Promissory Payback by Laurel Dewey Page B

long she’s been dead?” Jane asked quietly.
    â€œBody temp suggests twelve hours.”
    Jane checked the time on her cell phone. “So about 8:30 last night,” she said, more to herself to make a mental note.
    Jane moved closer to the bed and viewed Handel’s naked body. A yellow stain of urine soiled the white comforter under the woman’s pelvis. A smaller mark of feces lay next to her left hip. It wasn’t unusual for the vics to evacuate their bladder, since death relaxed the body. But when she saw shit expelled, it often meant that there was a sufficient degree of conscious fear while the attack progressed, allowing to literally “scare the shit” out of them. Across her back, written in red lipstick was KARMA IS A BITCH! The lipstick holder sat on the side table, its red phallic crown still exposed to the air, with the dusty trace of fingerprints left around the cylinder by the crime scene techs.
    â€œWhoever did this, took their time, didn’t they?” Jane stated. “They wanted her to suffer badly.” She looked at Weyler. “Why let God sort it out, when you can take the power in your own hands and make it easy on Him.” Jane hunkered down to get level with Handel’s point of view. That deathly, terrified stare appeared to be gazing at a point just behind where Jane stood. The only thing in that area was a single chair. “Has that been moved?” she asked one of the crime techs who replied that it was in the same spot when they arrived. “That’s an odd place for a single chair, don’t you think? Facing the bed like you’re watching a TV program.”
    â€œOr waiting,” Weyler suggested.

    â€œYeah. Waiting.” Jane carefully sat in the chair and looked at Handel. She had to hunker down a bit in the seat to meet the dead woman’s fixed gaze. “Waiting,” Jane repeated, “to make sure Carolyn saw who was killing her . . . and maybe to make sure she was dead before they left.” Sitting there, Jane could almost feel an intangible connection to the ass that sat in that same seat twelve hours earlier. It was right there ... so close. As if they were still watching Handel suffer the fate they dealt to her.
    Weyler noted that the specific knot used to secure Handel was known as a “figure eight.” “It’s an anchor knot often used in rescues. I believe it’s in the Army Field Manual.”
    â€œSo did the killer want to ‘be all he could be’?” Jane took a closer look at Handel’s cheeks. They looked puffy, but bloating would take a little longer to cause that. She slipped on a latex glove and gently poked the flesh around Handel’s mouth. A soft, crunchy sound was emitted. “There’s something in her mouth.”
    A crime scene tech carefully removed the layers of duct tape. Like confetti erupting from a small tube, strings of shredded paper drifted from Handel’s mouth and onto the comforter. Jane gingerly released more of the salivalaced shreds until she found one strip where she could clearly read the words Promissory Note.
    â€œWhat the fuck—?” Jane muttered. In the background, she could hear Handel’s childhood friend, Laura Abernathy, whispering to the street cop. Jane stood up and spoke confidentially to Weyler. “Is there a reason why Mrs. Abernathy is still here?”
    â€œApparently, she doesn’t want to leave her friend.”
    Jane looked across the room at the round-faced woman. Her diminutive stature was exaggerated by the soft
pink dress that hung well below her knees. Clamped in the crease of her elbow was the strap of a matching pink purse. It was the kind of outfit you’d wear to church or high tea.
    â€œHas anyone talked to her yet?”
    â€œNot formally,” Weyler stated.
    Speaking to witnesses to death at crime scenes was never Jane Perry’s forte. Her gruff manner better suited