Dead Woman Crossing J.R. Adler (early reader chapter books txt) 📖

“Well, you know how I feel about small towns. A bit too claustrophobic feeling for my taste.” Megan shook her head. “So, what do we have here?”

“We just arrived ourselves, but from what I know we’ve got a dead woman and her baby found alive a hundred yards away from the body.” Sam nodded.

“Let’s have a look,” Megan said, marching toward the crime scene, her hips swaying like a runway model as she walked toward the scene, a crime scene being her stage.

They ducked under the police tape, greeting a deputy in his late forties with a potbelly, Kimberley presumed was from the night shift, and Deputy Bearfield. They were standing guard near the body.

“I got the area sealed off right away.” Bearfield stood stoic. Some of his long, black hair had come loose from his ponytail, blowing in the dry Oklahoma wind.

“Good work, Bear.” Sam gave him a nod.

Kimberley circled around it and was horrified at what she saw. The woman’s head had been severed from the body, a pool of blood emanating out from the open hole, like a wine bottle that had been felled on its side, left unchecked to pour its contents out in an ever-expanding pool of deep-crimson liquid. The sight was grim. Surrounding the weeping graying flesh was the exposed cervical spine and open trachea, a dark cavernous tunnel leading deeper into the once warm depths beyond. Kimberley’s eyes searched the area around the corpse. No head in sight.

“Watch your step,” Megan warned.

Kimberley caught Sam roll his eyes. It seemed the working relationship between Sam and Megan was rocky at best. From what Kimberley could tell so far, Megan had a high level of attitude, but if her work was as impeccable as how she presented herself, it would be worth the price.

“Where’s the head?” Kimberley asked Deputy Bearfield, ignoring Megan’s warning.

“Haven’t located it yet. I’ve got men casing up and down the river in search of it.”

Kimberley nodded approvingly. For being a department that didn’t experience these types of severe crimes very often, they were handling it with a level of professionalism that surprised her.

Sam rubbed his chin with his hand and looked up at Kimberley. “You know what this all looks like, don’t you?”

“I do. I just hoped it wasn’t.”

Sam and Kimberley were already on the same wavelength, almost as if they had been working together for years, not days.

“You should probably wait until I’m done investigating the crime scene before you jump to any conclusions.” Megan lifted her chin.

“Why don’t you stick to your job and I’ll stick to mine,” Sam said tensely. “What’s the cause of death?”

“Well, without the head, all I can say as of now is decapitation. The body looks pretty clean otherwise.” Megan bent down beside the corpse, lifting the hand of the woman carefully. She inspected the nails. “No defensive wounds on the arms or hands. I’d assume she knew her assailant, or she didn’t see it coming, and her death was quick.”

Megan placed the hand back in the dirt and looked over the woman’s clothing. She was dressed in blue jeans and a short-sleeve cotton top. There was a bulge in the front pocket of her jeans. Megan carefully pulled the item from the pocket revealing an older iPhone, maybe a five. She clicked the button and a lock screen appeared.

“Bag and tag this,” Megan said.

A deputy extended an open evidence bag toward Megan, and she dropped it in.

“Can you make that a top priority, so we can get our hands on it?” Kimberley asked, thinking the evidence they needed could be one four-digit code away.

“Of course.” Megan nodded as she continued to inspect the body. One of her tennis shoes was off, just a foot away from the body.

Kimberley followed Megan’s eyes, down the victim’s body to the shoe and beyond. “She looks like she was dragged to this location. There are some drag marks in the dirt around three feet in length, and it seems to have been brushed away after that, like someone was trying to cover their tracks.”

Sam nodded.

“That’s exactly what I was going to say,” Megan said, looking up at Kimberley. “Where did you come from?”

“New York City. I was an NYPD homicide detective,” Kimberley replied.

Megan nodded and then her eyes widened slightly, a moment of recognition. “Wait, King. Kimberley, King… You’re the detective, the one that…” She paused and her eyes became sympathetic. “I saw the headlines a while back.”

Kimberley swallowed hard. She was surprised Megan would have not only heard of the case but remembered the mention of one of the lead detectives, but then again, it had become infamous, and all the major newspapers had covered it.

A slideshow of images played right in front of her eyes, like a private viewing for just Kimberley. The woman shackled to the mattress. The woman strung up by her neck in the attic. The woman in the bathtub. And the…

Kimberley blinked rapidly and swallowed hard before the slideshow continued. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“It’s a shame you guys never caught him.” Megan gave her a sympathetic glance.

A pang of guilt hit Kimberley like a punch to the gut. ‘I… I,’ she began.

Sam coughed, clearing his throat and the conversation. “If this is a copycat killer, we’re going to need to get a log of every person that passed through town recently. This place attracts a fair number of true-crime obsessives and murder tourists attracted by the Katie DeWitt James murder, so it might be a long list.”

Kimberley was grateful Sam had changed the subject. It was obvious Sam knew about her past and had given her the job anyway. A Google search of her name pulled up every news article related to the unsolved case. It wasn’t a case she liked to talk about, but it was one that lived inside of her like a parasite that burrowed its way in, refusing to leave or let go.

“Fair number? How many murder