My brain cells were colliding like bumper cars as the scattered pieces of this case seemed to be coming together. The date, the type of train, the crossing. I didn’t understand what any of it had to do with the Davenports and Lucy. But it was there. I felt like a hunter whose dog has just gone into point. Something was in the bushes.
I exchanged a glance with Mac and saw my rising excitement mirrored in her eyes.
“Raya Quinn was struck by a hazmat train?” I said.
“Yup. Agricultural chemicals. I expected the Feds to show up. It’s a big deal, right, the risk of a spill? But Bull and the engineer did a walk of the train. He told me that only the locomotive was damaged. A team from SFCO confirmed it the next day. No leaks or spills. Probably why it was kept local. If any Feds ever came, I didn’t hear about it.”
“You said Bull Zolner was upset?”
“Oh, he was torn up. First time I’d seen Bull bothered by anything other than trespassers and politics. Well, and religion. Bull was a mighty opinionated man.”
“Do you know why this accident in particular bothered him?”
Wolanski splayed his hands. “Don’t know that it was this one in particular. I figured it was every accident bothered him. It was just that night was the only time I worked an accident with him right after it happened. His reaction made me decide he wasn’t a total asshole.” He flushed. “Pardon my French.”
“So who else was there?” Mac asked. “Any passersby?”
“Raya’s friend, Jill Martin. She got notified by a friend in the sheriff’s office. Jill and Raya worked together at SFCO. And let’s see, Hiram Davenport was there, too.”
Astonished, I said, “Hiram was at the scene?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure exactly when he showed up. He told me he was there because it was his train and because it was a hazmat.”
Funny how Hiram hadn’t mentioned that.
“Tell us what you know about the victim,” I said. “Raya Quinn.”
Wolanski rifled the pages in the file but didn’t seem to be looking at them. His eyes were in some middle distance. “Raya Quinn. Young, twenty-one, I think. A real beauty.”
“Did you know her personally?”
“No. I just felt like I got to know her some after the accident. Just like the other victims. But something about Raya stuck in my craw. Maybe because she was essentially an orphan. She grew up outside Brighton, over in Weld County. Her mom was a nutcase. Smart, I heard. But a—what do you call people who are scared to leave their homes?”
“Agoraphobic,” Mac supplied.
“That’s it. And a drug addict. Opiates. Friends said the drug abuse started getting bad around the time Raya was old enough to help out. Or maybe the old woman just leaned on her more then. Raya used to do all the shopping for Esta, soon as she was old enough to drive. No one could blame her when she took off for bigger and better soon as she turned eighteen. Went to Hollywood to try her hand at acting. She did have some talent.”
Wolanski shuffled through the file and pulled out a sheet of paper. He passed it over to us.
“That’s her in the lead in the high school musical, Camelot.”
The paper was a photocopy of a newspaper article. The headline read LOCAL GIRL, BIG TALENT. The reporter gave the high school production a kind review—enthusiastic kids, great sets, an honest attempt at the musical score. But he saved his real applause for Raya Quinn as Guinevere: Quinn eloquently captures the heartbreak of Arthur’s queen, torn between the man she loves and the man she is wed to. With Quinn in the role, you believe Guinevere carries the weight of an entire kingdom on her shoulders. If we’re fortunate, someday we’ll see Quinn on the big screen.
The article included a photograph of Raya Quinn in a long, medieval-style dress, staring pensively out over the audience with eyes that held a world of sorrow. And no question. She was the woman whose photograph had been in Ben’s desk. I lifted the picture to the light spilling in from the window and stared into the eyes of a woman who, as a seventeen-year-old, had managed to convincingly portray someone both older and wiser.
I passed the picture to Mac, then took out the photo of the woman from Ben’s desk so she could compare them.
“I’ll be damned,” Mac murmured. “It’s her.”
Wolanski said, “Raya Quinn is part of this case you’re working on?”
I nodded. “It looks that way.”
He finished his coffee and returned the mug to the table. “Then I’m sorry I can’t offer very much. Just the little I pieced together after her death.”
