Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) Book 1 in the J.J. Graves Series

by Hart, Liliana

  I followed the tread of another set of tires behind Fiona’s car and watched the last of the crime scene guys take more photos.

  Jack pointed to the deep treads in the mud. “Her killer pulled in right behind her. He knew she wasn’t going to try and hike her way into town in freezing temperatures, and chances were less than slim that someone would drive by and see her that late at night. She had the standard blankets in her backseat like anyone else with a brain in this area. We found a cell phone in the bottom of her purse, fully charged, but instead of staying inside out of the wind and calling for help, she gets out. Why?”

  “Panic, maybe?” I said and shrugged my shoulders. “If she thought her husband was going to come after her maybe she decided she’d take her chances with the elements instead of staying in one place where he could find her.”

  “Yeah, that was my first thought, but look at her footprints. The ground was soft after yesterday’s rain. She steps out of her car and goes around the back to meet whoever pulled in behind her. There’s no indication she was trying to run away. Her trunk was closed when we found her this morning, so she wasn’t trying to get anything and get back inside. I’d thought at first she might have been getting another jacket. There’s one back there.”

  I looked at Jack in confusion, knowing I was missing something important, and then the light bulb went off.

  “You don’t think it was George?” I hissed in a shocked whisper. It wasn’t an opinion I wanted anyone else to hear. In a small town like Bloody Mary, the citizen’s had a tendency to declare guilt first and ask questions later. I knew this from experience. And they wouldn’t care for their sheriff to have a different opinion. It sure as hell wouldn’t help him win the next election.

  “That’s for you to help me find out,” he answered, his teeth gritted in a smile so hard I was surprised they didn’t turn to dust.

  Jack ran his hands through his hair in a gesture I recognized as frustration. He knew how small towns worked, and he knew he was walking a fine line. He’d forgotten his hat again, so I pulled the spare I always kept out of my pocket and handed it to him. Jack was damned good at his job. He was way overqualified to be the sheriff of a podunk town, and no matter how unpopular his theories, I would always back him a hundred percent.

  I squeezed his arm in support. “I’ll look into it,” I assured him.

  He nodded in gratitude and pulled the ski cap down low over his ears. “This is how I see it. She runs out of gas and realizes she’s still too close to home. Not too much time passes before someone else pulls up behind her, and by the size of the tire treads it looks to be some kind of truck.”

  “George has a truck,” I said, playing devil’s advocate. “And who else would be traveling this road that late at night?”

  “I know, and we’ll test the treads and take samples from the bottom of his tires, but don’t you think that if Fiona recognized her husband’s truck behind her, she’d dig out the cell phone from the bottom of her purse?”

  “What if his lights kept her from seeing who it really was?”

  “Listen, Jaye, I know you want it to be George. Hell, even I want it to be George. There’s not a man in this county who deserves to be in jail more than he does, but we have to look at every possibility. My gut is screaming over this.”

  The last time Jack’s gut had screamed over anything, he’d been shot three times and forced to retire from a job he’d loved.

  He pointed to the clearly imprinted treads in the now frozen mud. “He pulls up behind her, and let’s say she doesn’t recognize the vehicle. She feels relief, maybe gratitude that luck should be on her side tonight. She’s invincible and has just taken the biggest step of her life. She gets out of the car calmly and takes four steps towards him. Have you noticed that as clear as the tire treads are in the mud, there are no footprints from him that show us the initial meeting?”

  I had noticed, but I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, so I let Jack continue to paint his picture.

  “That tells me he deliberately kept to the pavement. He probably got out on the passenger side.”

  “So maybe he just didn’t want to get muddy.”

  “Maybe. So he comes up to her, talks to her a bit. Maybe he tells her to grab her purse, that he’ll take her into town. I don’t know. But for some reason she turns her back and he strikes a blow to the back of her head. You’ll have to tell me once you get her in if it was multiple times, but my gut says once. He just wanted to incapacitate.”

