Page 21 of Shadow of Justice
I picked one up. It had been taken after the ME moved the body. A blue gloved hand pointed to a massive defect at the back of Ellie’s skull.
“Did you find anything of value off your search warrants yet?” I asked.
“No,” Gus said. “It’s gonna take some time for BCI to go through the phones and computer. But I don’t expect any real surprises.”
“We can’t know that,” Sam said. “Simmons has probably gotten lazy … comfortable after all this time.”
“We have this,” Gus said, handing me a photograph. It was a close-up shot of the ground near the base of the tree where she’d been placed.
“What is this?” I asked, although I knew. I’d seen it before.
Gus picked up an evidence bag from the second table. He handed it to me. Inside was a single earring. A flat hoop with little heart-pattern cutouts.
“That was found at the scene twenty-two years ago,” he said. “It looks like a match for the one in Simmons’s treasure box.”
“And there’s this,” Sam said, pulling another photograph. It looked like a yearbook photo. Ellie’s senior year. She wore her hair up. Those same gold hoop earrings dangled from her ears.
“She wore them a lot,” Gus said. “Her favorite pair. Her mother provided other photos of her wearing them. We only ever found the one at the scene.”
“You’re sending these to BCI as well?” I asked. “Will they be able to determine if they really are a match?”
“I’ve got an agent en route,” Gus said. “Hopefully, they’ll come up with something conclusive. They’ll test the underwear and the lock of hair. Though it looks cut, not pulled out at the root. Not sure they’ll be able to extract any DNA. She colored her hair. I bagged one of her hair brushes back in the day. They’ll be able to compare.”
“Good,” I said. “That’s really good.”
“Detective Ritter?” Maggie, one of the civilian clerks, poked her head in. “I’ve got those tapes you wanted.”
Maggie walked in holding a flash drive. She handed it to Gus.
“Everything’s labeled in separate files,” she said.
“Thanks,” Gus said. He had a laptop sitting on one of the tables. Maggie excused herself and he slipped the drive into the side port. A moment later, the file menu populated. Each file was labeled with a name. A witness.
“I videotaped every interview,” Gus said. “God. I don’t even remember interviewing Jamie Simmons. I just went through every name of the people she was in class with. A few people her parents said she hung around with.”
Gus pulled up a folding chair. Sam and I did the same. Gus pushed the laptop further back so we could see it. He connected two speakers into another port and pulled up the file on Jamie Simmons.
A moment later, the screen filled with a shot of the interview room just across the hall. After twenty-two years, it scarcely looked different. The image was grainy, an overhead shot. The camera was placed on the ceiling in the corner of the room.
A skinny kid walked in. Simmons. He had a full head of blond hair back then and wore track pants and a Chicago Bears tee shirt.
A moment later, Gus walked in. It was strange to see him like that. Twenty-two years ago he would have been thirty-four years old. Younger than I was now. He was a bit trimmer. Had more color in his face. But it was like Caro said. Gus had probably looked like a middle-aged man since he was eighteen.
“Thanks for coming down,” Gus said on the screen.
“Oh, of course,” Simmons said. His voice was higher-pitched then. Possibly a function of his youth or the quality of the playback. It might have been nerves but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Gus said. “I understand you and Ellie Luke were friends.”
“Good friends, yes,” Simmons answered.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
Simmons sat with his hands folded on the table. Rod straight, it was more the posture of someone sitting in class. Still, I don’t know that it would have raised any suspicions in me at the time. Being brought in for questioning by the police would be nerve-wracking for anyone. And his friend had gone missing.
“Um … I wanna say it was three days ago. What is this? Sunday? We have an anatomy class together on Thursdays.”
“Did you talk to her that day?” Gus asked.
