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“Women are so strange,” Jack said, shaking his head. “The bed has been slept in. Both pillows have a head indentation.”
“There was no seminal fluid or secretions when I did the autopsy, but none were really expected with the submersion in water. No vaginal tearing. If she had sex it was consensual. But her underwear was on and intact when we found her. That doesn’t explain where or how she got the contusion along her jaw. It was definitely perimortem.”
“Maybe they had a fight after they had sex,” Jack said. “Maybe she put her underwear and the night thing back on. Wonder if she has a robe or something. Usually when there’s a fight after intimacy women tend to cover up. Things got heated and he struck her. A hard enough blow could have knocked her out.”
“Could be,” I said, running the scenario through my head. “Or maybe she brings someone new back to her place and old John downstairs isn’t too happy about it. When the new lover leaves he and Cami get into it. He knocks her out and kills her.”
Jack grunted. “I like that one. I don’t like that guy. We’ll see if CSI can light up some luminol anywhere in the house. We need a location where she was killed.”
“The other scenario is that she never came back that night at all,” I said. “Toby said she had her purse. Maybe she shoved her sexy nightie in her bag and went to the office to meet her lover. Maybe she didn’t want to bring a new lover home and have him bump into John.”
“Except her body ended up back in King George,” Jack said. “So if she did go into DC she made it back into the county alive. Seems like too much trouble for someone to kill her there and then bring her body back across state lines and dump her in the creek. It’ll be easy enough to check and see if she actually went into the office. All of the judges’ staff members are given swipe cards. It shouldn’t be hard to confirm. We can check with the rideshare companies too. The question is where did she go when she came back?”
“Maybe we’re making it too complicated,” I said. “John is her usual bed buddy. Maybe he’s the second pillow.”
“Without the crime scene location and the murder weapon we’re up a creek without a paddle on this one.”
“We might be able to get some hair or skin cells from the other pillow,” I said, opening the nightstand drawer. “Usual stuff in here. Box of condoms that’s half full. Some toys. A couple of pens and a .38 special.”
“Loaded?” Jack asked.
“Six bullets all accounted for,” I said, handing it to him. “A box of bullets underneath it.”
“We’ll test it anyway to see if it’s been fired recently,” he said.
We moved into the bathroom. “All her toiletries are still here,” I said. “And makeup. Things she’d normally pack if she was staying overnight somewhere else.”
“We’ll track down Thea and Kevin and get their alibis,” Jack said, making his way back into the room. “We’ll need to look at Cami’s cases too and see if she was working anything that might be dangerous or controversial.”
“But you don’t think so,” I said.
“No. Being stabbed thirteen times is personal.”
“Very,” I said, agreeing. “Some of those stab wounds were deep. That kind of rage doesn’t normally come from a street criminal hoping to score some cash for drugs. We just need to find out what could make someone elicit that kind of rage.”
“We need to talk to all of them individually,” Jack said. “Tomorrow. Put them on ice for a bit. They’re not going to like being displaced.”
We closed Cami’s door behind us and then went back downstairs to join the others. Cami’s roommates were all where we’d left them in the living area, but they stopped talking when they noticed us.
Jack looked at Toby and asked, “Where did you and Cami eat dinner?”
“Down here,” she said blankly. “In the kitchen.”
“You said you ate around seven thirty?” Jack asked.
“That’s when I called it in,” she said. “I remember because the menu for the Chinese place is on the bulletin board next to the clock in the kitchen. The delivery guy got here around eight o’clock.”
“And what time did Cami leave to go to the office?”
Toby looked off in the distance, trying to recall. “It was probably close to ten,” she said.
“That’s not unusual to go in that late?” he asked.
“Not really,” Toby said. “I’ve gone in at three in the morning before when I realized I left papers I needed at the office. It isn’t unusual to work all-nighters. Cami and I sat down here talking for a while after dinner. And then she got a text on her phone and she kind of rolled her eyes and said she was going to have a late night, and that she had to go pick up some files from the office.”
“How long does it take to get from here to the office?” Jack asked.
“Right at an hour fifteen when there’s no traffic,” Toby said. “The reason we live in this dump is because it’s an easy drive into the city and it’s dirt cheap.”