  There was a small amount of blood on the ground near the trunk, and the crime scene team had already numbered and photographed it for their report.

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “We found more blood in the back seat of the car. The blankets were shoved to the floorboard. That’s where he raped her. He tied her up and waited until she was coherent before the rape, then left the rope on the seat. Didn’t tidy up after himself.”

  I shivered as we made our way to the other side of the car. To Fiona. Jack had painted a clear picture in my mind, and after I got her on the table I’d be able to tell him for sure if his theories were correct.

  The December air was brittle with cold, and the wind chill was several degrees below freezing. The sun peeked through the bare trees and cast everything in a pinkish hue. The only good thing about the temperature was that Fiona Murphy was well preserved.

  Fiona hadn’t died with dignity. Her naked body was sprawled face down, her arms and legs at abnormal angles. I ignored the yellow spray paint the crime scene unit had used to trace around the body and moved around her so I could snap pictures from different angles. When I was through, I squatted down beside her to get a closer look.

  “God, her body’s a mess. Some of these bruises look weeks old,” I said as I ran my gloved finger down her back and around to the side of her ribs. “The ones along the spine look fresh. And I’ll make sure when I get her back to the lab, but by the coloring I’d say they’ve been there no more than a day.”

  There was blood matted to the back of her blond hair where the initial blow had been struck. It had turned black and flaky overnight.

  “He posed her here,” Jack said. “Everything about this scene is deliberate. Look at the footprints.”

  I looked down at three precise footprints labeled with a yellow tag. I stood up and moved back so I could take a look at my own. My footprints were visible, but they were smeared. The killer’s were a different story.

  “They’re perfect.”

  “I know. He places her body here, poses her arms and legs, and then plants three perfect footprints next to the body. Look how close together they are. He either has extremely short legs or was trying to shuffle slowly with the body in his arms.”

  “And if he was shuffling slowly, there would be smears,” I finished for him.

  “What do you want to bet that those perfect footprints are the same size as George Murphy wears?”

  “You think someone deliberately set up George? Who would do such a thing?

  “I don’t know. Maybe one of the hundreds of people in this town he’s managed to piss off.”

  When put that way, the list of suspects could go on forever. I flexed my leather gloves that were tightening with the cold, took a deep breath and turned the body over. A long, red silk scarf was wrapped around Fiona’s throat and mud was caked on the side of her face. I tried to look at the scene dispassionately through the lens of my camera, documenting the broken capillaries in the eyes due to the strangulation and the swollen tissues around the neck. Her face was the palest marble, and the hopelessness that had been imprinted on her face over the years had vanished in death.

  “There’s no facial bruising,” I said. “George has always been careful about that for the most part, but there are bruises on almost every other surface of her body—bastard. Apparent cause of death appears to be strangulation. And I’ll definitely rule it as a homicide. After everything she’s been through, someone chokes her to death. I’d
say she’s been dead no longer than six or seven hours, but it’s hard to tell. I can’t gauge the time of death accurately by body temperature because of the weather, so I won’t be able to give you a firmer TOD until I get her on my table. The sister’s story about the phone call helps narrow it down a little, but that’s the best I can do right now.”

  Jack squatted down next to me and his every breath sent cold puffs of white into the air. He put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Jaye. I know you were friends.”

  “It’s been a long time. George didn’t let her have any close friends.” Guilt ate at my insides despite the fact that it had been out of my control. I remembered a skinny, pale-haired girl built like a dancer with laughter in her eyes. A girl who’d grown into a quiet young woman stuck like so many others in a town that offered little. A woman who George Murphy had taken one look at and decided to claim for his own. She hadn’t had any better offers.

  “I’m sorry for you too, Jack. I know you were close once.”

  “Yeah, well, that was in high school. Like you said, it’s been a long time.”

  “He didn’t bother to condomize for the rape, so we’ll be able to nail his ass with DNA. Let’s get her back to the lab, and I’ll get started. It’s the weekend, so you know everything’s going to be slower. I’ll have to send the DNA to Richmond as soon as you get a sample from George. It’ll probably be the end of next week before the results come back.”

