Gurney entered the building and bounded up through the stairwell two steps at a time. The fourth-floor apartment door was open, held that way by Torres, who stepped back to let Gurney into a narrow foyer lighted by a single ceiling fixture. He handed Gurney a pair of latex gloves and Tyvek shoe covers.
Gurney put them on without asking any questions. He knew he’d have the answers soon enough.
“They’re in the living room,” said Torres.
The sickening smell that intensified as Gurney passed through the foyer was one he knew well but had never gotten used to.
Two African American women in short skirts and satin tops were sitting on the living room couch. They were leaning against each other—as though, instead of going out for the evening, they’d fallen asleep in the middle of an intimate conversation. Looking closer, Gurney could see on their skin the characteristic sheen of autolysis. In addition, there were signs that the first gases of decomposition were beginning to bloat their bodies. But the faces were still recognizable. He was sure the one on the left belonged to the fiery woman he’d seen on RAM-TV’s
As was usually the case with corpses at this stage, flies were everywhere—most thickly concentrated on the mouths, eyes, and ears. The apartment’s two front windows were wide open, likely an effort by Torres to mitigate the stench.
There were two empty glasses, open bottles of vodka and raspberry liqueur, and two glittery purses on the coffee table in front of the couch—along with a number of hypodermic needles. Gurney counted eight, all used and empty. Their labels indicated they were of the preloaded type containing propofol.
“Blaze Lovely Jackson and Chalise Jackson Creel,” said Torres. “At least that’s what it says on the driver’s licenses in those purses. Sounds like they might be sisters.”
Gurney nodded. “Have you called the ME’s office?”
“Thrasher said he could be here in twenty-five minutes, and that was twenty minutes ago. I called Garrett Felder, too. He’s on his way.”
“Good. You’ve been through the apartment?”
“A general look-around.”
“Anything get your attention?”
“One thing, actually.” Torres pointed to a small desk against the wall opposite the couch. He opened the top drawer all the way. In the back behind a ream of paper there was a plastic zip-top bag containing what appeared to be a stack of twenty-dollar bills. Gurney guesstimated the total, if they were all twenties, to be at least three thousand dollars.
He frowned. “Interesting.”
“The money?”
“The plastic bag.”
“The bag? Why—?”
Torres’s question was truncated by the sound of a car door closing in the street below.
Shortly after Thrasher’s arrival, Garrett Felder came trudging up the stairs with his evidence-collection equipment, followed by Paul Aziz with his camera. While the three donned their Tyvek suits, Torres acquainted them with the basic facts of the situation, after which he and Gurney took a low-profile position, mostly observing the technical work in progress and being careful not to get in the way.
From time to time Felder and Aziz expressed their dismay at the odor that had permeated the apartment. Thrasher acted as if it didn’t exist.
After watching them for a while, Torres took Gurney aside and informed him that he’d been contacted earlier that day by the lead singer of an obscure old rock band. “He told me he’d heard a news report a few days ago that members of a white-supremacist group called Knights of the Rising Sun were wanted by the police in White River. That would have been when Turlock and Beckert were publicly linking the KRS website to the Jordan-Tooker murders and to the Gorts. Anyway, the news reporter included the website address in the story. The rock-band guy got curious and went to the site—because he remembered the phrase ‘knights of the rising sun’ was in one of his old songs.”
Gurney chimed in. “And on the website he found the video of him and his band performing that song. But he didn’t know anything about any white-supremacist group and his band had never given anyone the rights to the video.”
Torres looked baffled. “How on earth do you know that?”
“It’s the only way it would make sense, considering the fact that the whole KRS business was a fabrication. I figure the website creator found the old video somewhere—maybe on YouTube—copied it, and used it. I’d also bet that the band’s actual name has the phrase ‘white supremacist’ or words to that effect in it.”
Torres stared at Gurney. “He told me his band, as sort of a joke, was named ‘The Texas Skinhead
