“You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you? You’re wondering now if she gave birth to that baby.” Angie leaned forward, her blood beating faster. “But how would that be possible? Gulati went over the falls in her waders, was never seen again, then is found wearing the gear she drowned in, lying in this shallow grave near the river, which has seen two major flooding events over the past twenty-four years.”
The food arrived. O’Hagan quickly closed the file, and the two women fell quiet while the server set steaming plates on the table. As soon as the server left, the doc opened the file again and studied it more deeply. She tapped a photo. “This antemortem scarring at the decedent’s left shoulder joint. It’s consistent with chronic dislocation of the shoulder. The scarring indicates healing had commenced on the shoulder but in a way that would appear to indicate the dislocation had not been properly reduced.”
“Can you tell how long before death?”
The doc pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’d want to see the original radiographs or, better, the skeleton itself. And I’d want an expert forensic anthropologist’s input on that.”
“But it could have been recently prior to her death, as in not an old childhood injury, for example?”
The doc nodded, reached for her fork, and broke into the crust of her pie. Steam rose from the hole she’d made in the pastry, releasing a fragrance that made Angie’s hunger acute. She picked up her own fork, pointed it at the report.
“What about that spiral fracture on her left arm? The pathologist notes it’s typical of wrenching force.”
The doc nodded. “But that injury is perimortem. It occurred at or around the time of her death—no sign of healing.”
“Something that could have happened while going over the falls?”
“It would be consistent, yes, if her arm had gotten caught in rocks or something while the rest of her body was torqued away by currents or by the force of falling water.”
Angie tucked into her Guinness pie and delivered a forkful to her mouth, almost burning her tongue in the process. “This is good,” she said around her mouthful. “You were right.”
“Told you.” The doc grinned.
Angie began to wolf down the entire meal as O’Hagan picked at her own plate while combing more carefully through the report, a frown furrowing deeper and deeper into her already lined brow.
Angie reached for her drink. “Is it possible, Barb?” She leaned forward. “Is it remotely possible that Jasmine Gulati did not die going over those falls? But she was injured, and she lived long enough to start healing from injuries sustained going over the waterfall. Injuries for which she never received medical treatment—like a shoulder dislocation. She lived long enough to give birth to the child she was carrying.”
O’Hagan bit her lip. “There’s nothing here that would be inconsistent with that scenario, Ange.”
Angie’s heart started to thud in her chest. “But? I can hear the but in your voice, Doc.”
“But the waders. She’s wearing the Kinabulu waders in which she was seen going over the falls.”
Angie finished the last morsel of pastry on her plate and pushed it aside. She wiped her mouth with her napkin and sat back. “So help me walk through this. Jasmine leaves the camp with her fishing rod. She goes down to the bay. The two guides, Garrison Tollet and Jessie Carmanagh, leave the campsite to gather firewood. Rachel Hart goes up to the ledge to film Jasmine fishing in the late evening light. Eden Hart says she needs to relieve herself and leaves camp. But Eden follows Jasmine down into the bay. Her mother, filming from above, sees her daughter strike Jasmine with a log.” Angie cast her mind back to her own visit to the bay. The cold water rushing by. The shiny, slippery rocks along the bank. Claire’s words.
That’s it. The bay where Jasmine Gulati’s rod was found. My dad told me there were marks in the slime-covered rocks where her studded wading boots looked to have slipped.
That niggle in Angie’s subconscious returned tenfold. Her stomach tightened. “Jesus. Give me that, Barb!” She lunged across the table and snatched away the report. She flipped quickly to the page that documented the belongings returned to Jasmine’s parents. Among them, two pairs of size nine wading boots. One with felt bottoms, another with rubber soles.
Where her studded wading boots looked to have slipped.
“Different boots. Shit.” She looked up, excitement racing through her chest. “The couple from Dallas who fished with me and Maddocks had different boots with them for different conditions. A pair each with felt soles and a pair each with studded soles. Jasmine Gulati also took different sets of wading boots with her according to the inventory of her belongings.”
