Brass was no scientist, but he understood that you needed a fairly complete sequence of DNA to make a reliable match. “Any idea how much time it would take for the DNA to decay that much?”
“Hard to say,” Catherine said. “There are too many unknown variables. Time, heat, moisture, bacteria, chemicals, etcetera. But the degree of degradation suggests that Park and Debra may have known each other for some time, maybe even long before this whole Shock Treatment stunt was conceived.”
“She wasn’t wearing braces the night of the shooting,” Brass pointed out. “Wonder when she stopped wearing them?”
“That would help fill out the timeline,” Catherine said. “Assuming, of course, that those were Debra’s elastics we found in Park’s trailer—which we don’t know for sure.” Frustrated by their lack of conclusive proof, she pondered their next move. “You had Debra pretty rattled before. Maybe we should keep the heat on, see if we can get her to flip on Park?”
Brass mulled it over. “You think she’s the weak link?”
“Maybe,” Catherine said. “I wonder if she fully grasps the legal consequences here. Even if she and Park didn’t actually shoot Novak themselves, if it can be proven that they deliberately conspired to get him killed, that’s first-degree murder. Perhaps somebody needs to explain that to her?”
“Could work,” Brass grunted, warming to the idea. “The fingerprints alone might be enough to make her crack.” A ringtone chimed and he fished his cell phone from his pocket. “Excuse me,” he said to Catherine as he took the call. “Brass here.”
She took advantage of the interruption to sort through the accumulated paperwork on her desk, which seemed to multiply faster than maggots on a corpse, but a sudden edge to Brass’s voice caught her attention.
“What?!” he demanded of the person at the other end of the line. His expression darkened and he shot Catherine a glance that made it clear that she needed to hear this. “All right. I’m on my way.”
Catherine waited until he hung up. “What is it?”
“Change of plans,” he said grimly. “Looks like we won’t be grilling Debra Lusky after all.”
“How come?”
“She was just found in Sunset Park. Shot in the head.”
24
SUNSET PARK HAD been closed for hours.
The spacious public grounds usually went lights-out at eleven, but the streetlights around the tennis courts were already back on by the time Catherine and Brass met up with Nick and Greg at the crime scene, which was just a short hike away from the parking lot. Yellow tape cordoned off the vicinity. Uniformed officers stood guard. A frigid wind rustled through the palm trees. A paved footpath traversed browning swaths of lawn. Sunrise was only a few hours away, but the temperature was still too cold for comfort. A winter coat and wool cap helped Catherine hang onto her body warmth.
Unlike Debra Lusky, who was cooling rapidly.
Camera flashes strobed the night as Greg and Nick photographed the scene from multiple angles. David Phillips was already examining the body, which lay prone upon the walkway leading to the tennis courts. Her lifeless face, turned to one side, stared blankly into oblivion. The dead woman had changed clothes since her interrogation several hours ago. A black hoodie, dark pants, and leather boots made it look like she had been considering a new career as a cat burglar. A dropped flashlight had rolled away from her limp fingers. A bullet wound at the back of her skull revealed that she had been shot from behind—a ragged exit wound in her forehead lined up with the smaller injury behind it. Frozen blood glistened in her hair. Debra’s newly straightened teeth appeared intact, not that they were going to do her much good anymore. Nobody was going to see her smile at her funeral.
Catherine wondered if Jill Wooten would attend.
“A security guard stumbled onto the body while doing his rounds,” Nick explained. He and Greg had beaten Catherine and Brass to the scene by a few minutes. His frosty breath misted before his lips. “Apparently they’ve been having a problem with teenagers sneaking in after closing lately.”
David knelt by the body. “COD appears to be a single GSW to the head. Stippling on the scalp indicates that the weapon was fired at close range, from less than two feet away. She probably never saw it coming.”
“Time of death?” Catherine asked.
“Judging from lividity and body temperature, and taking into account that it’s way too cold out tonight, I’m saying about three hours ago.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “So around one a.m., more or less.”
