Page 42 of Not Quite Dead Yet

Jack opened the file, flicking through pages and photographs, those yellow numbered markers from the scene. Jet tried to catch all the words, failed because they moved too fast, upside down.

‘Here.’ Jack stopped at a large photograph, slid it out and held it up.

A gloved hand at the top of the frame, two fingers pinching a clear baggie in front of a white surface, sealed at the top. And inside the plastic baggie was a hair. Jet squinted, leaned closer. The hair looked red, straight, about five inches long.

Jack handed the photo over and Jet studied it closer.

‘That hair was found at the scene. More specifically, it was found where you were lying, after the attack. And this hair was on the wooden floor, underneath the main pool of blood. The hair was there first, and you bled over it; the techs can tell things like that.’

Jet lowered the photo, looked back at him. She thought she knew what that meant, but she wanted him to say it.

Jack nodded. ‘Which means it wasn’t left there by any of the first responders or police officers, or Billy finding you, when the scene was contaminated. This hair was under the blood. It was left there either before, or during …’

He didn’t finish his sentence, didn’t need to.

‘So it was left by the killer?’ Jet asked, eyes returning to the photo, running her finger along the zoomed-in strand of hair. Did Jet even know any redheads? Sophia’s hair was dark brown, but sometimes looked a little red under the right lighting.

Jet swallowed. ‘DNA?’ But she already knew. Knew thatmovies and TV lied about that stuff, fast-tracked it. Knew that it could take weeks to get any results back from the lab. Jet didn’t have weeks, and she wasn’t in a movie.

Jack shook his head. ‘No need,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not human.’

Jet narrowed her eyes.

‘It’s synthetic,’ he said. ‘Plastic.’

Jet looked back at the hair. ‘You mean a wig?’

‘I mean a wig.’ Jack reached forward, took the photograph from her, replaced it in the file, another look over his shoulder. ‘You know anyone who was wearing a red wig at the Halloween Fair?’ But he’d asked it like he already knew the answer, like this wasn’t really a question at all. Which was why Detective Ecker hadn’t needed to ask it.

Jet exhaled. ‘JJ,’ she said, her hands finding each other again, gripping on.

Jack pressed his lips together, closed the file.

JJ couldn’t have done this, right? He’d hardly raised his voice the whole time Jet had been with him; in fact, maybe yelling would have showed that he cared more. But JJ was missing. JJ had sent her aSorrytext after the time of the attack. JJ had been wearing a red wig with straight hair on Halloween, on the night Jet was killed.

Jet could see it in Mr Finney’s eyes, could count them one by one.

Three strikes against JJ.

10

The inside of the truck smelled like salt and grease, stronger somehow, the colder the fries got. Maybe Jet hadn’t needed four whole boxes – large, of course – as well as a double cheeseburger. But she hadn’t eaten fries in years, to save her kidneys, and what had been the damn point?

She finished off the last three fries from her second pack, eating with spite more than anything else – because she could now, so she would. They weren’t as good as she remembered, and now her tongue stung from the salt.

It was coming up again. The location.

Jet lightened the pressure in her right foot and the truck slowed to a crawl.

River Street.

Right here, where the road met North Street, continuing straight on ahead, where her headlights couldn’t reach.

It had been three nights now, since her phone was brought here by her killer, turned off in this exact spot.

What did this place mean to them? Where were they going?

If JJ was the prime suspect, then how did this tie into the police’s theory? JJ had never mentioned knowing anyone on this street either, so why would he have come here after killing her? And – scratch that – why would he have killed her in the first place? They used to make each other laugh … a lot. Although, now Jet thought about it, maybe the laughter had been mostly one-sided. His. At work, catching stolen moments in the gym staff room, before they realized therewere cameras in there. They’d been good together, but good hadn’t been good enough for Jet. You had to aim for something better than good, something bigger, and Jet had her whole life in front of her … back then, at least. She’d done it nicely, even quit her job at the gym so it wouldn’t be awkward for either of them. That wasn’t a reason to kill somebody, right?

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