by Elaine Viets
Two more cop cars and the Forest crime scene van arrived, and the once quiet street was cluttered with official vehicles. Jace assigned uniforms to handle the traffic, string yellow crime scene tape, and guard the entrance to the secret path.
“Let’s hope the cold weather keeps the curious away until we finish this,” Jace said. “The tech is here, and we got lucky – it’s Sarah ‘Nitpicker’ Byrne. Let’s go see Juliet.”
I was so tired I could hardly walk down the snowy path – the cold stole my energy. “Daisy and I made these footprints, Jace. There were no other tracks in the snow before we walked here.” The detective followed behind me on the narrow path, crunching carefully in the footsteps Daisy and I had left.
“That’s Juliet’s velvet jacket on the tree limb.” I thought it looked impossibly small twisting in the cold winter sun.
“And those are her high heels.”
The silver slippers glittered sadly in the snow.
“That has to be her party dress on the bush,” Jace said.
“And her pink water bottle,” I said. We were at the lip of the creek now, overlooking Juliet’s frozen body. Jace was stunned into silence by the ice queen pillowed in the snow. Finally, he said, “Jesus.” The single word was too reverent to be a curse.
He stared for a moment more, then clenched his gloved fists and growled, “That little bastard. When I finish with him, he’s gonna beg me to put him back into a coma.”
“You think Dex raped her?”
Jace’s face was flushed, but I wasn’t sure if it was from fury or the biting cold. “She’s in the water, isn’t she? And her clothes are all over the place.”
“Why would Dex rape her outside in sub-zero weather when he had a nice warm car?” I asked. “How did he get her clothes off her? They don’t look torn.”
“He did it.” Jace’s face was stone as he repeated those words. “And he’s gonna pay.”
“Let’s get some facts first,” I said. “I’ll start my investigation. I’ll get my kit out of the car.”
“You can’t go down there,” he said. “Not on those slippery rocks. We’ll video and photograph the scene, then bring her up.”
I followed an angry Jace back to the road. The doors to the ambulance were open and Daisy was sitting up on a stretcher, talking to the two hunky paramedics while her worried brother sat next to her on the ambulance’s metal bench.
Jace stalked over. “Rick? How’s Daisy? Can she talk?” He seemed genuinely worried about the girl.
Rick seemed totally unaware that he’d perfumed the ambulance with pot. “They say Daisy’s stabilized and she wants to talk now. Better do it before Mom and Dad find out. I’m giving you permission. But if she gets too upset, it stops. Understand?”
He was now his sister’s fierce protector. Jace nodded, and he and I climbed into the crowded ambulance. I huddled next to Rick on the metal bench and both paramedics watched their patient. Jace sat directly across from Daisy and talked in a soft, friendly voice. “I understand you want to help.”
Daisy looked uneasy. Her lower lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. I leaned forward to catch the girl’s teary whisper. “My parents told me to always do the right thing. I should have talked to you before, but they – I mean their lawyer – wouldn’t let me. Maybe… maybe if I had, I could have saved Juliet.”
Jace cut her off before she started crying. “Juliet was, uh… gone already when you talked to me the first time. But you can tell me what happened the night of the party and then we can find out who killed her. Was Juliet upset at Arabella Du Pres’s party?”
“Yes. Really upset.”
“What upset her?”
“She had a fight with Dex. He was drunk and bragging that rich girls weren’t… weren’t…” Daisy was deep pink with embarrassment. Rick shifted and I was afraid he’d shut down the interview.
“Weren’t what?” Jace looked her in the eye and smiled. “Please, tell me. This is important.”
“I can’t say the words.”
“Juliet needs you to.”
“He said…Dex said poor girls did it better than rich girls, or something like that. And then he said…he said…she had small…she was…small…her breasts were… ” The next words poured out in a rush: “She had small tits.”
“Did you hear him say that?”
“No, Bella heard about it and told Juliet. She was drunk.”
“What was Juliet drinking?”