“Well after closing time, in other words.” Catherine found the time and location more than a little suspicious. “Which begs the question: What exactly was she doing here at one in the morning?”
“We found her car in the parking lot,” Nick informed Catherine. “A green Subaru Forester.”
Catherine recalled seeing the Subaru when she arrived, parked alongside the various cop cars and the coroner’s wagon. “Any other vehicles that didn’t belong there?”
“Nope,” Nick said. “No security cameras either.”
Damn, Catherine thought. Not that she was too surprised by the lack of cameras; from the looks of things, Debra had wanted to keep things on the down-low. They would have to impound the Subaru, of course, and hope that it contained some clue as to what had brought Debra here sometime after midnight. Chances were, the killer had exited in their own vehicle, or perhaps on foot.
She glanced around for any obvious tracks, but didn’t see any. Not for the first time, she regretted that Vegas’s arid climate cut down on the number of muddy footprints they found. Then again, she reflected, we don’t often have to worry about rain washing away our evidence.
“You think she was meeting someone?” Brass wondered aloud.
“That’s what I figure.” Catherine couldn’t think of any other reason for Debra to visit the park under the cover of dark. “And secretly.”
Brass pulled out his notepad. “Any signs of robbery?”
“Nope,” Nick said. “She still had her purse and car keys on her. Ditto for her watch and jewelry.”
“No evidence of sexual assault either,” David added, after rolling the body over to conduct a more thorough exam. A trickle of blood streaked her forehead. Cloudy brown eyes gazed sightlessly up at the heavens. Pooled blood had settled on the right side of her face, creating a livid pink eclipse across her features. Her clothing appeared undisturbed.
“So this probably wasn’t a random mugging,” Nick concluded. “Unless, I suppose, the shooter panicked and fled before looting the body.”
Catherine shook her head. “Unlikely. That would be one more freaky ‘coincidence’ in a case that already has too many of those. No, this has something to do with Matt Novak’s death. I’d bet a week’s salary on it.”
Brass didn’t disagree. “So who would want Debra dead?”
“Good question.” Catherine considered the possibilities, and an awful scenario popped into her head. “I hate to say it, but do you think maybe Jill did this? She was pretty upset at Debra—with good reason.”
“Oh, crap,” Brass muttered. She knew he felt sorry for Jill, who had probably been tricked into shooting a stranger. “I hope not.”
“Me, too.” Catherine couldn’t rule out the theory, however. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first time an innocent crime victim decided to take the law into their own hands, with tragic consequences. Jill could have just dug herself a very deep hole. “I mean, right in front of us, she did threaten to kill Debra. I thought she was just blowing off steam, but . . .”
“Yeah, I know.” Brass winced. “We need to find out if Jill has an alibi for tonight.”
“Not to mention Roger Park,” Catherine said. Jill wasn’t the only suspect with a motive for killing Debra. “Maybe he’s tying up loose ends?”
She found herself hoping that Park was to blame. If their suppositions were correct, Park was already responsible for one death. She wouldn’t mind putting him away for Debra’s m
urder as well.
Her gaze was drawn to the ugly exit wound in Debra’s brow. “Any sign of the bullet?”
“Way ahead of you,” Greg reported. He moved down the walkway to a swaying palm tree. The beam of his flashlight exposed a gaping wound in the tree trunk, around eye level. Shredded bark circled the impact site. “The security guard spotted the bullet hole after he got the lights back on. We haven’t had a chance to extract the slug yet.”
“No rush,” Catherine said. Great care had to be taken to avoid damaging a bullet when it was being recovered; they wouldn’t want to compromise any identifying marks by scratching it themselves. If necessary, they might have to cut out a chunk of the tree trunk to keep the bullet intact until they got it back to the lab. “What about any casings?”
“Haven’t even looked yet,” Nick admitted. “We’ve been busy with the body.”
“Works for me.”
