Body found in Spring Grove Cemetery
By Detective Will Borders
A man’s body was discovered at approximately 9:30 a.m. Thursday in Spring Grove Cemetery. The unidentified male was white, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Cincinnati Police Department homicide detectives responded, although the cause of death was unknown and may be suicide. A routine autopsy will be conducted. Anyone with information in the case should contact Cincinnati Police or Crime Stoppers.
He clicked “post” and the system responded immediately.
Then he sat back and digested the words of the mousy little nursing student: We used to party up there…
Those were almost the same words John had said to him when they were sitting on Will’s balcony, talking about Miami. Will hadn’t thought about it much at the time, but why would John be hanging around Oxford?
Why did John have the same brand of shoe that left a print on Kristen Gruber’s boat? For that matter, why had John gone to Kristen’s funeral, a woman he had met once? It’s not as if John was deep into the life of the city or looking for an excuse to dress up.
Will stared at the steering wheel, feeling numb inside. If he were examining this evidence about anyone else than his stepson, his son, he would think this is the only person he had encountered who had a connection between Kristen and Oxford. John had met Kristen. He had partied up at Oxford. It was circumstantial, so far. But circumstantial evidence could be the building blocks of a homicide case.
He laughed mordantly. Cindy was afraid John was involved with drugs. Right now that would be a relief.
John had wanted to tell Will something when he stopped by on Monday night. Did he intend to confess? The memory made Will angry and woozy at the same time. He should have pushed him.
All Will needed was some of John’s DNA to test against the hair found on the boat. Matching the shoe-print could also be probable cause. So would getting Cindy’s permission to enter the house, where he could search John’s room, and find Kristen’s badge, gun, wallet, and keys, as well as the underwear of all the victims. Right that moment, he should pull out his cell phone and call Diane Henderson or Dodds. Then he should call the police in Oregon and find out if they had any unsolved homicides from the time John was in Portland, especially ones involving a knife.
He left the phone in his suit-coat pocket.
Maybe that female nursing student-Allison?-was a potential suspect. She would have a motive to kill two rivals being screwed under the stars by her good-looking boyfriend, and then coax him to the same fate. She didn’t have the strength for it. And how did she know Kristen? He was reaching to the moon.