himself there?”
“Looks like it.”
Zoe was trying to imagine the events unfolding, when the photographer said, “There we go.” He walked over to them and showed them the screen on the back of the camera.
For a second Zoe had difficulty understanding what she was looking at. “Is that the body?” she asked. “Was it covered?”
“Yeah,” O’Donnell answered behind her. “She was covered in a blanket.”
“Who found the victim?” Tatum asked.
“Her father, Albert Lamb,” O’Donnell said.
“Was he the one who covered her?”
“He said he didn’t, that he found her that way,” O’Donnell answered. “And the evidence corroborates it. See those stains on the blanket?”
The photographer flipped through the images, finding a close-up of two large brown spots.
“Bloodstains.” O’Donnell pointed. “She was covered when the blood was still fresh. But the body was in advanced rigor mortis when we got here and the blood dry. She’s been dead for a while. Whoever covered her did it soon after she died.”
Did O’Donnell contemplate the alternative? The father could be the killer. He might have covered her body and called the police hours later.
“So he found her covered and just left her like that?” Tatum asked in disbelief.
“No. He took the cover off, saw she was dead and stiff. He still tried to wake her up, according to his initial statement. Then he covered her again and called nine-one-one.”
The photographer scrolled through a few more shots of the covered body from various angles. Then he paused. The image on-screen displayed the body without the cover.
It was easy to see why the father had covered her again.
The woman’s body was folded, her knees bent backward, her skirt pulled down to her ankles. Her shirt was torn, her left breast exposed. She wore no underpants. Even if the father had wanted to protect his daughter’s modesty, he would have found it hard to pull up the skirt, the way the legs were bent.
Zoe glanced at the torn bra that lay on the floor, marked with an evidence marker. “Did you find her underpants?”
“Not yet. We’re still looking through the trash.”
“If they weren’t here, you probably won’t find them,” Zoe said. “He took them. It’s a trophy.”
She examined the picture closely. The body’s arm was covered in blood, and the woman’s face was spattered as well, clumps of her hair clinging to her bloody cheek. Blood was smeared on her left leg, but it looked like it didn’t originate from a wound. At a certain point, the victim’s leg had probably brushed against the blood on the floor. Bruises marred the woman’s neck—possibly ligature marks, but it was hard to be sure on the small screen, particularly in that wide angle.
The photographer kept scrolling through the pictures, speeding the pace, as if he found it hard to look at them, which Zoe found strange. He had taken the pictures himself.
“Wait,” she said. “Go back one.”
He scrolled one picture back. It was a close-up of the marks on her neck. They really did look like ligature marks, but Zoe still wasn’t entirely sure. What had caught her attention was a delicate silver strand on the woman’s neck.
“Did she wear jewelry?” she asked.
“A silver necklace with a cross. Her father said she wore it all the time,” O’Donnell answered.
“Why didn’t he take that as a trophy?” Zoe muttered.
“Maybe he’s not into jewelry,” Tatum suggested.
Zoe nodded. It was possible, though serial killers who took trophies usually took jewelry. Especially if, like in this case, she was strangled, and the necklace was on her neck. Surely the killer would have noticed it. Could he have used it to strangle the girl? She examined the image closely. It didn’t seem likely. The necklace would have snapped. It was much too delicate.
“You said there were finger smudges on her night table,” Zoe told Tatum. “Any jewelry there?”
“I don’t know.”
“There was a jewelry box there,” O’Donnell said. “With two