She gave Dave the go-ahead to transport the body to the morgue. While Greg and Nick helped him load Debra onto a gurney, she tried to trace the trajectory of the bullet in her mind. Visualizing Debra standing in front of her on the walkway, Catherine lined up the shot with the tree farther down the path. Her index finger filled in for the gun as she imagined the killer shooting Debra from behind, the bullet passing through the woman’s skull to strike the unlucky palm tree. Catherine glanced down at the pavement beneath her feet. Assuming no ricochets, she deduced, the shooter would have been standing right about . . . here.
She started retracing the killer’s steps back toward the main parking lot. If the shooter had indeed driven away, that was the way they would have headed. The beam of her flashlight swept across the ground before her in slow, deliberate arcs. The streetlights around the tennis court lit up much of the surroundings, but nocturnal shadows still cloaked the greenery outside the pathway. Her eyes and flashlight carefully probed the neatly trimmed lawn and foliage, which were showing signs of the winter’s rigor. Bare branches and brown grass reminded her that spring was still months away. Nick and Greg joined the search, spreading out from the crime scene in ever-expanding circles.
A row of shrubs ran parallel to the walkway. A metal waste bin was filled with empty soda cans, plastic water bottles, soiled diapers, napkins, fast-food wrappers, and other debris. Catherine made a mental note to have the trash bagged and processed, just in case the killer had tossed something incriminating away. It was amazing the things people would toss in convenient garbage cans and Dumpsters sometimes. In the past, she had recovered guns, knives, gas cans, and even the occasional cadaver from the trash. She shuddered to think how much valuable evidence had been lost to landfills.
And how many missing persons.
A metallic glint caught her attention, only a few feet away from where Debra’s body had fallen. She replaced her winter gloves with latex ones, then knelt to investigate. “Eureka,” she murmured as she spotted the distinctive gleam of a brass shell casing nestled in the bushes. In her experience, shooters rarely stuck around to clean up after themselves. They were usually in too much of a hurry to get away. “I knew you had to be around here somewhere.”
Despite her excitement, she took the time to thoroughly document her find. Snapshots captured the location of the casing, as well as its proximity and orientation to the crime scene. She sketched a map of the park grounds in her notebook, noting the approximate distances involved. As was to be expected, the casing was on the right side of the path, facing toward the distant tree; most firearms ejected their empty cartridges to the right. Not until she was sure she had enough coverage did she gently retrieve the casing and place it in a clear plastic bag. Scooting away from the shrub, she stood up and walked back toward the tennis court.
“That was fast,” Greg commented. He broke off his own search to join her. “You got something.”
“A brass casing, to go along with the bullet in that tree.” She held the transparent bag up to the light. Unfortunately, the explosive heat of the gunshot would have burned away any fingerprints, but hopefully there were still things they could learn from the shell. Ejector marks on the brass indicated that it had been fired by an automatic. “Looks like a 9 millimeter round.”
Brass finished conferring with the security guard. His hands were tucked into the pockets of a heavy overcoat to keep warm. “I’m heading out to pick up Jill for questioning,” he told Catherine. “You coming?”
“Definitely.” She wanted to keep on top of the human element here. Handing the bagged casing over to Greg, she peeled off her latex gloves. “You and Nick finish working the scene here, then meet me back at the lab.”
“Will do.” Greg took custody of the shell, then looked over at the pavement where Debra’s body had been found. A bloody smear was frosting over in the cold. He frowned at this brutal new development. “You really think Jill Wooten shot another person?”
“Could be,” Catherine said. “For a ‘harmless’ cable show, Shock Treatment is racking up quite a body count.”
“I’ll say,” he agreed. “Who knew reality TV could be so . . . real.”
Catherine wondered if he was rethinking his viewing habits.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Not to mention fatal.”
This time Jill Wooten got the full interrogation room treatment. They could not afford to go easy on her, not if she had actually killed her ex-roommate.
“Debra is dead?” she asked again, as though she still couldn’t believe it. “No kidding?”
