“Someone will have to care for Spencer’s animals,” Matt said.
“I’ll call animal control.” Bree turned right. “I’ll take the bathroom.”
Matt crossed the pale gray carpet to stand by the bed. A wallet sat on the nightstand, next to an iPad. He took a picture, then picked up the wallet and thumbed through it. “Cash and credit cards are still in his wallet.”
Bree poked her head out of the bathroom and frowned. “I found a two-year-old bottle of Vicodin in the medicine chest. More than twenty pills are left.”
“So it’s unlikely he was a drug addict. And this wasn’t a burglary gone wrong unless the stolen items were rare reptiles.” Matt closed the wallet. Cash, drugs, and electronics were the most commonly stolen household items.
“Gunshots or blunt force trauma say burglary gone wrong. Plastic wrap around the head feels personal.” Bree ducked back into the bathroom.
Matt turned to the closet. Clothing was organized by type, with color subgrouping. He checked labels and pockets. There were no dry-cleaning bags shoved onto shelves, not a single stray dirty sock. Shoes were lined up in a neat, polished row on the floor.
“Find anything?” Bree asked from the doorway.
“Every pocket is empty.” Matt straightened the hanger of the suit pants he’d been searching. “Spencer liked designer labels.”
“He used pricey personal grooming products too,” Bree said. Her phone buzzed. She tilted the phone, still attached to her belt, to view the screen. “The ME is here.”
Matt followed her out the front door. In addition to the medical examiner’s van, several news crews had also arrived. A deputy was barring them from the property, so they were setting up to deliver sound bites from the road. Bree made a sharp turn, clearly avoiding the media, and they walked along the side of the house to the rear yard. When they reached the back patio, Todd joined them at the edge of the pavers.
The medical examiner, Dr. Serena Jones, was a tall African American woman. She was all business, from her unflinching gaze to her ground-eating stride. On the cases Matt had worked over the past months, she’d proven to be an excellent ME. Thorough, compassionate, dedicated. She stood a few feet from the body, scanning the scene. She wore rubber boots, a parka, and a knit hat over her close-cropped hair. She exchanged a pair of leather gloves for surgical ones. While she sized up the crime scene, her assistant took pictures. He moved in a spiral pattern around the body, photographing the victim and scene from all angles and distances.
“Killer did a thorough job of it.” Dr. Jones leaned closer to the victim’s head. “That’s a lot of plastic wrap. I’m going to wait to remove the plastic until I get him to the morgue. Don’t want to lose any evidence.”
Bree nodded in agreement.
Dr. Jones tilted her head, assessing the victim’s hands. “I don’t see defensive wounds, but I’ll have to confirm that on autopsy.”
The ME pressed the skin on the back of the victim’s hand and moved a finger. “He looks relatively fresh. Rigor hasn’t set in yet.” Rigor mortis, the postmortem stiffening of muscles, typically began about two hours after death, though the cold could slow the process. “Hard to judge lividity with a fully dressed body, but I doubt he’s been dead more than two hours. Body temp should give us a decent approximation of time of death.”
In general, a dead body lost approximately 1.5 degrees of heat after death in a process called algor mortis. But using body temp to determine the postmortem interval, or PMI, was complicated by factors such as ambient temperature, the body’s state of dress, and how lean the corpse was. Once a dead body reached ambient temperature, algor mortis was no longer useful in determining time of death.
Once her assistant stepped back, Dr. Jones pulled a scalpel from her kit. Squatting next to the body, she began to raise the hem of the jacket and underlying T-shirt. Liver temperature was the most accurate way to measure core body temp. “Look here.” She pointed to a pair of small red marks on the victim’s hip. “Burns from a stun gun.”
“Now we know how he was overpowered,” Bree said.
“Was it definitely a stun gun and not a Taser?” Matt asked.
“Yes.” The ME pointed to the burns. “There are no punctures from barbs.”
A Taser fired a projectile that attached to the target, while a stun gun was a close-range weapon that required the user to physically hold the device in place to deliver the shock. A Taser could be used from ten feet away. A stun gun was up close and personal.
The ME continued. “There are multiple strikes here at the hip. There’s a nerve center at the hip. Hitting him here maximizes the effectiveness of the stun gun.”
Matt leaned over to see the marks more clearly. “So, the killer or killers knew what they were doing.”
“Great.” Bree’s voice rang with sarcasm. “Just what we needed, an experienced killer who likes to get close to his victim.”
CHAPTER SIX
Several hours later, Bree drove toward Jasper LaForge’s address, dreading the news she needed to deliver. In the passenger seat of her official SUV, Matt leaned sideways to access the dashboard computer. They’d dropped off his Suburban at the sheriff’s station.
A death notification was one of the worst duties she had to perform. But it needed to be done that night, before Spencer was identified by the press or on social media. No one should accidentally find out about a deceased loved one. It was bad enough to find the police on your doorstep late at night.
“What do we know about the brother?” Bree asked. The purpose of their visit was to deliver the death notification, but they were also investigating a murder, a dual process that required a delicate balance of compassion and intrusion.
“He’s fifty-seven. He’s lived at his current address for eleven years.” Matt tapped on the keyboard. “I don’t see any legal issues other than a couple of speeding tickets. He has a motorcycle license in addition to a regular auto license.”
The GPS announced their arrival. Most of the homes on the block were neat. But not this one. Not much light managed to penetrate the filthy glass of the front porch lamp, but even in the dimness of a half moon, Bree could see mold spreading over the siding and weedy vines crawling through cracks in the driveway. Darkness and neglect gave the house a menacing air. It was the sort of house neighborhood kids dared each other to tag.
Bree studied the run-down property. “Are we sure this is the right address? It doesn’t look much like Spencer’s place.”
Matt checked the screen of the dashboard computer. “This is it.”
They got out and walked toward the small, one-story house. The rusting carcass of an ancient sedan perched on cinder blocks in the side yard. There was no garage, but a tarp-covered motorcycle occupied the carport. Blinds covering the front window were closed tight.
Next to her, Matt pressed the doorbell. No chimes echoed inside. The house remained quiet. He rapped his knuckles on the door next to the peephole.
She’d left Todd at the scene, assisting forensics and requesting the appropriate warrants for Spencer LaForge’s cell phone, financial, and other personal records, including his dating app profiles and history. The ME had taken away the body, but the forensics techs in Tyvek coveralls were still crawling over the house and patio, dusting and swabbing surfaces and bagging and tagging evidence.