Wild Season: A Coastal Caribbean Adventure (Tyson Wild Thriller Book 22) by Tripp Ellis

Author:Tripp Ellis [Ellis, Tripp]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tripp Ellis
Published: 2020-12-06T22:00:00+00:00

21

I was pretty sure that if Erin Edwards had been killed in this room, there would still be bloodstains on the carpet. It's not like this place got a routine steam cleaning.

JD and I scoured every inch of the carpet, looking for year-old dried bloodstains. The carpet was in pretty bad shape—so bad that it was hard to determine at a glance what some of the stains were. But nothing on the floor looked like what I’d expect to see from a fatal blow to the head.

We pulled apart the beds and examined the mattresses on both sides. Even though we didn’t find any bloodstains that could have come from a bludgeoning, the mattresses were truly horrifying. There were a host of other stains and soil marks.

I called Brenda and had her meet us in the motel room. A forensics photographer accompanied her. Long exposure photographs were used to document any reaction with the reagent. Brenda sprayed Luminol to see if anything glowed.

The chemiluminescent reagent glows when mixed with an oxidizing agent such as iron in blood. But it can also be oxidized by other agents such as bleach, copper, horseradish peroxidase, fecal matter, and certain plant matter. The glow of the reaction only lasts about 30 seconds, and the room needs to be fairly dim to see it.

The results were disappointing.

There were various luminescent speckles across the room, but nothing consistent with Erin Edwards’s injuries. The bathroom had been scrubbed with bleach so many times by the maids that the whole area glowed. If there was any trace of blood in the bathroom, the DNA would have been destroyed by the bleach, making analysis impossible.

I stepped outside of the motel room and surveyed the parking lot. Cars zipped by in either direction on the highway. There were empty fields on either side of the motel as well as behind. The grass was high and swayed in the breeze, and small trees and bushes covered the area. A quick march northeast, through the brush, and you’d be at the water’s edge. I tried to run through possible scenarios in my head. I had hoped the motel room might speak to us, but it didn’t.

I talked with the desk clerk before we left the seedy rat trap. He told me Oscar Padilla was on shift the night Misty Valley had checked in. Maybe he’d be able to confirm that Gary Richardson met her that evening, but I doubted he’d be able to recall any details.

Isabella had sent me Gary's address and background information. He lived in a decent neighborhood not far from Erin's home, only a few blocks from the cemetery. We headed back to town, found Gary’s residence, and parked at the curb. We strolled the walkway to the front porch and knocked on the door. It was late afternoon now, and there was a nice breeze.

A woman that I assumed was Gary’s wife pulled open the door. Vera Richardson was in her late 40s, shoulder-length brown hair, pale eyes, and a round face.

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