Pretty Broken Dolls: An absolutely gripping crime thriller packed with mystery and suspense (Detective Katie Scott Book 6)

by Jennifer Chase

  “I think, Agent Campbell, that you are grasping at straws without any solid evidence or link. So now what you’re telling me is that Nancy Day’s murder is solved because Gwen Sanderson did it. But her murder, as well as Jeanine Trenton’s, and the Jane Doe at the fairgrounds are all the work of a copycat?” Katie shook her head in disbelief.

  “Look closer at the crime scenes,” he urged. “We’re close.”

  “What was the reason or motive for Sanderson to kill Day?” she said.

  Taking a sip of coffee, a little too loud for Katie’s taste, he said simply, “I don’t think we’ll ever really know. But, for the other murders…”

  “Yes?”

  “My theory? And it’s a theory, don’t forget.”

  “Please… keep going.”

  “Someone who is trying to make themselves a household one. Someone who read about Nancy’s case and wanted to continue for whatever reason—fame, revenge, or out of hatred.”

  “I see.”

  “Look, Detective, I know that you are a by-the-book investigator. And you’ve proven how good you really are in a short period of time.”

  Katie still couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being set up and was being fed disinformation—her instincts told her to keep to her investigation.

  “We’re relying on you and your partner to find the killer. The copycat killer.”

  “I’m working the two cases now in my jurisdiction; however, that’s not to say I’m not going to look over the first two.”

  “Of course not.”

  Katie slowly digested the information. Her head spun. She needed to verify the new information about Sanderson. “When did you come to this theory?” she said.

  “When my entire team couldn’t go any further, it pushed me to look outside of the box.”

  “I see.” Although Katie didn’t see.

  “I can tell you’re not completely on board with us.”

  “I need to see for myself,” was all that she could say. She needed to talk to McGaven.

  “Absolutely. I know you want the training videos from the military K9 facility and I’ll also get you the list of recruits who made the cut—and the ones that didn’t.”

  “I have one question and I really need for you to be transparent—and give me an honest answer. There are many detectives and investigators you could have gone to and you obviously have in the past.” She took a breath and felt she needed to brace herself. “Why did you choose me?”

  Special Agent Campbell leaned forward and lowered his voice. “That’s easy. And that’s why we’re keeping such close tabs on you. Your proven skills. Haven’t you and McGaven solved every case—so far? Well, there’s also your military background in K9 explosives training and your above average investigative skills… of course.” He watched her closely.

  “It almost sounds to me that you’re using me as bait because I have the military K9 background similar to the victims.”

  "That's one possible way."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Monday 0835 hours

  Katie drove her usual route to the sheriff’s department. She could get there faster, but she preferred a slightly longer journey to let her mind wander about the current cases. Plus this route meant more trees, less traffic, the landmarks that hadn’t changed since she was a little girl, and a little extra time to enjoy the town she had loved her entire life. Everything that made her life and perspective what it was today.

  McGaven had called her at 8:05 a.m. and said to meet him and John Blackburn in forensics regarding the Jeanine Trenton case. Katie had been running behind, since she had overslept. It was rare, but it happened. It had been quite the tumultuous weekend and she still hadn’t had the time to update McGaven on everything.

  She entered the forensic department and immediately heard laughter—not just chuckles but full-blown hysterical laughter. It seemed odd and out of place in such a quiet zone that was normally deathly silent, but now she could hear two men laughing. No doubt it was John and McGaven.

  Katie slowed her pace and hesitated before the forensic exam room door. She peered around the corner where McGaven casually leaned against a work table and John was seated in a chair. She watched them talk about sports for a minute and then she stepped inside the doorway.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “There she is,” said McGaven. “We were wondering if your skills were better suited to hockey or football.”

  They laughed.

  “Football,” said John. “Definitely.”

  “I don’t know, hockey could really use someone like Katie.”

