Code 61 ch-4 Page 4

  I was bothered again about Borman and the “suicide” statement, as I turned off onto X8G and dipped down into a valley along the Mississippi. He really should have known better, even with just a couple of years under his belt.

  I traveled along the Mississippi again, past a stretch of maybe thirty small cabins on the right, or river side, of the road. They were across the railroad tracks that ran the length of the county in the valley of the Mississippi. I drove past a large, abandoned silica sand mine carved into the bluffs on the Iowa side, on my left. Then past a small sign near the railroad tracks that proclaimed “Givens' Switch.” There was nothing there but the sign, which had recently been placed by the county historical society. Commemorating one of those myriad little places that had just disappeared over the years.

  I thought some more about Borman. He was taking a class in “Humanizing the Police,” or some such thing, taught by a sociologist via a college extension plan. He was picking up on all these “empathy” techniques, and I strongly suspected that this had somehow influenced him this morning. Or maybe I just was reluctant to acknowledge that he was a younger generation of cop. I chuckled to myself. Maybe, indeed. Fifty-five really isn't that old. Well, not if you're ninety.

  About a quarter of a mile later, I turned back west, or inland, onto a gravel road called Willow, slowed to fifty or so, and called in for better directions.

  “Comm, Three. Just turned onto the gravel. How 'bout those directions now?”

  This sometimes got very interesting, because under code sixty-one rules, it forced a radio transmission that had to be very circumspect. Try that with directions, sometime.

  “Ten-four, Three. Take your next right turn to the north. Take the second drive after the curve that sends you back east, toward the river.”

  I paused, setting the directions in my mind. It was the great big house on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi. It was usually known as “the Mansion,” although some of the local kids called it the Dropout Dorm, because of the people who lived there.

  “Comm, M Mary?” I hoped she got it, because I didn't want anybody to know precisely where I was headed. I didn't know if the dispatcher, the ambulance crew, or Borman had specifically referred to the Mansion, but I wasn't going to. If somebody with a scanner had missed the initial traffic, I wasn't going to help them out now.

  It took her a few seconds. “Oh, sure. Ten-four, that's the one. Confirm with last three: three five four.”

  The 911 address would be 24354, useless to anyone who didn't have the name of the particular road. She asked for the last three digits to make sure I didn't have the wrong place. Nobody listening would know the first two digits unless they knew where I was all along.

  I'd always been fascinated by that house. It was huge, of a kind called Victorian or Queen Anne, or something. It was perched at the end of a long lane on top of the bluff, with what had to be one of the finest views of the Mississippi River that was available from privately owned land. I'd never really been in the place before, although I'd been in the yard once. It was far and away the biggest house in Nation County.

  “Ten-four, Comm, I know the location. ETA about five.”

  If it hadn't been for the 911 address sign 24354, a partially hidden mailbox, and a big, blue plastic refuse bin that was just visible from the road, you wouldn't even have known there was a lane there at all. Located smack in the middle of the Beiderbaum Timber, a wooded area that ran along the west, or Iowa, bank of the Mississippi for about ten miles, the house sat out toward the east end of a long, wide finger of land that pointed right at the Mississippi River. Bordered by two streams, or creeks as they're called locally, the ridge itself was about half a mile wide, with the east end about two miles from the road that ran along its west side. I'd guess that the top of the ridge was about 250 feet above the roadway, covered with trees and low bushes and foliage on the long sides, and ending in a vertical limestone bluff overlooking the river. The gravel drive that extended uphill was nearly a mile and a half long, winding from the valley floor through a heavily wooded area that had littered the road surface with fallen leaves. I crested the rise, onto the top of the finger-shaped ridge, and traveled the last quarter mile on nearly level ground. The trees were just as thick up here, a mixture of brilliant yellow maples and tall, dark green pines. As I drove on to the house, I caught a glimpse of its reddish turreted roof through the trees. I passed through a weathered iron gate set in limestone blocks. They were part of a limestone wall that demarked the area between the woods and the cleared, almost manicured area that displayed the house. My car bumped slightly as I left the gravel and drove onto the wide new blacktop of the circular drive.

