Free Faceless by Dawn Kopman Whidden

his jaw locked shut.
     
    He was right. I didn’t have any proof that his stepdaughter was guilty of anything. All we had was what the three girls had told the first officer who responded to the 911 calls.
     
    All three girls had told Officer Beck the same story. Jamie Camp had wandered off and they were concerned, so they went looking for her. When they found her, she was already dead.
     
    Unless we were able to get one of them to tell us something different, I had no reason to hold any of them.
     
    I threw the envelope down on the table in frustration.
     
    “Maybe after a good night’s sleep, Katie, your memory will be a little clearer,” I told her, my eyes targeting hers.
     
    Her eyes were almond-shaped, and in contrast to her dark lashes and the long, dark hair, they reminded me of the sky-blue crayon in a Crayola box. As annoyed as I was with the girl, I could not help but acknowledge how beautiful she was. Her skin was flawless, and even seemed to glow as if it had been airbrushed.
     
    She looked over to her mother and then to her stepfather. I had a feeling she wanted to mouth off to me, but thought twice about it.
     
    “Can I have my cell phone back?” she asked snidely.
     
    I turned to Frank.
     
    “Give her the damn phone back, and mayor, I expect you aren’t going to be planning any family vacations?”
     
    He didn’t bother to answer me, just guided his wife and stepdaughter out of the room.
     
    I did notice that Katie was straining her neck as they walked out of the room in what I thought to be an effort to locate her two friends, from whom she had been separated.
     
    ***
     
    It wasn’t more than five minutes later when Marty came out of one of the other interview rooms. He glanced up and gave me a shrug. Apparently, he hadn’t had too much success, either.
     
    He was standing next to Tiffany Bennett’s parents. The girl’s father, a tall, dark-haired man looked to be lecturing Marty as if he were a disobedient child, but Marty just stood there, nodding his head as if he was agreeing. (It was a cop trick, just pretend you are submissive and the aggressor will eventually say something stupid.)
     
    It took only a second for me to recognize the man as an acquaintance of my husband Glenn. The man was a successful and prominent defense attorney who had a well-established law firm in the nearby town of Monticello.
     
    The girl’s mother looked familiar to me, yet I couldn’t quite place her. She was tall, although her stilettos gave her an additional few inches. Unlike her daughter, Mrs. Bennett was quite attractive and was well proportioned. She was wearing what I assumed to be a pair of two hundred dollar jeans that fit her like a glove and a long car coat. It was apparent that under the coat Tiffany’s mother, who I guessed to be about my age, had a figure that could very well be found on the front cover of fashion magazines.
     
    I subconsciously looked down at my unattractive cop shoes and compared them to what could be no less than a $600 fashion statement that the woman had on her feet.
     
    I comforted myself when I looked up at Mrs. Bennett and saw the sour expression on her face. Either she was uncomfortable having to pick up her daughter at the local prescient who was being questioned about a murder in the middle of the night, or her shoes were killing her. I chose to guess that it was the shoes that made her look as if she was constipated.
     
    Now that I saw some of the adult participants of the puzzle, and with whom I would have to deal. I realized that if these girls were in any way responsible for the death and mutilation of Jamie Camp, it was going to be an uphill battle getting a conviction.
     
    These girls weren’t your average teenagers; they were born into privilege and money. These girls were to this town as the Kennedy clan was to Boston. Even if we could tie them to the murder, trying to get one of them convicted in this town was going to be tough. My mood was