  Katie smiled, still feeling her sore muscles from the incident on Friday but not letting the guys know it. “Go ahead, have your fun.”

  “You know we’re kidding, but you’ve got some serious skills,” said John. Dressed in a black polo shirt, leaning back in the chair, he crossed his arms, showing his tattoos. He was always dressed informally, but as if he was ready to go at a moment’s notice to attend a crime scene. His experience for eight years as a Navy Seal made him a great asset as the supervisor in the forensic unit and to the sheriff’s department.

  “I think the army helped,” McGaven chimed. “My only regret was that it wasn’t on video.”

  “Let me put my stuff in the office and I’ll be right back,” Katie said.

  She dropped her coat and briefcase on her desk before returning to the exam room. She was interested in what John had to say about Jeanine Trenton’s crime scene evidence.

  Returning to the exam area, she said, “Okay, what do you have?”

  “Well,” John began. “All this evidence has already been studied and tested. And by experts in the FBI,” he added. His voice didn’t give the indication that he was impressed by their findings.

  “I want to know what you think,” she said. She knew what the reports said, but she wanted a new set of eyes on the case.

  John smiled. “Okay. Now we’re talking. I’m sorry to say that we didn’t get anything from the Raven Woods house. No prints near the door, camera, or gas intake. Zip.” He pulled up photos on his computer of the comparison and the potential weapons that made the wound patterns. “According to the big guys, an eight-inch blade made the neck wound.”

  “Like a butcher’s knife?” she said.

  “It’s possible, but I have issues with the jagged cuts in the skin every half centimeter. See here,” he instructed as he magnified the image. There were little crescent shapes along the skin like tiny-toothed cuts.

  “Hesitation marks?”

  “No, more like a dull knife or one with a serrated edge.”

  “Something that a person would find handy in a kitchen?”

  “Could be. But reporting it as a butcher’s knife is too generic—besides, it’s too flat a blade. Too many variable factors—like the sharpness—to be one hundred percent accurate. The eight inches would seem to be consistent, so it wouldn’t be a type of pocket knife.” He flipped the screen to a close-up of a tattoo on the inside of Jeanine’s right wrist. “I didn’t see anything about her tattoo in the report. It’s very faint and it appears that at some point there was an attempt to remove it, most likely with a dermabrasion technique, but it wasn’t completely successful.”

  “Didn’t know about it.” Katie was surprised that they didn’t see it initially. “That’s where layers of skin are removed?”

  “Yes.”

  Katie leaned in closer to the screen and saw a gold outlined five-pointed star with “K9” and partial solid dog head with two faint slashes making an “X” through it. “It’s so small, but it’s definitely Army K9.” She marveled a moment, wondering why Jeanine didn’t continue her training or why she would have wanted to remove the tattoo.

  “Maybe she wanted to remove it because of her jobs?” suggested McGaven, studying it too.

  “Or she didn’t want anyone to know about it?”

  “Mandy said that she didn’t talk much about her time in the army,” said McGaven.


  “True. But she might not have been telling the truth—there were some things she said that seemed deceptive and hesitant.”

  Katie took another long look at the tattoo. “I wonder if we can find out more about it, like the artist. It was probably done when she was in the army. It’s blurry and amateurish, so I don’t think it was a professional, but you never know. It might have looked better when it wasn’t partially removed.”

  “Maybe a friend? Army buddy? Boyfriend?” suggest McGaven.

  “What about the necklace and the makeup?”

  “Now it gets interesting,” said John. He brought up photos of the necklace. “No prints or fluids were found, but…” He smiled for dramatic effect. “It’s not the necklace but the ribbon.”

  “The ribbon?”

  “Look at how it’s tied.” He zoomed in on the loop. “That is a nautical knot. See how it’s a figure eight and the two ends are pulled through? There are many nautical style knots—this one is the more basic.”

  “It also looks like the beginning of a macramé knot,” said Katie. “Why would the killer do that? Why not just tie a regular knot or double knot?” She wondered aloud to herself.

