Guilty Photographs

by S I Taylor

  There was a long wooden four-by-four row bolted to the ceiling reaching from one end of the warehouse to the next wall. On it were three pairs of equally spaced thick linked chains with leather cuff restraints at the end of each one. Each one of them looked warped from overuse, but the one in the center seemed to be the one that was recently used.

  There was a pool of dried blood beneath the chain and the cuffs were partially damp with skin fragments left behind. Several large cages with padlocks were placed around the room, with thin cushions inside, each one smeared with feces, urine, and blood.

  “That explains the stench that we smelled when we were first here,” Coolidge said. “I had a feeling that the scene needed to be further investigated.”

  McKinley agreed with Coolidge. He opened his mouth to add to her reasoning but decided that he didn’t want to add to her frustration as he concluded that the forensics team in San Diego did a thorough job at nitpicking scenes and he now appreciated all the time they took.

  “Yeah, definitely not a place where homeless people would casually wander and sleep,” Deputy Harry said, dispelling his previous conclusion of homeless people living in the warehouse.

  “True. It looks like a torture chamber,” Coolidge said.

  There was an empty metal table which seemed to be used to place whatever pain-inflicting instrument the perpetrators used.

  “This was a torture room for sure. I would hate to believe that this was a room used for sexual activities, but as far as this career is concerned, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was used for the latter as well,” McKinley said, scanning the room.

  “However, Deputy, we didn’t call you to just look at the scene. We have a dead body inside of the cage to the far right,” Coolidge said.

  The body lay on its side with its knees slightly bent toward its stomach as if it was shielding itself. Her hazel-brown eyes were wide open, staring up frozen in that moment of torture and pain.

  “If it wasn’t because she lay on her side, we wouldn’t been able to decipher if it were male or female,” McKinley added.

  “Her skin looks like it has been peeled off from the lashes on her back,” Deputy Harry said. He walked around the cage to inspect the stiffened body. “She has cuff marks on her ankles.” Deputy Harry pointed.

  McKinley and Coolidge approached the body as well. Her body still had its caramel skin tone which indicated that she must have died recently.

  “Looks like she was cuffed upside down,” Deputy Harry said.

  “Or right side up. Since we can’t see her wrists it could be either or,” Coolidge added.

  “I doubt that they would take their time to cuff her both ways,” Deputy Harry said.

  “No need to speculate, forensics will tell us the cause of death soon enough. What we need to know is: Who is she and is she the same person John Doe saw walking away from here the night of the murder? Was she brought back later by the person who left the fifth blood sample? Or, has she been here since the initial incident?” McKinley finished his thought, sighing heavily under the weight of this new scene.

  “Every time we turn around this case gets more complicated and messier,” Deputy Harry said, looking around.

  Coolidge and McKinley agreed. “Yeah, well, hopefully we can find answers soon,” Coolidge added.

  “I overheard you guys speaking,” Dr. Kincade said as she got closer. “According to blood-containing foam leaking from her mouth and nose, her internal organs decomposing hence the smell, how her body is bloated, and the lack of bacterial organism growing, I’d say her time of death is between seventy to seventy-two hours ago.” She wrote on her notes.

  They all looked at her.

  “So, what we smelled when we first arrived wasn’t her body. Which means this place was used for torture in the past, so all of the smell lingered in the air,” McKinley said.

  “Yeah,” Deputy Harry said.

  “The neighbors couldn’t smell it beyond these walls since this is hidden underground, the building already has trash around it, and reeks of too many different atrocities to pinpoint the scent to anything in particular,” Coolidge added.

  All of them split up taking different areas of the investigation.

  The entire team worked for hours, taking pictures, dusting for fingerprints, and marking everything. They made sure to investigate every space within the warehouse so as to not leave anything else behind. The body was carefully taken out of the cage and placed on a gurney to be transported to the ME’s office.

  McKinley looked at the girl’s lifeless body on the gurney. Her hair was messy, her brown eyes transfixed, and her body frozen in time. The final minutes when she took her last breath she must have been screaming from the rawness of her wounds, he thought.

  McKinley walked over to Deputy Harry, who was now standing beside Coolidge by the disinfecting station.

  “Someone had to have heard her. Deputy Harry, I want you to get the names and numbers of everyone in this neighborhood. Go door to door if you have to but someone heard or saw something,” McKinley said.

  Deputy Harry nodded and walked away, looking for two more deputies to assist him.

  When they finally left the warehouse, it was six in the morning. Everyone was exhausted and decided to complete the report once they got some rest.

  Coolidge and McKinley arrived in the hotel; his walk was staggered as the weight of tiredness was heavy on his body but primarily on his eyelids. The red carpeted hallway seemed distant and narrow as he tried to focus on his walk.

  “Are you okay?” Coolidge asked. He couldn’t read her expression but her voice sounded weary.

  “Yeah, just tired,” McKinley said as he yawned, an infectious gesture as Coolidge yawned as well.

