Free Shiver by Lisa Jackson

Washington.”
    “Okay.” She was still frowning, but gave him a quick nod as she slipped into a more companionable mode. “I did the preliminary walk-through. Everything appears to have happened in this room. From the blood splatter and body position, it looks like both vics were killed right here.” She jabbed a gloved finger at the floor of the cabin. She was obviously convinced of where the crime had happened, but her brow was still furrowed, her frown intense. “But it’s been staged.”
    “Staged?”
    “Um-hmm. What we have here is either a murder-suicide or a double murder. Haven’t figured that out yet. But I will.”
    He didn’t doubt it.
    “I think the man was tied to that chair over there.” She indicated an old metal and plastic dinette chair that had been shoved into a corner of the room. “Traces of blood on it, and you can see that it was dragged through the dust…footprints beside the tracks. Shoes. Our boy here”—she motioned toward the dead man staring sightlessly upward, his eyes glazed, his face bloated—“isn’t wearing any. And we can’t find a pair. They’re too big for the girl, so I’m thinkin’ we’ve got a third party. A big man from the footprints around. We’ll just call him Size Twelve.”
    “The killer.”
    “Yeah, the male vic is a size nine and a half, maybe a ten. This whole scene appears staged to me, but not done well enough that we wouldn’t figure it out immediately. As I said, either the killer’s an idiot, or he wants us to know that he’s behind it; he’s just showing off.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Montoya over the tops of her half-glasses. “There is GSR on the female vic’s hands, and a little blood, but this whole place feels off.”
    “Who threw up?”
    “Her, by the looks of her clothes.”
    “A wedding dress? She was a bride?”
    “Don’t know. Don’t think so…over there in the pile? Running shorts and T-shirt. She changed. Or was changed. Premortem, the blood spatter is all over the wedding dress.”
    “Why would she change?”
    “Beats me.” Dark lines creased her forehead and she tapped her pencil to her lips as she thought. “But whoever our killer is, he wants us to notice that the guy is stripped bare, naked to the world, and the girl is on her way to her own wedding…or something like that. Go figure…”
    Montoya didn’t like what she was suggesting. He stared at the man lying faceup, the woman’s body draped over his. Something about him…
    “You recognize the male vic?” she asked, again pointing with her pencil at the dead man with the thinning brown hair.
    “Should I?”
    “Luke Gierman. Local celebrity of sorts. Shock jock.”
    “Gierman’s Groaners,” Montoya said, remembering the controversial radio personality. He’d never met Gierman but had seen his photo in the newspapers a few times.
    “ID was on him. Cash and credit cards undisturbed, or so it seems. He had two hundred and six dollars on him and a receipt from an ATM from First Congressional Bank on Decatur Street for two hundred dated the night before last at 6:36 P . M .”
    “He could have been abducted about that time.” He decided to review the cameras at the bank.
    “Maybe. As for her…” She pointed a finger at the dead woman lying atop Gierman. “Courtney LaBelle, according to the student identification card in her wallet. She wasn’t carrying a purse, just one of those slim card holders she’d stuffed into a small pocket of her running shorts. No credit card and only five bucks with her. But she did have a driver’s license that indicates she’s from the city, address is in the Garden District.” She clucked her tongue sadly and shook her head. “Eighteen years old.” The edge of Washington’s jaw hardened. “The ME took a preliminary look, thinks from the lividity, flaccid stage of rigor, and body temperature, the TOD was the night before last, probably between ten P . M . and three A . M . He can’t get any