Water's Edge: A totally gripping crime thriller (Detective Megan Carpenter Book 2)

by Gregg Olsen

  “Could she have broken the metacarpal pulling her hand out of handcuffs?”

  “That’s what the coroner said. I agree with his assessment. I need to open her up to see how and how long the ribs have been broken, but I can tell you without a doubt that her neck has been broken. And not by a fall. Someone twisted her head.”

  He puts up his hands like he’s holding a basketball and twists quickly. “It was intentional. He knew what he was doing.”

  “Did she die from that?” I ask.

  He keeps his eyes on mine. “Not necessarily. It could have been done after death.”

  I lean closer and study her head and neck. The neck doesn’t look straight. I see the same bruising and busted lips as at the recovery site, but under the bright light they appear darker, deeper, as if they hadn’t yet started healing.

  “How old would you say the bruises are?” I ask.

  Andrade looks at them and touches several. “They’re all different ages. Some, like these,” he says, and puts his finger on the bruising on a rib, “are maybe a week old. Maybe less. But some are only a couple of days old.”

  I look at Ronnie and her eyes are scrunched up.

  “You don’t have a name yet?” Andrade asks. “Any idea when the last time someone saw her alive was?”

  I shake my head. I don’t want to jinx myself by saying something negative.

  “My best guess without opening her up is that she’s been dead at least forty-eight hours. Cause and manner of death are undetermined for now. A broken neck would do it.”

  I know that time and manner of death is guesswork unless someone sees you die. In most cases it’s an educated guess. I have to find out who she is, who saw her last. Besides Robbie Boyd.

  Dr. Andrade’s assistant uses a piece of dampened gauze and removes the blush from the cheek. I walk around to the other side of the table. Ronnie stays glued to my side. Jane has been kicked in the ribs several times. The marks that encircled her neck, wrists, and ankles are more pronounced under the lights. The skin had almost been rubbed off the side of the neck where the bruise is. I take one last look at the body, starting with the feet. No portion of her body is without injury.

  “Did you take a rape kit?” I ask the assistant.

  “It was collected and sent to the crime lab yesterday,” she says.

  I don’t ask her if there are signs of sexual assault. Dr. Andrade would check for that in great detail. Rape is a given in my mind.

  Ronnie grasps my arm and apparently has quite a grip when she wants. I will be bruised.

  Dr. Andrade puts on clear goggles. He steps on a pedal under the table. I look up and see a microphone suspended from the light.

  He begins by giving the date and time of the autopsy, lists the names and titles of each person in the room, and then indicates that he is performing an examination of an unidentified deceased female. He gives her height, weight, hair, and eye color, then says there are no deformities or tattoos or scars. He states the body has been X-rayed.

  “There are several contusions on the head and face,” he says, then goes on to describe down to the centimeter the cuts on the lips, the scrapes near the cheeks, a cut on the head, the broken nose, and the broken bones in the hands, all in colorful detail. He stops the recording and separates the hair to examine the scalp. He steps on the pedal and records more findings. The assistant is instructed to shave some of the hair from the right side of the scalp where a deep, sharp-edged bruise can be seen. It resembles the wounds on the ribs. Dr. Andrade postulates the injuries to the scalp and ribs were caused by the same instrument.

  The X-ray also shows the maxilla, or upper jaw, on the right side has been fractured and corresponds to the split lips.

  He glances at us and says this injury could have been done with a fist, but the person would have had to have been very strong. There are three broken ribs on the right side of the upper chest, two on the lower side of the left side.

  “Okay,” Dr. Andrade says, “let’s turn her.”

  He and his assistant turn the body over on the table, her forehead is placed on the wooden block, and her arms are laid loosely at her sides. Dr. Andrade continues looking for cuts, tears, bruises, punctures, or other abnormalities. The bruises here are numerous. I count three places along her spine that show fist-sized bruising. The bony prominence at the base of the neck looks enlarged.

  “See this,” he says.

  “You mean the shape of the bruise?” I ask.

