So now I knew. Drobysch. David and Nancy Drobysch.
I pulled out the Atlanta phone directory, looked up David Drobysch. There was no listing for either David or Nancy.
But that’s not a problem when you’re a detective. I called the phone company. “Yes, hello there,” I said. “This is Detective Deakes with the Atlanta Police Department. I need an unlisted number for a David Drobysch in Alpharetta.” I gave her my badge number, then spelled the last name.
“Please hold for the number,” the operator said.
It was as easy as that. I felt a little chill run through me as the phone clicked, the computer about to feed me the number I’d asked for. I hung up before the voice could tell me the number.
This was bad, I was thinking. This was creepy. I was going to have to quit this, quit it right now.
ELEVEN
“You like dead kids?”
“Excuse me?”
Lt. Gooch was looking up at me from his desk as I walked into the office. “Dead kids. You gave me two cases, both of them got dead kids. Then I hear through the grapevine the chief just stomped on you for sniffing around this Jenny Dial thing.”
“Okay, yeah.”
“What was the name of that other case you gave me? The first one.”
“Evie Marie Prowter.”
“Yeah, that one. Where’s the file?”
I opened my desk drawer, pulled out the Evie Marie Prowter file. “Right here.”
“All right then,” he said. “Let’s go.” Without saying anything, he stood up briskly and walked out the door. I followed him. It was the first time I’d ever seen him get out of his chair. I’d expected him to move slowly, inching along toward his retirement. Instead he moved quickly and gracefully, like an athlete. I had to move fast just to keep up.
“What are we doing?” I said.
“It’s called working a case,” he said.
“Yeah?” I said. “I didn’t know we did that down here.”
“Lot of things you don’t know,” he said.
And that was the last word he spoke until we were standing in the office of Dr. Vale Pleassance IV, Assistant Medical Examiner of Fulton County.
Dr. Pleassance had just finished an autopsy, and was taking off his green medical gown and his green protective booties as we walked in. Underneath the gown he was wearing the full Kappa Alpha: seersucker pants, a billowy white Brooks Brothers shirt, bow tie, white bucks.
“Ah, the ever-cheerful Hank Gooch,” Dr. Pleassance said, smiling at Lt. Gooch. He had one of those drippy accents that rich white people on the coast have—Savannah, Charleston, someplace like that—and a smile that went with the accent, the kind that managed the strange trick of seeming both very warm and a little condescending at the same time. “What brings you to my humble abode?”
“Need to dig into your memory banks a little.” The lieutenant handed the file to the pathologist. “Prowter, Evie Marie. Female white. A child. You autopsied her in ’92.”
The ME’s eyebrows went up slightly. “I’ve been a trifling civil servant in this sinecure for so long, shucks, I can barely remember that far back.”
Gooch glanced at me. “Vale’s one of them people thinks it’s funny to pretend he’s a damn fool.”
Vale Pleassance, also addressing me, said, “The lieutenant is a man who finds little enjoyment in life’s smaller pleasures. Jokes, conversation, human beings, etc.” Then his smirky expression went away as he began leafing through the file. “Huh,” he said finally.
Lt. Gooch crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame of the ME’s office.
The ME seemed to be waiting for Lt. Gooch to ask him something, but when the lieutenant failed to say anything, Vale Pleassance finally said, “Cause of death, so far as I could determine it, was a gunshot to the back of the head.”
“So far as you could determine it?” I said.
“The body was found in the woods in July. I don’t have to tell you how hot July in central Georgia is. The body had been lying there for some time and was in a state of relatively advanced decomp. As generally happens when dead things lie in the woods, it had not only rotted, it had been munched on by racoons and other happy critters of the forest. All of which complicated forensic analysis.”
Lt. Gooch said, “Talk to us about time of death.”
The ME turned to me. “How long have you been working homicides, my dear?”
“This is my second case,” I said.
“Ah!” Vale Pleassance smiled brightly. “Then you have yet to be introduced to the pleasures of larval infestation.”