“This isn’t another hoax,” Brass said firmly. “Debra Lusky’s body was found in Sunset Park earlier this morning.”
“Oh my God.” Jill drooped in her seat, the wind knocked out of her. She wore a red cotton poncho over the T-shirt and sweat pants she’d had on when Brass and Catherine had knocked on her door less than an hour ago. He had been surprised to find her still up, given that it was the wee hours of the morning. She was definitely wide awake now, though. She clutched a steaming cup of coffee as she processed the news of her one-time friend’s death. Jill’s face was pale, but her eyes were dry. Her voice, when she spoke again, was halting. “I honestly don’t know how I feel about that.”
Brass found himself in the position of trying to assess her acting skills. Jill certainly appeared stunned by Debra’s murder, but he couldn’t forget how furious she had been at Debra less than twenty-four hours ago. At least, he noted, she’s not pretending to be completely broken up about it.
Was that a point in her favor?
“I’ll bet,” Catherine said, sitting in on the interrogation. “You two weren’t exactly the best of buds anymore.”
“You know we weren’t,” Jill said. “Still . . . oh my God. I can’t believe she’s really dead.”
“Lot of that going around.” Brass took out his pen and notebook. “I have to ask, where were you around midnight tonight?”
Jill tensed up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa . . . you think I did this?”
“We’re just considering every possibility,” he said blandly, avoiding either sympathy or accusations. “You did have a motive.”
She didn’t deny it. “Yeah, I guess so. You got me there. But I didn’t do it, I swear.”
“So where were you tonight?”
“At midnight?” She didn’t need to search her memory. “At home, right where you found me.”
“Sleeping?”
“Hah!” She laughed bitterly. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since . . . you know when.” Her haggard appearance lent credence to her claim. Dark shadows haunted her eyes, and her hair was a mess. Good bone structure notwithstanding, she wasn’t likely to get many modeling jobs these days—unless they were for insomnia cures. “I was watching TV. Just had a movie on in the background. About the only way to avoid stumbling onto a news story about what happened.”
Brass could believe it. The media was still having a field day with the Shock Treatment shooting. Even people who had never heard of the show before were following the story—and demanding that the authorit
ies get to the bottom of things. Matt Novak had achieved in death the fame and celebrity that had largely eluded him in life, while cheesecake shots of Jill, taken over the course of her modeling career, were all over the tabloids and internet. Just wait until the news about the sex tape leaks, Brass thought. The media will go thermonuclear.
He prayed he could wrap up the case before then.
“Can anyone confirm your alibi?” he asked.
“Not really,” she admitted. “I was home alone all night, hiding from the press.”
Too bad the paparazzi weren’t keeping watch outside, he thought. Then we’d have some way to verify that.
“So when was the last time you saw Debra?”
“That morning at WaxWorkZ.” She cracked a pained, humorless smile. “When you stopped me from kicking her sorry ass. That was the last time I saw her, and the last time I ever wanted to see her.”
“We spoke with Debra yesterday,” Catherine said. “She said she’d been trying to get hold of you.”
“Trying,” Jill stressed. “That doesn’t mean I was taking her calls. Or answering her emails.”
“Not even tonight?” Catherine showed her a cell phone in a plastic baggie. David Phillips had taken the phone off Debra’s body before escorting it to the morgue. “According to her cell phone, she tried calling you several times this evening, only a few hours before her death.”
Catherine wasn’t bluffing, Brass knew. Judging from the phone records, Debra had started calling Jill almost as soon as she’d left this very interrogation suite. Had they arranged to meet later on, perhaps at Sunset Park after midnight?
“Yeah, sure,” Jill said. “But I was screening my calls, especially where she was concerned. There was nothing she had to say that I wanted to hear.” Her eyes moistened, and she choked up a little. “To be honest, I feel kind of bad about that now.” For the first time, guilt showed upon the hollow angles of her face. “You think I should have given her a chance to apologize . . . ?”