Rock Bottom (Em Hansen Mysteries)

by Sarah Andrews

  “I don’t either,” I said.

  At last a technician in a white lab coat presented himself to us and asked what we needed. Eleanor identified herself as next of kin. “I’m here to…” She began to cry.

  “I can only take kin in there,” said the man. He looked from face to face.

  Eleanor turned to me.

  I said, “Okay, Cousin Eleanor, Hank and I will come with you. The rest of you wait here.”

  Brendan said, “Turn your cell phone to vibrate.”

  I did as Brendan suggested and followed the man down a network of hallways and into a chilled room that had big drawers mounted along one wall. The place stank of chemicals. He asked Eleanor to sign a paper, then opened one of the drawers. Inside lay a gray plastic zippered bag covering a form the size and shape of Wink Oberley.

  The technician grasped the zipper but then stopped and turned to Eleanor. “You know that scavenging birds got to him before he was found?”

  Eleanor’s eyes grew wide, and she shook her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks afresh.

  The man said, “Perhaps you ladies would like to close your eyes and let the gentleman have the first squint.”

  Eleanor snapped her eyes shut, but I stepped forward to make sure I had as good a look as possible. I told the technician, “This isn’t my first time at this sort of thing. Open it up, please.”

  “Okay then.” He drew the zipper down along the bag, letting the plastic sag open around the corpse’s head and shoulders.

  For a moment I thought the man had opened the wrong drawer. The face was mangled, but there was more to my unrecognition than that. Something was different, very different. Then it hit me what had changed. “He’s had his hair cut!” I said.

  Hank said, “You’re right, he was all shaggy when we last saw him, and look, he’s clean shaven, too!”

  I heard Eleanor gasp, which meant that she had opened her eyes. In a tiny, squished-up voice, she asked, “Is that Georgie? Really?”

  Using her question as an excuse, I gestured for the technician to open the bag farther. “Did he have any birthmarks?” I asked.

  He opened the bag to below the navel.

  I could see deep scrape marks running alongside the coroner’s incisions. “What made those scrapes?” I asked. “He was always scratching his belly, so he had his shirt up a lot, but I don’t remember all that.” I caught the technician’s eye to make sure that he could swear on a witness stand that I had not touched the body and said, “Would you do me a favor? Do you have a magnifying glass of some sort handy?”

  The man fetched a large magnifier attached to a light source and switched it on. “What did you want to look at?” he asked.

  “Down there in those scratches,” I said. “Do I see a fine gravel, or is that my imagination?”

  The technician leaned down toward the magnifier and had a closer look. “Yeah, that’s bits of gravel. Why?”

  “Well, I was wondering exactly what kind of gravel it is, you see. This man was murdered, so any particulate matter that’s gotten stuck to the wounds as the blood coagulated might have significance in the investigation, don’t you think?”

  The technician nodded. “The coroner would have made a note of that.”

  “Can we see his notes?”

  The man shook his head. “It’s a murder case, after all. It’s evidence, like you say.”

  “Well then, here’s my point: I’m a geologist, a forensic geologist, and that looks very much like asphalt in those scrapes. I’d like to know if I’m right about that. In fact, I demand to know if I’m right about that, because at this moment my husband is being held for this murder, and I can guarantee that he was not anywhere near any asphalt for over two weeks before this cat went missing from our group. Do you get my drift?”

  Eleanor turned to Hank. “What’s she saying, Hankie?”

  To the technician I said, “The Park Service might like to know that they’re holding the wrong man for this murder.”

  Eleanor suddenly reached out and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my head around to where she could stuff her nose up against mine. Her tears had instantaneously been replaced by rage. “Just who the fuck are you?” she demanded.

  Hank said, “Let go of her, honey! That ain’t gonna help!”

  I struggled to free myself, but Eleanor’s grip was formidable. I heard the drawer roll shut. Pain shot through my neck and scalp, and my stomach was about to blow from the stink of death, but the emergency was over. I had found the evidence I needed. Fritz would be freed.

