by Julie Cave
Elise had invited Dinah to stay with her for a few days. In between cases, Dinah had agreed, remembering how much she enjoyed Elise’s company. This was her first night, having spent the evening getting to know Elise’s husband, Lewis, and 15-year-old daughter, Chloe.
“I’m . . . um, I’m running,” said Dinah, realizing it probably sounded weird.
“Oh. Are you in town somewhere?”
Dinah looked around, trying to get a sense of where she was in a town she didn’t know. “Let’s see . . . I’m outside a little strip of shops, there’s a little place called Wheeler Diner?”
“Oh yeah, I know where you are. I’m going to come pick you up.”
Dinah frowned. “I’m okay. You don’t need to worry about me. I do this all the time in D.C.”
Elise gave a brief, dry chuckle. “I have no doubt of that, Dinah. I only ask because the dispatcher just called me to let me know a 911 call was received regarding a dead body. I thought you might be interested in coming along.”
“Sure,” said Dinah, feeling a familiar thrill. “A murder?”
“I don’t know. The caller didn’t say much.”
“Okay. I’ll wait here for you.” Dinah hung up and looked around the cold, clear night. Above, a tapestry of stars shone gently in the velvet sky, the faintest whisper of a breeze caressing her cheek. It was at moments like this that she was simply glad to be alive. In spite of past sadness and struggle, she was still here, picking up the pieces of a shattered life and thriving.
By the grace of God.
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her windbreaker and waited, watching her breath bloom in front of her face like a flower made of mist.
A few minutes later, a white Ford appeared. It careened toward Dinah and stopped suddenly, tires squealing. Elise waved at her from the driver’s seat.
Yikes.
As she drove, and Dinah hung onto the sides of her bucket seat for dear life, Elise explained that the body would probably turn out to be a suicide or an accident. In the small town of Ten Mile Hollow, Virginia, murders were rare, save for the odd drunken fight. Periodically, she pushed a hand into her hair, trying to keep the tight, springy ringlets the color of honey out of her eyes. It meant she only had one hand on the steering wheel, and with the careless regard she had for speed limits, life, and limb, Dinah felt sure they would not actually arrive at their destination in one piece.
I am destined to be scraped up off the road by the fire department.
When Elise had finished speaking, to distract herself from her impending doom, Dinah asked, “Do they call you by the nickname you had at Quantico?”
Elise had pulled on a puffer jacket to protect against the chill settling into the fall air, and although it did make her look slightly bulkier, it didn’t hide the fact that she was short and thin as spaghetti. At Quantico, she’d been known as Bonesy Jonesy, often shortened to just Bonesy.
Elise snorted. “It follows me wherever I go. Could be worse I suppose.”
They passed through Main Street, where tranquility ruled in the sparkling fountain outside the courthouse, in the small, green park next to the medical center, and in the striped awning of Esther’s Eat Inn (get it? — so small town clever). They crossed to the western side of town, now literally the wrong side of the tracks according to Elise. Apartment buildings that had once been starter homes for young couples had fallen into disrepair and become havens for drug addicts and petty criminals. Elise knew that gang activity was beginning to crop up in the town, a consequence of failing families and poor employment prospects.
The apartment they’d been called to was a crumbling, red brick, two-story walk up. The street was quiet and deserted, except for the wail of a baby somewhere inside the apartment building. In the darkness, a light was switched on in a window. Elise parked, Dinah said a prayer of thanksgiving for her survival, and they walked up the stairs. Elise knocked on the door, and a shower of peeling paint flakes fell at their feet.
There was no answer. They waited as Elise knocked again. When there was only silence from within, she tried the doorknob. It was locked, but the deadbolts weren’t.
Elise raised her eyebrows at Dinah and bent down to peer through the keyhole. A moment later, she motioned for Dinah to do the same. Dinah pressed her eye to the keyhole and saw what could easily have passed for a waste facility. It was trashed.