  The large house was three stories, with two turrets and a vast wraparound porch, all in a dark blue-gray wood frame with maroon trim. Actually, “enormous” was a better word for the house, I thought. It got bigger as I got closer. It stood on a little rise, about ten feet above the level of the drive, and with a wide flight of limestone steps that led up through the little berm to a double door with tall, oval, etched and stained-glass panels. The doors themselves were flanked by very tall, oval windows. Etched and stained glass there, too. It had been built in the 1890s to mark the great wealth of the Givens family, who had amassed a tremendous fortune in grain.

  Both the ambulance and car Eight, Borman's fully marked squad, were parked near the front door. No flashing lights or anything. No reason for them. Both vehicles were running, though. There were two other vehicles in the yard, a '90 Buick four-door, and an '87 Ford pickup. Both looked to be well maintained, but showing signs of their age.

  “Comm, Three, I'm ten-twenty-three. Be out of the car.” I didn't have to say where, as she already knew that. And it concealed my whereabouts from the folks with the scanners. Always a good idea. I swung my legs out of my car.

  Comm acknowledged, and then Eight came up on his walkie-talkie. “Three,” he said, sounding sort of brittle, “I'm up on the second floor. First room on the left. Come in there and one of the EMTs will show you just where we are.”

  I headed for the house, and as I came around the side of the ambulance, saw a young male subject, about twenty years old, sitting on the bottom step. He had ear-length black hair, parted in the middle. A silver stud through the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes, sort of stood out. Dark blue sweatshirt, black jeans, black shoes.

  “Hi.” Not the best opener, under the circumstances, but you have to start somewhere. “I'm Deputy Houseman.”

  He just looked at me. He had a lit cigarette in his right hand.

  “And you'd be?” I knew I'd seen him before, mainly because of the stud in his nose, but I didn't remember arresting him or anything. The instant database in my head had him filed under “decent kid.”

  “Oh.” Like I'd startled him. Hard to see how. “I'm Toby. Toby Gottschalk. I live here.”

  Oh, sure. Toby. “What's happened, Toby?”

  “Ah, it… oh, you know, Edie's done herself.” He looked sort of unaffected by the whole thing. Sometimes, that can be one of the effects of an emotional shock in some people. He took a drag from his cigarette.

  “Did you see her do it?” The name Edie rang a bell, but, again, no placement.

  “No.”

  “Did you find her?”

  “No. No, I just heard Hanna holler, and then she came running down the hall to use the phone. That's how I found out.”

  You hate to belabor a point, but it can be important. “Hanna found her, then?”

  “Well, yeah.” A little exasperated. And why not?

  “Thanks, Toby. I'll probably have to talk with you a little more, when I'm done in the house.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay.” Pretty calm and self-possessed. Good, as far as I was concerned. Much easier to interview. I hated to see him smoke, though not for some sort of altruistic reason concerning his health. That was his problem. It was just that I'd quit about five years before, and still had a bit of a di
fficulty when I was in the presence of a smoker.

  I entered the front hall, crossed the foyer, and entered the main hall through another pair of double doors, also with the great oval glazing. This place was really big. And nice, too. There were hardwood parquet floors in every room I could see. I started up the walnut staircase that incorporated an inglenook, got to a landing, and continued up the next flight of stairs to the second floor. I found myself in a long hallway, with another stair at the far end. I saw Eunice Kahrs, an EMT, kneeling beside a youngish female who was seated on an upholstered bench in the hall.

  Eunice, the EMT, gestured toward my left. “Just go through that door, Carl, and on into the bathroom. I'd better stay with Hanna, here.”

  “Sure, Eunice.” The young woman she'd called Hanna looked very pale, and was staring off beyond the adjacent wall, to some point known only to her. She was breathing rapidly, and shallowly, as if she'd been crying. “She's the one who found her?” If you don't ask the obvious, things can get by you quicker than you'd think. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time I'd had two people with the same first name in a house.

