by A. M. Potter
“What about the head wounds?” Naslund asked.
“What about them?”
“Maybe Mr. Tyler was dead before he entered the water.”
“Oh? Why do you say that? Regard the foam, Detective. Foam,” Kapanen pronounced, “often oozes from the mouth and/or nose of victims of wet drownings. Its presence indicates the victim became immersed while still breathing.”
She nodded.
“Furthermore, the foam you see contains blood. The force of inrushing water causes the lungs of a living individual to bleed. A dead individual’s lungs do not bleed. However, the evidence you see is not conclusive.” Kapanen shook his head. “The autopsy will determine if the lungs contain microscopic lake algae. If they do, we have a wet drowning.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“It’s a good thing that the divers found the body. It might have taken weeks for it to refloat.” Kapanen stood and scrutinized the two detectives. “Why?”
Naslund and Chu said nothing.
Kapanen rolled his eyes. “The human body weighs slightly more than fresh water. When a person suffers a wet drowning, they sink. As a body sinks, water pressure compresses gases in the abdomen and chest. As a result, the body displaces less water and, therefore, becomes less buoyant the farther it sinks. And if it does not sink?” The question was rhetorical. “You detectives should suspect another cause of death.” Kapanen raised a finger. “So, what about taking weeks to refloat? What factors can affect the length of time it takes for a body to refloat?”
“A weight,” Naslund said. “Like an anchor attached to the body.”
“Well, yes. I hadn’t thought of that. You people, always looking on the dark side.”
“We have to.”
“Indeed,” Kapanen allowed. “Now, let’s return to medical science. Think food consumption preceding death. Plus water temperature and depth. Foods high in carbohydrates, such as beer or potatoes--”
Or vodka, Naslund thought.
“--feed bacteria that elicit a quick refloat. In warm water, gases form rapidly, resulting in a possible refloat within days. In deep, cold water, bacterial action takes place slowly, and a corpse might take weeks to refloat. As you’re aware, Detective Naslund--” Kapanen turned to face her. “--in the summer months, Georgian Bay has thermoclines, different layers of water temperature. While the surface temperature can be fifteen to twenty Celsius, the temperature a hundred meters down might be three or four. Do you know the depth and temperature where the body was recovered?”
She nodded. “Sixty-point-two meters down. Six Celsius.”
“That would certainly retard the re-flotation process.”
She figured that she and Chu had had enough schooling. She pointed to Thom’s head. “What caused the damage?”
Kapanen turned back to the body. A few minutes later, he looked up. “Consider the right eye socket and orbital bones. I detect two or three blows by a blunt force instrument with a rounded impact surface. About six centimeters wide. Most likely metal. I don’t see any wood splinters, although they may have been washed away by the lake. As for the left eye,” Kapanen paused, “it seems to have been pierced with a pointed instrument. Metal. Again, no wood splinters. Perhaps a thin blade. I can’t tell. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Okay,” she said. “What about time of death, post-mortem interval?”
“You expect me to tell you PMI?”
“An estimate, Doctor, of course.”
Kapanen appeared to be appeased. “Well, we’ll have to adjust the usual hat trick.”
She nodded. The hat trick, she knew, was lividity, algor mortis, and rigor mortis. Lividity, or blood pooling, turned a body purple and pink. Algor referred to a body turning cold. With no blood flowing, body temperature dropped by about one Celsius each hour, until it matched air temperature. In this case, she realized, it had likely dropped by double that amount, until it reached water temperature. Rigor mortis, or body stiffening, generally started within two hours and became fully established in twelve.
“Considering the water temperature,” Kapanen cautioned, “I can’t be very precise. As for lividity, when the body is undressed we’ll know more. For now, I see traces of blood pooling in the throat area, which is what I’d expect in the case of a drowning. A drowning victim normally assumes a position of face down and buttocks up. Of course, the traces could be bruises. As for algor, when a body has undergone submersion in cold water, algor is unreliable.”