“We need to get through the door,” Elise said. “Lend me your shoulder?”
“Sure.”
Dinah and Elise hit the door three times with their combined bulk. It was a cheap door and a flimsy lock, and it was eventually defeated. Dinah stood on the threshold of the apartment, her eyes scanning the scene. Though the apartment was dark and cold, it didn’t take long to see the body of a woman and the pale, waxy hue of her skin, lying on the couch. She was definitely dead.
Elise turned to Dinah. She spoke in the careful, calm voice of a person used to dealing with crisis. “I’m going to take a look at her and then call for backup.”
Dinah nodded. “I’m right behind you.”
As she navigated the room behind Elise, Dinah took careful note of the surroundings. The apartment was in disarray, filthy and messy. She saw at least one used needle on the coffee table.
Perhaps Elise is right. This is probably just an overdose.
Dinah knelt down by the body and looked at the dead woman while Elise checked for a pulse. The victim was not a young woman, but heroin often aged someone considerably. Recent and faded track marks scored both arms. She was very thin. She had long, dark hair that was fanned around her face.
Dinah couldn’t see an immediate cause of death — there was no pool of blood.
Elise suddenly motioned with one hand. “Look,” she hissed.
Dinah leaned closer, and then she saw the long, purplish bruises around the woman’s throat. Definitely not a suicide or overdose. This is murder.
Carefully, she raised the eyelid on one of the woman’s half-closed eyes and saw red, broken blood vessels — the telltale signs of death by asphyxiation.
Elise looked at her, and understanding passed between them without a word having to be spoken. Elise rocked back on her heels and pulled out her cell phone.
Dinah stood up and took a careful step back from the body. She listened as Elise called in backup, forensic technicians, and the medical examiner.
Dinah began to look carefully around the room, taking out her cell phone to record her observations. Her immediate impression was one of neglect and filth. It would appear that the dead woman lived alone in squalor, which wasn’t unusual for hard-line heroin addicts.
The kitchenette contained a hotplate and refrigerator that both looked unused. Judging by the number of empty takeout bags and containers around the room, the dead woman had lived almost entirely on Chinese food.
The living room contained only a couch, coffee table, and a small TV. Dinah picked her way gingerly across the room, mindful both of needles that were likely strewn around and not disturbing the crime scene. There was nothing that stood out immediately to her as being out of place, but it was so hard to know given the state of the room. On a crate serving as a coffee table, Dinah found a small purse. Inside, she found a social security card and an ATM card in the name of Malia Shaw.
She gave the purse to Elise, who dropped it into a plastic evidence bag, and headed for the bedroom.
The queen-sized box-spring mattress took up most of the bedroom, with sheets spread haphazardly across it. The small, attached bathroom was grimy and virtually empty, save for a bar of soap. The dead woman apparently hadn’t bothered with the niceties of makeup or perfume.
Dinah returned to where Elise was standing, just inside the door. She couldn’t shake a feeling of disquiet. The dead woman had lived a solitary, sad life, she thought.
“Well, what do you think?” Elise asked. Two deputy cars had parked below them; Elise waved at them to come up.
“She was a hard-core heroin addict,” said
Dinah, “so it could be a drug deal gone bad. Or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“There’s nothing to take, except a stash of drugs, perhaps,” observed Elise.
“Do you know who she was?”
Elise sucked in a lip for a moment and said, “Not offhand. I’m willing to bet that if we plug her name into the computer, there’ll be a record. She had to be supporting her habit somehow.”
Dinah nodded, distracted by the feeling that she had missed something. What is it?
She went back inside the apartment and knelt beside the dead woman again. Without touching her, she looked over the body more closely, wondering if there was anything there she had overlooked.
“Found anything I should know about?” a cheerful voice sounded above her. It belonged to a tall man in his late forties, with a thick thatch of silvery hair with a matching beard and a beaming smile.