“In what sense?” I said.
“When a body lies out on the ground, flies deposit eggs, the eggs hatch, larvae begin to grow,” the doctor said. “A clever colleague of mine did a study to see how quickly larvae would form based upon ambient temperature, length of days, and so on. He developed a chart for estimating how long a body has lain around based upon those studies.”
“You actually count the maggots?” I said. “Boy, where can I sign up to be a medical examiner?”
“Touché.”
“What did you find out from your maggot counting?”
“This body had been lying there for less than a week, but more than three days.”
“But the girl had been missing for three months,” I said.
Vale Pleassance squinted at the file. “You’re right,” he said. “Which implies that she was kidnapped and held somewhere for quite a long while.”
“The main suspect in the case had a cabin a couple miles from there,” I said.
“Ah.” He leafed through the file again. “I’m a little surprised they never indicted,” he said. “As I recall . . . Ah, here it is. The suspect had a sex-crime record, didn’t he?”
“Multijurisidictional,” Lt. Gooch said. “Body found in Baldwin County, missing from Atlanta. The suspect’s cabin, which seemed like it could have been the actual murder site, was in Putnam County. Atlanta PD worked the case, but not before the GBI, the FBI, the Baldwin County Sheriff, and the Putnam County Sheriff had all stuck their noses into it.”
“That’s right, that’s right, it’s coming back to me,” the ME said. “You’ll note, Detective Deakes, that my autopsy report is actually on Georgia Bureau of Investigation letterhead, not on Fulton County ME letterhead.”
“Why’s that?” I said.
“You might be interested to know that the American Medical Association lists the forensic pathology specialty as the worst-paying specialty in the entire field of medicine. Sadly, I am a man of rather rarified and extravagant tastes. As a result, I whore myself out to anyone who’ll pay for my services.”
“What he’s beating around the bush trying to say,” Lt. Gooch said, “is that he’s a part-time ME for the GBI.”
“Not just the GBI. I’ve worked for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the State Law Enforcement Division over in South Carolina, and quite a few of the more backwater jurisdictions in the state of Georgia. Have cranial saw, will travel.” Dr. Pleassance gave me his Low Country-aristocrat smile.
“So, what can you tell us about this case that’s not in the file?” I said.
“It’s been a long time, my dear.”
I studied his face for a moment. There was something he wanted to tell us. “Talk to me,” I said.
“There was a peculiarity that I noticed. As I was doing the autopsy, the decedent’s femur shattered.
“And?”
“That’s not normal. It could indicate that the child had been suffering from a disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta. A very rare genetic disorder that causes bones to break extremely easily. Occasionally children with osteogenesis imperfecta get brought to emergency rooms with broken bones, where X-rays reveal dozens of healed fractures. The parents are frequently charged with child abuse. Until a correct diagnosis is made.”
“Osteogenesis imperfecta didn’t cause no bullet hole in this gal’s head,” Lt. Gooch said drily.
“T
rue.”
“So what else could cause this girl’s bones to fall apart?” I said.
“Advanced malnutrition causes the decalcification of bones.”
I felt sick suddenly. “You’re saying this little girl was starved to death?”
I got the superior smile for that. “No. As the report states, cause of death was a GSW to the head. But she appears to have been starved almost to death.”
“Let me see that.” I took the folder from him, leafed through it until I found what I was looking for. “You have a section here where you list the contents of the stomach. I’m reading this, quote, “Contents of stomach, 400 grams of partially digested food, possibly SpaghettiOs.”
“Your question, I take it, is: If she was being starved, why did she have SpaghettiOs in her stomach?”
I nodded.
“That would be what we in the death-investigation trade call a mystery.”
“Was there any other evidence of starvation?”
“Hard to say. The body had lost mass both from decomposition and from being munched on by critters. But under the circumstances, it was not unusually light.”
“Is it possible the starvation occurred before her abduction?”