“Beer. Vodka. Grey Goose, I think. And she had a bag of white stuff.”
Jace tensed, but kept his voice soft. “What kind of white stuff? Coke? Heroin? Meth?”
“I don’t know, but it was in a big Ziploc bag. Too big to fit in her little purse.”
“Who gave it to her?”
Daisy’s eyes darted about. “I don’t know.” I wondered if she was lying. Jace continued his soft questions.
“Were there drugs at the party, Daisy?”
Daisy shifted uneasily and looked frantically around the crowded ambulance until she saw her brother. “I don’t want to talk anymore.” She dissolved into tears.
“This conversation is over,” Rick said, and stood up.
CHAPTER 12
Wednesday, December 28, 12:37 p.m.
I’d been a death investigator for almost twenty years, and I had never encountered a death like Juliet’s. I didn’t know how to examine a frozen body. I couldn’t carry out my usual routine. How could I take a body core temperature and slit the skin to insert the thermometer, when the body was rock hard ice? How could I remove any hairs and fibers frozen to the girl’s skin? How much evidence would be lost when Juliet thawed?
I needed help. I called Katie, the Forest’s assistant medical examiner.
“I found Juliet,” I said. “She’s frozen solid.”
“Aw, fuck.” Katie was silent for a moment. In that brief moment, the sadness and waste of Juliet’s death overwhelmed me, and I was afraid I’d cry.
“Wait! You found her? You personally?”
“Thanks to Rick’s little sister. Daisy showed me the secret path Juliet took to her home. We found her body in a creek about five hundred feet from her house. The searchers passed right by her, but no one could see her until the wind shifted and blew away the snow. She’s completely naked.”
And beautiful. Stunningly, tragically beautiful. And I’m not going to cry. I’m not, dammit. I’m a professional.
“Was she raped?”
“I don’t know.” I hated how my voice shook. “I don’t know how to do this, Katie. Not a frozen body. That’s why I called you.”
“I remember one frozen case years ago, when I was a resident. Let’s see…” She paused briefly. “You’ll need two body bags. Do you have any of those old white ones left?”
“I think there’s one in my car trunk. We discontinued them because they were too thin.”
“They are, but the white makes it easier to see the hairs and fibers when she defrosts. Put her in the white body bag first, then in the heavy black bag. When she gets here, I’ll keep her at room temperature so she’ll thaw naturally. What’s she weigh? A hundred-ten, a hundred-fifteen pounds?”
“Something like that.” I gulped back my tears.
“She’ll take about 36, maybe 48 hours to defrost.”
Like a piece of meat. I fought against my horror at this bizarre conversation. I’d done many ugly body actualizations – drownings, drug overdoses, decompositions in August – but this one seemed worse.
“I’ll have to check her every two hours,” Katie said. “The hands and feet will probably defrost first, and then I can get scrapings from under her nails. As the defrosting progresses, I’ll draw blood and get fluids, including ocular fluid from her eyes, and seminal fluid, if there is any, in the vaginal vault. Did you see any signs of sexual assault – scrapes, bruises, cuts? Any defensive wounds?”
“I couldn’t tell from where I was standing. I was on the bank of the creek and she was about eight fe
et below on a muddy beach. Jace won’t let me do my job. He says I can’t go down to the creek bed to examine her. He wants to bring the body up.”
“You want to climb down into a slippery, snowy creek in the dead of winter when you’ve just recovered from six strokes?” I heard Katie’s anger and disbelief.
“It’s been almost two years. I’m fully recovered.”
“Save that bullshit for someone who doesn’t know you.”
“It’s my job.”
“To break your leg? Let me guess – this is a typical creek with lots of rocks and loose boulders spilling down to the water. They’re covered with snow, ice and frozen mud.”
“Right.”
“You don’t have the balance to go down there. If you slip and fall, you’ll mess up my findings. I don’t need your blood and DNA mixed in with the victim’s and her killer’s. I don’t need valuable evidence lost in a mudslide. Let Jace and whoever else is there get her. Who’s the crime scene tech?”