  I heard a door opening and footsteps approaching. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two men coming from around a divider at the end of the room: One was an older man in another white lab coat, and I thought, Coroner? and the other wore Park Service green and a flat-brimmed straw hat. God help me, it’s Chief Ranger Gerald Weber!

  “Do you want to explain yourself?” Weber demanded.

  “Yeah. Just help me get this woman off of me, okay?”

  “I don’t know,” said Weber, “maybe you’ll feel more talkative in that position.”

  “I can clear my husband,” I said. “The evidence is right there in that drawer.”

  Weber raised his eyebrows at Eleanor. She let go of my hair.

  I said, “I take it you’ve been listening?”

  Weber nodded.

  “Well then, what’s your problem? He disappears from Ledges looking like a shaggy dog and shows up at Whitmore with a haircut and shaven and all shot full of asphalt. You want to tell me how any of that happened if my husband killed him?”

  The coroner’s tone was pleasant and collegial. He said, “She’s got a point, Gerry,” and to me added, “So that’s asphalt? How do you know? I hear you have quite a name as a forensic geologist.”

  Now it was my turn to get angry. “You guys were waiting for me to show up?”

  Weber nodded. “Yes, I told Maryann to report your movements, so I flew over here to protect my evidence. You may have noticed something we didn’t, but even if that proves to be asphalt, you still haven’t given me an alternate perp. If your man didn’t kill him, I need to know who did, and you have to agree that all the other the evidence points to your man.”

  “What evidence?” I asked. “All I know is that you took him away and took my rock hammer with him. If you want me to help crack this case, you’re going to have to share everything with me.”

  The coroner turned to Eleanor. “Thank you for coming, madam. Do you identify these remains as your brother?”

  She nodded, her head wobbling like it might come off her neck. “He had a scar there on his right hand, and this one on his tummy,” she said. “That’s from a bicycle accident when we were kids.”

  “Thank you. My technician will show you back out to the waiting room.” He waited for them to go, then said to Weber, “Shall I show her?”

  Weber nodded his assent.

  The coroner re-opened the drawer, rolled the body onto its side and pointed to a stab wound just to the right of the spine at heart level, then lifted a flap of skin at the back of the scalp, exposing the skull. “This one on the head would have knocked him out, and the bleeding would eventually have killed him, but this stab wound here finished him off. From the angles here you can see that the assailant was quite tall, like your husband.”

  I turned back to the coroner. “Time of death?”

  “Difficult to assess, given the temperature of air and water, but I’d say he died the evening before he was found, plus or minus.”

  “What was he wearing?” I asked.

  The coroner described the life vest and the clothing.

  I nodded. “Hank’s shirt. Wait,” I said, feeling my cell phone vibrating in my pocket. I flipped it open, read Brendan’s text, and said, “They’re in the lobby.”

  “Who’s in the lobby?” asked Weber.

  “Holly Ann St. Denis and her mom, Lisette Carl. They—”

  Weber turned and headed quickly out the door. “I’ve
been looking all over hell for that woman!”

  To the coroner I said, “Please join us in the lobby and I’ll explain how to run tests on fine particulates,” and headed out the door, close on Weber’s heels.

  APRIL 21: WHAT HAPPENS IN LAS VEGAS

  Lisette St. Denis Carl stood in the lobby of Mohave County’s Offices wearing a new pair of high-heeled sandals, a lovely spring frock and even more makeup. It looked ghastly, and her hairdo sat askew.

  Brendan met me halfway down the hall and walked with me to the lobby. “Pretty good, huh?”

  “Yeah, pretty good! How did they know where to find us?”

  “You told me to stay on it with the cell phone. Well, we talked again, and I told her where we were going and why.”

  “And she just sort of decided to join us?”

  “Not exactly. She asked if you were going to do some detective work like on those TV shows. So I said if she wanted to see the real item she’d better get here as quick as a bunny, and get her mom to drive her. I have a feeling they know something.”

  “Nice work.”

  “It’s how we roll.”