Vale Pleassance shrugged. “I suppose.”
“So maybe her abductor fed her better than her own parents?”
“Again, possible.”
“Probable?”
“I would say not. According to the file, the mother was not in danger of being nominated for the parental Olympics. She was an alcoholic and occasional prostitute. But still—starving a kid almost to death? Not all that likely.”
I waited to see if Lt. Gooch had any questions. But he just stood there, arms crossed, holding up the door frame and looking down at his pointy-toed cowboy boots. I started to feel like maybe he was testing me, seeing if I knew the right questions to ask.
“We’re trying to go back and dig up old cases that have extant DNA samples,” I said. “Any evidence of anything on this body that we could get DNA off of?”
“I wouldn’t think so, no.”
“You didn’t use a rape kit on her, anything like that? No semen swabs, no blood stains?”
He laughed pleasantly. “There wouldn’t have been any point.”
“Hair?” Hair follicles, if they were properly preserved, also contained DNA.
“Any hair samples—from her clothes, say—would have been gathered by the crime-scene investigator. Not by me.”
I had read the list of evidence samples carefully and didn’t recall any hair samples listed.
After we’d finished talking to Dr. Pleassance, we went back out to the car. “You think this girl’s uncle, this Driggers guy, you think he put her in that cabin and starved her to death?”
Lt. Gooch shrugged.
“But if he did, how come she had food in her stomach there at the end?”
Still nothing from Gooch.
“Hey, wait,” I said. “How about this? Her uncle was the main suspect in the case, right? And he lived here in Atlanta. But his hunting cabin was down in Putnam County. So maybe he’s got her locked up down there and he can’t get down to the cabin except on weekends. Because he’s got to go to his job up in Atlanta during the week. And maybe he doesn’t leave her enough food but for a couple of days. So during the week, she starves, then on the weekends he comes down and feeds her. That would explain why she had a meal in her when he finally got around to killing her.”
Gooch drove silently.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said. “Being honest here. Are you testing me? Is this whole silent-treatment deal like a hazing kind of thing?”
“Silent treatment?” Gooch looked over at me briefly, then looked back at the road.
“Silent treatment.”
We drove a few more blocks, then the lieutenant finally said, “If I had something worthwhile to say, I’d say it.”
“What’s that mean?” I said.
But it was pointless. I got nothing, not even a glance from those lynch-mob eyes.
TWELVE
The next morning when I walked into the office, Lt. Gooch wasn’t at his desk. I was a little surprised. Usually he had been coming into the office at a ridiculously early hour. I figured he’d given me a week of show and now he was going to start malingering in a more conspicuous way.
I had nothing to do, so I skulked outside and hung a bunch of the MISSING posters of Jenny Dial on telephone poles up and down Ponce de Leon Ave. I figured the Chief couldn’t fault me for that. Anyway, who would even notice? The poles were covered with tattered ads for rock bands. I wondered if anybody in the entire history of the universe had ever looked at anything stapled to a telephone pole. After a while, the whole business started making me feel depressed. So I went back to the office.
Around ten-fifteen Gooch walked in and dropped a brown manila envelope on my desk. It had the logo of the GBI Crime Lab in the corner.
“Congratulations,” he said.
“What.”
“You just solved your first murder.”
I stared at him dumbly, not getting what he was talking about.
“Vernell Moncrief,” Gooch said. “The DNA from the semen found on Marquavious Roberts. It matches the mouth swab you took off him yesterday.”
I squinted at him, then opened the envelope. Inside was a DNA reported dated and time stamped nine-fifteen AM today. “How’d you get this?” I said. “The tech over there told me only God himself could get next-day service on DNA.”
“Making the world in seven days, that made me sweat a little. Getting some DNA run overnight, that’s nothing.”
“You just made a joke!” I said. I walked to the door and yelled out into the empty, echoing hallway. “Listen up, people! The Lieutenant just made a joke!”
