High Profile

3

Jesse was in the squad room with Molly Crane, Suitcase Simpson, and Peter Perkins. They were drinking coffee. “State lab has him,” Peter Perkins said. “They’ll fingerprint the body and run the prints. They haven’t autopsied him yet, but I’ll bet they find he died of gunshot. I didn’t see any exit wounds, so I’m betting they find the slugs in there when they open him up.”

“Had to have happened last night,” Suitcase said. “I mean, people are in that park all the time. He couldn’t have hung there long without being spotted.”

Jesse nodded and glanced at Peter Perkins.

“I haven’t seen all that many dead bodies,” Perkins said. “And very few who were hanged from a tree. But this guy looks like he’s been dead longer than that.”

Jesse nodded.

“And...” Peter Perkins glanced at Molly.

“And he smells,” Molly said. “I noticed it, too.”

Jesse nodded.

“And there was no blood except on him. He got shot and hanged, he’d have bled out and there’d be blood on the ground,” Suitcase said.

“So,” Jesse said. “He was shot somewhere else and kept awhile before they brought him up to the hill and hanged him.”

“You think it’s more than one?” Molly said.

“A two-hundred-pound corpse is hard for one person to manhandle around and hoist over a limb,” Jesse said.

“But not impossible,” Molly said.

“No,” Jesse said.

They all sat quietly.

“Anyone reported missing?” Jesse said.

“No,” Molly said.

“Anyone else know anything?”

“Nobody I talked with,” Suitcase said.

Molly Crane and Peter Perkins both shook their heads.

“Even if you knew the guy,” Simpson said, “be kind of hard to recognize him now.”

“Anyone want to speculate why you’d shoot some guy,” Jesse said, “hold his body until it started to ripen, and then hang it on a tree?”

“Symbolic,” Molly said. “It must have some sort of symbolic meaning to the perps.”

Jesse waited.

“Obviously they wanted him found,” Suitcase said.

“But why hanging?” Peter Perkins said.

Suitcase shook his head. Jesse looked at Molly. She shook her head.

“Perk,” Jesse said. “Any theories?”

Perkins shook his head.

“Okay,” Jesse said. “It looks like, for now, we wait for the forensics report.”

“Unless something turns up,” Suitcase said.

“Unless that,” Jesse said.