by Jason Pinter
“I don’t know how you can read in the car with no light without throwing up,” Tally said. “Even the tiny-ass text on the GPS makes me queasy.”
“My eyes adjust,” Serrano said. “Makes you thankful, doesn’t it? We’re pretty lucky to be human. We could have been born orcs.”
Tally took her eyes off the road for a moment to roll her eyes at her partner. “You have problems, John. Deep-seated problems. You should see a therapist about this goblin stuff.”
“Orcs,” Serrano said. “Not goblins. Anyway, this stuff helps me think.”
“If you don’t stop talking about orcs while I’m driving, I’m going to think us right into the river.”
“You know, I’m willing to bet that Claire and the kids would love these books,” Serrano said. “At least you were smart enough to marry someone who’s open minded, even if her good traits don’t rub off on you.”
“Claire is open minded about Spanish wines and British sitcoms. Books where the main characters have hairy feet and don’t wear shoes? Hell no. And why don’t they wear shoes? They wear clothes, don’t they? So why no shoes? There are rocks in Central-earth, right?”
“It’s Middle-earth,” Serrano said. “But I’ll give you points for trying.”
“Spending twelve hours a day chained to your goofy ass doesn’t give me a choice but to pick up some of your nonsense. Read a real book.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that.”
“Enough of this crap,” Tally said. “We’re almost there. Dispatch says word from Lieutenant George is that it looks like a suicide.”
“Wouldn’t be the first to go off this bridge,” Serrano said, “and probably won’t be the last.”
Snowflakes drifted onto the windshield like powdered sugar and disappeared beneath the wiper blades. The sky was a rich tapestry of inky black with hues of dark blue. Serrano listened to the wind. Gentle, calming.
Ashby winters could be brutal, but Serrano relished the frigid months. While some people came down with seasonal affective disorder, the cold made Serrano feel alive. Summers sapped his energy. Gorgeous, sun-dappled days brought back memories he had tried long—and unsuccessfully—to forget.
Partnering with Detective Leslie Tally had been a blessing. It was more than a partnership to Serrano. She was his family. Tally had brought him back from the brink on more than one occasion. And if you’d told twenty-two-year-old recruit John Serrano that he’d one day be reading thousand-page fantasy novels and his best friend and only family would be a younger, black, gay detective with three stepchildren, he would have laughed.
Serrano saw the Albertson Bridge looming ahead, a ghostly vision in the dark night.
“Here we are,” Tally said. “Could this night get any eerier? Wait, I take that back. Given the stuff you read, you could probably say yes.”
“No evil clown sightings yet,” Serrano said.
“Now, even I read that one.”
The Albertson Bridge had been erected in 1928, its steel truss standing 148.5 feet above the 1.2-mile-wide Ashby River. At night the bridge was a beautiful sight, and the midpoint was a favorite spot for couples to get engaged. On the eastern side of the bridge you could see clear across the river into Woodbarren Glen, which contained a thousand acres of lush foliage, hiking and running trails, and bridle paths. When Serrano was younger—much younger—he could comfortably run the 5.4-mile jogging trail around the Glen in under thirty-five minutes. Now he was content to walk it while listening to audiobooks and podcasts. The Ashby River itself flowed north one hundred miles into Iowa near Cedar Rapids and cut southwest, ending in northern Missouri.
Tally pulled the car to the side of the riverbank. The water beneath the Albertson Bridge was frozen solid, a thin dusting of snow covering it like icing. Serrano could hear a steady whup whup whup across the river as a harbor patrol boat cut through the ice. Most older patrol boats had been retrofitted with icebreaker technology. The reinforced bow was strong enough to cut through solid ice, but the specially designed hull pushed the broken ice away from the boat so as not to damage the propulsion system. The wind from the propellers swirled the snow around like a wintry cyclone.
Portable Nomad 360 Scene Lights had been set up on both riverbanks. The spotlight from atop the patrol boat shone a white circle that illuminated an area underneath the bridge. Serrano could see two forensic techs taking photographs and samples. Between them was a seven-foot-long, three-foot-wide yellow tent staked into the ice. The tent was there to prevent the elements from doing more damage to the body underneath.