  Ranger Weber strolled up to the mother and daughter. “Ms. Carl? I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said. “It’s been reported that you overheard a person threatening George Oberley’s life.”

  Lisette’s eyes grew wide. “I don’t know anything,” she said.

  Holly Ann said, “Tell him the truth, Mom. Tell him what you told me in the car. Tell him the whole story.”

  Lisette seemed to drink in the strength of the girl’s conviction. “Okay.” She closed her eyes, opened them again, faced Ranger Weber, and spoke. “I don’t know how you know all this, but it’s true that I overheard a very heated argument at Cremation Campsite, but that’s not important.”

  “Why not?” Weber demanded.

  “Because George left the Grand Canyon alive.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he asked me to pick him up on the road that leads into Supai,” she said. “And I did.” She put a slender hand across her heart. “I’m sorry. I truly did not know that there was anything I should be reporting to the law.”

  “When did you pick him up? And where did you take him?”

  “I picked him up just after dawn on the sixteenth. I took him into Las Vegas and—” Her voice caught, and she closed her eyes, shutting out the world.

  Weber took a step closer to her. “When did you last see him? And where?”

  “In the driveway outside our church,” she said. She opened her eyes and turned to Holly Ann. “I’m sorry for what you’re about to hear, dear.” To Weber, she said, “I took him to the church vestry, where my deceased husband used to dress for his sermons, and I let him use the shower there to clean up.” With a dramatic flourish, she added, “And I cut his hair so he could be civilized in the presence of God.”

  I asked, “Did he tell you how he got to your meeting place from the river?”

  Weber shot me an I’ll ask the questions look.

  Lisette said, “He told me he had a wet suit hidden under one of his hatches.” Her voice began to wander and become childlike, as if she were telling a fairy tale. “That and an extra pair of those heavy sandals you people wear, and a little backpack with extra gear and some food and water. When we last spoke at Nevills, he told me that he would call me on a special telephone he could use so I’d know when to pick him up. He said there was a place called Ledges and he’d get your group to camp there, and he could swim to that canyon that leads to where the Supai Indians live.”

  I said, “Ranger Weber, you will therefore find his fingerprints on that satellite phone. But Lisette, why did he take our spare life vest?”

  She seemed to be losing her focus, distracted by cars moving about in the parking lot outside the windows. “He said he could swim that distance just fine, but I told him I was worried about him, because he said it would be difficult to swim out of the current at just the right instant and get into the mouth of Havasu Canyon. So he said he’d borrow a life vest. Once he was up and on the trail he put the wet suit into his pack and began to hike very quickly. In places he even ran. The moon was very bright and pretty that night. He had a head lamp, but he didn’t use it because he wanted to make sure no one at Supai Village saw him. He’s so strong, you see; a real man! So he was able to get all the way up there before daylight, and there I was waiting for him.”

  “Tell them why, Mom.”

  Lisette raised her shoulders in a coquettish little gesture. “He was going to take me away!” She arched her neck like a cat being stroked. “We met in such romantic circumstances … He was in Las Vegas for a geology conference, he said, and our eyes just met across a crowded room … We were going to go away together, get away from all the pressures…” She glanced at her daughter. “And take Holly Ann, of course.”

  Holly Ann stared at her hands, her lips set in a straight line. I had the feeling this wasn’t the first time she had heard this sort of story from her mother.

  Lisette’s voice took on a wheedling tone. “Really, sweetie, this time it would have been perfect! I swear it!”

  Faye’s cell phone rang, interrupting the story. She put it to her ear, listened, said, “Great,” and handed the phone to Weber. “It’s for you,” she said.

  For once, Weber couldn’t find an intimidating stare. “Me?”

  “Yeah. It’s a friend of mine with the FBI. He’s got some information for you about a stray helicopter flight that disappeared off the radar near Whitmore Wash the evening of the seventeeth.”

  Weber put the phone to his ear, nodded, nodded again. When the caller was finished speaking, he said, “Let me get your number,” and wrote it down on a small pad of paper he produced from his shirt pocket. When he had handed the phone back to Faye, he said to Lisette, “It would seem that your brother-in-law Terry Carl made an extra trip back to the canyon. Tell me about him, why don’t you?”