Nonetheless, Kapanen drew a liver thermometer from his medical bag and pierced Thom’s right side. “Six Celsius,” he read. “Given that thirty-seven Celsius is the norm, the victim died well over fifteen hours ago. That’s the best I can do with algor. Now, rigor.” Kapanen shook his head. “Again, the submersion complicates matters. I can’t tell you with certainty when he died. However, I can tell you one thing.”
“Please,” she said.
“The victim died in the water. He was not killed on land and then moved. Note the semi-fetal position. The arms and legs are slightly bent at the elbows and knees. Although he is lying on his back, the spine is curved and the chin is tilted down. When someone dies on land, the head is typically rotated to one side, a position almost never found in a drowning victim.”
“Good to know.”
“Try to remember that,” Kapanen said brusquely. “Now, consider the victim’s hands. They are turned toward his face, with the fingers clenched inward. Victims often try to cover their mouths to prevent drowning. Rigor reflects that. All right, back to PMI. When does rigor normally set in?”
Naslund glanced at Chu. Class still in. She turned back to the coroner. “After twelve hours.”
“How and when does it diminish?”
“Gradually, after twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”
“Correct, Detective. Very good. Extensive physical exertion before death may speed it up or even trigger instant onset. However, I don’t see evidence of that. There are no signs of cadaveric spasm. On the other hand, we have an obvious temperature effect. Cold retards rigor. Given the cold water--six Celsius--the length of the submersion, and the victim’s size, I’d estimate full rigor took much longer than normal, roughly twenty-two to twenty-four hours.” He eyed the corpse. “The victim still exhibits signs of rigor, with the exception of the face and hands. Considering the obvious loss of rigor in the facial muscles, for example, in the labial region--” Kapanen pointed to Thom’s lips. “--and the hands, but not in the largest muscles, such as the quadriceps, we can deduce the body is currently losing rigor. I’d say rigor has been diminishing for fourteen to sixteen hours.”
“Which means?” she asked.
Kapanen glared at her. “Which means the victim has been dead for approximately thirty-six to forty hours.”
“Thank you.”
“Approximately, Detective.”
Naslund knew that, in itself, PMI was just a number. However, she always pressed coroners for it. With a PMI estimate, she could narrow down an investigation. If she could place a suspect at a crime scene during the PMI window, she could drill down. She had opportunity; she could probe for motive. “Your final findings, Doctor?”
Kapanen didn’t skip a beat. “The victim suffered severe head trauma, but was alive when he entered Georgian Bay. He then drowned. The wounds he sustained were not self-inflicted. He was attacked. Cause of death: Drowning. Means: Homicide.” Kapanen jutted out his chin. “Any more questions?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll have my report delivered by midnight.”
She had no problem with Kapanen’s work ethic. His empathy was another matter. After he left, she waited on the jetty for the morgue transport. A full-moon rose above Colpoys Bay, its face redder than Kapanen’s. It reminded her of a death mask. Up it climbed, dominating the sky.
Chapter 5
Wiarton, OPP Station, July10th:
In Naslund’s eyes, Carrie MacLean was incredibly gorgeous. Over the past year, Naslund had eaten
dinner with her and Thom at least ten times. She supposed Carrie was a friend. And yet, in her experience, certain people often tried to take advantage--among them, not surprisingly, the beautiful. Carrie had already squirmed out of a 1030 interview. She’d seemed very controlled when Naslund had called her at 0900 that morning, as if she were hiding something. Bickell had said she’d been antagonistic when he visited her the previous evening, to the point of outright belligerence.
Now Naslund sat in her desk chair and leaned closer to the speakerphone. “Eva again. We need to see you this morning.”
“This morning?” Carrie asked.
“The investigation began yesterday,” Naslund reminded her. “It’s just a routine chat. How’s eleven-thirty?”
“Let’s say tomorrow....” Her voice trailed off. “I’m sorry, Eva, I’m just not myself.”
“I understand, but we need to see you today.”
“Tomorrow. Okay?”
