“That’s fine. Just give me a few minutes to think. Do you have a tablet?”

“You mean like an iPad? Not on me, but I suppose I can authorize the money.”

“I was thinking low tech: a notebook and something I can write with.”

Mike smiled and handed him his pad and a pencil. Decker took it and squatted next to the body.

Angeline Moreau was fully clothed and wasn’t positioned sexually: Her pants hadn’t been pulled off and although her top had flipped up, Decker could see that her bra was clasped. There was nothing to suggest sexual assault, but a rape kit would be ordered anyway. Sometimes the killer orders the victim to put her clothing back on. Or maybe she had recent, consensual sex and that could be a lead.

Since it was wintertime and the windows had been closed tight, there was no insect activity. No flies, no maggots, and no way to date the body using the critters. The flesh hadn’t been eaten up by external factors, but the body gases were exploding from the inside out. She had a bloated, eggplant-colored face that was shedding skin. Eyeballs had sunk into her sockets. Because of the swelling, it was hard to decipher things like ligature marks and bruises. Even things like knife wounds close up with the swelling. But Decker could discern dried blood that had leaked from the nose and a split lip. As he examined the face further, he noticed dark spots that could have been bruises.

“Looks like she might have been punched hard in the face.” Decker stood up. He ripped out a few blank papers of the tablet and started scribbling. “This is your department and your call. But this is what I’d suggest.”

“Please.”

“First of all, Stacy is freezing out there. Rotate a couple of people every two hours outside so no one gets frostbite. Second, let’s cordon off the area. If you don’t have crime tape, have someone get some traffic cones and we’ll tie string around them. We need to keep whatever we have left intact. Third, get everyone out of the apartment except a few of your select chosen. Put all the rest on canvass duty. Assign them to talk to every single neighbor within a couple of blocks. If this is mostly a student apartment, the kids aren’t going to feel loyal to Greenbury so we may hit a wall of silence. There’s a dead girl here and we need to push. I’m not saying we run roughshod over the kids, but we need them to know that we’re not going to go away. So if they know something, they’d better come forward now. No one wants to feel idiotic. Last . . .”

He sighed and shook his head.

“We’ve got to do a notification. It’s the proper thing to do, and maybe talking to her relatives will give us a direction.”

Mike nodded. “I’m sure the school has the name of her parents.”

“I know you didn’t find a cell phone. Did you find bills in her desk?”

Mike walked over to the desk drawer and pulled it open with a gloved hand. Inside was a massive pile of paperwork. “Be my guest.”

Decker gloved up and took out the stack. He found what he was looking for and held it up. “Her phone bill from last month . . .” Scanning down the list. “You know, let me go to the station house and I’ll start calling some of these numbers. I could use some help with that.” He looked around. “Uh, where’s McAdams?”

“He was looking green around the gills so I sent him home.”

“He went home?” Decker felt his fury rise. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

“Pete, he didn’t come to the department through usual channels. The mayor put him with us as a favor to his father. He didn’t sign up for this shit, and frankly I don’t want flak from the town biggies. I told him he could leave.”

“You are way too nice.”

“If you need him, I’ll call him back.”

“I don’t need him, but he needs to be here. I’ll make the call.” Decker pulled out his cell phone. “Because if I don’t see his sorry ass down at the station in fifteen minutes, he’ll have a lot more to worry about than losing his lunch.”

CHAPTER 9

WHILE WAITING FOR McAdams to make an appearance, Decker downloaded the photographs from Jenny’s camera to the station-house computer. She’d done a thorough job, taking dozens of pictures from all different perspectives. It gave Decker a chance to really study the body without distraction and noise since the place was basically deserted. Then he started going down the phone numbers. He picked out a few with out-of-town prefixes that were frequently called.

The first number kicked into a male voice: Leave your name and number and I’ll call you back if I feel like it.

Obviously not her parents. After the beep, Decker said, “This is Detective Peter Decker from Greenbury Police. Call me back as soon as you can.”

The next number also went to a voice mail, but this woman on the message was soft-spoken and sounded older. Decker tried to be as gentle as he could. “This is Peter Decker from Greenbury Police. If someone could please call me back as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it. Thank you very much.”

He hung up the phone and thought about the case. He had to give kudos to Mike. The captain wasn’t territorial. He wanted a quick resolution: to do justice for the victim, to put the town at ease, and to do a good job.

Decker picked up the receiver to make a third call just as McAdams walked into the station house. The two of them exchanged looks. Tyler sat down at his desk and said nothing, fiddling with paperwork while wearing a hound dog face. The kid wasn’t much older than Hannah and something about Tyler’s expression brought out the parent in him. He hung up the phone and tried to keep his face neutral. “You okay?”

McAdams looked up and then he looked down. “Yeah, fine. What do you need?”

Decker crossed his arms and regarded him until the kid looked up again. “Tyler, first times are the hardest. Almost everyone gets a little sick when you see something like that. Nothing wrong or embarrassing about it. But should something like this happen in the future—which is very unlikely here—this is what you do. You grab a nearby bag and place it over your nose and mouth to try to slow down your breathing. Sometimes that works. If not, and you have to throw up, you throw up in the bag, not in the toilet because there might be forensic evidence in there and you don’t want to contaminate anything. Then afterward, you wash your face with cold water and go back and do your job. No one will say anything because we’ve all been there, okay?”

“Yeah . . . yeah, you’re right. Sorry.”

“No problem. So take out a notebook and let me bring you up to speed. Let me get everything out before you ask your questions.”

Decker recapped his conversation with Captain Mike Radar. The kid was silent but he did take notes. “I have the victim’s phone bill. I’m going down the list, trying to find her parents so I can do a notification. That’s a lousy job even for someone experienced, so I’ll do that.”

He slid the phone bill across his desk over to McAdams’s desk.

“This is last month’s phone bill so it’s out of date, but right now it’s all we have. What I’d like you to do is to go down the numbers and find out what matches to what. If you find her parents, give the call to me. As soon as I make the notification, we’ll go to Littleton and start interviewing friends and acquaintances to see if we can get a feel for who she is—”

“Sorry for leaving, Decker. That was really unprofessional.”

“It’s past history, Tyler. Let’s just move forward because we have a lot of work—” His cell rang. Decker looked at his phone window. “This may be the parents. Hold on.” He depressed the button. “Greenbury Police.”

“I’m looking for a Peter Decker.”

A woman’s voice. He said, “This is Peter Decker. Who am I talking to, please?”

“This is Karen Bronson. What’s going on?”

“Are you related to Angeline Moreau, ma’am?”