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“Yes, ma’am.” Rio headed toward the truck. “Do you want me to call Rowley?”
Jenna shook her head. “No, with Wolfe on scene soon, we won’t need him.” She turned to Kane. “Someone murdered that woman. He must have left a trace.”
“First up, we get her prints and run them against anything we find inside the house.” Kane pulled a fingerprint scanner from his pocket. “I’ll need to move her hands. So we’ll need photographs of her in situ.”
Nodding, Jenna scanned the front yard and walked slowly across the driveway. “It’s impossible to see if anyone parked a vehicle here. I guess we start with her phone. I’ll look for that and her purse. We need to positively ID her, although I believe she is Dakota Slade. It’s the right address and Rio ran her plates. The vehicle here belongs to her. I recall reading a death notice for a Wilma Slade, who was the grandmother of Dakota, so I’m guessing the house belongs to her as well.”
“If she’s lived here all her life, there will be dental records as well.” Kane frowned at her and pulled his hat down over his ears. “Why would someone want to murder her? Did she have any relatives? Anyone who might want a cut of the house and any inheritance?”
Raising both eyebrows, Jenna stared at him. “Looking at the house, I doubt anyone left her a huge amount of money. The place needs work and the furniture must be fifty years old at least. I’m sure if she lived here with her grandma, she’d at least splash out and make one room comfortable. I didn’t see much apart from the new rug.”
“There is a new TV.” Kane led the way inside the house. “I didn’t see any closets filled with clothes either. I figure she cleaned out her grandma’s things. Apart from one room, which was obviously hers, the bedrooms upstairs are stripped bare. Empty, apart from beds, closets, and nightstands.”
Jenna followed him inside, pulling out her phone. “The house is clean. Maybe grandma was a hoarder? She’d likely been wanting to clean it for years.” She walked into the family room and took photographs. “How did her killer get inside the house?”
“She must have invited him.” Kane waited for her to finish and bent to scan the victim’s fingerprints. “We’ll need to check out her movements before her death. She must have had a boyfriend or at least met someone. Single women don’t just open the door to strangers.”
“Hmm… unless he was masquerading as someone else.” Jenna straightened. “Someone checking for a gas leak, for instance, or delivering a parcel?” He shrugged. “Not that there’s a parcel anywhere. Although, he could have taken it with him. It seems to me he walked in and murdered her.”
Nodding, Jenna looked at the victim. “She looks so relaxed. Not posed. I figure she knew her killer.”
“Yeah.” Kane moved around the room, scanning for fingerprints. He bent over the doorknob and shook his head. “All her prints so far. This guy is a ghost.”
Searching for a purse or phone, Jenna moved a cushion beside the victim. “I’ve found her phone. I’ll check out the kitchen for her purse.”
“No need.” Kane turned to her and pointed into the passageway. “It’s on the table beside the front door, with a bunch of keys.”
As Jenna walked into the passageway, Rio came through the front door. “No signs of a break-in anywhere. The back door and all accessible windows are fine. No footprints, tire tracks… zip.” He turned as a vehicle came along the driveway. “Wolfe has arrived.” He smiled. “Ah good, Em is with him.”
The slow-burning relationship between Rio and Emily Wolfe was on hold while she completed her studies to become a medical examiner, but they did spend their downtime together. Jenna smiled as Rio turned on his heel to go and greet her. She photographed the keys and purse and then dropped them into separate evidence bags. She added the phone to the pile at the front door and went to greet Wolfe. He’d arrived with Colt Webber, his assistant and badge-holding deputy. Wolfe stood over six feet with white-blond hair and piercing gray eyes, a true professional on the job but with a heart of gold. “Morning. Dave figures the victim was hit with a powerful stun gun at the base of the skull. We haven’t found any prints other than the victim’s. We presume her name is Dakota Slade. Her vehicle checks out and so does her general description.”
“A powerful stun gun?” Wolfe’s expression darkened and he pulled on mask and gloves. “They are made to stun not kill. If this is so, someone tampered with the device to increase the amperage. That’s the only way to make one lethal. It would mean a complete rebuild. They don’t have the capacity to create enough amps to kill.”
Hearing Kane’s explanation echoing in her head, she walked behind him into the house. “Kane said the same thing. The body is in the family room on the left.” She followed him inside. “No signs of forced entry. No signs of anyone else in the house but Dakota.”
“It’s warm in here.” Wolfe turned to Emily. “Check the temperature and hunt down the setting on the thermostat.” He looked at Rio. “Go with her and check the thermostat and all around for prints.” He looked at Jenna. “I’ll need to know when she was last seen. The high temperature in here will give a false reading on her time of death, so you’ll need to find as narrow a window as possible.”
“I’ll call the general store. It was the manager who called 911 this morning when he couldn’t reach her.” Kane walked to the door pulling out his phone.
“You mentioned sweeping for prints.” Wolfe walked around the sofa frowning. “Did you move the body?”
Jenna handed him her phone. “Yeah, but only her fingers. Kane used his scanner to get her prints for elimination purposes. These images were taken prior. I’ve uploaded all the shots we took to the server.”
“Kane’s correct. The burn marks on the back of the neck would suggest a stun gun.” Wolfe indicated the marks at the base of the skull. “They are typical of contact wounds. The hair here is singed as well, but y’all know this might not have been the cause of death. There’s always an entry and exit wound, and although y’all believe the charge came out through the eye sockets, you’d be incorrect.” He bent and lifted up the victim’s feet, one at a time. “See here?” He pointed to burn marks on the base of each shoe. “Electric charge grounds itself through the body. If she’d been wearing rubber-soled shoes, the outcome may have been different.”
Confused, Jenna stared at the black holes where the eyes should have been and swallowed hard. “Hit by a surge of electricity that burned out her eyes must have fried her brain.”
“Not always.” Wolfe shrugged. “People get hit by lightning, and because they’re wearing rubber-soled shoes they survive. It’s the grounding that kills.” He bent to take instruments from his forensic kit. “An electrical charge that caused that much damage to the eyes could cause a brain stem dysfunction or a cardiac arrest, then we need to consider respiratory paralysis, not to mention multiorgan failure. All are caused by the passage of electric current through the body when it grounds. An autopsy will determine the correct cause of death.” He smiled at Jenna. “This is all part of the mystery, Jenna. The obvious is often the last thing we expect to find.”
She looked up as Kane walked into the room. “Did you get any info?”
“Yeah, heaps. She left work at the usual time. So if she came home without stopping by the store or anywhere else, she would have been here by six-thirty.” Kane scratched his cheek. “She’s never missed a day since starting work, is always on time. Lives alone here since her grandma died. Doesn’t have a boyfriend, but the manager noticed a guy hanging around the general store. He came by three times in a row and she helped him. He said they became quite friendly.” He looked at Jenna. “I figure we need to speak to the manager and get more information. He was shocked by the news of her death, and I tried to ask more questions but he’s alone in the store until lunchtime and was too busy to talk.”
“What time did Rio drop by?” Wolfe straightened from examining the body.
Jenna checked her files. “He dropped by at nine. She usually shows for work at eight sharp. So last seen at six leaving work and nine this morning.”
“Okay.” Wolfe blew out a long sigh. “That’s your time of death. No amount of science will make it any closer, but from the livor mortis in her arms and feet, I’d say she wasn’t moved and died here. The time of death in my estimation would unofficially be before midnight. It takes some time for the blood to pool in the extremities.”