“So?”
“She had to have been wearing stocking-foot waders on that trip. Waders constructed with neoprene booties in their foot sections that slide into the wading boots of your choice. Garrison Tollet had told his daughter that the marks left by Jasmine’s fall on the slimy rocks indicated they’d been made by studs.” She pointed the report. “But look here.”
Barb pulled the report close and read the text on the page. “The decedent was found in chest-high Kinabulu boot-foot waders with rubber soles. Size nine.”
“Boot-foot waders,” Angie said. “Where an integral boot is constructed right into the wader. And no studs.”
“What?”
Angie grabbed back the file and flipped through it. “It’s mentioned here, in the separate SAR report from twenty-four years ago. Signs of her studded boots sliding through the moss-covered rocks.” She finished her whiskey and sat back, her brain racing. “Size nine,” she whispered, more to herself than the doc. “Jasmine wore size nine boots. She was a tall woman. The boot-foot waders in which she was found accommodated a size nine foot.” She leaned forward. “Male size nine?”
O’Hagan checked the report. “Doesn’t say specifically whether the boot-foot waders were male or female size nine. You’d have to go back and check. You mentioned this was a preliminary report.”
“Yeah, Justice Monaghan got that direct from the coroner. It’s not the official final release.”
“Maybe that’s something that would have been picked up before the final report was issued.”
“There’s an approximate one-and-a-half size difference between men’s and women’s sizing,” Angie said.
“You’re thinking the boot-foot waders in which she was found weren’t hers?”
“How is that possible?”
“Hoi, Palloreeeno and the Death Doc. Fancy seeing yous guys here.”
Both jerked up their heads at the sound of the familiar voice.
“Christ, Holgersen,” Angie snapped. “Give us some warning, will ya. What’re you doing here anyway?”
His gaze fell to the open file on the table. “Just having a drink with a mate. Saw yous over here in the corner and thoughts I’d come say hi and congrats on the big solve with the Gulati case.”
“What’s wrong with the Flying Pig?” Angie said, closing the file on the table to avoid his prying eyes. Last thing she needed was for him to go back to the station and say she’d screwed up and that the case was not actually solved.
A look akin to guilt rippled across his features, and his eyes began darting around the place. “Just talking with a colleague about a case. Needed to get away from the rest of the blokes. Leo and all, you knows?”
Angie shot an eye toward the bar, saw Corporal Rebecca Webb sitting there. Webb raised her beer bottle and nodded. Angie forced a smile and returned the nod. “Don’t let us keep you,” she said to Holgersen. “Your company is waiting.”
“I’m in no rush. Got two whole regular weekend days off.” He grinned. “Boss man took off to the mainland again for a few days on some business thing with the E-division cops.”
Surprise pinged through Angie. “He’s not in town?”
Holgersen and the doc exchanged a quick glance, and Angie immediately regretted her words.
“Right,” she said. �
��I forgot.” It was a lie. But she didn’t like looking out of the loop.
“Well,” Holgersen said, regarding Angie with an expression of something like sympathy on his face, which irked her. “Good to see ya, Pallorino, Doc.”
“Yeah.” Angie watched him lope his way through the tables on his way back to Webb at the bar.
O’Hagan studied her. Reading something. “Another drink?”
“I should go. I—”
“We’re not done here yet, Ange. Go on, have another drink.”
She inhaled. “Okay,” Angie said. “Another.”
The doc waved to the server, held up two fingers, and pointed to their glasses. She turned back to Angie. “One thing looks to be certain here,” she said with a nod to the report. “That blunt-force trauma to Gulati’s skull would have done her in. Whether that happened in the water or on land remains a question.”
The drinks arrived, and the server took their plates.
