Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 01 - The Sex Club (5 page)

Every moment mattered.

He stepped back from the dumpster and spoke to the teenage boy for the first time. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” He located his cell phone and used speed dial to call the county medical examiner’s cellular line.

The ME answered on the second ring. “Gunderson here.” Radio and traffic noise muted his voice.

“It’s Jackson. You’re on the way?”

“Yep.”

“I want to take her out of the dumpster.”

“Don’t. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“I need to see her wounds before I talk to the kid who found her.”

“Leave her. I’ll be right there.”

They both hung up. Jackson turned back to the young man, who seemed to be on the verge of tears.

“Name?”

“Trevor Michelson.”

“You live around here?”

“About five blocks away. I come here to shoot hoops.”

“Where’s your ball?”

“My friends took off with it after the homeless guy started shouting.”

The kid was visibly shaking. Was he upset or just cold?

“Tell me about him.”

“He rode up to the dumpster on a bike. After a couple minutes, he started yelling at us to come over. My friends thought it was pretty funny, but then they had to take off. I decided to go see what he was yelling about. I wish I hadn’t. I feel kinda sick.”

“What did the guy look like?”

The kid shrugged and his teeth chattered. “Like an old homeless guy. Dirty jeans. Dark blue jacket that looked like it came from the Mission. Bad teeth. Shoulder length dirty brown hair.”

“Why did he leave?”

“He said he couldn’t deal with cops. Something about a warrant.”

Jackson jotted down the transient’s full description. A patrol officer might know who he was and why he had an arrest warrant. Jackson hoped he would be able to read his notes later. The sun was completely gone now and the dull yellow from the pole light in the parking lot didn’t illuminate much.

“Do you know the girl?”

Trevor shook his head.

“Let me see your hands.”

The kid held them out. Jackson used his flashlight for a decent look. Trevor had long narrow fingers with the swollen knuckles of someone who liked to pop them.

“Over.”

The kid’s left palm had a slight bloody scrape.

“Explain that.”

“I fell on the court.” He lifted his leg to display a matching scrape on his shin. “Can I go now? I’m freezing and I haven’t eaten all day.”

Jackson’s gut feeling was that he was telling the truth. But until he could corroborate the kid’s story, he was a suspect. He jotted down Trevor’s phone number and address as well as the names of his friends who had been there earlier.

Headlights came around the corner of the building, and Gunderson pulled up in the body van.

Jackson turned to the kid. “You can go, but I want you available for further questioning tomorrow. That means you and your friends don’t go anywhere except to school. Are you a student at Spencer High?”

“Yeah. We have an away game in Salem tomorrow.” The idea of missing a basketball game seemed to cause him physical pain.

“We’ll try to talk to you again in the morning.”

Jackson turned toward the medical examiner’s van, and the kid hurried off into the darkness.

The ME’s bald forehead glistened in the lamplight, and his ponytail was held back with a beaded black band. In his mid-fifties, Gunderson had been on the job for seventeen years, and Jackson had witnessed his many hairstyles over the years. The white lab coat over a black turtleneck and black slacks never changed though.

In a few quick movements, the county ME had retrieved battery powered flood lights from the vehicle and set them up near the dumpster. They looked like vehicle headlights on yellow spider legs.

“Any idea who she is?” Gunderson asked.

“Jessie Davenport. Lives about eight blocks from here and was a good friend of my daughter’s.”

“Shit. I’m sorry to hear that.”

Standing at the end of the dumpster, Jackson watched as Gunderson analyzed the girl where she lay, turning her head, lifting her shoulders, and mumbling to himself. The rest of her body remained inside the plastic bag. While the ME clicked off about ten pictures, Jackson’s thoughts kept returning to his own daughter. What if Katie had still been friends with Jessie? Would Katie be dead now too? The idea was unbearable, so he shut it down.

After another minute, they carefully lifted Jessie, still mostly covered by the black plastic, out of the foulness and set her down on a body bag Gunderson had laid out. The ME carefully cut open the plastic and exposed the rest of its contents. Under the glare of work lights, Jessie was nude, but stunningly unblemished. No blood, no bruises, no abrasions. Not even a freckle.

“Who’s going in?” Schakowski asked in response to the unspoken question: Where are her clothes?

“You know you are. There’s coveralls in the back of my car and booties in my bag.”

“Thanks.” More sarcasm than appreciation.

While Schak dug through the garbage, Gunderson examined the body, talking out loud for Jackson’s benefit. “Lack of rigor mortis, except for in the small muscles of the hands.” Then a little later: “Body temperature is 95.5, and it’s 64 degrees right now, but it was warmer earlier. Most likely, she’s been dead for three hours, maybe a little longer. I’d say she most likely died between 4 and 5 p.m. today.”

“Do you see any sign of trauma? A blow to the head maybe?” Jackson wanted to know what had killed her, and so far, her body wasn’t giving it away.

“Not yet.” Gunderson began to probe around the girl’s genitals. Jackson involuntarily looked away. The ME’s voice was unaffected. “Swelling around the inner labia indicates recent sexual activity, but no real sign of rape.”

Sexual activity? Jackson was stunned. Jessie was only thirteen, or maybe fourteen by now. He turned back to the ME. “How do you know it wasn’t rape?”

“There’s no bruising, tearing, or blood,” Gunderson responded. “And the swabs I just took show semen in the anus.”

“What are you saying?” Jackson knew, but he did not believe.

“She had vaginal and anal sex, most likely consensual, sometime today. We’ll see how viable the sperm are under a microscope.”

Jackson struggled to set aside his personal feelings. He had to forget that he knew this girl, that she was his daughter’s friend. He had to be objective and focus on the facts. She was probably sexually abused by someone she knew.

