The investigator stood and smiled at Amanda and Trent. “Want back in?”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Amanda replied, and the investigator stepped aside. “Actually, while I’m thinking of it,” Amanda started, “it might be a good idea if we collect the garbage outside the office too.”
The investigator poked her head out the door, followed the direction of Amanda’s pointing finger, and said, “You got it.”
“Thanks.”
Amanda and Trent put on their plastic booties and gloves and entered the room.
The slender and older CSI was taking Palmer’s fingerprints. Trent looked at Amanda.
“It’s procedure,” Amanda started, about to explain the CSI’s purpose for doing it.
Trent took over. “It’s to verify the deceased’s identity and it tells investigators right away if he has a history with the police.”
She’d obviously misread why he’d looked at her. Regardless, if Trent had been her pupil, Amanda might have patted him on the back and given him a gold star. But he wasn’t, and for some reason his knowledge and brown-nosing ticked her off.
“Did either of you find a duffel bag?” she asked, moving farther into the room. “Maybe in the dresser or the closet?”
“Not me,” the investigator near the door answered.
“Me neither, but CSI Donnelly’s been working on the room, while I’ve been tending to the deceased,” the slender CSI said, nodding toward the investigator who had been searching for shoeprints.
“Donnelly?” Amanda said. “I’m Detective Steele and this is Detective Stenson.”
“Nice to meet you,” Donnelly said.
“I know who you are,” the other CSI mumbled.
Amanda bristled. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Emma Blair.”
There was an electric charge to the air, far more powerful than any forensic apparatus could be, and Amanda wondered why Blair seemed so hostile.
“Some body called?”
Amanda turned and was pleased to see Hans Rideout. With numerous qualified personnel at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manassas, a town about a half hour from Dumfries, it was a crapshoot as to who would be sent out. Rideout was one of the best. He had morgue humor down pat and, for a career built on death, he had quite the zest for life. In his forties with a full head of gray hair, he had deep smile lines around his mouth. Sometimes his cheeriness was almost too much to handle, but Amanda was more concerned by the fact he’d know who Palmer was to her.
“Hi,” Amanda said to him.
“Hey-lo.” Rideout’s greeting came out in two parts, with the latter in a baritone. He waved one hand toward Palmer; the other held his case. “You do know who that is?” He looked directly at Amanda.
“Uh-huh.” She drew up tall, ready to defend herself.
He held eye contact with her and eventually said, “All righty, then,” and got to work.
She went straight to Palmer’s wallet, more than ready to return to what she’d been doing when Trent and the CSIs had shown up. So, he had a couple of expired credit cards, a healthcare insurance card, and a ten-dollar bill. She rattled that inventory off for Trent, then pulled out two photos from another partition. One was of Palmer with a woman, both smiling, probably taken around the time of the accident given Palmer’s appearance. They were standing rather close, which indicated a romantic relationship, though they weren’t touching. If she was a girlfriend, Amanda didn’t remember her face from the trial. The other picture was of a teenage Palmer next to two other boys about the same age, each of them holding bicycles at their sides. She flipped each picture hoping there’d be names, but no such luck.
She passed the photos to Trent. “We’ll want to find out who they are.” She wasn’t hinging much hope on their identities having much, if any, bearing on the case, but it was still a matter that needed to be explored. If Palmer had been targeted, the more they found out about his life before prison the better.
“Possible one of them is Palmer’s next of kin,” Trent said.
“Could be,” she replied.
Rideout lifted his gaze from Palmer’s body to her. His frown said it all: she shouldn’t be working this case. But damn it to hell, she could compartmentalize the personal from the professional. She’d had years of practice as a cop stuffing her feelings down deep, keeping the recommended emotional distance from the cases she worked and the families she had to deal with.
“Whoever they are, we’ll find his next of kin.” Her words circled back to her ears with far more confidence than she felt. After the accident, she and her father had pried into Palmer’s life. The intention had been to build a case for the prosecution, to establish a pattern of behavior—Palmer had always been a drunk—but during the process they’d found out his parents were both dead and he didn’t have any siblings.
Trent handed the photos back to her, and she looked at the one of Palmer with the woman again. If she had been his girlfriend, they could have broken things off before the case went to trial. She returned the photos to the wallet and in exchange fished out a business card. She angled it for Trent to see.
“King of Pawnshops,” Trent read out.
“It was located in Woodbridge,” Amanda said. “Place is out of business now, but Palmer was part owner there before he went to prison.”
“We should reach out to his partner then,” Trent said, not questioning for a second that Palmer had been to prison. He’d definitely been read in and knew Palmer’s history.
“You said King of Pawnshops?” CSI Blair stopped whatever it was she was doing near the closet.
“Yeah?” Amanda angled her head, not sure where Blair was headed.
“Oh.”
“Not following,” Amanda said.
“The owner of that pawnshop was murdered. Brutally. It was one of the nastiest crime scenes I’ve worked in my career.”
Amanda tried to recall the name of Palmer’s partner. It was Jackson something, but his last name wasn’t coming. “You remember his name?” she asked the CSI, curious about her change in attitude. She’d been so hostile up until now.
“Jackson Webb. I’ll never forget. He’d been tortured. His fingernails were removed, and he had cigarette burns all over his body.” Blair consulted Rideout. “Do you remember that?”
“Lots of bodies visit my table,” Rideout said, “but I’m guessing someone else was assigned that autopsy.”
“Signs of torture…” Amanda’s gaze went to Palmer. Could it be that whoever had killed Webb was responsible for Palmer’s death? But there were no signs of torture present here—at least not visible ones. After the sentencing, she’d let her obsession with Palmer go, choosing instead to wallow alone in her grief and anger. “When was this?”
“Easily five years ago or so. As I said, it was a memorable crime scene.”
The skin tightened at the back of her neck. The accident was five and a half years ago; six this coming July eighteenth. Turnaround time from trial to sentencing was five months, twenty-six days, six months. But no wonder she didn’t know about Jackson Webb’s fate; she’d been out of touch for a couple of months after the accident. Hospitalized and monitored. An internal bleed had made an operation necessary, and that surgery had repercussions of its own. Long-lasting, life-altering ones. She did her best not to dwell on them. She had enough to deal with when it came to losing Kevin and Lindsey as it was. Only she and her doctors knew the full cost of that fateful day.