Naslund fought to contain her exasperation. “It has to be today. Eleven-thirty. We can meet at your cottage or you can come to the station.” Carrie didn’t reply. She wasn’t a known suspect who’d be read her rights, but if she wanted to start off with a lawyer that was her prerogative. “You can arrange for a lawyer,” Naslund said.
“Oh, no. I don’t need a lawyer.”
“Home or station?”
“I’ll come to the station.”
“Fine. Eleven-thirty.”
Naslund hung up and turned her attention to the Tyler case file. An hour ago, Central had informed her that they were assigning a Detective Inspector to run the case. DI Lewis Moore was due at eleven. After the MacLean interview, Moore and Naslund had to hustle to Orillia for Tyler’s autopsy. In the meantime, she was saddled with her least favorite task: completing case notes.
***
Naslund observed Carrie MacLean enter the station via a security-camera feed running on her laptop. Carrie wore a loose-fitting pantsuit, not one of her usual body-hugging outfits. Although she normally let her strawberry-blonde hair down, it was piled on top of her head and knotted. Her cat-like green eyes seemed a few shades lighter. She looked strained, almost fragile--not herself at all, which, upon reflection, seemed appropriate. She was different now, a POI, a person-of-interest: Carolyn Cornelia MacLean, 414 Mallory Beach Road, Ontario D/L P6790-00530-53412, DOB 8/18/75, owner of Blue Bay Catering. She had no previous record: no arrests, no traffic infractions, no citations or complaints against. At the same time, she was on the wrong side of a murder line.
Inspector Moore had insisted on questioning her alone. After hearing about her delaying tactics, he’d informed Naslund that he intended to show MacLean her place. A POI couldn’t be coddled, especially an evasive or belligerent one. Naslund hadn’t replied. Besides, there was nothing she could say. Moore owned the case. Now she called him, a tall, thin man who moved with surprising quickness.
She pegged him at sixty. His shirt and suit were gray, his short hair grayer. He had the eyes of someone who’d seen it all a thousand times. “She’s here, Inspector.”
“Very good,” he replied.
Naslund watched him materialize beside Carrie MacLean as if by magic. The POI almost jumped out of her chair. With Moore’s height and bony face, he looked otherworldly, like a skeleton on stilts. MacLean stood and shook his outstretched hand. Naslund saw discomfort in her eyes then displeasure. I’m not here to see you. She switched camera feeds to watch as he led MacLean to the interview room.
No chit-chat, Naslund saw, no friendly gestures. Moore was all business. The two FID men who’d arrived with him had already departed for Tyler’s cottage.
As soon as the door closed, Naslund left her office and took up her position in the shadow room. On the console screen, the interview room looked long and narrow. The ceiling hosted two sets of glaring fluorescent lights hiding high-tech cameras and microphones. Three flimsy wooden chairs flanked a small metal table bolted to the floor. The suspect’s chair, known as the Slider, had a heavily waxed seat. Its front legs were a centimeter shorter than the back ones. The incline wasn’t visibly evident, but anyone who sat in the chair slid slowly forward, right into the face of their interrogator.
Moore offered MacLean the Slider and sat across from her in front of a stack of papers. “I’m sorry to bring you in so soon after the event,” he began.
She stared at him. Naslund was sure she could read MacLean’s face. Event? How dare you?
Moore smiled evenly. “Mr. Tyler’s murder.” He paused. “Miss MacLean, you seem annoyed by my word choice.” He looked down his nose. “The word murder, I mean. You see, Mr. Tyler was murdered, we’re sure of that.”
“I am too.”
“Why is that?”
“He was far too good a sailor to drown.”
“But he did drown. The coroner’s report concluded--” Moore stopped to pull some crisp pages from the pile on the desk, fished a pair of half-moon glasses from a pocket and put them on. “--that Mr. Tyler, and I quote, ‘suffered traumatic head wounds but died from water inhalation when he entered Georgian Bay.’”