“Who says I’m joking?” he growled.
I looked to see if he might crack a smile, but he all he did was spit tobacco juice in his Dixie cup and lock the cup back in his desk. I reviewed the report carefully. The DNA from Vernell’s mouth swab was a clear match to the semen found on Marquavious Robert’s body over a decade ago. Finally I looked up. “I guess we better go pick him up, huh, Lieutenant?”
“I want SWAT involved,” Lt. Gooch said. “Full felony takedown.”
I raised one eyebrow. Back in Narcotics we didn’t use SWAT unless we absolutely, positively had to. Calling SWAT was the sissy play. You’d get a reputation as being a hairstyle if you couldn’t close your own busts.
Gooch must have seen what I was thinking. But as usual, he didn’t say anything.
SWAT is a blunt instrument. Rapid entry, rapid takedown. That’s what they’re good at. Anything more subtle, and their value starts to drop.
Unfortunately the bust didn’t go the way it should have, and we ended up trying to fix a Swiss watch with a hammer.
We got some intel at the last minute, a CI of Gooch’s, who called twenty minutes before the bust was supposed to go down and said that Vernell wouldn’t be home that night, that he would be at a motel down on Stewart Avenue, the sleaze strip on the south side of the town. As a result we had to change plans inside the SWAT van itself, go in without a clear tactical plan.
How hard could it be, though, right? A motel room has a front door and a back door. You clear the rooms next door, you drop the flash-bang, you bust the door, you go in. Simple.
Only someone got their wires crossed.
SWAT piled out of the van first, sending three guys around back beside the empty swimming pool, and three guys to go through the front door. Lt. Gooch and I joined the stack on the front door.
As always, I felt the strange mix of prebust emotions—half pleasure, half terror. I could feel the sweat on my palm against the grip of the Glock, smell the cologne radiating off one of the SWAT guys in front of me.
Then everything else closed down, and my whole mind focused on the door.
The lead man had the door basher in his hand, hefting the steel handles, getting r
eady to pop the door, when I heard something behind me. It took me a moment to process the sound. A sort of click. Like a door lock.
I guess the SWAT guys were so focused on the door that they didn’t notice it. But Gooch and I turned in unison, like our heads were attached to the same little motor. Behind us, I saw someone walking out of the room next door.
“Who cleared the rooms next door?” Gooch snapped.
But it was too late for an answer.
The captain in charge of the SWAT team screamed, “Go!”
As the door basher hit the wood, the man coming out the next door room swivelled around, spotted us. He was a young black guy, ghetto fabulous, a white Sean John suit, white shoes, yards of bling. “Five Oh!” he yelled. It wasn’t clear who he was yelling to, but it must have been somebody in the room next to Vernell’s.
And then his gun came out.
Before I could even get my gun up, Gooch had double-tapped him, two shots that came so fast they almost sounded like one.
The kid with the gun staggered against the wall and went down, a shocked expression on his face.
“Go, go, go!” the SWAT captain yelled.
The three SWAT men disappeared into Vernell Moncreif’s room.
“With me,” Gooch said, gliding swiftly to the open door of the next room. He kicked the dying boy’s gun away, then peeped quickly into the room.
I reached down to feel for the boys’ pulse.
“Forget him,” Gooch said. “He’s gone. There are two men in the room. You take the one on the left, I’ll take the right. Go.”
Then he was in the room. I followed immediately.
The two men inside the room were on their feet, unarmed, panic in their eyes. On the table between them was a small mountain of baggies full of something that looked like brown sugar. I recognized it as Mexican heroin cut down to street weight. Apparently we’d walked into a drug deal between Vernell and the men in this room.
“Yo! What the—”
“Get down, get down!” Gooch yelled.
The door to the adjoining room was open. Apparently Vernell and whoever these guys were had been renting both rooms. Which meant the SWAT guys couldn’t see what we were doing, and we couldn’t see what they were doing. This was a disaster.
The Body Box Page 6