Page 81 of Animal's Reformation
Chapter Eighteen
Duct tape coveredthe victim’s body as she lay naked on her back with her arms and legs tied in a spread eagle position to the posts of the bed. She was covered in blood and it looked as though multiple stab wounds had been the cause of death. Detective Ed McCue noticed bruising around the woman’s neck and noted it in his report.
“Her name is Samantha Paulson,” Officer Levi White said.
The detective cocked his head in the young officer’s direction. “You know her?”
White nodded. “Her son, Daniel, was one of my mom’s students at Slavens a few years ago. My mom teaches second grade at the school, and I volunteer to coach softball in the summers. Daniel’s a great player. I can’t believe she’s dead. This is going to be tough on him.”
“Was she married?” McCue jotted down everything White had told him in a small spiral notebook. He was old school and refused to use the handheld notebooks the department had given all law enforcement two years before.
“Divorced, but my mom suspected she was having an affair with one of the teachers at the school—amarriedteacher.”
“You got a name?”
The officer shook his head. “No. My mom wasn’t 100 percent sure about the affair, so she didn’t tell me that name.”
“Sounds like that’s where I’m going to have to start. Let me know if you hear anything about the murder through the school’s grapevine.” He turned away and stared again at the young woman. “White?”
The policeman stopped at the door of the hotel room and looked over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“Do you know how old she was?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Gotcha.” McCue scribbled the number on the piece of paper.
“Older than the other one in our county and the other five in the neighboring counties,” Detective Ibuado said as he approached the bed.
“Yeah, but it’s the same sonofabitch doing the killing. This murder is similar to the last one and the others in Chester and Valley Pine counties.” He looked around the room. “An out-of-the-way bed and breakfast or boutique hotel, the woman registers alone, duct tape across the mouth, tied up, stab wounds and the bruising around the neck. I’ll bet she was raped too.”
“And the sheets are gone.” Ibuado blew out a long breath. “Seems like we got a serial killer in Pinewood Springs.”
McCue ran his hands over his face. “Fuck! We gotta find this madman fast.”
“We need to alert the papers so women can be careful.”
“Yeah, but let’s not jump to conclusions until we get the reports back from the coroner. We’ve got to find a connection between these murders. Something is tying them all together, but what?” McCue tapped the cap of his pen against his mouth.
“I’ll order copies of the case files on the women in the other counties. Maybe we can see something in them that they don’t.” Ibuado slipped his electronic notebook into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“That’ll be a start. Let’s hold off with the press for a bit—I don’t want this killer going underground or moving on.”
“Agreed,” Ibuado said as he walked away from the crime scene.
The squeaky wheels of the gurney drew McCue’s attention away from the body and to the corner’s crew as they entered. He nodded to the men then trudged out of the room and down the stairs to the lobby. A growing number of hotel guests stood in the lobby, speaking in hushed voices, their gaze fixing on him as he walked over to the manager.
“I’m going to need the guest list for the past two days. Do you have security cameras? I didn’t see any when I walked around the property.”
A flush crept across the cheeks of the thirty-something woman. “No.” She pulled at the collar of her lavender blouse. “The owner of the hotel hasn’t installed them yet, but I’ll have one of the desk clerks print out that list you wanted. Can you tell me anything about the”—she glanced around and lowered her voice—“murder?”
“At this time I’m not at liberty to say anything. I’ll be in touch.”
The detective walked away and paused at the large glass front door and watched as the gurney rolled by. The black body bag wiggled from side to side as the crew navigated it across the terra cotta tiles.
The detective sucked in a breath through his teeth and followed the techs out into the bright sunlight. His next stop was the one that he hated the most: death notification. Even though he’d been in law enforcement for twenty-five years, there was never a right way of telling a family that their loved one had been murdered.
Putting on his sunglasses, McCue plodded over to his car.