  “What does that look like to you?”

  Before I can answer, Dr. Andrade’s assistant hands him a ruler and he calls out the measurement of the angles. He answers his own question: “A buckle, perhaps. Yes. Definitely a buckle.” He measures the width of the bruise encircling the neck, partially blocking out the buckle. “Two point six centimeters wide. Approximately one inch.”

  He measures several areas on the back and sides of the neck.

  “What’s one inch wide and has a buckle?” he asks Ronnie. For some reason it sounds like the opening line of a joke, and an inappropriate one at that.

  “A collar or belt,” she says.

  “Give that girl a gold star. We’ll have to open her up to see if she’s been strangled.”

  Dr. Andrade holds his hand out. His assistant puts a scalpel in it, and he moves to the top of the table. He pulls the lamp above the victim’s head and puts the tip of the blade against the skin behind the left ear. He slices left to right, starting at the bony prominence behind the left ear, ending behind the right ear. He hands the scalpel back to the assistant and uses his fingers to peel the scalp up toward the top of the head. He has to use the scalpel several times to excise the tissue attaching the scalp to the skull, but eventually he’s able to get a grip and pulls the scalp up and over the victim’s head and eyes.

  It looks like the scalp has been turned inside out and put on the head like a hair-fringed sock hat. I feel Ronnie’s fingers, which had been so limp when I met her, dig deep into my lower arm. I feel nauseous myself. The sides of the table are angled at the bottom to form a semi-drain that runs into an industrial double-size steel sink. Attached to the faucet is a long hose with a spray head. The assistant uses the sprayer to wash blood away and I watch it run down the steel table in rivulets and pool against the angles before running into the sink.

  The blood triggers me.

  I’m back in Port Orchard. My little brother, Hayden, is on the kitchen floor. He’s crying. His shirt is covered in blood. Rolland is on the kitchen floor beside Hayden. A large hunting knife is buried in his chest. He isn’t moving. His eyes are fixed in a thousand-yard stare. The room starts spinning. Spinning. I can’t breathe.

  “Are you okay, Detective?” A male voice, faint, like it’s coming from far away.

  “Megan, what’s wrong?”

  A woman’s voice.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Help her to a chair,” says the male voice.

  “Come on, Megan.”

  The woman’s voice is close in my ear. Too close. Touching me. I jerk away and something catches me in the back of the legs. I sit down hard; my teeth clack together and I bite my tongue. I put my hand over my mouth and zone back in.

  “Are you all right?” Ronnie asks.

  I look across the room at Dr. Andrade. He has a look of concern on his face, but his assistant looks tired. She’s seen this too many times. No doubt thinking that I’ll throw up and she’ll have a mess to clean up.

  “I’m sorry.” I get up and start for the door. “I’m going out for a breath of air.”

  “I’ll take notes,” Ronnie is saying as I go through the door and almost run to the elevator. I hit the button but it’s too slow. I look for the stairs and see the door marked with the silly sign for “His and Hers.”

  I rush into the bathroom, throw the latch, and hurl into the toilet.

  Fourteen

  I clean up the best I can and look in the warped steel mirror above the sink. My eyes are puff
y, like I’ve been crying. I splash water on my face and dry off with paper towels. Pushing my hair back into some order, I stand up and flick the latch open. I walk to the stairs and go up and outside. The fresh air revives me, but I still feel like I’m on the verge of reeling.

  I sit on the concrete steps in front of the building. I’m embarrassed. I brought the new girl and I was the one who got sick. I will never live it down if Sheriff Gray finds out.

  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and smell it. I don’t think I smell of vomit. I decide to go back in and finish what I am here for. I can do this. I head back in and go down the stairs. My stomach aches a little and that reminds me of the stretch marks on the victim’s abdomen.

  Dr. Andrade is moving right along. I can see a section of the skull is missing along with the brain. I don’t want to ask where they are. Ronnie doesn’t notice I’ve come in.

  She’s mesmerized.