“There’s trace evidence,” Gunderson said, using tweezers to lift something from Jessie’s pubic area. “A short dark hair, definitely not hers, most likely pubic.”

Excellent, Jackson thought. Now all he needed was someone to match it to.

After a few minutes, Gunderson noted that there were faint red marks around the girl’s wrists, indicating she may have been bound. In this case, Jackson had no idea what that meant. If she wasn’t raped, he couldn’t assume she had been forcibly abducted or held against her will.

But like every other person in this county who had died under suspicious circumstances, Jessie would be sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Portland for a full autopsy. Like every other death he’d investigated, Jackson would attend. The trace evidence would be couriered separately to the lab for DNA testing, which could take a week or longer. First thing tomorrow, Jackson would call the lab’s supervisor, a woman named Debbie he’d known for years, and ask her to prioritize the work. This case was more important than any drug-related homicide.

“Any idea on cause of death?”
She didn’t just die.

Gunderson’s permanent frown line puckered a little deeper. “If I had to guess, I’d say either drug overdose or suffocation. And that’s all I can do here. Let’s get her into the van and on her way to the morgue for an ID.”

As they were loading the body, Lara Evans drove up. At thirty-two, she was the youngest detective in the unit and still single. She wore her ash-brown hair short and feathered, emphasizing her heart-shaped face and bright blue eyes. Her expressions were as changeable as a chameleon—sweet one minute, inscrutable the next. She reminded Jackson of the actress Ashley Judd. Evans wore her standard on-the-job combo of black slacks and a pastel blazer.

Jackson quickly briefed her. Evans had been a detective for less than a year, but her first response reminded him why he had picked her for the investigation.

“Consensual sex doesn’t mean she wasn’t the victim of a sexual predator. We need to pull in all the known perverts in this area, registered or not.”

“You’re right. We will.”

Schakowski, who now smelled like cold pizza grease and cat litter, joined them. “I haven’t found a single thing that looks like it might belong to a young girl,” he said. “I’m going to pull the top layer of garbage out and use the spotlight.”

“Great. We’ll check the other dumpsters and cans in the area too.” Jackson turned to Evans. “When McCray gets here, I want you guys to split these units,” he gestured at the two apartment buildings separated by the basketball court, “and knock on every door. Move quickly. Our priority is to find a witness or get a description of anyone who may have been seen in the area this afternoon. We’ll go back tomorrow with photos of the girl and get more specific.”

Jackson watched the body wagon pull onto the street and heaved a sigh.

“I’ll go see her mother.”

Judy Davenport frowned when she first saw him, then looked confused. The last time they’d spoken, Jackson had been upset with her—maybe yelled a little—because she had let Katie and Jessie stay overnight somewhere else when he had been told that the girls would be in the Davenport home.

This time, she did not know why he was here and was not prepared for what he would tell her. Jackson didn’t feel ready either. This was the first time he’d ever had to tell a parent that their young child had been murdered. In the other homicides he’d investigated involving children, the parent or guardian had reported—and committed—the crime.

“Mrs. Davenport?”

She opened the screen door. “What can I do for you?” Judy was mid-aged, mid-sized, and would have been attractive if she had not been stuck in the eighties. The pile of teased gray-blond hair made her face look small, and the padded shoulders of her blouse made her seem insecure.

“Is your husband here?”

“Not any more. Why?” Her eyes darted from Jackson to his car, then down the street. She was starting to panic.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news. Can I come in?”

Judy stepped back, letting the screen door bounce. Jackson followed her into the living room. In all those times he’d picked Katie up here, he’d never come inside. The barrage of color and clutter made him want to run. Mrs. Davenport stood at the end of a maroon-and-green floral couch, facing him. Her hands pressed against her chest, as if to protect her heart from a blow.

Her lips began to tremble. “It’s Jessie, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I’m very sorry to have to tell you that she’s dead.”

For a few seconds, she was absolutely still, as though her brain had shut down. Then a floodwater of tears built up behind her eyes until the pupils looked as if they would drown. Judy Davenport sank onto the couch and began to pray and cry in a cacophony of sounds. She rocked back and forth, begging for Jesus to help her.

“Is there anyone I can call who can come over and stay with you?”

She ignored him, rocking and wailing on her bright floral couch. Jackson moved away, taking a moment to look around at the house. The living room and dining area were cluttered but clean, and totally feminine. Pink and red throw pillows, wall hangings with embroidered poems and prayers, and shelves full of porcelain figures. But nothing, on the surface, to explain how the girl who had lived here had ended up dead.

Jessie’s mother took several gulping breaths, then looked up. “How did it happen?”

Jackson moved to the couch and sat next to her. “We don’t know yet. Someone found her body. But there’s no evidence of any trauma.”

“What are you saying? She just died?”

“She was naked and in a dumpster. We’re treating it like a homicide.”

A wounded animal sound burst from her throat. Davenport closed her eyes and began to pray again, her lips moving in a whispery singsong.

“I know this is very difficult,” Jackson prodded, “but I need to ask you some questions. Maybe some tough questions about Jessie’s social life.”

Suddenly, she sprang off the couch. “You think this is my fault, don’t you? You think I’m a bad mother. You always did.” The outburst was followed by more weeping.

Jackson gave her a minute. “You’re a fine mother. I just need to figure out what happened. And I need your help. Will you please sit down and answer some questions?”

She sat, but she would not look at him.

Jackson took out his notepad. “When was the last time you saw Jessie?”

“This morning before school.”

“What was she wearing?”

She whipped her head around. “Why? Do you think the way she was dressed was responsible for whatever happened to her?”