Picture Perfect

Chapter 7

    I walked into the morgue about ten minutes after Kayla's call. "Alright sis let's see what you found."
    "Right to the point and slightly grumpy, fair enough. Step into my lair." Kayla replied with a smile.
    We followed her to the autopsy room. There were only two tables so only the two adults were visible. They had yet to be processed.
    "We only got as far as getting them laying flat and taking inventory." Kayla admitted.
    "So why call us down here Kayla? Shouldn't you at least wait til you have one autopsy done first?" Hayley questioned impatiently.
    "Gees, you're both grumpy. What the hell?"
    "Sorry we're not a barrel of laughs Kay but three people are dead and we don't even know who they are for sure." I said a bit more harshly than I intended.
    "Well I can unofficially confirm that for you." Kayla said choosing not to acknowledge my tone. She knew wen I was stressed I lash out at people. Most took offense to my behavior but Kayla knew me well enough to not take it to heart.
    "How's that?" Hayley asked calmly, hoping her calmness would ease the tension in the room.
    "Come over to the computer," Kayla replied. "When I got back here I decided to Google Donovan Olsen, I figured with a not overly common name and with him winning that violin competition I might get lucky."
    "How did you know he won a competition?" I asked still sounding annoyed. We were trying to keep all details about this case very quiet including any information about the residents of the home, whether they were the victims or not.
    "I do have ears sis and cops at crime scenes gossip worse than women in a hair salon. But that's not the point, so I managed to find his Facebook page complete with contact information and family photos."
"What do you mean by contact information?" Hayley asked figuring if Kayla mentioned it there may be more than just email.
"Well he's got a cell number, city and state of residence, plus one of his wall photos has the house we were at earlier with the address visible. The people in the photos resemble our three victims but I'll have to wait for dental records or possibly DNA to confirm." Kayla finished and looked between us.
"Is that all you got for us right now Kay?" I said, I was beginning to feel worn out.
"One more thing that proves very unhelpful." Kayla said heading over to the tables. "The pads of their fingertips have been burned off, from the top joint to the tip gone." She said as she turned the adult male's hand over.
"Their fingerprints are gone?" Hayley questioned. "Do they still have teeth?" she also asked since all three had been posed with closed mouth smiles. Usually if a killer goes to the trouble of removing one identifying feature they usually get rid of as much as they can.
"Yeah I checked, that's why we're waiting for dental records to confirm their identities." Kayla said trying to keep the sarcasm to a minimum.
"I'm sorry, you did say that didn't you/" Hayley replied with a slight smile and blush.
"It's all good, it's been a long night already." Kayla replied with a smile then switched back into work mode at break neck speed. "You ladies are more than welcome to stay and watch the autopsies but I need to get started. I'd like to try and get home before the boys need to be up; god knows Jackson is harder to wake up than the twins." Kayla said as her assistant Micah walked in and the detectives headed towards the door.
"Ready to start boss?" He said quietly making sure to only look at Kayla.
"Yeah Micah, the detectives were just leaving. Apparently they feel sleep is something that is needed." She joked which made Micah smile slightly. Kayla then gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear, "We'll talk about your day in court tomorrow. You okay?" She then quickly pulled back and looked me in the eyes.
Unfortunately I could not lie to my sister, she could see right through me. I took a deep breath and said, "I'm as okay as I can be right now."

When I finally walked into my house all I wanted to do was collapse, but my son's dog Zebbie was wiggling frantically. I knew my nephews had even over to play with her earlier in the day but we had a routine. No matter what time I came home we always took at least a twenty minute walk but normally it was closer to an hour.
I quickly changed into comfy clothes and we set off on our walk. I let Zebbie lead the way through the neighborhood and let my mind wander to the details of the case. We knew the two methods the killer used but we had no murder weapons. We assume the victims are the Olsen family but there was no apparent motive. I had a preliminary report about the family and there were no red flags to indicate any illegal activity that may attract this type of violence.
    Zebbie's excited bark brought me out of my thoughts. I hadn't realized til that moment she had led us to the scene. She was excited because our neighbor was approaching us.
    "Well if it isn't Ashlee and Zebbie, you girls are out late." Jeff said greeting us with a tired smile. He, like a number of my neighbors, worked in law enforcement as a beat cop.
    "Yeah, this case is giving a lot of us a late night." I responded pointing to the house behind him.
    "It is a nasty one." He agreed. "I heard you were lead on this one. Catch any breaks yet?"
    "I wish. CSU still here?" I asked. From where we were standing I couldn't see if the van had left yet.
    "Yeah they're still here, going through everything with a fine toothed comb."
    "Well you guys feel free to solve the case for me, make my life easier." I said half joking. It would be nice to have the mystery solved, I didn't care who broke the case. Murders were always unsettling but the fact that this happened in my own neighborhood made me more motivated than ever to find this killer.