Death of an Ordinary Guy

by Jo A. Hiestand

  Graham paced back and forth on the driveway, trying for the best view.

  Ramona lay on her back, her knees bent, her feet tucked beneath her. Her left arm was stretched out above her head as though she was in school, raising her hand. Her right elbow was bent, allowing her right hand to lay beneath the small of her back. She seemed more suited to the bedroom than to the wintry elements, for she was clothed in a matching turquoise robe and nightgown.

  Frozen, I thought, my eyes traveling over the frost-stiffened fabric. Frozen in time. As though mimicking a 1950s pinup photo. The robe was open, the tie belt strung out and several feet from the body, having freed itself from the belt loops. She seemed to be barely wearing the robe, for the upper portion lay halfway down her arms, exposing her shoulders. The generous hemline of the nightgown fanned out and bunched up in one place to expose her right thigh. Like an absurd epaulet, a broken spaghetti strap dangled over her right shoulder. She might have been provocative if it wasn’t for the ghost-white, shocked face with its eyes staring at the sky.

  She was also, I noted, very wet and very frost-covered.

  “For God’s sake, can’t you cover her up?”

  Arthur’s voice pleaded behind us, yet we couldn’t reply. It was a travesty, the body lying unprotected, the eyes moist, the eyelashes hoary and starched. I stared at the feathered mules encasing her feet, the turquoise feathers reduced to a sodden pulp. “Kind of inadequately dressed,” I said to no one in particular.

  “She obviously hadn’t intended to stay out here,” Graham muttered. He turned, gazing at the end of the driveway where Arthur stood, leaning against the fence. The man was hatless and gloveless. His heavy woolen jacket was unbuttoned, as though he had loosened the restraints to stoop over Ramona. Dampness had seeped into Arthur’s shoes and edges of his jeans.

  “Taylor,” Graham called, gazing at his watch. “7:12. Fordyce, I assume, has created a sensation at the station. I told him to get everyone back out here.”

  “Should be here by 8:00 or so,” I said.

  “I don’t suppose the scene will change much before Tolliver and his all-seeing video equipment arrive.”

  “Can’t see it getting much warmer in three-quarters of an hour.”

  “Never hurts to be careful. So, just in case…” As well as distance permitted, he pointed out the details of the immediate area surrounding Ramona’s body. “Someone’s knelt next to her—Arthur, I assume. See the area there, where the grass is crushed and devoid of frost? And the same marks from the driveway?”

  “Got out of his car, saw her and came over.”

  Graham indicated Ramona’s right hand jammed behind her back. ”Wish Karol was here. I’d love to know if that hand position’s from death throes or if she was reaching for something.”

  “What would she be doing out here, dressed like this?”

  Graham shrugged. “The back door’s open. Barely, I grant you, but it’s open. I only noticed it because it swung slightly in the breeze.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, sir. She was expecting to return.”

  “I should hope so, dressed like that…” Pointing to the broken nightgown strap, he said, “Might have done that in a tussle.”

  “If someone else was out here, why wouldn’t she have on more clothes? Sexually assaulted?”

  Graham shrugged, saying that was in Karol’s realm of medical magic.

  I pointed to the ground. “If another person was out here, wouldn’t there be more evidence? Besides, this patch where someone—ok, probably Arthur—stooped can in no way be construed as a fight scene. There are less than a half dozen sole prints where he knelt and then got up again. His prints, too, go straight as an arrow back to the driveway.”

  In the quiet I could hear Arthur’s incessant stammering as he poured out his heart to PC Byrd.

  “Does he always come over for breakfast?” I asked. “He phoned you up at 7:00, for God’s sake!”

  “I don’t know his habits.”

  “One thing’s certain. He wasn’t just leaving after a comfortable night out. The condition of the body screams that she’s been out here for hours.”

  “Unless he left at midnight, say, and came back.”

  “Even if she kissed him good night—”

  “I would have done that from the warmth of the house.”

  “Heart attack, you think?”