  “You seem more than tired,” she said.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said as he finally reached his room door, pressed the key card onto the keypad, and pushed the door open.

  “Okay.” She shrugged.

  He stepped inside and faced Coolidge before closing his door and watched her as she did the same and entered her room. She seemed tired but she hid her tiredness better than McKinley.

  “We’ll continue later,” McKinley said, yawning again.

  She nodded and closed her door.

  McKinley closed the door and turned toward his bed. Not bothering to undress, he plopped on it and slept on the sheets.

  A call from Coolidge startled him and he scrambled to reach for his dying cell phone in his pants.

  His voice came out raspy when he answered. “Hello.”

  “Hey, get ready. I’m coming over so we can call Bush and start on this list and catch him up on last night’s escapade,” she said.

  “Damn, why are you up so early?” He yawned.

  “What are you talking about? It’s almost noon. We need to get this case moving and lying around will not get us there,” she said.

  He wondered if they’d been at the same place last night because she didn’t seem as tired as he sounded. Coolidge was odd and he thought she had way too much energy.

  “Did you sleep at all?” he asked.

  “Not really. When I’m excited, I can’t really sleep and since I’m not in the comfort of my home and my bed, it adds to my insomnia.”

  “Ugh, I’m not sure whether to have pity for you or to congratulate you on your enthusiasm. Either way your energy level is extremely high.”

  “No, it’s not, but whatever, just get ready. We have shit to do that can’t wait for later.”

  “Fine, give me half an hour,” he told her and hung up.

  The list of potential female and male suspects that McKinley received was extensive and they had a lot of work to do. They needed to wrap this case fast and they needed to split the workload to get it done faster.

  Once McKinley was ready, he called Coolidge to meet him in his room so that they could call Bush and work together on the case.

  “Hey, Bush, you got the list I sent you?” McKinley said.

&nb
sp; “Yeah, this list is long,” he said. “I’m looking at it right now. What do you want to do?”

  “I think we should first work with the easiest list, split it, and use the NCIC database to get physical descriptions of each of these names,” Coolidge said.

  “I agree, the female list is the easiest to work with, then we can work on the male list once we have some sort of connection from the female to the males,” McKinley added.

  “Yeah, and maybe through her we can identify the other two nameless victims,” Coolidge said.

  “Perfect. I almost thought you guys were going to tell me to do it on my own,” Bush said, relieved.

  “Come on, dude, we’re a team and we wouldn’t want you to do all the work. Plus you probably would’ve been working for at least two days nonstop alone,” McKinley said.

  “Well, guys, enough chitchat and gossiping, let’s get to work. Bush, we’ll call you as soon as we’re done on our end and if you’re done before us, shoot us a text and we’ll update you on our progress,” Coolidge said.

  “Sure thing. Later,” he said before the call ended.

  Coolidge, Bush, and McKinley worked for hours and finally narrowed the list down to ten suspects that fit the physical description and age range for the female suspect on NCIC. They cross-referenced their list with women who were previously arrested and that seemed to speed up the results.

  “This will be a good place to start and if that list doesn’t pan out then it’s back to the drawing board, because then this means that the female suspect has never been arrested and doesn’t have a criminal record,” McKinley said.

  He looked at Coolidge, who nodded in agreement.

  “The male suspect will be harder to identify because there are far more males who fit the description with a criminal record, and if we factor in the ones who never had a police record we will be here for weeks trying to sort it out,” Coolidge said. “I got a text from Bush. I texted him that we have ten female names so far.”

  “Great, let’s call him so he can clue us in on what he found so far,” McKinley said.

  They dialed Bush and he answered on the first ring.

  “Hey, I had Six help me over here and together we have an additional six names for the list,” Bush said.

  “That makes a total of sixteen names we need to investigate,” Coolidge said.

  “I will take the first eight on the list and Coolidge, you take the second half,” McKinley told them.

  “We’re splitting again?” she asked.

  “Yes,” McKinley confirmed.

  “I love it.” She beamed. “Although you were the one with the action recently. How about I take the first eight and you take the last half? I sense that I’m going to get something good from the first half.”

  “Okay, whatever you say. I’m good either way.”

  “Since we narrowed down the list significantly, I’m going home. It’s late and I want to sleep,” Bush’s voice emitted from the phone as he yawned. “Besides, I have a long report to write and meetings to arrange where I have to report the findings to Chief,” he added, yawning once more.

  “You did volunteer to stay behind, so don’t complain now,” Coolidge scolded.

  “I’m not complaining, I just want to sleep. You guys are having all the fun when I’m stuck with the mundane paper-writing task,” he said.

  “Again, you volunteered for it,” she retorted.

  “Fine, if you guys need me for anything else, call me tomorrow. Later,” Bush said as he hung up.

  “Okay, tomorrow we’ll start with the leads,” McKinley told her.

