by MK Alexander
I raised my hand. “Sorry to interrupt… Is that something you want the public to know?”
“What’s that, Mr Jardel?”
“About the camera… the more eyes the better kind of thing?”
“Great question. Anyone?” Jamal left it open to the room.
Officer Mendez from the Nederland PD spoke up: “Most of the locals already know about the NedCam, and… how it hardly ever works right. I don’t think we need to say anything new, especially if we’re monitoring it.”
“Agreed, thank you…”
“Um… sorry,” I interrupted again. “Could you tell us where that camera is?”
“Sixteen Hill Drive,” someone in the audience replied.
That deserved a follow up, I thought to myself.
“Right then,” Jamal continued, “Let’s get started… Marisa— ready on the vehicles?”
An attractive young woman with dark hair stood up. Carrying an open laptop, she made her way to the stage. “Yup, just give me a quick second, I have to change my numbering system here…” She was a bit frantic, typing on her keyboard. “I had them organized by model year.” She plugged in and the screen behind her lit up with pictures of cars.
“A moment, please, Ms Welsh,” Fynn interrupted.
She looked up at him with a smile.
“Do the model years not correspond with the time of death in each case?”
“Well, pretty much… except for Mrs Corolla.”
“Mrs Corolla?” Fynn asked.
Marisa glanced over at another woman sitting in the front row. “Oh, well… she was found wearing a wedding ring.”
“I see… and the dates?”
“Just her car was out of whack… Time of death was nineteen eighty-six, but her car is a seventy-one Toyota Corolla… that’s about a fifteen year difference.”
“Such is not the case for the others?”
“Nope. Model years and time of death are all pretty close to each other.”
“Thank you, and I’m sorry to have interrupted. Please continue…”
Marisa gathered herself. “Well there’s what we know and what we don’t know,” she started a bit nervously. “Forensically, the facts so far: Each vehicle was found in neutral or park, emergency brake engaged… the left blinker in the on position. Headlights were off. None of the vehicles were damaged significantly on their way to the bottom of the reservoir. Further, we found keys in the ignition in each, and from that we surmise the engine was running.” Marisa paused. “I’m going to have to agree with Mr Fynn on this: the rafts don’t seem to be part of the picture. No brick on the accelerator kind of thing… And, as for the rafts we salvaged, no trace evidence… no tire impressions… no oil or fluids from an engine. I doubt if they are structurally adequate to bear the weight of a vehicle without sinking. We’re doing further tests on that.” She smiled at Fynn.
“As far as we can determine, each vehicle had its windows closed at the time of submersion, though some of them opened subsequently over time due to damage. Also, it seems the seat belts were tampered with.” Marisa held up a lock to demonstrate. “Close it once and it does not open again. Looks to be done with a shim wedged in the side.”
I raised my hand to get Marisa’s attention.
“Yes, sir, in the back?”
“I was wondering about the pickup truck.”
“Currently not part of our investigation…” Marisa replied and then continued, “What we don’t know is worse news: No trace evidence, no fingerprints whatsoever— no surprise, I guess, given the circumstances and the time periods involved. It does look to us that every scrap of paper from the glove compartments was removed. No registration, ID cards, personal effects, etcetera.” Marisa took a breath. “Except for this…” She clicked her laptop and a giant oil-change sticker appeared on the screen. “Caught ourselves a real break here: written in permanent marker. We found this sticker on the windshield of the Prius, dated two thousand and one. We are trying to track down the garage.”
Marisa typed on her laptop again and a list of vehicles appeared on the giant TV:
1969 El Dorado
1978 Buick Riviera
1980 Volvo
1971 Corolla
1990 Ford Taurus
2001 Prius
2012 Mercedes
“Were all the cars the same color?” I asked from the back of the room.
“Not to my knowledge… but that is an odd question to me. Do you think it’s relevant in some way?”
“Maybe not. When I saw the cars getting hauled out, most of them were just rusty. If we knew the color, it might prompt someone’s memory.”
