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Despite already having seen a screenshot, a chill settled over Jo as she glanced down at the phone. This text was more specific, including Deena Scott’s name and the address of the gym, followed by “three down.” Again sent from a new number, this time just before eight in the morning.
Jo stared back up at Bernard’s face. Despite ashen skin and wide eyes, her expression was grimly determined.
Bernard gestured toward the crime scene. “Your dispatch sent some other detectives. I don’t think they realized it was connected to the other murders.”
“Detective Goran figured it out when he saw the blindfold. He called me on the way.” Jo searched past the crime-scene tape for Eli Goran’s close-clipped brown hair, and found him standing next to his partner, Charles Coyne. Coyne jutted his chin in her direction; Goran turned and waved her over. “We need to go talk with them. If anything else happens in the meantime, text me right away.”
Bernard nodded and went back to surveying the crime scene.
Jo and Arnett checked in with the officer securing the perimeter; once they’d outfitted themselves in PPE, he logged them in and let them past. They hurried over to the detectives.
“This is turning into a habit. The second time in as many months you show up to take a case from us,” Goran joked.
Coyne nodded his head toward a pair of feet sticking out from behind a car. “Vic’s right over there.”
Jo followed his nod. “Marzillo’s here already?”
“She lives just outside Granton,” Arnett said.
“Right, of course.” Jo chastised herself for lack of focus and turned back to Goran and Coyne. “What are we looking at?”
“Pretty clear-cut,” Goran answered. “Beaten to death with a crowbar. Perp left that behind, by the way, so I’m guessing he used gloves and we’ll find nothing. And put a blindfold on her, like the others.”
“Who found her?”
“Homeless guy who uses behind that dumpster as his pied-à-terre. Mickey Millward. Claims he didn’t touch anything and just went into the grocery store to have them call us,” Goran said.
Jo glanced around the strip mall, taking in the layout. The gym sat on the innermost corner of two building complexes that formed an L. The long side of the L also contained a sandwich shop and a Thai restaurant, both currently closed; the smaller section held a twenty-four-hour mini-supermarket and a Starbucks. The parking lot filled the square between the two, and also extended between the two sides of the complex into the back side, where a series of dumpsters lined the property’s fence. “Hopefully someone’s got security footage,” she said.
“We have uniforms canvassing as we speak,” Coyne said, then pointed up toward the mini-mart. “But I’m not optimistic, ’cause of the angles.”
She followed the gesture, and nodded. The security camera fronting the market pointed outward, away from the gym and the part of the parking lot that poked back between and behind the buildings. The gym’s camera did the same, facing straight out away from the far end of the lot.
“Is there a back way out of the lot?” she asked.
Goran nodded. “Yep, out of sight of all cameras. And there’s a break in the fence behind the dumpster you can access on foot. Millward uses it, and told us everyone from the apartment complex on the other side does, too.”
Jo rubbed her brow. “So we’ll need to canvas that complex.”
“Happy as I am to turn this over to you,” Coyne said, expression somber, “we’re already here, so we might as well help. We can take the apartments.”
“We appreciate it,” Jo said, not fooled. SPDU detectives always had full plates; their offer to help reflected how disturbed they were by the series of killings. “The faster we can identify anyone who might have seen anything, the better.”
“We’ll alert you as soon as we have even a hint of anything.” They strode off toward the perimeter tape.
“Have you informed Hayes about this yet?” Jo called out to them.
“We didn’t want to rob you of the opportunity. We know how much you love your gabfests with her,” Goran called back over his shoulder.
Jo gave him a sarcastic smile and wave. “If they hadn’t offered to help us, I’d flip him off.”
“Not to mention the gathering crowd.” Arnett tilted his head toward the onlookers standing outside the outer perimeter, some with cameras out and recording.
Jo swiveled and crossed the pavement to Marzillo. As she rounded the edge of the car, the rest of Deena Scott came into view. She was short, not much more than five-two. Slender. Early fifties. Dark brown skin, short natural hair streaked with gray. Her simple gold wedding band brought a lump to Jo’s throat—she had a spouse, maybe even children, waiting somewhere for her to come home. Her eyes were covered by the blindfold, but her mouth lay open in a slack gasp. She lay on her back, dressed in tight-fitting workout clothes, arms posed in the same position as Ashville’s and Sakurai’s had been. But while the other two women’s blood had been relatively contained, Scott’s head, and the pavement around it, was drenched.
Marzillo launched in without preamble, voice weary. “Bludgeoned to death, most likely with that crowbar.” She pointed to where it lay, not two feet from Deena’s head. “ME will have to confirm officially, but I’ll risk it.”
Also not in the mood to mince words, Jo squatted down to peer at the brown-stained blindfold. “Added after, same as the other two?”