  “Yeah, good idea. I’m going to bed as well. I’m tired. Rest up, McKinley, we have a long day tomorrow,” Coolidge said.

  McKinley walked her to the door and locked it behind her.

  He got in the shower and washed that day—or better yet, the previous day—off his body.

  Hopefully tomorrow they would find the female suspect and hope that the dead body they found was not her.

  Chapter 20

  The first lead on McKinley’s list lived fairly close to the sheriff’s office and he made that his first stop.

  He activated his GPS and drove to the address, parking his car in front of an old blue house with a missing front gated door and broken gates around it. He walked the few steps to the front door and knocked.

  He peeked through the front window and didn’t see any movement and rapidly knocked again.

  “I’m coming, hold your horses,” a croaky voice said from within the home.

  He couldn’t figure out if the voice was from a male or female from the tone of voice, but he stood waiting as he heard the slapping of flip-flops across the floor approach the doorway.

  An older lady with rollers on her head and a cigarette in between her cracked old wrinkled lips, wearing an old oversized flowery dress, opened the door and stood in front of the screened door looking up at him.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “Good morning, I’m Agent McKinley and I’m looking for Noelle Loner,” he told her.

  She looked at him quizzically, trying to figure out why an agent was looking for Noelle.

  “I guess you can call it a good morning,” she said. She continued to study his features and looked him up and down. “Why do you need to see her?”

  “She might have some information that I need,” he said.

  Her eyes started circling around, not meeting his, as if she was thinking about his words, but she simply huffed and waited for McKinley to continue speaking.

  “You’re a relative of hers?” he asked.

  “Yeah, she’s my granddaughter. Her mother died when she was young, and I’ve been raising her ever since. Giving me headaches every day,” she said.

  “Oh,” was the only thing he could muster to say, as he wasn’t sure how to respond to a complete stranger about the turmoils of raising a granddaughter, let alone one who was imposed on her by the death of their own relative, and who, by the way, was giving her issues.

  “Is she home?” he asked.

  “Yeah. What the fuck has she gotten herself into now?” she asked, puffing smoke in McKinley’s face.

  He coughed as he tried to wave the remnants of the smoke away from his face.

  “Sorry,” she said unapologetically.

  “She hasn’t done anything, I just need to ask her a few questions about something she might have witnessed,” he told her, still waving his arms and coughing.

  “I doubt she witnessed anything unless it was in front of her while she sat on her ass on the porch,” she said, gesturing to an old wooden bench to her right. “On second thought, there was another young good-looking guy like you here a few days ago. He came looking for her as well.”

  “Do you know what he wanted or what he looked like?”

  “I only remember that he was tall, black hair, and fair skin.”

  McKinley stood looking at her. “Ma’am you kind of just described me and half of the white male population.”

  She placed her hand on her hip while the other held the cigarette inches from her lips as she looked at him with irritation.

  “Young man, Agent, or whatever the hell your name is, you asked me a question and I answered. Now my old brain can’t remember the details of his face but if I see him again I’ll point him out to you.”

  “All right, I apologize, but if I brought in a sketch artist tomorrow would you be able to describe him to her?”

  She paused thinking about it and took a long puff of smoke before letting it out again. “Yeah, I think so. Why you need the sketch for?”

  He waved his hands swatting the smoke from his face. “He’s a person of interest in a case I’m working.”

  She nodded. “Oh, that warehouse murder. I think I saw you on TV the other day. You think that could get me famous?” she asked with enthusiasm in her voice.

  He didn’t want to crush her dreams, but he didn’t want to lead her on either. “I don’t think so, but i
t would greatly help in my investigations.”

  “Yeah, I’d help ya,” she said.

  McKinley smiled at her. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask Noelle about the man she met with.”

  “Sure,” she said and puffed more smoke, leaving the air laden with a cloud of death behind. “Noelle! Noelle! Noelle, goddamn it, get your fat ass out here. There’s a young man looking for you!” she yelled.

  “Thank you,” McKinley managed to say but she was out of earshot and yelling for Noelle. He wrote down a reminder to ask Bush to arrange to have the sketch artist agent Vivian Pratt fly to Huntersville tomorrow and meet with Noelle’s grandmother.

  An obese woman appeared before McKinley, barely able to walk. Her face was strapped to an oxygen tank as she was pushing a walker.

  There was no way this woman had been at the warehouse that night. She might have fit the description years ago but today she was not who McKinley was looking for. However, maybe, just maybe, she’d heard something. He hoped. The grandmother walked back inside the house mumbling that she needed to lie down.

  “Hi, Noelle. I’m Agent McKinley and I wanted to ask you about a case that I’m working on. Do you have a few minutes?” he asked.

  He tried to keep his composure and look past the image before him as he stood. He took out a notepad and a pen to write anything that was relevant to the case that she might provide. “Your grandmother told me that a man that resembled me came looking for you?”

  Noelle inhaled and exhaled twice before removing the mask and responding.

  “Yeah,” she said and covered her face again.