Page 21 of Wild Justice

“Our daughter didn’t have any secrets,” Carole assured her. “Her life is - I mean, was - an open book. But we do understand what you mean. We understand that you need to ask personal questions, and we’re fine with that.”

“Do what you need to do to find out who hurt our little girl,” Gary said gruffly. “If you can’t, I’ll find the son of a bitch myself.”

“I beg of you, please do not try and investigate yourselves. There’s a killer out there, and we don’t want any more victims. One is more than enough.”

There were a few more questions, and the parents wrote down the names of the friends…that they knew about. At the age of thirty, Dana might have had secrets from her parents, despite Carole’s insistence that her daughter’s life was an open book.

Lulu’s gut was telling her that someone in Dana’s life had killed her. Just who might it be?

After informingDana Cartwright’s parents of her passing, Lulu’s next stop was Dana’s home way out in the boonies. The house was at the end of a long driveway off of a side road about ten miles outside of town. It had been Dana’s grandmother’s home until she’d inherited it a few years ago.

Lulu wasn’t the easily creeped out type, but she wasn’t sure she’d want to live out here by herself. There were no streetlights for a good two miles leading up here, and at night this whole area had to bring a new definition todark.The house had just one porch light, and the detached garage also had a lone single bulb. Surrounded by trees, the home and grounds would have made an excellent setting for a horror movie.

The forensic team was almost done here, and she was anxious to get inside. The crime scene team was looking for trace evidence of a possible murder. Lulu was looking for something far different. She wanted clues into what was happening in Dana’s life - people, places, issues.

Despite what movies, books, and true crime television would have a person believe, stranger murders weren’t all that common. In truth, less than ten percent of victims were killed by people they didn’t know. Lulu’s money was on a romantic partner, friend, neighbor, or family member. Because of that, she needed to know the intimate details of Dana’s life.

She took the mother’s declaration that Dana’s life was an open book with a grain of salt. As much as Lulu loved her parents, she didn’t tell them everything about what was going on in her life. And the older she got, the less she told them. Not because she didn’t trust them. She did, wholeheartedly. It was simply that she was an adult, and adults didn’t go running to mommy and daddy about every little thing.

Especially when it came to her love life. While her parents - especially her mother - were open-minded, she wasn’t the type to talk to her mom about a guy she was seeing and yes, sleeping with. Her dad was the type of parent who knew she had sex, but didn’t want to know the details. Her mom would have been fine with the details, but Lulu still thought it was a bit weird. She sure as hell didn’t want to know about their sex life, although she knew her mom and dad loved and adored one another after many years of marriage.

I don’t need all the minute details. I get it. They have sex. But I don’t want to dwell on that.

“It’s the garage,” the lead forensic said to Lulu, pulling her from her thoughts. “That was ground zero. I can show you.”

After pulling on her protective gear, Lulu followed the woman into the garage. Dana didn’t have much inside of it. Just the usual - her car, a few boxes of Christmas decorations, a large cooler, a few yard tools like a mower and rake, and a shelf with cans of paint and some random tools.

On the driver’s side of the vehicle was a blood pool at least a foot wide, and a few random spatters on the side of the car.

“It looks like she was killed here,” the investigator said. “And then probably carried to another vehicle parked in the driveway. There are drops of blood leading out of the garage.”

Images of what might have happened flew through Lulu’s mind, reversing and going forward several times as she played through multiple scenarios. Had someone come up behind Dana and surprised her? Did Dana have a friendly visitor who had turned not so friendly? Had Dana fought back? Or had she not even seen it coming?

“Then the killer drove her to the lake and dumped her body there,” Lulu said, mostly to herself. “Premediated or spur of the moment decision?”

“I know you’re not asking me, but it sounds like a spur-of-the-moment decision,” the investigator replied. “The victim was found the next day. You’d think whoever did this would want the body to be hidden for a longer period or even forever. But that’s just my two cents.”

“You make a good point,” Lulu conceded. “I’m not married to any particular theory yet. What else have you got from the house?”

“Not much. No broken windows or doors. No signs of any forced entry at all. We didn’t find any cell phone at the lake, and we didn’t find one here either. There appears to be a spot at the desk for a laptop, but we didn’t see one. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It’s clear if you want to go through it.”

“I do. Thanks.”

“I will say,” the investigator said with a visible shiver. “That this probably looked very different at night. No lights, no cameras. No one anywhere near enough to hear and see. It’s the perfect place to kill someone and get away with it.”

Lulu agreed, which was why she was leaning toward premeditation. But she couldn’t rule out the fact that the killer just got lucky with the location.

Did he or she kill Dana here because it was a remote location?

Or was he or she here with Dana, and the murder just happened here without forethought?

Frankly, the murderer could have dumped Dana’s body somewhere on the property. There were several acres here, most of it wooded.

If I was the killer, I wouldn’t have taken the risk of moving the body and being seen. I would have hidden it close by.

Did that mean that the murderer panicked? So many questions, and she needed to get the answers.

Lulu moved her investigation inside of the home. The crime scene techs had dusted for prints and taken samples for DNA analysis. If Dana had any visitors that night, hopefully, they left a little something of themselves behind.

---