  “Maybe the killer is trying to tell us something?” said McGaven.

  John wheeled smoothly in his office chair over to a table and took out some rope and cut about three feet. He tossed it to McGaven as he expertly wheeled back to his station. “So you can practice tying knots.”

  Katie nodded. “We’ll have to look at the first two cases to find out if there’s anything to the ribbon-tying.”

  John moved to various photos of Jeanine Trenton’s face where the makeup was blurred and clownish, in ghastly colors. The effect was deeply disturbing, like a horror movie. “So, since the makeup was so prominent for the staging of the body, there were tests run and I agree with not only the tests but the findings and the conclusions. The makeup was connected to one of the major cosmetics companies that can be found in any department store, drug store, online store selling makeup—you name it. There was nothing foreign mixed in the makeup used, just the typical ingredients you would find, like pigments for color, waxes, petrolatum oil, lanolin, cocoa butter, aluminum, manganese, and BAK—benzalkonium chloride—for preservative purposes.”

  “Wow, I’m going to rethink my makeup choices,” said Katie with a distinct frown. “So you’re saying they were fairly generic, cheaply made makeup items that can be found just about anywhere.”

  Katie became quiet, rolling scenarios in her mind—preparing herself for what they would pursue next. McGaven and John waited.

  “Well, I do have some more thoughts,” John said with an upbeat tone cutting through the silence. “I always go the extra mile—you know that.”

  Katie’s hopes raised a few levels as she waited patiently.

  “Now, remember how the body looked, posed like a possessed doll from a horror show?” He clicked through several angles of the body. “There was nothing in the crime scene report about the body pose, so… I started searching through covers of horror movies and books with certain specific parameters: body posed, heavy makeup like clown, legs broken, etc.”

  “And?” she said getting excited.

  “I’m afraid that I haven’t found anything but the typical slasher movies, but I’m still searching with key words in the database. There were some movies that had scenes that resembled the poses but they were from eighties and nineties. Maybe trying to recreate a time or incident?”

  “Oh,” she said, remembering those horrible slasher films and hoped that wasn’t the inspiration for the crime scenes; again, it was too vague and not specific enough to be a lead.

  “I should have some preliminary information about the Jane Doe case soon,” McGaven said.

  Katie and McGaven returned to their office.

  McGaven turned to Katie and said, “What are your instincts saying? What first comes to mind?”

  “I don’t want to go in the wrong direction.”

  “C’mon. First thing that comes to mind,” he stressed.

  “Well, the killer doesn’t seem to like the army. It could mean that they don’t like the K9 unit or the army in general.”

  “Keep going.”

  “The nautical knot could mean that the killer has been trained in navigating boats and it’s just a habit to tie a knot like that.”

  “Good,” he said as he made a few notes. “This is fun. You usually make the notes.”

  Katie imagined the crime scene in her head and everything they knew from the reports as she read the notes McGaven wrote. It suddenly hit her like a sledgehammer. “Why haven’t I seen it before? I don’t know… It could be possible.”

  “What? You’re killing me here.” He sat down to face his partner.

  “I think… I think that…” she rambled.

  “What? Spit it out.”

  “We could possibly be looking at a military person or even a veteran as the killer instead of someone who just hates the military.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Monday 1450 hours

  Katie and McGaven made their way to the morgue to speak with the medical examiner, Dr. Jeff Dean, about the findings in the Jeanine Trenton case. They still hadn’t heard from him about the autopsy on the body from the fairgrounds, but he had told them they were backed up. Thinking about a morgue being backed up gave her some gruesome images.

  As they entered the morgue, Katie’s senses were assaulted by an exceptionally strong odor of cleaning disinfectants—more than normal. She fought the urge to pinch her nose so she didn’t have to smell it anymore. She glanced at McGaven—he hated the morgue and still had some trouble seeing the oftentimes twisted remains of the dead. Now he was relaxed because they didn’t have to view an actual autopsy.

