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Mettner looked back and forth between them. Once satisfied that they were finished speaking, he continued his review of Dr. Feist’s autopsy findings. “Eve Bowers’s cause of death was strangulation with ligature. You have the file up? You’ll want to see the photos.”
Josie clicked through various documents until she found the photos of Eve’s throat that Dr. Feist had taken on exam. Noah came around the desks and stood behind her, leaning over her shoulder to get a better look. Under the harsh lights of the morgue, the red ligature marks were in stark contrast to Eve’s otherwise unblemished, youthful skin.
“Two inches wide,” Noah read. “What did he use? A belt?”
“I don’t think so,” said Josie. “Look at this.” She pointed to the top of the ligature mark where a minuscule pattern emerged. Tiny, uniform grooves almost like a dense webbing. “Whatever he used, it was tightly woven.”
“Rope?” said Noah.
“I don’t think so,” said Josie.
“Too wide to be a piece of rope,” Mettner said. “The weaving is too tight, I think.”
Mettner added, “We were thinking some kind of cloth women’s belt? Dr. Feist found fibers under two of Eve’s fingernails.”
Noah said, “A leash of some kind, maybe?”
“Too wide, I think,” Mettner said. “But yeah, the pattern looks similar, doesn’t it?”
Josie felt a surge of hope. This was something. It might not help them identify or locate the killer today, but it was more than they’d had yesterday. Between this and the DNA samples found at each crime scene being expedited, the case might move more quickly. She kept clicking through the file until she found the images of the fibers which were so small, they had to be viewed under a microscope. Tan-colored.
Mettner said, “Hummel was able to analyze them in-house. Polyester. Oh, and I almost forgot—Beau Collins sent over those handwriting samples for Eve and Claudia. The writing on the back of the envelope belonged to Claudia.”
“Did you upload them to the file?” asked Josie, clicking furiously. She found what she was looking for and pulled up photos of each sample. She put them side by side with the photo she’d taken of the envelope. Noah leaned in to study them. Josie caught a whiff of his aftershave.
“Yeah, that’s definitely Claudia’s writing,” he said. “Look at the difference.”
Eve’s handwriting was a series of hurried slashes, whereas Claudia’s handwriting was small and neat, matching the envelope Josie had found in the pages of the Collinses’ book. “Why would Claudia write down Archie Gamble’s name?”
Mettner shrugged. “Why would Eve take the envelope?”
Noah stepped away and moved back to his own desk. “Neither of them is here to elaborate, unfortunately. All we’ve got is Beau, who has already insisted that neither he nor Claudia knew Gamble.”
Mettner said, “She wrote it on the back of a piece of junk mail, though. You don’t write down the names of people you know on your junk mail. She was jotting this down for some other reason. Then, somehow, the envelope ended up inside the book and in Eve’s apartment.”
Josie sighed. “You’re right, and this doesn’t really get us anywhere, but now we know that Archie Gamble—for whatever reason—was on Claudia’s radar before she died. The postage mark on the envelope was mid-December, so at some point in the last month, she became aware of him. Aware enough that she wrote his name down. What if she gave it to Eve to check out?”
“That’s possible,” Noah said. “Listen, all we can accurately say is that there is a very high probability that the handwriting is Claudia’s. Everything else is just speculation, and I’m not sure it’s going to get us anywhere.”
Josie nodded. “Let’s move on then.”
Noah looked over at Mettner. “Did you hear anything from the ride-share companies?”
“Yeah. No passengers were picked up or dropped off near the city park around the time of Eve’s murder or where her car was found.”
“Speaking of where the car was found,” Gretchen said, pulling the cell phone away from her ear, “Precious Paws Rescue was over at Archie Gamble’s house today gathering up feral cats. He’s got a burn barrel behind his house. The ash at the bottom of it was still warm.”
A collective groan went up around the room. Burn barrels were not uncommon in Central Pennsylvania. Many people with large properties burned their trash rather than pay for waste removal. Or they burned remnants of leaves and downed trees. But for Archie Gamble to be burning things inside his barrel right after two murders—and immediately after the vehicle of one of those victims was found close to his property—was not a good sign.
Then again, it could mean nothing. That was the infuriating thing about murder investigations. Sometimes you didn’t know what was important until it was important.
“I don’t suppose we can get a warrant for the remains inside the barrel,” Noah said.
“We tried,” Gretchen said as she dialed another number on her phone. “Not enough probable cause. Not a strong enough connection between Eve’s murder and his burn barrel.”
Josie swore. Dead end after dead end.
“Let’s talk about alibis,” said Noah.