Serrano and Tally each put on a pair of Caterpillar Drover Ice+ boots and exited the car. Serrano heard the whup whup from the icebreaker slow and then come to a full stop. A strong wind bit into his face. The patrol boat needed to chop through the ice to get close enough for its lights to illuminate the scene. But get too close, and it risked fracturing the ice to the point where the crime scene itself might not only be disrupted—but disappear beneath the surface.
“Careful,” Serrano said, as he and Tally gingerly stepped onto the frozen river. Forensics had determined that the ice on the eastern shore of the Ashby River was five to seven inches thick. It would support the weight of the detectives, and possibly even a light vehicle such as a snowmobile. They were still trying to figure out how to remove the body without jeopardizing the lives of the crime scene technicians or destabilizing the ice shelf to the point where the body itself could slip under. Airlifting the body off the river via helicopter could cause them to lose potentially valuable trace evidence, making it out of the question.
Serrano wiped the frost from his face and blew his nose into a tissue. He heard a crack, his heart lurched into his throat, and Serrano stopped in his tracks.
“It’s from the boat, you big ninny,” Tally said.
“I fell into a frozen pond in Woodbarren Glen as a kid,” Serrano said. “Would have died if a couple guys ice fishing hadn’t seen me go under. Rather not go through that again.”
The scene in front of them was a beautiful nightmare, a three-quarter moon hanging over the leafless trees of Woodbarren Glen and glowing off the iced-over Ashby River, the illumination from the boat and police spotlights bathing it all in a sheet of harsh yellow. Two forensic technicians wearing heavy coats with Ashby PD in yellow lettering stitched on the back worked the scene about two hundred yards out from the eastern riverbank. Isaac Montrose, one of the techs, saw Serrano and Tally approaching and slowly crossed the ice to meet them. Serrano greeted him with a handshake.
Montrose nodded at Tally. He was big and burly—six four and on the other side of two fifty—with a shaved head hidden under a thick wool cap and a long bushy goatee that made him look like a member of a biker gang rather than a forensic investigator. Montrose had been hired away from the Peoria PD the year before, where he’d been working as a blood-splatter analyst. He wore extra large latex gloves that fit over his insulated mittens. Montrose was the size of a small rhino, but Serrano had witnessed him working crime scenes. The man’s hands had the finesse of a violinist. He could catch a wasp in midair with a pair of tweezers.
“So Detective Tally, you haven’t killed Serrano yet?” Montrose said. “You two might just work out.”
“The X factor being yet,” Tally said. “I’m still learning how to say, ‘Shut the hell up and let me drive in peace’ in Orc.”
Montrose laughed. “He tried to push some of those spells and dragons books on me last year. Gave them to my son. Now he’s hooked. He was never much of a reader. Guess I should say thanks?”
“You’re welcome,” Serrano said. “So what are we looking at?”
Montrose led them over to the body.
“Caucasian female. Forty-two to forty-eight years old. No identification. She’d been out in the elements for several hours before the 911 call came in. A couple of teenagers were hanging on the pedestrian walkway on the Albertson Bridge, seeing if their spit froze before it hit the ground. They hock
ed a loogie and saw the body. She might have been here until morning otherwise. Fingerprints are going to take some time.”
“How come?” Tally said.
“The blood vessels are thinner in your extremities,” Montrose said. “Fingers, toes. The cold may have expanded her capillaries significantly, which would distort her skin shape and texture. We’ll have to wait for the liquids to thaw to get accurate prints. But we’ll need to get her back to the lab quick because her organs have already begun to freeze. Human plasma is made up of fifty percent water. So when the blood freezes, it expands, and it can start to destroy surrounding tissue. And that’s when my job gets really hard.”
“Do we have a preliminary cause of death?” Serrano said.