“That’s a good point, and yes, we’d be happy to release this information.” Marisa looked over at Captain Morris.
“Can you tell me what color that car was, the El Dorado?”
Marisa checked her notes. “Forest green…”
“Thanks.” I texted Andrew Williams a few seconds later: Not to worry, green El Dorado.
“Well, thank you, Marisa,” Jamal started to interrupt but she looked confused. “Not quite done yet, Captain.”
“Oh, sorry.”
Marisa continued, “Tracking down ownership has been by far the biggest challenge for our team… And I’d like to turn that over to Oscar…”
“Hi, good morning, I’m Oscar Walden and I work for Marisa over at the lab… My team was asked to identify each vehicle using VINs and plates, and from those, the ownership history.” Mr Walden took a breath and continued: “To start off, none of the cars were rentals. That’s the first thing we checked. None of the tags match the vehicles, except in the case of Jeff Wheeler and Jolene Hendricks… One vehicle, the Toyota Corolla, had no tags at all. Turns out, most of the plates were from other cars, stolen as far as we can tell, lifted from local residents— and most of those folks did file a police report. None of them are considered suspects at this point.” He laughed nervously. “I don’t have a chart to show you this morning, but it’s in your packet somewhere.” He paused again. “I’ll spare you the pain we went through in tracking these vehicles down and just give you the short list:
“Sixty-nine El Dorado, registered to Clyde Lambert, Nederland; purchased from Wheeler Automotive Inc., aka Reservoir Motors…
“Nineteen seventy-eight Buick Riviera, registered to Joseph Hannah, Boulder, also purchased from Wheeler Automotive that same year…
“Nineteen eighty Volvo, registered to Lago Wheeler, father to victim number two…
“Seventy-one Corolla, registered to Anthony Parker, reported stolen nineteen eighty-five. He runs a garage in Nederland…
“Nineteen ninety Ford Taurus, reported stolen nineteen ninety-one from the lot at, you guessed it, Wheeler Automotive…
“The twenty-twelve Mercedes does indeed belong to Jolene Hendricks, victim number seven.” Oscar took a deep breath and looked around the room.
“And sorry to go out of order here, but vehicle number six, the two-thousand-one Prius has proved problematic. Seems like every trace of the VIN has been meticulously removed: filed off, scratched off, or pried off. It might be linked to an out-of-state cold case in Arizona… a Mrs Kimberly Groom. We’ve been working with Ralph on this one— but no joy so far.”
“Thanks, Oscar…” Marisa said as she took the stage again. “Finally…” she started, and it was clear from her smile that she was leading up to something. “We’ve had some amazing success with digital forensics… I’d like to send a special shout out to that team.” She glanced at several people in the room with a huge grin. “We were able to determine exact odometer readings, even on the digital models…” A slide appeared listing the cars and their respective mileage “…and something we think is pretty weird: apparently, the same song was playing in all the vehicles at the time of their submersion.” A new picture came to the screen, showing seven radio consoles. “We’re talking four generations of technology,” Marisa began again, “An eight-track, a cassette player, a CD and an MP3.�
� She looked down at her notes. “We can guess where the tape stopped on the first two… from the point when the electrical system failed. The CD player kept the last track in memory. And finally, an after-market MP3 player was plugged into our latest car, the Mercedes… All with the same song, we’re thinking. Seems to be track nine from Donovan’s Greatest Hits: Hurdy Gurdy Man, circa nineteen sixty-eight.”
“Can that player be traced?” someone asked.
“Not as yet… it’s a cheap one, you can buy it at any drugstore… but it only had that one song downloaded.” She paused to smile. “Might be Mr Jardel’s witness was correct after all.”
I raised my hand with another question.
“Yes, Mr Jardel?”
“Can you go back to the odometers for a second?”
“Sure.”
“Could we see the mileage again?”
“By all means.” Marisa displayed the previous slide. “Does that help?” she asked, and not without a bit of condescension in her tone.