  I find another mask and pull on a new pair of latex gloves. I’m not going to touch anything, but I don’t want anything touching me, either. Dr. Andrade doesn’t say anything about my absence, but his assistant cuts her eyes toward me. I nod to signal that I’m okay and her face crinkles behind the mask.

  I hope it’s a smile.

  The autopsy takes an hour and thirty-three minutes. All body parts are packed inside, and the body stitched up. Dr. Andrade gives his assistant some final instructions and motions for us to go to his office. We dispose of our gloves, booties, and masks in the biohazard container by the door and follow him down the hallway.

  I’m surprised how small his office is. There’s barely room for a small wooden desk, three chairs, and a wall full of tall steel filing cabinets.

  “I’d offer you coffee, but as you can see, I don’t have room for a coffeepot.”

  He says this with a grin and I suddenly like him.

  I take a chair and Ronnie takes another. She hasn’t said a word about my sudden departure, but the day isn’t over yet.

  “I can tell you some of what will be in my report,” he says. “The victim is approximately twenty-two years old.” Next he gives us a physical description: height, weight, hair color, eye color.

  Then he gets into what I am most interested in.

  I lean closer and take in every word.

  “Marks on her wrists were from hard bindings. I will say handcuffs could have made those marks, not rope or wire, but I can’t be one hundred percent sure and I’ll say that in my report. The band of bruising around her neck was caused by something an inch wide, leather, with a buckle. I say leather because I picked some pieces of material out of the scrape it left on her skin. The bruising was different depths on the left and back side of the neck as if it were pulled tightly or yanked at times. That’s why the buckle cut into the cervical bone.”

  He pauses and holds his hands down like he’s gripping a golf club. “Imagine a dog on a leash and the dog is straining against it. As to cause of death: strangulation. The ligature around the neck fractured the hyoid bone and the bruising was deep around the larynx. The neck was broken afterward.”

  “What about the stretch marks on her body?” I ask.

  He gives me a quick nod. “She’s had a baby. More than a year ago. The stretch marks are healing and silvery in color. That would indicate it has been more than a year from the birth of the baby. Sometimes while pregnant the pubis symphysis will separate, but that won’t show on an X-ray at this point, of course. The vaginal walls were very loose. I can say definitely that she had a child.”

  That is terrible news for a baby out there somewhere, but it is good news for me. If she had a child, she might have a husband, a boyfriend, someone to report her missing and identify her. I haven’t had any luck at this point. Her fingerprints have revealed nothing. The fibers on the body and the bits of leather collected will need to be confirmed. I have to call Crime Scene and make sure they’ve requested DNA testing.

  “She was raped very recently before her death, Detective,” he says. “There was tearing in the vaginal wall and bruising on the labia and vulva. It may have happened during rough sex or something was inserted, causing the damage.”

  That surprises me. He didn’t mention that during the autopsy while I was in the room. “Are you sure?”

  The forensic pathologist nods. “I took scrapings of the area and they’re being sent to the crime lab to look for pubic hair, tissue, fibers, that kind of stuff. I swabbed her inner thighs and sent that off as well. If there is semen on her, it didn’t show up on black light. She may have been cleaned by the killer to destroy evidence.”

  Dr. Andrade has been very thorough. I knew Crime Scene swabbed her hands, fingerprinted her, and scraped under her nails. Their report will show any results from the lab.

  As we leave, my mind is on overload. I don’t even know how Ronnie and I got into the Taurus. I am suddenly driving. I was right about the cause of death, and apparently Dr. Andrade thought the marks on her neck were caused by a belt, even though he didn’t put that in his report. She was raped and maybe worse. And there was a baby roughly a year ago.

  My mother was kidnapped and treated like Jane Snow. Confined, beaten, raped, left waiting to die.

  I wonder how much empathy Ronnie can have for the victim. Probably worst thing that’s ever happened to her is not being elected homecoming queen. I know that’s not fair. She’s been a help. She’s been a pain, too, but she came through like a trouper today. She stayed through the entire autopsy, didn’t throw up, didn’t complain, and, more importantly, when I’d asked her not to mention my loss of composure to anyone, she said, “Mention what?”