  He shrugged. “Well… I suppose we should talk to Arthur. You particularly keen on it?”

  I said I may as well. It beat standing around slowly turning numb.

  “Terrible thing,” I said, walking up to Arthur. He nodded, staring at me, his red-circled eyes still moist from crying. “You found her like this?”

  “Around 7:00. I’d just gotten out of the car and was walking up to the house. I saw her—well, I saw something. I didn’t know it was her. I didn’t realize it was a person. At first I thought it was a bit of tarp or something. Something blown off the bundles of sticks.” He turned his head, blowing his nose.

  I waited, remembering the sage advise of never rushing your witness, letting him recall and report things as he could.

  “Those are my footprints, Sergeant. I was walking up to the door when I saw her. I thought she’d just fallen, that I could help. When I found out— Well, I phoned the pub. I’m afraid Byron must think me an idiot. I started blubbering.”

  “No one can fault you for that. You have a key to her house?” We both knew what I meant, for there were no signs of his footprints leading from the body to her house.

  “No. We aren’t— We aren’t as modern as that. Or as immoral, however you prefer to classify it. You won’t find my footprints leading to the door. I knew you were at the pub, so I used my car phone. Saved time.”

  “You didn’t check to see if the door was open, then? I would have thought that would be a natural thing to do, assume the door was open—seeing how she was dressed—and phone from the house.”

  “Is the door unlocked? I didn’t look. One doesn’t think clearly in a crisis, does one? Car phone’s a natural reaction for me.”

  “So, why did you come over at such an early hour?”

  Arthur made a sound somewhere between a cough and a gag. “This is going to sound awfully inane.”

  “Don’t let that bother you, sir.”

  “I had a few things that needed to go to the cleaner’s. Ramona did too, only with her arm in a sling, she couldn’t handle all the items, so I came over to get them.”

  I jotted down a note to check his car for the presence of the clothing.

  “We talked about it over dinner last night, joked about her atrocious memory.”

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary this morning? No strange car parked near the cottage, for instance?”

  “Of course not. We never have any trouble in the village.”

  Except for a spot of murder for Guy Fawkes Day. “You didn’t phone up a physician or ambulance?”

  “There was no need.”

  “Really? I would have thought that would be the first call you’d make.”

  “I— It was obvious she was dead.” He colored instantly, darkly. It was the first time he had used the word. “It was the way she was, you see. I knew just from looking at her. She was all white, her body and clothes stiff. You could tell from the frost. Frozen stiff. There was no need for a doctor. Not when she was like that.”

  “And when did you leave her last night?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Arthur threw his car keys at a nearby tree. “Sorry. Eleven, I think. Near enough. I think Byron heard me return last night. You can ask him.”

  I echoed the information noncommittally, making a note of it. “Excuse me for a moment.” I walked to his car, picked up and searched through the bundle of clothes on the back seat, and returned. “Very good, sir. I must ask you to remain here for a while, until Mr. Graham can see you.”

  Mumbling he had nothing else to do, Arthur slowly picked up his keys and walked to his car, paus
ing just long enough to glance at the first police contingent arriving from Buxton.

  “So, we’re at it again.” Karol Mattox nodded to us as she walked up to Graham. Since there was no suggestion of foul play, Karol had been called in. Otherwise, it would have been Ahrens again. “You got here bright and early.”

  “So did you,” Graham replied, glancing at his watch. “Simcock coming?” We noted Harry Tolliver removing his video equipment from the car.

  Karol shook her head. “It’s your baby.”

  “Can’t even share the blame on this one.” He indicated the corpse. “Well, she’s all yours. Hargreaves!”

  Hargreaves came up slowly, noting the footprints and the condition of the area. He greeted us and began to suit up.

  “You want to join the throng?“ I asked.

  Graham shook his head. “We’ve got a good team. They can handle it. I can view the video. But if you...”

  “I’ll watch here, from the sidelines, if it’s all right, sir.”