“Nitpicker Byrne is working this one.”
“She and Jace are strong and sure-footed. They can carry her up. Before they move her, stand in a safe place at the edge and take lots of photos, then take more once she’s hauled up. Have the body bags open and ready and let them put her in them.”
“What form do I use? It’s not a suicide, or an apparent natural death.”
“What the hell, Angela? What’s wrong with you? You sound like a rookie.”
“This death is really getting to me.”
“Use a standard Body Inspection Form. Be sure to mark any and all injuries, and note anything unusual – including the fact that she’s nude. Are her clothes nearby?”
“Tossed all over the place. They’re hanging on trees or dumped in the snow.”
“Photograph those, too. Exactly where they’ve landed. I’ll check the police video, too, but the location of her clothes is important. Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, but my voice shook and I swallowed hard.
“You better be. I’ll stop by your house tonight and check on you.”
I clicked off my cell, then hauled my death investigator suitcase out of my car trunk and dragged it through the snow. I rolled it swiftly across the plowed street, but the snow, brambles and bushes at the secret path’s entrance looked like an insurmountable obstacle. The uniform guarding it lifted my suitcase over the brambles and set it on the path on the other side of the yellow crime scene tape. “Do you need help?” he asked. “Can I carry it to the scene?”
“I can handle it now, thanks.” I bumped and dragged the suitcase down the path toward Juliet’s body, determined to do this on my own. I slid several times, but I made it. Nitpicker was videoing Juliet’s clothes, when she saw me grab a sapling to keep from falling.
“Here, Angela. Let me take that.” She grabbed my suitcase. “I can handle it. I’m not a wimp.”
“The way you came back after those strokes, nobody’s going to call you a wimp.”
“I’m glad you haven’t moved Juliet’s clothes yet,” I said. “I need to photograph them for Katie.”
“Help yourself. I’m finishing up. I’ve done a partial search of the ground and bagged everything.”
“Find anything useful?”
She shrugged. “Doubt it. Some trash – a Coke can and some candy wrappers, but they look like they’ve been here a while.”
Juliet’s clothes looked like an art installation—the soft, snow-dusted velvet jacket, the silver shoes glittering in the pale winter sun, and the strapless dress spread out on the bush. I took wide shots of the bizarre scene. After I finished the medium shots, I worked on close-ups of each item.
“Where’s Jace?” I asked.
“In his car, drinking coffee and warming up before we climb down into that ice-cold creek. It’s so damn cold we’re working in shifts.”
Already, I was bone cold. I tried to ignore it by photographing the girl’s clothes. I felt a pang of sadness at the velvet jacket’s exquisite details, including the delicate silver filigree buttons.
As I shot pictures of the girl’s shoes, I asked, “Find any underwear?”
“Nope, and I don’t expect to. I’m guessing she went commando. Lots of young girls do. I did find her purse in a snowdrift.” She showed me an evidence bag with a delicate silver purse. “It’s just big enough for a cell phone and a lipstick, but there wasn’t a cell phone.”
“I think the police found the phone in her boyfriend’s car,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure her water bottle doesn’t contain water.” She showed me another bag that held the pink plastic bottle with maybe an ounce of clear liquid. “It didn’t freeze. It will be opened in the lab when we print it, but I’m guessing that’s either gin or vodka.”
“Her friend Daisy said she was drinking Grey Goose.”
“Vodka then. If you’re finished with the jacket and shoes, I’ll bag them.”
I nodded and Nitpicker put them in brown paper bags. If they were sealed in plastic bags, they’d mildew when the snow on them melted into water. They’d dry out on hangers.
“I’m finished with the dress now, too,” I said. I was at the creek’s edge and could see the icy body. “I’ll photograph the body before you and Jace move it. Katie says it should be double-bagged with a white and a black body bag. I’ll have them ready by the time you bring her up.”
Nitpicker carefully pulled the blue velvet dress from the bush so it wouldn’t tear. “Go ahead. You can use that clear surface there for the body bags.”
