Chapter 34

THIRTY-FOUR

Cold wind from the mountain whipped hair around Jenna’s face as they walked back to the Beast. She inhaled and sighed in delight. It was the first time the alpine fragrance had returned since the floods. Raising her chin, she stared into the distance, absorbing the beauty of the bright green pines that at last had escaped the shroud of rain clouds. Wide patches of blue sky stretched across snowcapped mountain peaks. At last, the craziness of the last few months’ bizarre weather was coming to an end. She checked her watch and pulled open the door of the truck. “We need to move it if we’re going to get to the autopsy on time.”

“What did you think of those two?” Kane started the engine and headed out of the parking lot at high speed.

Gripping the side of her seat as the truck flew around the corners, she flicked him a glance. “They made my hackles rise, as if they both had something to hide. They’re close friends and have been for many years. When I was interviewing Wasser, I had the awful notion that they might both be involved.” She allowed ideas to percolate through her mind and then took a deep breath. “My instinct tells me if they were involved in Abby’s and Cole’s murders, there’s a good chance they were involved in Marissa’s as well.”

“It sounds logical, but without evidence, it will be difficult to prove.” Kane flicked her a glance. “Circumstantially, all we have is they were on the mountain that Halloween. There’s no obvious motive for them to murder Cole, Abby, or Marissa.”

Determined to get answers, Jenna chewed on her bottom lip. “There’s only one reason anyone would plan to murder Marissa and that would be if she threatened to reveal the truth of what really happened to Cole and Abby. I figure we need to speak to Lily Jones and see what she has to say. When Josie spoke to us it was because Lily was concerned that Marissa was missing. She’d been a no-show for an appointment at the beauty parlor and wasn’t answering her phone. I believe Lily is part of the group that knows Cole’s and Abby’s killer. If she tells the exact same story, we’ll know she colluded with the others about the night in the mountains. We have four on our list of suspects now. This leaves Crawley, Hallon, and Lily to interview. She was the other woman in all the photographs. Perhaps if we lean on her a little, she might break?”

“I guess it’s worth a try, but it will be very difficult to break up a group that has stuck to their story for so many years.” Kane pulled into the medical examiner’s parking lot and stopped at the back door. “If they were involved in the murders of Cole and Abby, I doubt we’ll be able to make any of them talk. They’d know if one of them breaks, they’ll fall like a line of dominos.”

After using the scanner, Jenna moved along the passageway searching the examination rooms for one with a red light. The red light indicated that Wolfe was conducting an autopsy. They slipped into the alcove, removed their coat and jacket, and then pulled on scrubs, face masks, and gloves. She waited for Kane to tap his ID on the card reader and then followed him. The distinctive smell of an autopsy suite accosted her nostrils as she stepped inside and the door whooshed shut behind her. Although Wolfe did everything in his power to keep the odors to a minimum, the stink of death hung around like an evil twin.

“There y’all are.” Wolfe’s gray gaze moved over them from beneath his face shield. “Right on time.”

The idea there might be more than one killer circulated around in Jenna’s mind. “We’ve been out all morning and I haven’t seen what you’ve uploaded to the server. Do you have the crime scene images at hand?”

“Yeah.” Wolfe moved to a control panel and in seconds the images were displayed across the screen array. “What’s on your mind?”

Moving closer to search the images, Jenna gave her head a shake. “We’ve just interviewed Wasser and Twotrees. They’re partners in the auto dealership in town. I don’t know what it was about them, but they both made me feel uneasy. It was as if they were too cooperative. As it was so dark in the root cellar, I wanted to look at the crime scene images to determine if there could’ve been two people involved in the murder.” She raised both hands and dropped them by her sides and then turned to look at him. “I can see there’s only one set of footprints, so I can strike that idea off my list.”

Wolfe nodded slowly. “The number of people involved in the Cole and Abby murders is yet to be established. Norrell is making great headway with that case and is very keen to head up the mountain to check out the potential crime scene. From the information that Blackhawk supplied, she’ll be able to recreate what happened.”

“I guess we should take it one murder at a time.” Kane indicated to the body covered with the white sheet on the stainless-steel gurney. “At least we know her identity. We spoke to her the day before she died.”

“To move things along, I conducted an initial autopsy to give you the results you needed in the fastest time possible. I collected samples from various skin areas and I’m running them through the DNA sequencer as we speak, although without someone to match them to, you won’t be getting any answers in the short term.” Wolfe pulled back the sheet to reveal a partially autopsied corpse. “As the time of death is imperative, apart from taking the body temperature at the scene, I checked the stomach contents the moment we got back to the lab. From the rate of digestion from her lunch, I can put the time of death within an hour of leaving Aunt Betty’s Café. If you consider the time it took for her to drive from town to the Old Mitcham Ranch, she would have been murdered within minutes of arriving.”

“So this was a planned cold-blooded murder?” Kane leaned back against the counter and folded his arms across his chest. “This woman was a very quiet tax agent who spent most of her time at home. I couldn’t in my wildest dreams come up with a motive to kill her. She’s not wealthy and she didn’t have any love interests, so there must have been something significant to plan this murder and get her to go alone to the Old Mitcham Ranch.” He swung his gaze to Jenna. “You must admit this murder was very well planned.” He indicated to the image containing the marks outside the trapdoor to the root cellar. “That’s a classic impression made by blood-soaked clothes and yet there’s no evident trail of blood after he removes them. I did find a few spots but that could be spatter from his movements as he undressed. This tells me that he had a large bag of some description to use for his soiled clothes. From the way it was positioned, he planned to finish her in the root cellar.”

The body on the gurney was horrendous and no longer looked like Marissa Kendrick. Compassion for what the woman had suffered flowed over Jenna. “You mentioned previously that he kept her alive for as long as possible. I’m struggling to find a motive for why he would do such a thing. If he was trying to teach her a lesson, it was a pointless exercise as he killed her in the end.”

“Perhaps it was a warning to the others.” Wolfe shrugged. “We’re dealing with a deranged mind here, so I wouldn’t go trying to rationalize what he did. This murder might not be anything to do with Cole and Abby. Although, it would be stretching the imagination to believe that this was a random thrill kill.” He went to the body. “The person who did this took pains not to strike any vital arteries. He made a mistake by striking the ribs on the left side. Although you’d imagine that Marissa succumbed to blood loss from the many injuries he inflicted on her, her cause of death was due to asphyxiation. One of the blows fractured her ribs and punctured her lungs. Once that occurred, her lungs filled with blood and she suffocated. Although how long into the attack this happened is undetermined.”

Swallowing hard to control the bile threatening to run up the back of her throat, Jenna looked at the defensive wounds on the woman’s hands and legs. “We know the attack started in the stables, and she tried to defend herself. The tips of her fingers are missing on her right hand and she has suffered deep lacerations to both arms and the lower parts of her legs. She must have been fighting for her life.”

“That’s correct and the hematoma on her scalp would indicate that he dragged her by her hair from the stables to the root cellar. She has grazes containing dirt from the steps on her chin and palms. So we’re talking about a strong, presumably male offender who was able to toss her around without effort.” Wolfe indicated to the marks he was referring to and lifted his gaze back to Jenna. “If we roll her onto her back, you can see from the injuries she tried to get away from him. This is when the strike to the ribs occurred. If you look at the crime scene photographs, there’s a pool of blood around her head. Although there are no injuries to her head or neck apart from where he pulled her hair. The blood you see came from her lungs and spilled from her mouth. Death would have occurred shortly after.”

Jenna shook her head slowly. “What a terrible way to die.”