Close Enough to Kill by Beverly Barton Page B

fact.
    After he got out of the Jeep, he stood back, surveying the scene. Bernie paused after speaking to Downs and looked at Jim. She motioned to him with a wave of her hand. He nodded, and then joined the others at the edge of the yellow tape.
    “It’s Stephanie Preston,” Bernie said. “John called Morris Claunch, our county coroner, and he should be here any minute now. He’ll be able to give us some basic info, but it seems fairly obvious that Stephanie’s throat has been slashed.”
    Jim stepped over the tape and moved closer to the body, stopping a good five feet away. Stephanie was young, pretty, dark haired, full breasted and slender. With no apparent signs of a struggle and no blood anywhere on the ground near the victim, Jim surmised that she had been killed elsewhere and brought to this spot. And it was apparent, even to an untrained eye, that she had been posed in a somewhat seductive manner. One arm was draped across her breasts and one hand covered her mound, as if although the killer had wanted to expose her lush body, he’d also wanted to present her corpse with a small degree of modesty. The way he had arranged her limbs and long dark hair said that, in his own sick, perverted way, the killer had cared about his victim. Jim had seen this before, usually in cases where a member of the family turned out to be the murderer and in one case where the perpetrator had been a serial killer and posing his victims had been part of his MO.
    Just as Jim noticed several marks on Stephanie’s otherwise flawless skin, Bernie walked up beside him.
    “I have to call Sheriff Mays over in Jackson County,” she said. When Jim looked at her questioningly, she added, “Ed Mays is Stephanie’s uncle.”
    Jim nodded. “Take a look at those marks on her.” He pointed them out, one by one. “What do they look like to you?”
    “I’m not sure. Some look like small burns, as if—” Bernie swallowed hard. “They look like cigarette burns. And the others look almost like bite marks.”
    “I’d say the body was placed here recently, within the past few hours, so it’s hardly likely that any wild animals would have caused those bite marks. If they had, there would be deeper wounds, some tearing, some flesh torn away.”
    “They’re human bite marks, aren’t they?”
    “That would be my educated guess,” Jim told her.
    “Someone tortured Stephanie.” Bernie closed her eyes for a couple of seconds, then reopened them and cleared her throat.
    “It’s okay to be upset,” Jim said. “You don’t have to pretend that it doesn’t bother you to know that not only was this young woman killed, but she was probably tortured for a couple of weeks before he slit her throat.” He glanced at Bernie and noted how pale her face was. “It bothers me a hell of a lot, too. I’m just better at hiding my feelings.”
    “I don’t have the luxury of crying or screaming. I’m the sheriff. How would it look to my deputies—to anyone for that matter—if every time I’m exposed to something terrible, I break down and boohoo like a . . . a . . .”
    “Like a woman?”
    Bernie blew out a disgruntled moan. “Since she’s naked, do you think that means he raped her?”
    “Probably, but it’s possible he didn’t. An autopsy should tell us everything we need to know about what she endured in the what, two weeks since she came up missing.”
    “Our coroner, Morris Claunch, is the local undertaker,” Bernie said. “He’s not trained to do the kind of autopsy we need.”
    “I figured that. So you’ll recommend that Claunch contact DFS, right? Or am I being presumptuous in assuming the sheriff’s department usually calls in the state boys when there’s a murder?”
    “You’re my chief deputy, the lead investigator for my department,” she told him. “Is it your recommendation that the DFS and the ABI be brought in on this case?”
    He looked her square in the eyes. Was she testing him by asking what he thought should