“Okay,” Angie said, reaching for her tumbler. “If Gulati didn’t die in the river, if, say, she was injured going over the falls but washed up and came ashore somehow, and if she lived long enough to bring her baby to term and give birth . . .” She swore softly. “That raises all kinds of questions. Like, where was she all that time? Why was she unable to seek medical attention or come home? What happened to the baby? Did it die in birth? Where is it buried, then? How did she end up in waders with a hole in her head near the river? And why?”
“If she didn’t die in the river, that perimortem spiral fracture would’ve occurred on land at the time she incurred the blunt-force trauma to the skull. I’ve seen those spiral arm fractures before, primarily at a mass grave site in Burundi. The women in a village were raped by soldiers and then killed. Some had tried to escape by wrenching so hard against the hold of their captors on their arms that they broke their arms, resulting in this torque-type fracture.”
“So . . . she was trying to escape, perhaps. Running away in those waders that were not hers. She was grabbed. She twisted against the hold. And then maybe she was hit on the head with a sharp object, like a . . . hammer or wrench or something.”
“That scenario would be consistent with the postmortem results, in my opinion.”
Angie picked up her drink, sat back against the plush leather in their booth. “So what happened to her baby? This makes no sense. This—” Something struck her. Hard.
“What is it?” Barb said.
Another memory. Axel Tollet’s place. Which was near the river. Not far from the grove where Jasmine had been found. ATV. Arrows with yellow fletching. Little teddy bear. Bottles for the cubs—
“Similac,” she said. “What do you feed bears, Barb?”
“Excuse me?”
“Little orphaned bear cubs that have not yet been weaned—how do you feed them?”
“I don’t know. Baby bottles. Some kind of milk replacer.”
He calls the folks at Wild Critter Care—it’s a voluntary wild animal rehabilitation center—and they unofficially guide and advise him.
Claire’s words tumbled through her memory. Angie grabbed her phone and pulled up a search engine. She punched in Wild Critter Care, and the website and contact details came up. She checked her watch and said to O’Hagan, “Hang on. Need to make a quick call.”
When a woman answered and introduced herself as the manager, Angie explained who she was and cut right to the chase.
“I have a wildlife question in relation to a case I’m working. What kind of formula would one feed baby bears, orphaned cubs, to replace their mother’s milk?”
“A sow’s milk is high fat, no carbs. The cubs don’t do well on a replacer high in carbohydrates.”
“Could you use a human infant formula? Like Similac?”
“Negative. If you were going to use a commercial milk replacer, it would be something like Esbilac powder. For puppies.”
Angie hung up, energy humming in her blood.
“What is it?”
“One of the men who lives near the river had baby bottles in his shed and a little stuffed teddy bear. His niece said the bottles and stuffed bear were for the orphaned cubs he’d once rescued. But the old tins on the shelf were labeled Similac—for human babies.” She paused. “What if he was feeding a human baby. Shit—” Angie sat erect. “Waders. He had two pairs of boot-foot waders hanging in his shed.”
“It doesn’t prove—”
“I need to go out there. I need to check out his place, ask more questions. He has the right kind of profile, Barb. He’s the survivor of a brutal sexual assault in his youth, allegedly perpetrated by a group of boys from his school who used to bully him. He was gang-raped by males, and he never received medical attention or therapy of any kind. The incident was buried. He became even more of a loner, isolating himself out there on that forest property. He rescues things he finds in the woods. Little cubs, fawns, raccoons—”
“And a half-drowned woman? You think that’s what could have happened? He rescued and kept her? And she gave birth, and the child lived long enough to be fed formula for a time?”
Angie blew out a big breath. “I’ve got to go see. I need to check if that could be possible.” Her gaze shifted back to Holgersen at the bar, and an idea began to formulate in her mind.
CHAPTER 42
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25
Angie drove north along the island highway while Holgersen sat in the passenger seat chewing nicotine gum and reading through the coroner’s preliminary report on Jasmine Gulati.
“Still can’t believe you roped me into this,” he said, turning a page.
“Come on, you love it. Admit it—you’re flattered. What else were you going to do on your day off?”