“Well, I’m just thinking out loud here, but how could a seventy-one Toyota sunk in nineteen eighty-six only have twenty thousand miles on the odometer?”
“Maybe it went all the way around and then some.”
“I guess… But I’m just thinking the mileage could be like a calendar date.”
“That’s seems unlikely,” Marisa commented.
“How could these be construed as a date?” Fynn asked from his seat.
“Well, in America we write the date with the month first, then the day, then the year.”
“Of course. I must say, I’ve overlooked that detail. Thank you, Mr Jardel.” Fynn paused. “So, you think this mileage number would correspond to the fourteenth of February, nineteen seventy-three?”
“It could.”
The room fell silent after this brief exchange and I felt a bit silly, probably completely on the wrong track. Captain Morris rose again and made a formal introduction: “Next, I’d like to call up Doctor Linda Chu to speak on behalf of the medical examiner’s office.”
“Good morning everyone…” A keenly intelligent woman faced the room, though she had a sad look about her, as if smiling came with some difficulty. “I’m just going to be summarizing our findings for now. And bear in mind this is an interdepartmental consensus, the work of many experts.” She handed out a pile of thick reports that made their way through the room. Somehow I didn’t get a copy.
“Jolene Hendricks, formally Ms Mercedes, has changed everything for us… Not being a skeleton, we’ve given her a thorough examination and from that, we might extrapolate a few things about the other victims. Barker Meadow Reservoir is a unique environment in terms of preservation and decomposition, as the water temperature rarely gets above fifty degrees. And though most of these cases are so old this fact did not help us at all, it did for Ms Adipocere.”
“I’m sorry, Ms who?” Jamal asked from the first row.
“Forensics humor, Captain… of course I mean Jolene Hendricks. She is remarkably well-preserved. That said, there are still plenty of critters in the lake to help things along.”
“Critters?” someone asked, “Like fish or something?”
“No, like bacteria and algae.” Doctor Chu laughed. “First off, death by drowning. There’s little doubt to that. Also, underneath the adipocere, or grave-wax, we did find evidence of blunt force trauma, and it might explain how our victims were subdued before being strapped into a seat belt. Speaking of which, we found bruising along the upper torso, as well as tendon and ligament damage on both hands.”
“Trying to escape?” someone called out.
“It’s a good guess. Some of the skeletal remains also bear hairline fractures to the ribs, one, a shattered clavicle, and evidence of stress to the distal phalanges. Most likely scenario? The victims were alive and conscious in the backseat.”
Doctor Chu paused and I was glad she wasn’t showing slides. “On to the older victims though… We’re very confident about our TOD determinations— with a ninety-nine percent accuracy on the year. Further, each death occurred between January and April of that corresponding season. I’ll refer you to page three-thirty-nine, Limnological Findings.
“Excuse me, limnological?” I raised my hand and asked.
“Yes, it’s all right there in the report.”
“Oh, I didn’t seem to get one of those.”
Jamal rose quickly and whispered in Doctor Chu’s ear. Both turned to me. “I’d be happy to go through it with you, Mr Jardel, after the meeting... Without getting too technical, limnology is the study of diatoms, but algae in this case. By examining the blooms, the microscopic growth patterns made on a cross section of bone, we were able to calculate the time of death. The growth rings correspond to the season when the water is warmer. In each case, the algae blooms do not occur until several months after TOD. So, each death occurred in the winter. That seems to jibe with Inspector Fynn’s ice theory as well.” Doctor Chu paused.
“Forensics also tell us our victims’ height and weight, approximate age, gender, and something about the health of each. And, as you all know, we ran DNA on everyone. Not a single match, nothing in the databases. But we are able to type these victims by gender, race, blood group and hair color. We expect these identity vectors will be important in narrowing the missing persons search.
“That said, there were no artifacts or personal effects that can help with identification. No jewelry, wallets, purses, that kind of thing. There are two exceptions... As Marisa noted, we did find a gold wedding band on Mrs Corolla, and Mrs Prius. And of course, Ms Taurus’ polyester prom dress. None of these has led to anything so far. The clothing remnants from the other victims are degraded to the point of being useless— nothing distinctive or traceable.”