When she’d cleared the dress fabric from the last twig, she said, “Hello. What have we here?”
Underneath the party dress was a gallon-size plastic Ziploc bag containing a whitish powder. Sarah pulled it out with gloved hands.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” the tech said. “But it sure is suspicious. I’d better get Jace and tell him.”
While Sally left to find Jace, I took dozens of photographs of the frozen girl from the edge of the cliff. Juliet’s left arm was flung out and her right arm was frozen to her side. As the powdery snow shifted and swirled around the body, I wondered, did Juliet overdose? Who gave her that suspicious white substance? Was the dead girl raped and murdered, or did she OD?
The cold stung my eyes until they watered. Or maybe those were tears. I was too numb to know any more. My ears ached and my face felt stiff and frozen. At least my iPad was still working. I called up the Body Inspection (Actualization) Form on it and typed in the case number, the time, and checked my thermometer for the ambient temperature – a chilling two degrees.
As I was finishing, Jace and Sarah returned and the tech handed me a steaming foam cup. “I brought you hot coffee. Go warm up in Jace’s car while we bring her up. Then I can warm up while you do your death investigation. I showed Jace the white substance. I’m not going to field test it. We’ll look at it in the lab. Go on, so we can get started. His keys are in the ignition.”
I was grateful for the break. I drank the cup by the time I made my way back to Jace’s unmarked car. I poured another cup from the big Thermos on the passenger seat, turned on the engine, and reveled in the blast of warm air. I closed my eyes and drifted off. All too soon, Sarah was knocking on the driver’s side window. I opened the door and flinched at the cold.
“My turn.” Sarah’s gloves, coat sleeves, and boots were wet and muddy, and she had a muddy smudge on her cheek. She was shivering and her teeth chattered. “We got that poor girl out, and I hope I never have to do anything like that again. Good thing I lift weights.”
At the scene, I called up the form again. I could type with gloves on and correct the mistakes before I turned in my report. I kneeled down on a third body bag, folded to protect me from the cold. I estimated the girl’s weight at a hundred fifteen pounds. Katie would confirm that when Juliet defrosted. I measured her height at five feet two inches, then started with the girl’s head. Her hair was too frozen
to check her head for lumps. I saw a six-inch-long scrape on the girl’s right cheek and near her hairline three half-inch cuts, known as “cut-like defects” in my jurisdiction. From the lack of blood and bruising, I suspect these happened very close to the girl’s death, or just after it – postmortem.
The decedent had a thin twelve-inch bruise, a “contusion,” on her upper chest from her left breast to her armpit. Both legs were crisscrossed with multiple cut-like defects – I counted eleven – possibly from the brambles and frozen weeds along the path. Her legs were frozen together, but I saw no bruising, contusions or cut-like defects near her sugar-white pubic hair, and none of the telltale thumb-print sized bruises on her hips and thighs that often marked rape victims. There did not appear to be any semen stains on her pelvis, thighs and legs. Her narrow white feet both had quarter-inch blisters on her fifth “little” toes, possibly from the high heels, and her feet were contused, bruised and covered with cut-like defects—ten on her right foot, six on her left, ranging from an eighth of an inch to an inch and a half.
“Jace,” I said, “help me turn her over, please.”
We were both clumsy and slow from the cold, but we managed to turn the girl. The injuries on Juliet’s back side were similar to the front. She had two ten-inch cut-like defects on her bare back, a large bruise five inches wide by three inches long on her round right buttock, and more contusions and cuts on her thighs and lower legs. I counted and measured them all, as well as the half-inch blisters just above her heels.
“I think those pretty silver shoes must have hurt like hell, Jace.” I pointed out the blisters. “Do you think she OD’d on that white powder?”
“No, Juliet was raped by that little son of a bitch. As soon as he wakes up, I’m charging him with felony assault, first-degree murder, and everything else I can think of. I hate rapists – they destroy the innocent.”