  “Yes. Hanna here found her, and called us.” Just like Toby said downstairs. Good. Eunice squeezed Hanna's shoulders. “It'll be all right, honey.”

  I leaned toward the seated ffgure. She seemed stunned. “I'm sorry, Hanna, but I'll have to talk to you before I go.” She nodded.

  I went past her, and turned from the hall into a bedroom that had to be at least twenty-five feet by twenty. I could see Borman's back, and most of Herb Balk, an EMT, standing in an adjoining room, which appeared to be a bath.

  “What've you got?” I asked.

  Borman turned, very somber, and said, “A real mess. A real mess. Looks like a suicide, but I've never seen anything like this.”

  He stepped aside, and Herb backed out of the room, giving me free access. I stepped across the threshold, looked into the room and into the bathtub. I turned back to Borman. “Yeah.”

  FOUR

  Saturday, October 7, 2000

  08:19

  When you first enter a crime scene, it's really a good idea to stop, if you can, and just let the, well, the ambience sort of sink in. It's the only chance you get before things get really disturbed, and even with the best scene recording and evidence preservation, it's a chance that will never come again. Just a few minutes to stand still and look around. If you can do it when you're completely undisturbed, it's even better, because there's nobody to hurry you. If not, it sure as hell helps to be the one in charge.

  “Give me a few minutes here,” I said to Borman. “Why don't you go down to my car and get both cameras. The 35mm and the digital. And call the office, and make sure the ME is on his way.” I tossed Borman my keys, and began to try to absorb the room and its contents as well as I could.

  The center of attention, of course, was the body in the claw-footed tub.

  The white porcelain tub was almost against the far wall, and the drain end was the farthest from the door. What appeared to be a white female, twenty to thirty years old, was in the tub. She was seated, kind of, with her buttocks snug up against the end of the tub. She'd flopped forward and a little to her right, with her back kind of turned away from the door. Naked, like anyone else in a tub. Her head was bowed down toward her chest, with a mass of black hair hanging straight down, hiding her face. She seemed to have spatters of blood on most of her, except her head and her back, although it looked like there was even some blood between her shoulder blades. Both hands were in front of her, almost in her lap, like she had just sort of given up and let them flop down.

  There were what appeared to be fresh bruises on her arms and lower legs. The ones on her arms, especially, had a familiar look. They were circumferential, or nearly so, with three lighter-colored, narrow striations. The upper striation on the left side seemed to be a very narrow triangle, while the lower two were more like straight lines. I'd seen very similar marks on women and children a couple of times before. When a person grabs somebody and holds on, there is often a gap between the forefinger and the middle finger, with a much lesser gap between the middle finger and the ring finger, and the ring finger and the little finger. If they grab really hard, when they let go, the gaps appear almost white against the red marks left by the fingers. That's what these looked to be. The ones on her legs weren't that well defined. But they were large, and an angry reddish purple. I thought there might be some elsewhere, but there was too much blood on the skin to be sure.

  The tub had been modified into a shower, with an elliptical brass curtain track running around it about five feet above the rim; and a tall brass shower pipe and head rose from above the brass faucets and drain. The cream-colored plastic curtain was about half open and had blood on its lower edge, where it entered the tub.

  The tub itself had lots of bloody streaks all around the inside, mostly small spatters and streaks. Some appeared to have been large enough to begin to run toward the tub, before they'd started to thicken. Well, those that I could see, anyway. A little pool of drying blood encircled the brass drain rim. There was little, if any, blood actually filling the tub, and the drain lever seemed to be in the open position. I couldn't tell, at first, where the wounds were. I half suspected the left wrist, which was hidden from my view, and would be until I got closer to the tub. There were signs of a lot of blood, though. More than I'd expect from a wrist. Something related to that caught my attention, but I wasn't able to identify what it was right away. I stared at the blood puddle and the streaks. Then it struck me. Most of the blood didn't appear to have clotted. It was starting to dry, in a normal, evaporative way. But there wasn't much identifiable clotting anywhere, even on the body itself.