  Fifteen

  The sun finds an opening in the clouds and sets the scenery along the highway to Jefferson County afire in a thick splinter of golden light. It’s early afternoon, and in another hour the shipyard traffic from Bremerton will crowd the roadway as workers head home after a long shift. The ferry dock isn’t far, and I think of the last time I took the boat to Seattle. It seems like eons ago. I definitely need to get out more.

  The respite from the case is fleeting.

  “Our only suspect at this point is Boyd,” I say. “When we get back, let’s see what more we can find on him while we wait for the evidence to be sorted out.”

  “I looked him up on the Internet last night,” Ronnie says.

  When were you going to tell me?

  “Nice. Did you get anything?”

  Ronnie punches and swipes like crazy. “Bingo. Here it is.” She stops and stares at the phone, her mouth agape. “Oh my God!”

  I wait, but not for long. I don’t have to.

  “This wasn’t on here last night.”

  She holds the screen where I can glance at it. There is a selfie of Boyd with the state patrol vehicle behind him. Ronnie swipes again and there’s a picture of me. It’s not my best look. I concentrate on the road again. Cell phones have made people crazy. They drive crazy. Texting and driving should be a twenty-year prison sentence. Texting and hitting me while driving should be the death penalty.

  She swipes several more times. “Boyd is quite the water lover. He’s got his own website. He is a tour guide for whitewater rafting, canoeing, kayaking, you name it. He’s got a section in here titled ‘Killing Box’ and has a bunch of pictures of them. Luckily for him there isn’t one of our crime scene.”

  My phone rings. It’s Sheriff Gray.

  “You coming back to the office?” he asks.

  “We’re on the way.” I fill him in on what we learned at the autopsy. He doesn’t seem surprised. I guess with his years of service not much surprises him.

  “Where are you exactly?”

  “We’re about halfway to Hadlock. What’s up?” I can tell it’s important or he would wait until we got back to the office.

  “I just got a call from the state patrol I thought you might be interested in.”

  “I already talked to the state guy at the scene. MacDonald. He didn’t know anything. His shoes were sure sh
iny, though.”

  “Not him, Megan, and be nice. They have a tough job, and you might need them to back you up someday.”

  He is right, of course. “So who did you talk to?” And why would I be interested?

  “Trooper Lonigan. Working out on Marrowstone Island today. He got your APB and wants you to call him. He may have a lead on who your Jane Doe is.”

  “Jane Snow,” I correct him.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Sheriff. Give me the number and I’ll call from where we are.” I pull over and write down the number Sheriff Gray gives me, but I don’t really need to. I’m good with numbers.

  When I hang up, Ronnie says, “Marrowstone? Maybe she’s from there.”

  “Yep.” I dial the number and it’s answered promptly.

  “State Patrol, Lonigan.”

  “This is Detective Carpenter, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff told me to call you.”

  “Okay.”

  I wait. Why is everyone making me wait today?

  “Why am I calling you?”

  “’Cause I got your bulletin about the missing woman and a scary photo. I understand from MacDonald you found the body down at the state park. I was in the Nordland General Store a while ago. You know where that’s at?”

  I don’t.

  I say, “I think so.”

  “They got some really good sandwiches there. But anyway, I was reading your bulletin while I was eating an early lunch and I said something to Cass. She’s the owner. Makes a mean meat loaf, too, I’ll tell you.”

  I am silent this time. I’m hungry too.

  “Anyway, I told her what Mac said, and what you had in your bulletin, and we put two and two together and come up with Joe Bobbsey.”

  There are hundreds of state patrol officers in Washington State and I had to draw the simple-minded one.

  “Joe Bobbsey is my victim?” I ask, confused.

  “No. I’m getting to that. You probably don’t know Joe. He moved here from Indiana about ten, fifteen years back. He was a farmer but now he owns some land and built fishing cabins.”