Read Online In the Belly of Jonah by Sandra Brannan - Free Book Online Page A

just as I had a few hours ago. “Okay, here’s a puzzler for you. Why would you cut a chunk out of your victim’s body and then prop it up on a crutch so she’s sitting up? What does that mean?”
    “Jill was propped on a crutch?” I asked, trying hard to fight the bile that was crawling up my throat.
    “More like wedged. The perp stuck the crutch—or cane or whatever the thing was—behind the girl and wedged the handle beneath the shoulder blades where the spine should have been. That poor girl.”
    I felt sorry for Lisa. I had had trouble simply looking at Jill’s face and couldn’t imagine how I would have felt seeing her body, let alone having to study it as Lisa must be doing.
    “Maybe it’s a symbol or a message to someone. Like he was tired of carrying her, supporting her,” I speculated.
    She gave a nod of approval. “That’s a thought. I was thinking more like the perp ripped her heart out, her guts, her being, then propped her up for the whole world to see he’d conquered her.”
    “You’re the psychologist. Why a square?” I asked.
    “Actually a rectangle. And that’s the fifty-thousand-dollar question,”she said, draining the balance of her beer.
    “So, why do you think Jill didn’t fight back, Lisa?”
    “That bothers me the most. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out a scenario where I would not fight for my life.”
    “And?”
    “And I can’t come up with one. Except if I were unconscious,” she concluded.
    “Was she? You mentioned drug overdose earlier,” I pressed.
    “Still too early to know for sure. Coroner suspects she was. Jill had a needle mark on the upper part of her right arm. Lab results aren’t ready yet. But the coroner is sure we’ll have something to work with,” Lisa assured.
    The oven timer alerted me that the brownies were ready. I pulled the pan from the oven and set it on a cooling rack. I retrieved two cold beers, handing one to Lisa and setting the other down on the coffee table in front of the couch. A few minutes later I went back for the pan of brownies and two forks. I folded my long legs underneath me on the couch beside Lisa, handing her one of the forks. We both dug in.
    The pan was half empty and our bellies were full. Lisa tossed her fork aside and leaned back on the couch, holding her stomach. I did the same.
    “She was wearing a weird dress,” Lisa said in a small voice.
    She was staring out the window, and I slowly leaned forward, straining to hear her.
    “It looked like a costume. At this point, we don’t think it’s hers. Did you ever see her wear a dress? No, of course not. What was I thinking,”Lisa said, her voice regaining strength. “She had on a pair of tennis shoes, but we don’t think those were hers, either. They were way too big for her and there was no sand or mud or anything on the soles. They looked brand new, like they were just slipped on her feet after the fact.”
    “Strange,” I said.
    “That’s not all. There were these weird little cabinets on the beach between Jill and the water. It looked like they were staged there for her to be looking at, if it wasn’t for the fact that her face had been covered with a tea towel.”
    “You mean like a dish rag?”
    “Yeah. I don’t know what this guy was thinking, but the whole scene was bizarre, macabre, unreal . . . ” Lisa’s words trailed.
    “And you’re thinking this might be the work of a serial killer? You mean there is more than one body with the center hacked from the torso?”
    Lisa’s cell phone rang. She looked at me before answering the call and said, “Yes and no.”

WHILE THE PHONE RANG, Streeter looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock. He and Berta had been into the autopsy for nearly seven hours when he had decided to cut out, take a shower, and head back to his office for a few. Lisa Henry had left a message for him that she’d arrived in Fort Collins and was planning on finding a room in a local hotel. She would assess the