“Thanks, Tim, I’m still getting used to it. Yes, the second one this week. But the first one was an open and shut suicide. This one’s all yours. Once you transport her, I’ll have the car taken in. I want the lab working on it while you work on her.”
“Then I better get started,” McKay said.
“Give a shout out if you find an exit wound.”
Jake liked Tim McKay. Tim handled the victim in a methodical way along with a gentleness and respect as if she still lived. A survey of the scene while McKay worked told Jake it was a perfect place for a body dump. The area would’ve been deserted at night—no one would have paid any attention to a car in a car lot. Clever killer.
“I’ll call you once the post is done. Give me a couple of hours. By then I should have my initial report ready,” McKay said.
“Thanks, Doc. If you could run the fingerprints first for an ID, I’d appreciate it. I’ll talk to you later.” Jake headed back to the sales personnel to question them.
Louie had already divided them into two groups. There were too many people for Louie to interview alone, though Jake wanted to get back on Shanna’s case. She’d have to wait a little longer. He took his group a few feet away from Louie’s.
The five salespeople in his group were Michael Murphy, who found the body, Kevin Myers, Craig Nelson, Jimmy Jackson, and Michelle Williams. He started with Michelle Williams.
“Ms. Williams,” Jake said. Crime scenes tended to get innocent people babbling. Williams was no exception. The petite brunette in her twenties displayed an abundance of energy.
“I don’t see how I can help you,” Michelle said.
“Relax, Ms. Williams, this won’t take long. I’ll ask you a couple of questions now. If I need more after I check out your answers, I’ll contact you here for a follow-up interview. If you remember anything after I leave you can call me,” Jake said.
“I never saw the car, or smelled anything. I’ve been on for about three hours. I had no reason to come out here today. I didn’t have any customers,” Michelle rambled. He tried to keep up with her. “I won’t have to go back there, will I?” Michelle asked.
“No. When we identify the victim, one of us will bring a picture of her and show it around to see if anyone recognizes her. It’s possible the car was there all week. Are you sure you never noticed it?”
“I’m sure.” She wiped at her mouth with a shaky hand.
“You never went to where the car’s been parked all week?” Jake asked.
“No.”
“Okay, did you work yesterday?”
“Yes, from noon until closing,” Michelle said.
“Did you come back here yesterday?”
“I didn’t go any farther than the row with the red Impala. I’ve only had one customer this week.” She pointed to a spot four rows before the vehicle with the body. “My customer chose a car and we went into the office to process his paperwork.”
“Okay, I’ll need your customer’s name to verify.”
“Can you wait till he signs the rest of his paperwork? This is the first sale I’ve had this month… I don’t want to scare him off.” Her brown eyes pleaded with him.
“When are you signing everything?” Jake asked.
Michelle let out a deep breath. “Tonight, at six o’clock.”
“Okay, we’ll question him tomorrow, please get me the information I asked for.” Jake handed her his card and moved on.
He read the list Louie had given him. A rail of a man with a comb-over took his outstretched hand. “Kevin Jones?”
“Yep.”
“Man of few words, Kevin?”
“Naw, you haven’t asked anything yet that required an answer,” Jones said with a shrug.
“When did you come on this morning?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“Do you always come in at that time?” Jake scribbled in his notebook.
“Yes, I like to catch the service crowd while they wait for their cars to be fixed, they browse. I sell a lot of cars that way.”
“Did you sell any today?” Jake asked.
“No,” Kevin said as he looked at what Jake was writing in his notebook.
Jake tilted the book out of his view. “Did you have any reason to come back to the last row today or any other time this week?”
“No, I hadn’t been out on the lot today until I heard Michael scream. His customer came running into the office asking for the manager. The rest of the week, I’m not sure. But if I smelled something, I would’ve investigated it.”
“Did you work yesterday?” Jake asked.
“Nope, it was my day off. Six days on, one day off,” Kevin finished, rubbing his chin.
“You don’t look shaken, Kevin. Are you used to having dead bodies turn up?” Jake gauged his reaction.
“No. At this point, I haven’t seen a dead body and I don’t care to.”
The rest of his interviews went much the same way. He re-interviewed Michael Murphy after he had calmed down but got nothing new from him.
At his car, he and Louie compared notes. Louie had interviewed Cathy Elder, Carl Hannon, Rob Greene, Gino Spino, and Byron Sommers. Jake looked over Louie’s list. Louie’s interviews mirrored his. Nothing stuck out.
“I need another shower. The air’s like soup with this humidity,” Louie said, wiping his brow. Jake noticed Louie’s color wasn’t as green as when he’d first arrived.
Back at the station, they headed into the locker room where they kept another set of clothes and towels and jumped into the showers. Jake made a mental note to replace the items. After his shower, he started the identification process on Jane Doe while Louie processed and tagged the contents from the car the lab boys left behind. Though he wanted to work Shanna’s case, a fresh murder always took priority. The first forty-eight hours were critical. He’d need to jump back on the Wagner case when he was finished gathering information on the Adams woman. Luck was on his side—Chelsea’s prints popped right up.
A social worker employed by the state, Chelsea Adams, worked in Wilkesbury, lived in Southington. Jake pulled her picture from her state ID. An attractive woman—brown hair, brown eyes, five-six, her weight at the time her picture was taken was a hundred thirty-five pounds. Her daughter had reported her missing last Friday, according to the printout.
The car she was found in was also reported missing last Friday. The late model, white Chevy Impala came back to an eighty-year-old woman. She’d left it running in her driveway while she took her groceries into the house. Mrs. Page said she’d planned on garaging it after she unpacked them.
The deceased had disappeared last Friday, April sixteenth, after having drinks with some coworkers. Her daughter Cara reported her missing on Saturday morning when she didn’t show up at home. She tried her mother’s cell phone, got no answer, and started to worry. Cara Adams’s statement said she expected her mother to be home around ten o’clock Friday evening. She had stressed that her mother never stayed out any later. Cara had called the police station around midnight. The officer had followed procedure, explaining to Cara an adult had to be missing forty-eight hours before the department expended manpower searching unless there were extenuating circumstances.
* * * *
Cara Adams had listed her brother as a contact in