Read Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 01 - The Sex Club for Free Online

asked.
    “Jessie Davenport. Lives about eight blocks from here and was a good friend of my daughter’s.”
    “Shit. I’m sorry to hear that.”
    Standing at the end of the dumpster, Jackson watched as Gunderson analyzed the girl where she lay, turning her head, lifting her shoulders, and mumbling to himself. The rest of her body remained inside the plastic bag. While the ME clicked off about ten pictures, Jackson’s thoughts kept returning to his own daughter. What if Katie had still been friends with Jessie? Would Katie be dead now too? The idea was unbearable, so he shut it down.
    After another minute, they carefully lifted Jessie, still mostly covered by the black plastic, out of the foulness and set her down on a body bag Gunderson had laid out. The ME carefully cut open the plastic and exposed the rest of its contents. Under the glare of work lights, Jessie was nude, but stunningly unblemished. No blood, no bruises, no abrasions. Not even a freckle.
    “Who’s going in?” Schakowski asked in response to the unspoken question: Where are her clothes?
    “You know you are. There’s coveralls in the back of my car and booties in my bag.”
    “Thanks.” More sarcasm than appreciation.
    While Schak dug through the garbage, Gunderson examined the body, talking out loud for Jackson’s benefit. “Lack of rigor mortis, except for in the small muscles of the hands.” Then a little later: “Body temperature is 95.5, and it’s 64 degrees right now, but it was warmer earlier. Most likely, she’s been dead for three hours, maybe a little longer. I’d say she most likely died between 4 and 5 p.m. today.”
    “Do you see any sign of trauma? A blow to the head maybe?” Jackson wanted to know what had killed her, and so far, her body wasn’t giving it away.
    “Not yet.” Gunderson began to probe around the girl’s genitals. Jackson involuntarily looked away. The ME’s voice was unaffected. “Swelling around the inner labia indicates recent sexual activity, but no real sign of rape.”
    Sexual activity? Jackson was stunned. Jessie was only thirteen, or maybe fourteen by now. He turned back to the ME. “How do you know it wasn’t rape?”
    “There’s no bruising, tearing, or blood,” Gunderson responded. “And the swabs I just took show semen in the anus.”
    “What are you saying?” Jackson knew, but he did not believe.
    “She had vaginal and anal sex, most likely consensual, sometime today. We’ll see how viable the sperm are under a microscope.”
    Jackson struggled to set aside his personal feelings. He had to forget that he knew this girl, that she was his daughter’s friend. He had to be objective and focus on the facts. She was probably sexually abused by someone she knew.
    “There’s trace evidence,” Gunderson said, using tweezers to lift something from Jessie’s pubic area. “A short dark hair, definitely not hers, most likely pubic.”
    Excellent, Jackson thought. Now all he needed was someone to match it to.
    After a few minutes, Gunderson noted that there were faint red marks around the girl’s wrists, indicating she may have been bound. In this case, Jackson had no idea what that meant. If she wasn’t raped, he couldn’t assume she had been forcibly abducted or held against her will.
    But like every other person in this county who had died under suspicious circumstances, Jessie would be sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Portland for a full autopsy. Like every other death he’d investigated, Jackson would attend. The trace evidence would be couriered separately to the lab for DNA testing, which could take a week or longer. First thing tomorrow, Jackson would call the lab’s supervisor, a woman named Debbie he’d known for years, and ask her to prioritize the work. This case was more important than any drug-related homicide.
    “Any idea on cause of death?”
She didn’t just die.
    Gunderson’s permanent frown line puckered a little deeper. “If I had to guess, I’d