  Lisette turned white.

  Holly Ann told her mother, “You tell him or I will!”

  Brendan moved to Holly Ann’s side and gently took her hand.

  Lisette squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t and I won’t!”

  Holly Ann’s lips began moving, praying in silence to the Heavenly Father who supported her in all things, including and especially the trials of growing up as parent to her own mother. Out loud she said, “‘Uncle’ Terry took over the church’s books after ‘Daddy’ Amos died, and he found out about the account that had been set up for Mom.”

  Lisette shrugged her shoulders, a last-ditch effort to look innocent. “A girl has to look after business,” she said.

  I put two and two together. “He caught you embezzling?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” said Lisette. “More like getting paid for my hard work. Amos encouraged it, called it a tax loophole. And those people wouldn’t have sent in all that money if I hadn’t cried on camera all those times!”

  You and Wink deserved each other, I thought, but said, “So for the record, is Terry the tall guy with the Adam’s apple who was leading prayers at your camp?”

  Lisette’s attempts at playing the gamine suddenly vanished. She stared into space, watching memories play back in her mind’s eye, scenes that drained the blood from her face. “He’s six foot four,” she said. “He—”

  Brendan said, “And he knows how to fly a helicopter. He flew SuperCobras for the marines.”

  “That’s right,” said Holly Ann.

  Faye said, “And he flew an AStar out of McCarran Airport in Las Vegas the evening of the seventeenth.”

  Weber shook his head. “I thought I’d checked all of that, but—”

  Faye popped him on the shoulder. “It helps to know how to talk to pilots. We’re a mangy bunch, but we stick together.” She turned to me. “The guy who owns that bird is one of their parishioners. He said that Terry told him it was important church business, and God wanted things quiet.”

  “But wa
it, he was killed with your rock hammer,” said Weber. “Explain your way out of that one, Ms. Hansen.”

  “Wink was a geologist, too,” I said. “And you have more to tell us, don’t you, Lisette?”

  Brendan said, “I’ll bet it was his own hammer that was used.”

  Genuine tears began to roll down Lisette’s face. “Georgie asked me to buy it for Holly Ann,” she said. “He was going to give it to her to let her know she could go to college and study whatever she wanted. And we would have had the money if Terry hadn’t gotten in the way!”

  “Tell the rest,” I said.

  “Terry caught Wink hiding in the vestry, and he was so angry! He—he took the hammer, and…”

  Weber said, “What happened then, ma’am?”

  Lisette’s eyes were wild. “I can’t tell you that! He said if I told on him he would tell everyone on television what I did with their money. He’d found our passports and took them. And he was going to take Holly Ann, and…”

  Weber said, “Did you see Terry Carl strike George Oberley with a square-headed hammer?”

  Lisette sobbed. “Yes! Georgie fell down, and I—I was scared, so I ran away! I thought he would follow me, but—but he didn’t!” Tears were streaming down her face now. “I thought he loved me, but he didn’t call ever again!” She turned to her daughter. “I just wanted a nice life for you. You understand, don’t you?”

  Holly Ann put her arms around her mother. “It’s okay now, Mother. These people will find Terry and make him go away where he can’t hurt us anymore.”

  Brendan patted Holly Ann on the shoulder. “And there’s something else you need to tell us, isn’t there, Holly Ann.”

  The girl looked to the boy. “What do you mean?”

  “Tell them about how he touched you.”

  Now Holly Ann turned pale. Her lips moved again, but no words came out. I wanted to take her in my arms. She was the real deal, a woman who asked for guidance from that grace that binds us all and got real answers. And she was a child, an innocent stuck carrying the burdens of the so-called adults around her.

  Brendan said, “What he does isn’t healing, Holly Ann. It’s called molestation. You’re under age and you didn’t want it. I saw what he did and I will testify under oath and he’ll go to jail for that, too. He’s going away for a long, long time to a place where he can’t hurt you ever again.”