  They walked through the doors leading to a row of exam rooms, but this time, Katie didn’t divert her attention to glimpse who was lying on a steel exam table, open wide and having their internal organs weighed and counted.

  Katie kept her focus on speaking with Dr. Dean.

  Before they reached the office area, the doctor hurried out of one of the cubicles, carrying a stack of file folders.

  “Hi. My favorite investigators,” he said, with his usual upbeat manner. “Please have a seat in my office and I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  He never disappointed Katie with his openness and also his choice of clothing. Some thought Dr. Dean was a bit eccentric, but Katie loved the fact that he wore khaki shorts with a very brightly colored Hawaiian shirt, no matter the weather. He usually sported sandals, but today he’d opted for sneakers and socks.

  Katie and McGaven entered the medical examiner’s office. It was neat and organized as usual with file folders in arranged piles, brightly colored tabs differentiating categories, and every filing cabinet drawer was closed. There were plastic anatomical parts sitting on top of the cabinets; some were in pieces, while others were put together, along with a full, life-size skeleton in the corner. She didn’t remember seeing the skeleton before and assumed it must have been a gift from someone.

  To Katie’s relief, the smell of disinfectant had subsided and her stomach had stopped churning from the harshness of the odor. She noticed that smells triggered memories—and memories opened a heavy door for anxiety—but she quickly slammed that door and refocused her mind. She had been taught to let her anxious feelings and memories go—float away like balloons. As silly as it sounded, it actually helped Katie to minimize her panic attacks.

  McGaven fidgeted in his seat as he looked around the office.

  “Do you want to sit this one out?” Katie said.

  “Nope.”

  “Why are you so restless?”

  “Three cups of coffee.”

  “You’re making me twitchy.”

  “Detective Scott twitchy,” he mimicked with a half smirk on his face.

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” she softly said.

  “Okay,” said Dr. Dean as he
entered the room and shut the door. “No bodies today, just photos. I had some time to review them last night.”

  “We appreciate your time. I realize that an autopsy was already performed and reported on the victim, but…”

  Dr. Dean made himself comfortable at his desk as he pulled out several files each with a green coded label. Looking at Katie, he said, “Detective Scott, you don’t have to apologize to me. I respect your opinion and admire your tenacity when given a cold case. I’ll help in any way I can.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Dean.”

  The medical examiner put on the reading glasses that he kept on a wide cord around his neck. Flipping open the first file with “Trenton, J.” typed on the label, he said immediately, “I respectfully disagree with the senior medical examiner on this case. Actually, partly disagree.” His tone was calm and he remained confident in his position, experience, and credentials.

  “Really?” she said and leaned forward in her chair. “Why is that?”

  “It reads that the manner of death was homicide. I agree. The cause, however, reads neck injury of a sliced throat—loss of blood. However, looking closer, we can see that the knife cut the thyroid and cartilage, and nicked the trachea,” he turned the photo image to show the injury, “but it didn’t penetrate the larynx, trachea and through the cervical vertebrae to cause instant death.”

  “Wouldn’t she bleed to death?”

  “Slowly, unless of course the carotid artery was cut, but in this case, it wasn’t. Now look at this photo.” He showed a view of the victim’s chest, which had extreme darkened bluish-purple bruising, the heaviest being on the left side.

  “She had been impaled on the wrought-iron fence. Wouldn’t that cause much of that bluish color?”

  McGaven took a closer look, studying the photos as Dr. Dean continued his explanation.

  “But, what is difficult to see is that the heaviest discoloration is on the left side of the chest almost precisely on top of the heart. It’s not common, but it is possible to be struck with something on the area near the center of the heart’s left ventricle. It’s the lower left chamber of the heart.” He reached for a plastic heart from the shelf to demonstrate his hypothesis. “It’s called commotio cordis and it usually happens to young people playing sports—being hit by a baseball or a fist.”