“May I come in?” Annie rapped on the door much as Jackie Weller had done.
“Dr. McCall.” Sheridan walked from behind his desk to greet her. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you back here so soon. I’m hoping you have something good to share with us.”
“I think I do.”
“Have you met Detective Weller?” The D.A. smiled. Next to the petite profiler, who was always meticulously dressed, Weller looked like an unkempt Amazon. Sheridan wondered if Crosby knew just how lucky he was.
“I have. How are you, Detective?” Annie offered her hand.
“I’m hoping I’ll be better once we hear what you have to say.”
“Were you able to get in touch with Agents Cahill, Hoffman, and Muller?” Annie asked pointedly.
“Ah, no. I thought, since time was so short, I’d let Detective Weller here pass along whatever information you might have.”
“I see,” Annie said.
“Ah, here’s Detective Crosby.” Malone tilted his head in the direction of the door, where Evan stood.
“Come on in, Evan. We’re just about ready to start. Take a seat there”-Sheridan pointed to the remaining unoccupied chair-“and let’s see what Dr. McCall has for us.”
“I think you might want to copy these so everyone has their own.” Annie held up the folder containing the lab reports.
Malone left his seat and reached for the folder.
“I’ll take care of it,” he told her, and left the room.
“Just so you know”-Sheridan addressed Annie-“I’m treating these murders as two separate cases. We’re going to work on the assumption that we do in fact have two different killers. Detective Weller is going to be in charge of the Schoolgirl Slayer killings; Detective Crosby will lead the investigation of the unidentified victims. As far as the public is concerned, however, this is one case. Maybe if this second killer thinks he has us fooled, he’ll get careless.”
He turned to Evan.
“Just remember this was your idea, when Jackie solves the big case and gets all the publicity.” Sheridan’s idea of a joke.
“Jackie brings that guy in, she is more than welcome to the publicity.” Evan turned to her as Malone came back into the room. “Hey, this case could make you a star.”
“Right,” she said without smiling. “And the book deal could make me rich.”
Before anyone could comment on that, Malone started passing out the lab reports.
“Dr. McCall, if you’d like to start…,” Sheridan said.
“Just a few things of note,” Annie told them. “First of all, we have recovered several areas of trace evidence. On all your victims, Detective Weller, the lab found traces of maroon carpet fibers. The fibers were matched to carpeting used by several auto manufacturers-specifically Ford and GMC-between 1992 and 1999.”
“Any particular models?” Weller asked.
“No. They used this pretty much across the board. But we’re checking to determine if this color carpet was used exclusively with any exterior colors. We’ll narrow it down as much as we can. In the meantime, there is more…” Annie turned to the next page in the pack. “On these same victims, the lab found snippets of grass.”
“Grass?”
“Grass, Chief Malone. Green grass. Which fits quite nicely with our theory that the killer is a laborer. I understand you’ve narrowed the field down a bit, Detective Crosby?”
“We’ve determined that three businesses were common to all of the victims. Green Briar Country Club, Sweet Summer Pools, and Davison’s Lawn and Garden. All employ workers who would come into contact with mowed grass.”
“Wait a minute, I thought this was my case,” Detective Weller said crisply, the only animation she’d shown since she arrived.
“It is, as of this morning,” Evan responded pleasantly. “I went through all of the businesses and services the victims might have had in common last night. I found that some were used by two or three of the victims’ families, but only these three were utilized by all of them.”
Jackie Weller turned to Annie.
“Anything else that pertains to my case?”
“Actually, I think the rest of the report is pretty much self-explanatory. Most of the remaining trace I’d like to address right now concerns the three unidentified girls.”
“If I might be excused, then?” Weller looked at the D.A. “I’ll need to talk to the agents who came up yesterday, fill them in.”
“Of course. Go right ahead.” Sheridan nodded. “Just keep in touch. We’ll want to know the minute you think you have a viable suspect.”
“Will do.” Detective Weller grabbed her bag, said her good-byes, and left the room in a blur.
“Now, what else do you have for us?” The D.A. turned his attention back to Annie. “You said you have information pertaining to the other girls?”
“Hair from three different men and a dog.”
“Three men and a dog?” Malone leaned forward slightly to look at her, his brows raised.
“Right. Pubic hair from two of the men, head hair only from three. Dog hair from an as-yet-unidentified breed. The lab is still working on that.”
“So three guys are involved; only two had sex with the girls?”
“Looks that way. The hair we found on all three victims is the same. Same three men. Same two pubic hairs.”
“So what’s this other guy doing, watching?” Malone frowned. “With his dog?”
“Don’t know. But the third man has been close enough to the vics to leave a little bit of himself with each of them,” Annie told him.
“Any other trace? Carpet fibers like the others?” Sheridan wanted to know.
“No carpet, no fabric fibers of any kind. I’m wondering if he wrapped them in plastic before he transported them from where they were killed to the place where they were left.”
“Maybe that’s the third guy. Maybe he just moved the bodies.”
“You said the lab was still working on the dog hair. Can they even determine the breed of dog?” Malone asked.
“It will take a little longer to get a match, but yes, they can. Of course, it may well be that the girls came in contact with the dog someplace else. No one’s saying a dog was on the scene. The dog could have belonged to the girls. The evidence just tells us that at some point, all three of these girls came in contact with the same dog, or with something that had dog hair on it.”
“Three guys-one of whom may or may not have a dog-two of whom rape and murder these three girls, while another guy only handles the bodies, maybe only to move them?” Malone rubbed the back of his neck. “Anyone else think that’s odd?”
“There is one other thing,” Annie told him. “All three of these girls had dirt under their fingernails and in the tiny creases of their feet. Dirt with the same composition. We’re checking to see if the dirt samples check out with the areas where the bodies were found, but I’m betting they don’t. We already know that the girls were killed elsewhere and dumped where they were found. There’s no evidence of struggle, nowhere near the amount of blood there’d have been if their throats had been cut right there at the drop site. So they must have been taken someplace, someplace where they were raped and murdered, then moved to these other areas where they were found.”