  “We’re already on it,” Jack said. “Let’s get her loaded up, and I’ll follow you back.”

  I looked into Fiona Murphy’s open, empty eyes, and brushed the matted hair back from her face. I couldn’t give her dignity. But I could bring her justice.

  Chapter Three

  The drive through town was slow due to the fact that everyone recognized my vehicle, and word had obviously spread about Fiona’s death. Cars slowed almost to a stop and gawkers on the sidewalk made the sign of the cross as I led the procession back to the funeral home.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I murmured. I wasn’t expecting Fiona to sit up in the back and answer me, so I took the time to swear as I saw a pear-shaped, elderly woman in a peacock blue wool coat and yellow snow boots. Mrs. Meador was flagging me down with the precision of a traffic cop, and I’d be damned if I stopped to give her the time of day. Fiona would thaw before I was able to make an escape. So I gave a polite beep of my horn and a little wave as the Suburban came close enough to touch the sleeve of her flailing arms. She pursed her lips in disapproval, narrowed her eyes, and I knew I was going to get a tongue lashing from the old bat the next time I saw her. Very few people thwarted Mrs. Meador and survived to tell the tale. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Jack shaking with laughter as he turned his sirens on to move traffic along a little faster.

  It took almost half an hour to make it back to my lab, which wasn’t good considering it usually took about twelve minutes to drive from one side of Bloody Mary to the other. The funeral home parking lot was blessedly empty, and I pulled the Suburban under the attached carport nearest to my lab.

  Don’t let my cloak-and-dagger-like references to my place of business confuse you. The “lab” is little more than a refurbished basement at the funeral parlor, but it’s top of the line and as nice as any you’d find in a bigger city. My parents had been meticulous about every aspect of their business. It was their personal life they hadn’t had very good control of.

  Graves Funeral Home was on the corner of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, close enough so people wouldn’t have to go out of their way to find it, but far enough away that I was afforded a little privacy. There was a strip mall across the street that housed an attorney, a Laundromat, and a veterinarian who moonlighted as a bookie out of his back room when he wasn’t castrating steers or selling discounted drugs to anyone who didn’t have good medical insurance.

  I waved to Denny Kasowski, the vet, as he watched us unload Fiona from the back of my Suburban with slack-jawed fascination.

  “Geez, Jaye, don’t encourage him. I’ve been trying to bust his ass for the last eight months. He’s got his fingers in so many illegal pies that the cage is going to eventually close on him for a long time.”

  I started to whistle as I followed Jack into the side door of the funeral home. I didn’t figure it was a good time to mention that I’d bought a case of penicillin and a year’s supply of birth control pills out of the back of Denny’s trunk.

  We rolled Fiona down the ramp into the basement lab area, and he helped me get her moved onto a sterile metal table that had a deep indention around the entire perimeter to catch any stray body fluids. I flipped the ventilator on, stripped off the mountain of cold weather clothes I was wearing, and snapped a pair of latex gloves on my hands. Jack, bless his heart, was kind enough to offer to stay with me, but it usually took him less than ten minutes to get sick from the smell. The man could look at crime scenes and blood all day, but being closed in a room with a dead body and embalming fluid was just too much.

  “Jack, you’re looking a little green,” I said, my grin evil. “Let me get her set up and get the samples, and I’ll meet you upstairs for breakfast. Jasper Bridges slaughtered a pig a couple of days ago and brought me some fresh sausage to help pay for his mama’s interment.”

  Jack went pale, then green. He turned and ran up the stairs gagging. I laughed a little to myself. It was a cruel thing to do, but damned if it wasn’t funny every time.

  I turned the stereo on so it blared classic rock and took a deep breath. When I turned to face Fiona I gave her an apology before I got to work. She was only the second homicide I’d worked on since I’d taken the job as coroner. Like I said before, hardly anyone ever dies in Bloody Mary.