  Margo, I was pleased to see, had been assigned an active role and was stringing up the police tape to confine the scene. DC Fordyce was placing the trail of white squares up to the body and laid down a larger covering so Karol and Hargreaves could work there without damaging anything on the ground. Fordyce came back slowly and disappeared around the corner of the house. Karol and another officer finished suiting up and walked over to the body. Graham gave them three minutes by his watch before calling, “Well?”

  “There’s no way I can get an estimate of death from body temperature,” Karol said. “And rigor mortis is largely discounted, too, for the same reason. Though I usually don’t put too much weight on it. Too many variables, such as activity at the time of death, temperature of the environment.” She paused, looking at the frosted grass and icy tree branches as though that upheld her argument. Graham said something about being thankful for frost instead of knee-high snow. I agreed and hugged my down-filled jacket closer to me. There was usually something unpleasant about every scene that had to be processed outdoors. At least this one was easy to work and in daylight.

  Karol lightly pressed her fingertips into Ramona’s exposed thigh and called out, “No blanching. Blood’s clotted. Fixed lividity won’t help us any.”

  “You really expected to find that?” Graham said, his surprise evident. He watched a SOCO measuring distance of body from the driveway. Fordyce returned with a heavy paper sack and stood just outside the scene. The sack, I assumed, would receive Ramona’s slippers.

  “No. It’s obvious she’s been here over night. Just being thorough.”

  “If the storm began around midnight, and she was already dead at that time…”

  Hargreaves nodded, scooting in a bit closer to the body. “She was rained on, judging by the condition of her gown. You wouldn’t get this frosty without a good prior wetting.” He poked gingerly at an edge of the garment. It made a cracking noise as it bent against the spikes of silvered grass. ”See? It’s like it’s cemented to the ground. More icy than frosty. Like I said. She fell and lay in the rain. Then the temperature dropped and the moisture frosted over.”

  “That makes it about seven hours, then,” Graham calculated. “I’ll have to find out if someone knows when the rain stopped. I don’t think it lasted long, for all its punch.”

  “So even if she came out toward the end…”

  “Fits with the lack of blanching,” Karol said. “Which normally occurs six to eight hours after death. But of course the full body rigidity that one would expect to find after twelve hours doesn’t mean a thing. Everything out here is frozen.” She poked the gown as if to underline her statement.

  “We’ve got such an accommodating refrigerator out here,” Hargreaves grunted. “Good as a slab in the morgue any day.”

  “You probably can’t see it from there, Mr. Graham, but there’s whiteness around the lips.”

  Graham turned to me, frowning. ”Did Ramona look like that yesterday?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then whatever caused this…”

  “Louder,” he called to Karol, who replied, “If I have to make a snap decision—which I hate to do—I’d say it’s not from the cold. More likely the result of something chemical. Classic conditions of skin death.”

  “If it’s chemical, would you find anything in her after all this time in the cold?”

  “I should think so. The cold won’t have affected it.”

  “I’m particularly wondering if she’s lying on something.”

  Hargreaves stood up. “We’ll find out when we shift her. I’ll just go and set up.” He turned and walked toward the police car.

  Minutes went by, during which Karol continued her examination, Hargreaves set up his lights, Harry Tolliver busied himself with the video, and Graham directed the constables to their various assignments. He wasn’t too keen on Arthur’s tale of the purported trip to the cleaner’s, but the crumpled suits in Arthur’s car seemed to testify on his behalf. Or else he’s a damned smart murderer.

  Mark Salt and several other officers had just finished setting up the tent to confine Ramona and any possible evidence when Karol walked over to us. She peeled off her gloves and rubbed her hands. “I think it’s colder than the other night, Brenna.”

  I nodded, recalling the chill of Sunday night, the great puffs of our condensed breath like a steam railroad yard.

  “This is all unofficial, you know,” Karol said as Graham nodded. “The only thing that bothers me right now is how much I’ll be able to substantiate when I get her back to the morgue. Cold is fine for some things, but if it will have destroyed anything vital…”

  “Well,” Graham said. “I know you’ll do your usual first rate job.”