“If I could jump in here for a second,” Jamal interrupted. “We’ve been trying to track this prom dress down, though it seems the label might have been intentionally removed, so we are not at all hopeful or anything.”
“I beg your pardon, Doctor Chu, Jamal,” Fynn interrupted as well, “No jewels for Ms Taurus? Earrings, a neckless?”
“Nothing was found.”
“Seems rather curious… What woman would go to a fancy dress ball without wearing jewelry?”
“That’s an excellent question, though I have no answer.”
“What about her shoes?”
“Not preserved… probably made of leather.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve prepared a chart with all the information we’re sure of: Time of death, approximate age and other identity vectors.” Doctor Chu put a graphic onto the TV screen:
Mr El Dorado, TOD: 1974, age 25-29
Mr Riviera, TOD: 1979, age 37-42
Jeff Wheeler (Mr Volvo), TOD: 1983, age 14-17
Mrs Corolla, TOD: 1986, age 35-40
Ms Taurus, TOD: 1991, age 18-22
Mrs Prius TOD: 2002, age 37-44
Jolene Hendricks, TOD: 2013, age 41
“This is reprinted from page sixty-six of the report, with additional parameters on page one thirty-three… Well, that’s about it.” Doctor Chu looked up from the podium.
“Alright, thanks Doc…” Jamal stood for a brief moment. “Our final report this morning deals with the ongoing missing persons files. I’d like to call up Ralph Baikal.”
Ralph, a nondescript Indian guy with gold frame glasses, spoke too softly into the microphone. He seemed quite nervous as he brought out a tablet device and started his presentation with some cheesy graphics, namely a pie chart.
“An astounding two thousand Americans are reported missing every day, including adults and children. However, ninety-six percent of those are found, most of these are runaways, the others are custody disputes resolved within days. That still leaves several hundred reports per year that might match one of our victims… nationally. Thanks to Doctor Chu and her team providing forensic parameters, we’ve been able to narrow down our list considerably.” He paused to see if anyone was li
stening.
“Our job is all about methodology and it’s painstaking work… Geographically, we start out locally and work our way out across the country as necessary…” Ralph displayed another graphic, this one a map with the Town of Nederland at its center, colored in red. Boulder County was in orange, Colorado in yellow, and the rest of the nation in light green.
“Excuse me, Mr Baikal,” Fynn interrupted. “Do you also check cold cases from outside the United States?”
“Not so far.”
“I see…” Fynn muttered, and looked around the room. “Is there someone here representing the University?” he asked at large. One man raised his hand. “Thank you… Carl…” Fynn read his name tag. “Can you tell us— are there many foreign exchange students in attendance?”
“More than a few, I’d say…”
Fynn turned back to Ralph. “This may be of use to your investigation, yes? I am thinking specifically about the prom girl,” he added.
“It’s worth checking,” Ralph stammered a bit and pushed on his glasses. I’ll coordinate with, um, Carl on that.”
“While you two are speaking, you might want to determine which party she may have attended? A local affair? A school function?”
Ralph nodded and continued his prepared presentation: “I was saying… it’s a funneling process. We might start with thousands of names… narrow that down to hundreds, and then finalize our list of probables. Those, we are currently working through the databases. I should stress however that at this point, only dental records can offer a positive identification.
“Lucky for us, most of these cold cases have been thoroughly documented. So, the good news is we have dental records to access. These we can compare to the casts made by Doctor Chu’s office. Such was the case for identifying the young boy, Jeff Wheeler, found in his father’s Volvo. Dental records from Doctor Malawi in Boulder confirmed his identity. On the other hand, Ms Hendricks was ID’ed by her vehicle and next of kin.” Ralph paused again and it seemed he might be losing his audience. I saw a few yawns and thought it would be a good time to break for coffee.