  What appeared to be a knife handle seemed to be sort of wedged between the top of her right thigh and the side of the tub, but, again, it was difficult to tell from my vantage point. The last thing you want to do is go thundering right up to the body. You can disturb lots of trace evidence that way, not to mention the strong possibility of completely missing something important located away from the body. And as soon as you start to focus hard on the deceased, you begin to set a focal point that's hard to alter later. Later, as in when you're confronted with the evidence you missed in the first place. The salient fact was that she was dead. No need to rush. Keep it broad.

  I looked at the dark green and white tiled floor, especially the area between me and the body. It appeared to be clean, with no bloodstains. The pale yellow walls were clean, as well. The porcelain sink on the near wall, at least down as far as I could see into it from my position some ten feet away, was clean, as well. Likewise for the porcelain stool beside it. The brass-framed medicine cabinet with a mirrored front, over the sink, also looked pristine.

  There were folded pale green towels on a brass rack with glass shelves, about three feet behind the tub. Nothing there seemed to stand out.

  There was a tall, white cabinet with, naturally, brass hinges and handles, all four doors closed.

  There was no rug or mat on the floor, and there didn't appear to be any clothing in the room. No slippers. No robe. No unfolded towels. There was blood-spattered soap in the brass soap dish on the right side of the tub. No shampoo bottles, no sponges, no razor, no washcloth anywhere near the tub. Other than the dead woman, that was just about the only remarkable thing in the room.

  “Must have been really neat,” I said to myself.

  “What?” From the EMT Herb, near the door.

  “Oh, nothing. Just talking to myself.” Oops. Sometimes I concentrate so hard on what I'm doing, I forget other people are anywhere around.

  I looked up, just like the other night up on that third floor. I learned to do that long ago. Most cops never look up. Sometimes, they wish they had. I could see a half window above the tub, and a full-sized window at the far end. Both had curtains, and both were opened, with screens.

  Box elder bugs and ladybugs were moving inside the window casings. A seasonal thing in I
owa. A couple of ladybugs had flown down into the room. They're such friendly little critters, I didn't bother getting them out of the way. One of the box elders was steadily crawling across the shower curtain, appearing and disappearing in the folds.

  No obvious blood marks on the walls. Nothing remarkable about that, either way.

  There was a ten-foot ceiling with a four-bulb lamp suspended from a chain. The bulbs were enclosed in white glass globes that hung from the green enameled flowery ends of the brass framework. Nice lamp. Nothing remarkable about it at all. No bloodstains. It'll surprise you, sometimes, just how high they can go if there's a spray or a splash effect. The ceiling itself was either the original molded copper painted white, or one of the newer, plastic versions. Either way, it, too, told me nothing except that it was expensive.

  “Well, shit.” I failed to catch myself in time.

  “What?” Herb, again. The man was a good listener, I had to give him that.

  “I said, Herb,” raising my voice with a bit of exasperation, “ 'Well, shit.' ”

  “Oh.”

  “Is Borman back with those cameras, yet?”

  “Here I am,” said Borman, behind me. “The office says the ME has been notified, and will get here ASAP. And, uh, Lamar says he'll come up, too.”

  “Good.” I stepped back into the bedroom, and started to unpack the 35mm SLR. “How far into the room did you guys go?”

  “Which room?”

  “The bathroom,” I said, snapping the 50mm lens into the camera body. I unzipped the section of the bag that contained the digital camera, but left it in place. I'd duplicate some shots with the digital in order to have them right away. The 35mm stuff was for court, if necessary. I reached into one of the bag's many compartments, and put on a pair of latex gloves.

  “I pretty much stopped at the door,” said Borman.

  “We got to her,” said Herb. “Close enough to check vitals. But with that wound in the neck, you could tell there was no point before you even started.”