“This is the medical examiner, Dr. Theo Walker,” explained Elise. “Doc, this is my FBI buddy, Dinah Harris. She’s a private consultant now.”
Dr. Walker smiled as he snapped on his gloves. “Nice to meet you. What did you do for the Bureau?”
“Gangs mostly, but I also did some profiling for serial homicide.” Ah, glory days. All gone. Nothing lasts forever.
“Excellent. Well, what do you think of our body here?”
“So far, only that she’s a murder victim,” said Dinah. She pointed out the bruising on the woman’s neck.
Walker knelt down next to her and nodded.
“I saw it when I tried to find a pulse,” explained Elise.
Silence fell in the tiny, suffocating room as the county medical examiner carefully looked over the dead woman’s body. From time to time, he shook his head, as if noting the sadness of the woman’s wasted life.
“My immediate impression is that she was strangled manually,” said Dr. Walker finally, as he examined the neck carefully. “These bruises look like finger marks, as opposed to rope or cord.”
He began a second careful examination of the body, this time speaking into his iPhone as he made notes. Dinah watched as the man gathered evidence slowly and methodically.
“Any thoughts?” she asked, at length.
Walker rocked back on his heels. “Off the record, I think she was probably killed at least a couple of days ago, though the cold temperatures in here would have sped up the cooling process. Rigor mortis has passed. No sign of insect activity, but that is due more to the temperature than anything else. There are no other obvious signs of trauma. I’d be surprised if the killer inflicted any violence on her other than that by which she died.”
Dinah nodded. “He probably wouldn’t have needed to — she’s so small.” She stood up and walked to the door of the apartment to breathe in some fresh air, which suddenly felt cold and sweet compared to the odor of death.
“The crime scene tech is on her way,” Elise noted, after looking at her phone. “She’s coming from another job over in Norfolk.”
Dinah knew that Ten Mile Hollow was too small to employ a full-time crime scene technician, so they used the county resources. The tech worked from the same office as Dr. Walker in Norfolk.
From her perch by the door, Dinah looked around the street: still dark and quiet with not a soul in sight. If this murder had occurred in the middle-class districts, neighbors would have crowded around the scene, curiosity getting the better of them. Here, most of the neighbors had something to hide and stayed behind firmly shut doors.
Across the street, an apartment above a pawnshop had tried to cheer up the bleak façade of the building with flower boxes. For some reason, this attempt at homeyness made Dinah feel unspeakably sad.Somehow, the loneliness of this street struck a chord with her own isolation, and it echoed in her heart like a beautiful song left unsung.
****
The eastern horizon was blushing with the pink promise of a new day. In the hour before dawn the temperature plummeted even further, and dressed only in her jogging gear, Dinah began to shiver.
Wearily, Dinah and Elise stood in the threshold of the dead woman’s apartment as the crime scene technician finished up. Black fingerprint powder was dusted over every surface, but it was virtually unnoticeable amid the original grime. The crime scene technician nodded somberly at them as she left, the medical examiner had already removed the body, and the remaining apartment and its contents were Elise’s to process. Although she had notified him, the sheriff had no interest in combing through the dead woman’s belongings, and had made an excuse not to be there.
“He’d be here in a flash if it were an important member of society,” grumbled Elise. “Apparently lonely heroin addicts don’t make the cut.”
Dinah knew this only too well. It seemed that humanity was collectively keen to assign value to human beings based on a list of subjective criteria.
The apartment had been sealed all night with a sheriff’s deputy guarding the door. No doubt his presence severely dampened the usual trade of the drug dealers during the night, Dinah thought with a smile.
Though the dawn had teased them with feminine shades, the day failed to deliver. Clouds rolled in, turning the sky low and gray. Dinah felt as though she was now completely frozen. Her extremities were numb. Her nose could drop right off her face and she wouldn’t even notice.
“All right,” said Elise. “Let’s do this.”
She gave Dinah gloves. They decided to start in opposite ends of the apartment, go through each room carefully and compare notes at the end. Dinah was to start in the kitchen.