“I gots a life, Pallorino, even if you don’t.”
“That life include dating Webb?
He shot her a sideways glance. “What if it does?”
“You confuse me, Holgersen. I thought you were celibate.”
“I didn’t say I was fucking her, now did I?”
She gave a half shrug. “Why date if, you know, there’s nothing physical?”
“She’s a friend. I likes her company. We had drinks, that’s all.”
“Maddocks know about this? She’s in your unit, isn’t she?”
“None of boss man’s business. Yours, neither. She’s not in my cold case division. That’s justs me and hairy ass.” He sounded irritated or maybe frustrated. Angie let it go. She’d boomerang back to it later, because, yeah, she was curious. Everything about Holgersen made her curious. He was a dark one.
“Okay,” he said, flipping a page. “So maybe Jasmine Gulati was preggers at the time she went over the falls.”
“Yeah, maybe. All I have is her girlfriends saying that Jasmine told them she was carrying Dr. Hart’s baby. She wrote this in her journal, too. But how much of that journal is fact or fantasy, I don’t know. Jasmine told them she’d scheduled an abortion. She first asked Mia Smith to accompany her for the procedure, but she and Mia had a major fallout over termination. So Jasmine asked Sophie Sinovich to go with her instead, but according to Sophie, Jasmine bailed at the very last minute.”
“So, just to be clear, all Sophie Sinovich had was Jasmine Gulati’s word that an appointment for an abortion had actually been scheduled?”
Angie nodded. “I called the women’s center on the mainland this morning. They confirmed they don’t keep records going back that far—sixteen years is the requirement for medical records. So no proof of pregnancy. All just circumstantial.”
“And these post parturition scars are not unequivocal proof, either?”
“Correct.”
“So given that there was no evidence of a fetus found with her remains, she might not have been pregnant. Everything might be just as it seems. She went over the falls. Drowned. Washed up. Was found twenty-four years later. And the scarring on her pelvis was incidental. She could have hurt her shoulder some time before she went on that trip, maybe. Plus, there’s Rac
hel Hart’s confession that her daughter struck and pushed Jasmine Gulati into the river.” He powered down his window. Wind blasted into the car as he spat his gum out onto the highway. He dug into his pocket for the pack and started to pop a fresh tablet of nicotine chewing gum out of the cellophane. “That truck chasing you could have just been to scare you away from digging up shit on the old Porter Bates case. And them arrows in the grove, too.”
“Or those arrows really could have been hunters shooting at us in error. It happens often enough.”
“So it could be like it looks.”
“Or not.” She shot him a look. “Which is why I need to talk to Axel Tollet and poke around up there some more to be sure.”
“You could just let it lie.”
“No, I can’t. If Jasmine Gulati survived the waterfall, I can’t let someone take the murder rap for that.”
“They’s confessed.”
“Perhaps in error. Maybe Eden intended to kill Jasmine Gulati but didn’t succeed. Maybe Jasmine washed up, and someone else up there killed her later and buried her kid somewhere.”
“Like Axel Tollet, you mean?”
“Yeah. He’s a fit for the profile. I think he’s capable.”
“So he could be dangerous?”
She slowed and stopped for a red light as they entered the outskirts of Nanaimo. “Possibly. I got a weird feeling about him and that place when I went up there. I got a read from his niece, too, that he might have a potential for violence if cornered. I feel for him, though. He’s a survivor of a brutal sexual assault and long-term bullying. Ostracized. Shamed. Possibly has weird sexual issues because of it. He likes to rescue things and keep them in cages. But he does set them free after he’s nurtured them to health.”
“Yeah, but if he rescues a half-drowned woman outta the river and keeps her for long enough to bring her baby to term, he kinda can’t set her free because she’d talk. He’d go down for it.” He finally freed his piece of gum from the packaging and popped it into his mouth.
“You’re going to OD on that stuff,” Angie said, stepping on the gas as the light turned green.
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