Free Damaged by Pamela Callow Page A

know. She could be her mother-in-law, I guess.”
    “Why was she consulting Kate Lange?”
    Ethan sighed. Man, he was an idiot. “I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”
    Ferguson threw him a pitying glance. “Contact Judge Carson. Find out if she’s missing her daughter.”
     
    It was just after noon. Ferguson had called a quick debriefing for the team. Ethan walked into the war room at the station.
    The tension was palpable. As he looked around the table at the detectives’ faces, he knew they were all asking thesame question: Was their naked, dismembered victim Judge Carson’s daughter?
    “Heard anything yet?” Ferguson stood at the front by the diagram of the crime scene.
    Ethan shook his head. “I left an urgent message. But she was in court.”
    “You’d think if she was worried about it she’d just adjourn and call,” Lamond muttered.
    Ethan shrugged. “She never lets anyone off the hook.” He took stock of his team. It was a good team. They had each other’s backs. “Anyone else find anything?”
    One by one, the detectives gave their status reports. No sign yet of the missing limbs. “Probably in the killer’s closet,” Lamond muttered.
    “What about missing persons? Did you get a match on the victim’s description?” Ferguson asked.
    “We came up empty,” Walker said. “No matches.” He paused. “Maybe we should call Vicky. She never forgets a face.”
    Ethan threw him a sharp glance. Was that a dig?
    Walker returned it with a “Sorry, but it needed to be said” look. Ethan forced himself to relax. The guy was just trying to do his job. It was well known at the station that Vicky had an uncanny knack of recalling people’s names. They’d be negligent to not involve her.
    “Okay, call her if the victim isn’t Judge Carson’s daughter,” Ethan said.
    “And,” Redding interjected, “I did find a witness named—” he checked his notes “—Shonda Bryant, who said that she’d seen the victim down on Gottingen Street. At approximately 2200 last night.”
    “What was she doing?”
    “The girl was buying E, but she ran out of money and was going home.”
    “So the killer could have lured the girl into the car and offered her more ecstasy…” Lamond murmured.
    “She took it, and then got so high it would be easy to strangle her.”
    “So she was strangled?” Redding asked.
    Ethan nodded. “She’s got petechiae all over her face.” They all knew the significance of that. Petechiae were little blood hemorrhages caused by lack of oxygen—a classic sign of strangulation.
    “Sounds like a good theory,” Ferguson said briskly. “Let’s go with that until we know what the autopsy findings are.” She turned to Redding. “Did this Shonda Bryant know the girl?”
    “Said she didn’t know her name. She was lying, but I couldn’t get her to tell me any more.”
    “Who was selling the drugs?”
    Redding shrugged with the loose-limbed ease of a former basketball star. “She says it was some guy named Darrell, but my sources tell me she’s the dealer.”
    “Let’s pick her up. Maybe that’ll convince her to ID the girl. Also, check out the other kids on Agricola Street. Give them the heads-up. Tell them to keep an eye—”
    The phone rang. Normally, the meeting would continue while someone took the call. But not today. Everyone fell silent.
    Ethan sprinted to the desk at the back of the room. He dug under the crime scene photos scattered on top to find a notepad. Grabbing a pen, he jotted down the date and time. The phone rang for a third time. He snatched it off the cradle. “Detective Drake, Major Crime Unit.”
    “This is Judge Carson. You left a message.”
    Ethan inhaled sharply. “Yes, Your Honor. We are investigating a homicide of a young girl—”
    “Is it Lisa?” she asked abruptly.
    “We don’t know. The victim has no ID.”
    “Then why do you think your victim may be my daughter?”
    “We received a tip that your daughter had been