The inspector dropped the report and eyed MacLean through the half-moons, his gray orbs eerily magnified. With his glasses on, he looked more unearthly. “When a man inhales water into his lungs, Miss MacLean, he experiences severe chest pain. He suffers simultaneous circulatory and respiratory failure. The victim usually succumbs within four to eight minutes. Four to eight minutes of hell.”
She flinched.
He jotted down a note. “Let’s continue, shall we?”
She didn’t reply.
“The coroner concluded that when the victim ‘fell’ into the lake he was alive. If a man were dead when he went overboard, he wouldn’t draw water into his lungs the way the victim did.” Moore leaned forward. “Dead men do not respire.” His words hung in the air. “Miss MacLean?”
Her eyes seemed to say enough.
Moore kept going. “The coroner found foam in the nose and mouth containing blood and mucus. The force of inrushing water causes the lungs of a living individual to bleed. A dead individual’s lungs do not bleed.”
She turned her head away. No more.
“The victim’s auto-inflatable life vest failed.” Moore eyed her silently. “If it hadn’t, he might have survived--even though there was an anchor line attached to his right ankle. You see, if the life vest hadn’t failed, he might have had time to unwind that line or cut it.” Moore shook his head. “First, the victim’s life vest fails and then somehow an anchor line, pardon me, a rode,” he corrected himself, “gets wrapped around his ankle.” He stopped. “Any idea how that happened?”
“No.” She pulled herself back in the Slider.
Moore pretended not to hear her. “I repeat, do you know how that happened?”
“No.”
He shrugged as if to say you’ll tell me eventually.
Naslund wondered about the inspector’s angle. He was breaking the usual rules of a first interview: make the POI feel comfortable, get them to open up by being pleasant. Apparently, it had served him well. Moore was a top gun. She’d heard that he had an eighty-six percent solve rate.
Moore leafed through the papers piled in front of him again, pulled out a thick booklet, and opened it. “This is a forensic report, Miss MacLean. Among other things, it details what is known about the victim’s life vest. Our analysts found that the CO-Two gas cartridge failed to inflate the vest’s buoyancy chambers due to a blocked valve. Vests of that make and manufacture rarely fail. They have--” He donned his specs and glanced down. “--a one in five million failure rate. Miniscule.”
She nodded guardedly.
Naslund sensed her retreating into defense-mode, trying to decipher where Moore was going.
The inspector removed his glasses. “The vest showed virtually no signs of wear and tear. Apparently, it was almost new. So, a new vest, a first-class new vest, if I may say, failed.”
She said nothing.
“Do yo
u know when Mr. Tyler bought the vest?”
“No. Thom and I didn’t shop together for boating things.”
Moore scribbled a note. “Do you know where he bought it?”
“In Owen Sound, I think. I’m not sure.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not myself. My mind isn’t working.”
“What do you know about the vest?”
“It was blue,” she said. “Dark blue.”
Moore seemed about to lash out. He appeared to think she was stringing him along. However, he pursed his lips and sat back. “Given the blocked valve, the vest did not inflate automatically. However, the wearer could still have inflated it manually, with the mouth blow-tube. The report indicates Mr. Tyler tried to do so. His bite marks were found on the tube. Repeated marks, the bite of someone frantic, someone desperate.”
Enough! her eyes seemed to say.
“Speaking of the report,” Moore continued, “it states the anchor got released. Any idea how that happened?”
“No. I apologize, I rarely went aboard Thom’s skiff.”
“What about his bigger boat?”
“I liked it more, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Did you go aboard it?”
“Yes.”
“So you know how to sail?”
“Yes, well enough.”
“Then you know mooring lines, mainsheets, and jib sheets.”
“Yes.”
“And anchor rodes.”
“Yes, of course.” She seemed more at ease. “Whenever we dropped anchor, Thom would stay at the helm. I’d always go forward to handle the hook.”
“Very nice. The hook.” Moore smiled with insincere respect. “You’re not a novice sailor, are you?”
“Oh, no. I’ve been sailing for over a decade.”
“Is there anything you’d like to tell me about the skiff?”
“Tell you?” She looked confused.