“Take your time,” Jocelyn said.
For a few moments, there was only the hiss of his oxygen feeding the air into his nose. Finally, he spoke again, “She was in a grassy area, beneath the tree. No mud, so we don’t have any footprints. Of course, because so many people frequent that area, it would have been hard to tell if any footprints belonged to the killer. She wasn’t found until after midnight when her sister, grandmother, and a few of their neighbors went looking for her. It was a neighbor who found her and called it in.”
“Robbed?”
“Yeah. They took a gold necklace with a charm on it that bore her name, her class ring, and two small gold hoop earrings.”
“Raped?”
“No. But the killer pulled her shorts and underwear off and put them over her head.”
“They took her pants off but didn’t rape her?” Anita said.
Knox fidgeted with the cannula, pushing the tubing deeper into his nostrils. “Yeah. The ME said there was no evidence of sexual assault.”
Anita piled the photos neatly atop one another, their edges lined up perfectly, and pushed the pile to the center of the table.
Jocelyn chewed her lower lip. “That sounds a lot like a random,” she remarked. “Someone looking for a quick buck. Sees an opportunity, acts impulsively. Maybe he was going to rape her but got interrupted. They were in a public park.”
“Well, yeah,” Knox said. “That’s how it’s always been treated. We got nothing forensically. No trace evidence. No semen. Not one goddamn piece of evidence except the bullets, which we were never able to match to a gun. I know this is the kind of case most people give up on and Sydney being a black kid? I had no resources for this case.” He pointed toward the crime scene photos. “You’d better believe if that was a young white blonde girl, there would have been a goddamn hotline for tips. Maybe if I’d had a hotline, or more news coverage or more manpower, I could have turned something up.”
Jocelyn frowned. She looked at Anita, but the other woman’s eyes were locked on Knox. He looked at his lap and then back at Jocelyn. “You know it’s true.”
She did know. The year before, when Anita was viciously attacked and mutilated, no one cared. Only after a white schoolteacher was assaulted by the very same men did the case get the attention it deserved—the kind of attention that often meant the difference between a cleared case and a cold case. The press named the assailants the Schoolteacher Attackers, but Anita was a victim before the teacher. The men should have been called the Receptionist Attackers. Of course, Jocelyn could never prove that the disparity was due to the fact that Anita was black and the other victim was white, but the disparity was there, and she couldn’t deny that Knox had a point. He very well may have been given more resources had Sydney been white. But that didn’t change anything about the case as it stood now.
Jocelyn said, “I know what you’re saying, Knox, and I think you’re right, but this is what we’ve got to work with right now, and what we’ve got points to an impulsive, random type.”
He pointed a finger in the air. “But impulsive random types don’t pick up their shell casings and take them with them—I mean assuming he didn’t use a revolver.”
“Which is why you think it’s someone she knew.”
Knox reached into his back pocket and pulled out three color photographs, which he pushed across the table to Jocelyn. They were small, three by five inches maybe, and old, as if they had been developed back when people actually used rolls of film. Jocelyn studied them while Knox talked and then handed them to Anita. There wasn’t much to them. It was three flirty pictures of the girl.
“She was ambushed. Shot in the back. If it was a robbery, why not just threaten her with the gun and demand her valuables? This guy shot first. The few pieces of jewelry she had on weren’t that valuable—although I’ve routinely checked every pawn shop in the city for the last fourteen years, and none of it ever turned up. Anyway, if the killer’s intention was to rape her, why shoot her first?”
“People get shot in this city every day for no good reason at all,” Jocelyn pointed out.
“Yeah,” Knox said with a grimace. “I remember.”
“Who took these photos?” Jocelyn asked, tapping a finger on Sydney Adams’ bare midriff.
“I think her track and field coach, Cash Rigo, took them at his home. Based on how broken up he was after her death, I have always suspected him. I couldn’t prove it, but these photos show they had a relationship. Sydney hid these photos under her carpet, beneath her nightstand. They obviously had some kind of inappropriate relationship. She tried to keep it hidden.”
Jocelyn sighed and rubbed a hand over her eyes, suddenly feeling tired. She needed coffee. “Before we go any further with your Cash Rigo theory, does he have an alibi? I assume he does if you were never able to pin this on him.”
Knox pinched his oxygen tubing between a thumb and forefinger. “He left the school at five in the afternoon that day. He was home by himself until nine-thirty that night. His wife, who was the school nurse, was at a Home and School meeting, which started at six-thirty. It went a few hours. Apparently, there had been some ongoing vandalism in the school that parents were up in arms about. There was a lot of damage. Someone had even broken into the nurse’s office and stolen some things.”
“What about the wife?” Anita interjected. “Any chance she knew about her husband’s relationship with this girl and went off the deep end?”
Knox glanced at Anita and shook his head. “I don’t think she knew, but even if she did, her alibi is airtight. The Home and School meeting was taped. I’ve got her on video from six-thirty that night till just after nine. She never even got up to use the bathroom. Anyway, she got home around nine-thirty and found her husband violently ill. She took him to Chestnut Hill Hospital.” He pointed at the box. “The records are in there. But he was home alone for hours before his wife came home. He had plenty of time to go to the park, shoot Sydney and get home, assuming that she was killed shortly after seven. She ran the same route every night for two years. Everyone who knew her knew that. The Rigos lived in Mt. Airy, which as you know, is a lot closer to the athletic field than Franklin West.”
Anita pulled the box over to her. She handed a set of Emergency Room records to Jocelyn and kept rifling through its contents. She pulled out another pile of photos that looked like they had come from the same roll of film as the flirty photos. She pulled one out and held it up for them both to see. “Is this him?” she asked Knox.
He nodded. Anita caught Jocelyn’s eye and handed her the photo. “A pretty boy,” both women said in unison. Jocelyn studied the photo more closely, ignoring the quizzical look that Knox directed at Anita and then her. Cash sat at a desk, and judging by the student desks and chalkboard in the background, it was his classroom. He looked young and fresh-faced, not much older than a high school student. He had broad shoulders, kind brown eyes, an angular jaw and curly brown hair cut just short enough to look stylish. Long enough for a woman to want to run her fingers through it, but not so long that it would make him look dorky or effeminate. He wasn’t smoking hot, but he would definitely get second looks from most women he encountered.
“I really am going to need some coffee,” Jocelyn said, although her mind was abuzz with the news of Rigo’s shaky alibi. It was something.
She flipped the pages of the ER records until she came to the discharge summary. Food poisoning. “What did he have for dinner?” she asked.
Knox answered, “Chinese food from a local place that no longer exists. He picked it up on his way home, at about five forty-five, which still gives him plenty of time to shoot Sydney and get home. None of the other patrons that ate there that night got sick.”