“Hard to tell out here,” Montrose said. He pointed up at the Albertson Bridge, then whistled and mimicked his finger falling, making a splat sound when it hit his palm. “She did a header off the pedestrian walkway. That’s almost a hundred and fifty feet up. It . . . doesn’t look good. Fall from that height, exact cause will depend on how and at what angle she landed, which we won’t know until we get her to the lab and examine the body without worrying about losing her beneath the ice. Could be blunt-force trauma if her head hit first. If she landed flying squirrel style, arms and legs spread, she could have shattered every rib in her chest and impaled her heart and lungs with the bone fragments.”
“Christ,” Tally said, shaking her head.
“ME is on the way. They’ll take her down to Hector Moreno at the morgue once we’re done,” Montrose said. “But I’m not sure how we’re going to move the body yet without destabilizing the ice around her.”
“I’ll call Lieutenant George,” Tally said. “He might have a suggestion.”
Serrano said, “Let’s have a look.”
“I’ll stay here,” Montrose said. “The ice surrounding the body is thick enough to bear the weight of two more people. But three or four, we risk losing the body and maybe one of you too. And I’d prefer not to become a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound ice pop.”
Serrano thanked Montrose, and he and Tally headed for the tent covering the body. Another forensic tech, a guy Serrano didn’t recognize, was hunched beside the tent. When he saw the detectives, he stood up and greeted them.
“Ryan Beene,” he said. Beene was young—Serrano guessed twenty-nine; he was five ten with hollow cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. He stripped off a pair of latex gloves and shook Serrano and Tally’s hands. He sniffled nonstop and was working hard to stop his teeth from chattering.
“Not from around here,” Tally said, “are you?”
Beene laughed, then turned to the side and sneezed into his elbow. “Reno,” he said. “We don’t get winters like this.”
“Welcome to Ashby,” Serrano said. “Get your flu shots, make sure you always have tissues on hand, and next time you’re documenting a crime scene on a frozen river, wear thermal underwear.”
“See, that’s useful information they left out of the department handbook,” Beene said. He gently undid the tent flap and lifted one side. “Well, here she is.”
The woman’s body came into view. Serrano felt a shiver run up the length of his spine, and not from the cold.
She was lying stomach down on the frozen surface of the Ashby River, her face still partially submerged.
Serrano studied the mangled body splayed out before him. Her right arm and leg were both bent at horribly unnatural angles, which led Serrano to think she had landed face-first with her body tilted slightly toward the right.
Six inches in front of her head was a rough oval-shaped gash in the ice. A smear of blood had frozen at the edge. It sparkled like red lipstick in the spotlights.
“We think she landed cranium first,” Beene said. “Her head drove through the ice, but the rest of her body stayed above the surface. Like a macabre bobbing for apples. Her head was submerged for at least an hour before the 911 call came in.”
Serrano examined the hole in the ice by the woman’s head and the blood at the edge. “You pulled her out?”
“Just removed the top of her head from the water,” Beene said. “If all the liquids in her face froze—blood, mucus, eyes, brain—it could make getting accurate tox and tissue readings like trying to put a cow back together out of hamburger patties.”
“Have some respect,” Tally said. “This is a woman you’re talking about.”
Beene nodded in apology. “I’m sorry, Detective.”
“Did you photograph her body, her positioning, before you took her out?” Serrano asked. He already knew the response.
“No,” Beene said.
“Goddamn it.”
Beene turned white. “Don’t tell Montrose,” he pleaded. “I’ve only been here a month.”
So I get the newbie, Serrano thought. If this was a suicide, like Lieutenant George suspected, it likely wouldn’t matter. At this point, Montrose and Beene would have catalogued everything they needed: hair, fiber, blood. There was nothing left to worry about disturbing.
Serrano knelt down next to the woman and felt her fingers and joints. Her body was stiff to the touch, a combination of rigor mortis and the liquid in her body freezing.
“Her blood and organs are starting to solidify,” Beene said. Serrano nodded. It was like touching a block of ice zipped into a down jacket.
“We need to get her out of here,” Serrano said. “The longer she stays, the longer the body takes to thaw, and the less accurate the tox screen will be.”