After only a few minutes, she decided the autopsy would have to show signs of significant malnutrition. There was literally no food in the apartment, the spoiled remains of a milk carton notwithstanding. The small refrigerator was bare, and there was no evidence of a pantry at all. Underneath the sink languished a solitary bottle of disinfectant. Another cupboard yielded a few mismatched cups and plates. The countertops and sink were covered with the detritus of fast food. Dinah sifted through all of it, looking for anything odd. She opened a large trash bag and dropped each piece of rubbish in after a thorough inspection.
She found nothing there.
She moved into the threadbare living room. First, she looked through the rubbish that littered the couch and coffee table, and put it carefully into the trash bag, mindful of needle stick injury. Once the floor and the couch were clear, she stood back to look. The furniture was cheap, the couch cushions ripped in places and sagging in others. The floor was covered with thin, worn carpet, the original color of which was anyone’s guess. Now it was a sickly gray-brown. At the age of 39, this woman should have had a significant other, some kids, a warm and cheerful home. Dinah sighed. In this, she and the dead woman were alike.
There were few places to hide anything of note. There was no murder weapon to look for, no ballistics. She hoped that the crime scene tech had found some hair or fingerprints.
Dinah decided the only thing to do was to pull the couch apart. Gingerly, afraid of used needles flying out at her, she pulled up the cushions, leaving the frame bare.
It paid off. A thin black cell phone had been hidden or had fallen underneath one of the cushions. Dinah opened it and began to look through the contacts. There weren’t many, and she felt encouraged by this. She dropped the phone into a plastic evidence bag.
She walked into the bedroom with its tiny attached bathroom. The sheets on the bed were dirty and covered in tiny flecks of blood — perhaps from needle wounds. Dinah carefully bagged it up as evidence. Perhaps, as a stroke of luck, the killer had left his own speck of blood. Clothes littered the floor of the bedroom, but in totality, Malia Shaw had owned little in the way of clothing. Dinah found a pair of jeans, several T-shirts, a couple of sweatshirts and an old coat, a pair of boots, and a pair of sneakers. She bagged each item, carefully wrote the record book, and was left with the mattress.
With a sigh, she rocked back on her heels, wondering why she suddenly felt so warm and claustro
phobic. Dinah had always thought that a person’s home shared a soul with its owner, and therefore had a personality of its own. In her own house, visitors would instantly see that she loved cooking. She owned every cookbook ever published, and displayed them in her kitchen. Much of the color was provided by a potted chili plant in one corner, and a collection of potted herbs in the courtyard. A throw blanket was always carelessly draped across the couch for use on cold nights. A beautiful and rare painting by an indigeneous Australian artist adorned one wall, the earthy ochre, burnt gold, deep brown, and dark red reminding her of an exotic and faraway land. It was a home that was lived in.
That was what was bothering her. There was absolutely no indication in this apartment that Malia Shaw had cared one little bit about herself. The apartment was bereft of love, cold and shuttered. There was nothing sentimental, nothing personal. There were no photos or mementos or souvenirs. There were no books or music — not even a computer. No indication that a human being, with a soul, with a personality, with preferences and desires and fears, had lived here. Is this what a life reduced to a heroin addiction looks like?
A spreading sadness trickled through every vein. How could you call this a life? Was there anyone who loved you?
Dinah took apart the box spring, searching for any cuts or frays in the fabric in which something could be hidden. She didn’t find anything.
The final room to search was the bathroom, which consisted of a shower stall, a toilet, and a sink, all of which were moldy and dirty. Dinah found nothing in the stall or toilet tank, and turned her attention to the small cupboard underneath the sink.
It was bare — a bottle of shampoo, a body moisturizer, and several new bars of soap. For lack of anything else to look at, Dinah picked up the bars of soap and threw them back into the cupboard in frustration. The soap hit the back wall of the cupboard with a hollow thunk and Dinah frowned.