  “Did I ever tell you I hope you make Super?” She shared our opinion of Superintendent Simcock’s bellowing technique.

  “Not lately.”

  “Sir!” Margo called to Graham. “Sir, I’m having Harry video the hemline of Ramona’s nightgown so you can see it later.”

  “Fine, Lynch, but what’s unusual about it?”

  “Puckers in the gown. Looks like she caught it on something.”

  “There anything out here that would have caused that?” He moved over a few feet so he could see the cottage’s back door. “We’ll get the lads to do a thorough going-over. Damn that storm. It might have wiped out more than we know. All right, carry on.”

  Karol returned to her preliminary examination of the body and Graham nodded to Custody Officer Peter Kelly. They walked over to Arthur, who was leaning against his car. I could hear his yelp of indignation as Graham requested his shoes. After a brief argument, Arthur shoved them at Peter, who put them into a paper sack, folded and sellotaped it closed. Arthur slid into his car seat, talking to Graham and gesturing toward the house. A SOCO was measuring and photographing Arthur’s footprints that lead to Ramona’s body. The photos, I knew, would be black-and-white and to scale. Another SOCO was taking samples of the grass from the print depressions, packing each specimen flat between sheets of folded newsprint. When he had collected samples from several areas in the garden, he sealed them in paper sacks. The mortuary van attendants, bored and yawning, stood at the end of the drive, talking to a constable.

  An hour later, when Karol had concluded the examination and the mortuary van attendants had left with the zipped body bag, a white-faced Arthur was given permission to leave. Graham watched him drive slowly away. “I wonder if I’ve just given him a chance to destroy something.”

  “Don’t know what it could be,” I said.

  “Let’s pray we don’t find out the hard way. Lynch! I want a thorough video of the house interior, too. Don’t miss a thing.”

  Margo’s ‘Sir!’ was as good as a raw recruit’s. A moment later she called, “Mr. Graham, sir.”

  “You have something else, Lynch?”

  “Yes, sir,” Margo said, standing a bit taller. I knew she was dying to complain about the space suit and face mask, but
she kept her eyes on Graham. “In the process of lifting Miss VanDyke, with the ground beneath her now exposed to view, I am able to discern a small twist of hemp fibers.”

  “What’s the ground like, Lynch?”

  She pressed her palm against the ground, feeling its condition, then said that it was wet. She backed away when Harry came over to video the area.

  “Not so odd, Taylor. After all, it rained last night.”

  I remarked that I had heard something about it, then said, “Ground would have sponged up the water, no matter if she was out here before it started or afterwards. That doesn’t help us much. You think that’s what she was groping for?”

  “Seems absurd, doesn’t it? A barely discernible strand of rope.”

  “Coincidence?”

  Graham called to a constable, who hurried over to Margo with a pair of tweezers. As Margo entered the tent, Karol said, “So, does the plot thicken?”

  “The plot sickens, perhaps.”

  “Lot of rope around this village.”

  “Enough to hang someone with, if hanging is required after we’ve finished.”

  “Hung for a sheep, hung for a lamb.”

  “Or lambs to the slaughter,” Graham said, grimacing. “Thanks, Lynch.” He accepted the clear plastic bag from Margo and stared at the encased rope fragment. “Do anything for you, Taylor?”

  “I hate to jump to conclusions, but it sort of brings to mind another piece of rope we’ve seen with another recent Upper Kingsleigh death.” And, I thought but didn’t mention, another series of rope incidents that I was involved in. Three, to be exact: my personal Guy, the string tied around the wren, and the nooses drawn on my photos. So what was the connection?

  Turning so he now faced the back garden and the dotting of bundled tree branches, Graham murmured, “It does indeed.”

  TWENTY

  “Isn’t it rather odd,” I said after a few moments of amazed contemplation, “that we have two cases involving rope?”