  And the last murder I’d dealt with hadn’t exactly been something that had the potential to cause an avalanche of trouble if handled the wrong way. Bobby Gentry had been my first murder. His brother Billy had gotten back early from a hunting trip and caught him climbing out of his bedroom window butt-ass naked. Billy’s wife, Loretta, had only been wearing Bobby’s cowboy hat at the time, so I could understand how Billy had jumped to the right conclusion. Billy had left a hole in his brother’s chest big enough that cause of death wasn’t too difficult to determine. And there hadn’t exactly been a lot of internal organs left to remove during the autopsy. It had been an open and shut case considering there’d been a witness and Billy had been more than happy to confess to the deed.

  It wasn’t like this time. I already felt the pressure to do right by Fiona, and I’d barely even gotten started. I’d been at the top of my class at Columbia Medical School and worked for two years as an ER doctor at Augusta General, so I could at least tell the difference between an anus and an aneurism, but I was only a coroner because I wasn’t board certified to be a pathologist. I’d had to take a Board Examination to get my mortician’s license, but I’d had the advantage of growing up in a funeral home on top of my medical background, so it hadn’t been difficult.

  A coroner wasn’t unusual in small towns. Usually the town doctor took on the position, but Doc Randall hadn’t wanted the job (smart man), so I’d been the next best thing. Considering Doc Randall had already seen the early side of eighty, I was thinking I might eventually get to take over his job and do what I was trained for. But considering all the women in my family had died before the age of fifty, I wasn’t holding out too much hope.

  Jack would take a little while to turn back to his normal color, so I set to work on preparing Fiona’s body. I gathered a blood and semen sample to send to Richmond, and then switched on my black light to look for fibers. I bagged what I found, cleaned her body with strong smelling disinfectant, then took out my recorder to officially document my findings.

  I flipped the stereo off so there would be no questions if the tapes needed to be heard at a trial. “Fiona Murphy. Caucasian female. Age thirty. Victim has shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes. Small, crescent shaped birthmar
k on right thigh, and small tattoo of what seems to be a dragon on left buttock.”

  I couldn’t imagine what Fiona had been thinking when she’d picked a dragon for her symbol. Actually, I couldn’t believe she’d gotten a tattoo at all. I looked her over once more before I started listing the other marks that marred her skin. Her body had enough damage to fill up every official document I had.

  “Swollen tissue around neck due to strangulation. Multiple hemorrhages in neck muscles and broken blood vessels between the head and shoulders are also indicative of strangulation. Multiple contusions on both right and left arms and abrasions on wrists indicate she was restrained.”

  I looked closer at her wrists, turning them over slowly in my hands, and then I moved down the table to look at her ankles. There were old burn marks. Fiona had been tied up before. Interesting.

  “Evidence shows signs of old ligature abrasions around both wrists. Deep bite marks found on both left and right breast, probably more than a week old by discoloration around area. Bruising around ribs one, five, six and seven. Contusions and slight abrasions on hip bones. Secondary set of bite marks found on both thighs. There are abrasions on both knees, and again, old ligature marks on ankles.”

  I took measurements of the bite marks on her breasts and thighs. And then I did it again.

  The marks belonged to two different people. What the hell had George made her participate in? Her feet and face seemed to be the only part of Fiona’s body that didn’t have a mark of some kind. Not even her murderer had tortured her as much as her own husband.

  I stopped my train of thought. Jack’s impression of the murder scene already had me declaring George’s innocence. I flipped Fiona over and went through the same routine as quickly as possible. I almost felt guilty for working on her. Fiona needed some peace in death.

  What made it worse was she’d been killed just as she’d found the courage to escape a life of misery. I shook my head and covered her body in one of the white sheets I kept folded on the shelf. I rolled her into the refrigeration unit, washed up at the sink by the stairs and headed up the stairs to meet Jack. I closed the reinforced steel door that protected the dead while I was away and locked it behind me.