Evidence of Murder by Lisa Black

bag, pulling it tight around the wrist with red evidence tape. Her toes had gone numb.
    Twigs snapped behind her as Frank approached along their set route. “What do you think? The setup has some similarities to the other hooker, but I didn’t see a mark on this one. You find anything?”
    “No. Of course she could have a syringe sticking out of her arm, for all I know, but we’ll have to wait until she’s undressed. I doubt it, though. I’ve seen a lot of overdoses, and she hasn’t got the look.” She pulled up the bottom of the sweatshirt, just enough for a peek at the pink pullover beneath it. Sections had begun to darken as decomposition fluid seeped from the body, but she saw no defects from bullets or knives. At least in the front.
    “So you think pretty Jillian decided to end it all?” Frank asked. He sounded disappointed, either in Jillian’s abandonment of her family or the loss of a reason to arrest George Panapoulos.
    “I think I’m going to treat her as a homicide until I decide she’s not.”
    Frank digested this as Theresa taped the front surfaces of Jillian’s sweatshirt and jeans. The cold lessened the adhesive qualities of the tape and, in light of the fact that the body had been exposed to the elements for days, made it enormously unlikely that any useful trace evidence would be found, but the process was quick, cheap, and nondestructive. Without a table or work area handy, she didn’t bother pasting the pieces of tape to sheets of clear acetate paper, merely folded the pieces back on themselves and dropped each into a hastily labeled manila envelope.
    “She hasn’t got a mark on her,” Frank repeated. “Unlike Sarah Taylor. But one was a prostitute and one’s an escort.”
    “Sarah was malnourished and poor. Jillian had found her way to a different world.” She combed her fingers through the detritus around the body, lumbering around in short hops, like a short sumo wrestler; ungraceful in the extreme, but she could not kneel or she’d have wet pants as well as cold feet. She had even clipped a few branches from the blackberry bush—if it had caught on her clothes, it might have snatched at someone else’s. She found only a crushed Coke can that appeared to have been there since the last millennium, a gray plastic ring about an inch in diameter, and a broken piece of red rubber, the same width as a heavy-duty rubber band. She bagged and tagged these items, doubting that they would relate to Jillian’s death. They were not on a remote mountaintop; over two and a half million people called Cleveland home, and the Edgewater beach and park were popular, even in the winter months. She could probably find debris from human beings in every square inch of the wooded area if she looked long enough.
    When she had searched the ground with reasonable thoroughness—reasonable defined as longer than she wanted to but not so long that she shrieked with boredom—she turned Jillian Perry onto her side. Frank helped her, but it was not difficult given Jillian’s slender frame and the assistance of gravity. Theresa quickly taped the back surface of the clothing as well. Another peek under the clothes—not difficult since the pink polo-type shirt had not been tucked into the jeans—confirmed their suspicions: Jillian Perry had not been shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned.
    Frank stood up, rubbing his arms, his mustache framed by red cheeks. “Damn, it’s cold.”
    “I’d still rather be here. A brilliant forensic scientist hired by the defense for their poor railroaded client is visiting our lab as we speak.”
    “I take it he’s not a buddy of yours. She could have gotten here on foot from her place,” Frank thought aloud. “It’s not even three miles by car. Less if she walked along the train tracks.”
    “I know.”
    “She disappeared Monday afternoon. The high that day was six degrees. How long does it take someone to freeze to death?”
    “A long time. Overnight would be enough. But if