Serrano went to turn the body over to see her face but noticed the fur-trim lining on her jacket had frozen to the ice. He took a TAC Force folding blade from his boot and began to saw away at the lining. The TAC Force had come in handy on numerous occasions and could punch out the window of a car if need be. But this was the first time Serrano could recall using it to detach faux fur stuck to the surface of a frozen river.
Once the lining was separated, Serrano leaned down and gently rolled the woman onto her back. Her face was a ghostly white. The damage to her head was tremendous. The front of the woman’s skull was flattened from the top of the frontal bone above her eyelids to her mandible. Her nose had been crushed, jawbone dislocated.
Still, despite the damage, Serrano recognized her immediately.
“Holy hell,” Serrano said. “It’s Constance Wright.”
“No way.” Tally came closer. She sighed when she saw the woman’s face. “Shit.”
“You know her?” Beene said.
“Yes, we know her,” Tally said. “She was the mayor of Ashby not too long ago. A damn good one until she got railroaded. I voted for her. Twice.”
“What happened?” Beene said.
“Let’s just say that some people fall from grace,” Serrano replied. “Constance Wright plummeted into the Grand Canyon.”
Tally looked at Serrano. “John?”
He turned away. “Look, I’m sorry she’s dead.”
“Detective Serrano and Mayor Wright had a bit of a history,” Tally said to Beene.
“She did what she had to do,” Serrano said. “I’ve moved on.” His voice made it clear he had not.
“Yeah. Moved on like a tree,” Tally said. “What happened between you and Mayor Wright wasn’t personal, John.”
“It was a long time ago,” Serrano said. “I don’t hold grudges.”
“I know it’s barely five degrees out, but your pants are on fire.”
They heard the sound of tires squealing along the riverbank. Three television vans rolled up, skidded on the icy slope, and nearly rammed into each other while jockeying for position. Serrano cursed under his breath. Tally cursed over hers.
It was common for TV crews to arrive at potential crime scenes almost simultaneously with law enforcement. Deep-pocketed media producers offered cops cash for tips. And on a cop’s salary, taking into account alimony and child support and the occasional gambling debt, an extra grand to buy Christmas presents could be too good to pass up.
St
ill, they had to keep Wright’s identity confidential until a proper ID was made and any next of kin notified.
“I don’t see a purse or pocketbook,” Tally said. “Did you and Montrose find one at the scene?”
“Nope. What you see is what we found.”
“It could have slipped into the water after she landed,” Tally said.
Serrano shook his head. “Impact crater is the size of the victim’s head. No other scrape marks around. And no footprints around the body other than ours,” Serrano replied. “So doubtful we have a grave robber. It’s also not uncommon for suicide victims to lack identification or money. Where they’re planning on going, they figure they don’t need to bring credit cards or house keys.”
Tally knelt down and slid her hand into Wright’s coat pockets. “Empty.”
Serrano waved Montrose over. “I want a full tox workup. BAC and screens for prescription and illegal drugs.”
Serrano watched the TV vans with contempt. Camera operators were already setting up for live shots. The reporters themselves were hidden, waiting by the heat vents until it was time for their close-up.
“ME is ten minutes out,” Montrose said. “How do you want to handle this?”
“Ice is too thin for the wagon,” Serrano said. He pointed at the patrol boat. “And if the boat comes any closer, this whole sheet could crack.”
“Snowmobile,” Tally said.
Serrano nodded. “Good call.”
Tally continued. “Have them attach a litter basket stretcher to the back of a snowmobile. The basket will prevent her body from dragging along the ice. We need to get her out of here, without any further damage to the body.”
“I’ll call it in,” Montrose said.
“What about them?” Tally asked, motioning over to the news vans. Serrano sighed. He didn’t especially enjoy live shots, especially in this kind of weather, when there was a decent chance of a high-definition booger making it into viewers’ living rooms. A small crowd of onlookers had begun to gather on the bank of the river. At this time of night, they were mainly rubberneckers, drunks, and vagrants.