“Nice wheels,” Bailey said.
“It’ll do.”
Scott had finished photographing Hayley and had gloved up, preparing to deal with the body. He pulled out the long steel needle to take the liver temperature-one method of determining how long the victim had been dead. I turned away. A few moments later, Scott’s assistant rolled the gurney up to the car and Scott carefully examined Hayley with his flashlight, looking for evidence that might be disturbed when he moved the body.
“Dorian!” he called out. “Take a look here.”
Dorian, who’d already gloved up and put on her shower cap, moved forward with her kit and peered in. She bent down, pulled out some tweezers, and carefully plucked something too small for us to see from the body. Dorian placed it in a small coin envelope and set it into one of the little compartments in the toolbox. Scott finished his examination and told Dorian she could start on the rest of the car. He and his assistant then lifted Hayley out of the trunk and into the body bag that was on the gurney.
Her beautiful blonde hair was tangled and matted with blood and her pale pink sleeveless T-shirt was soaked in it. Her eyes were half closed, and I imagined her bleeding out, dying slowly in that trunk, alone. The lump re-formed in my throat and I quickly turned to focus on Dorian, who’d begun examining the driver’s side of the car with a flashlight and a magnifying glass.
“Hey, Dorian,” I called out. “It’s a long shot, but can you let us know if you find a laptop?”
“No. I figured I’d just put it on eBay.” She shook her head in disgust and muttered something about “inane questions.”
Bailey almost cracked a smile. I heard the zip of the body bag and the wheels roll across the asphalt to the wagon. Only after I heard them slam the rear door did I risk speaking to Scott. “Can you tell cause of death?”
“Stab wounds. But no murder weapon in the trunk that I could see.”
And I doubted very much that Dorian would find it in the cabin of the car either. One of the many reasons why I prefer gunshot wounds for a cause of death. Between the casings and the bullets, you have something to work with. Knives can never be matched the way a gun can. And criminals don’t get attached to knives the way they do to guns, so they don’t mind dumping them.
Bailey gathered all the officers together and asked them to canvass the grounds for a knife. They all nodded solemnly.
When they’d left, I heard Dorian mutter, “Yeah, good luck with that.”