“What else did you learn?”
“She lived in LA for three years. Never saw her in anything. Not TV or movies. When she came home she went to work for SFCO. She’d worked there part-time in high school. Six months after that, she was dead.” He gave a rueful shake of his head. “From what her friends said, she’d settled into her life. Liked her job, was thinking about college. She died a week before her twenty-second birthday.”
I tapped the file. “What about the autopsy? Was there anything unusual?”
“There was no autopsy. Given the circumstances and the condition of the body, the coroner felt an external exam was sufficient.” Wolanski tilted his head, smoothed his mustache. “But if you two are looking for a mystery, I don’t think you’ll find it. There’s not much in that report other than a sad story. She was slightly intoxicated. Her car was on the tracks when the train struck it. The engineer said the car wasn’t moving.”
“Suggesting it wasn’t an accident,” I said.
“The coroner told me that, in his opinion, it was suicide. But because she was intoxicated and because she didn’t leave a note, he ruled it accidental. For her sake, and her mother’s.”
Wolanski pulled out a sheaf of stapled papers. “You want me to give you the highlights?”
“Please,” Mac said.
“Quinn was alone in the car. She died instantly when her vehicle was struck. Cause of death was multiple blunt-force injuries. Vehicle was in good working order, from what the mechanic could tell. No skid marks. I already mentioned the .04 blood alcohol level. There was an empty bottle of Rebel Yell bourbon on the passenger floor. Last act of defiance against the world, I figured. Or maybe a way to make death easier to contemplate. I found a fresh patch of oil on the road near the tracks. I figure she sat there drinking and thinking about her life before she drove onto the tracks. That would account for the missing time.” He shrugged, a sad, helpless gesture. “Maybe she was more disappointed in Hollywood than she let on.”
“I’d like to look at the report now,” I said.
Wolanski handed the pages to me. I passed the photographs over to Mac and began skimming through the report.
“What did Tate say about why she was working late that night?” Mac asked.
“Just that she was finishing up for the day. She worked as a secretary—payroll department, I think. She’d had a doctor’s appointment that morning and was trying to make up the hours. After she finished for the day, he said she went into the women’s bathroom, changed into her going-out clothes, told him goodnight, and left. Next time he sees her she’s—” Wolanski shook his head.
I flipped through the report until I found the list of Raya’s clothing. She’d been wearing a black skirt and halter top, nylons, and black dress shoes, as if she’d been planning a night on the town. She had on silver earrings and a heart-shaped necklace with a single diamond. A sparkly sweater had been found on the seat next to her; the sweater was covered with a light distribution of animal hair. I thought of the black-and-white kitten she’d been holding in the photo.
“Did she have pets?” I asked. “A cat, maybe?”
He nodded. “Her mom had cats.”
“The quality of the identifying photo in the autopsy is terrible,” Mac said.
I leaned over and saw immediately what she meant. Instead of a straight-on shot of Raya’s ruined face, the picture had been taken at an angle so that faint shadows were cast across
the left side of her face. A slight blurriness suggested the photographer’s hand wasn’t entirely steady. I’d taken more than my share of photographs at Mortuary Affairs. I wouldn’t have accepted this level of work.
“Is that unusual?” I asked Wolanski.
“Wish I could say it was. That was just Gerald Roper, the coroner at the time. He had way more ambition than work ethic. He didn’t get reelected.”
Mac paused over one of the photos. “That’s startling.”
She passed the photo to me. I found myself looking at the image of a heart etched on Raya’s throat. Roper had noted it in his report as a “discrete impression abrasion.”
“You talking about the necklace?” Wolanski asked. “Roper said it was pressed into the tissue by the force of the impact.”
The image of the necklace was disquieting. But I moved on from the jewelry and studied Raya’s neck, where bruising showed under the chin—blotchy purple hemorrhages that stood out against the more general bruising.
I went back to the report to see if Roper had made note of these. His only comment referenced the all-over florid distribution of the bruising.
“Are there other shots of her face and neck?” I asked Mac.
Mac handed over more photos.
I flipped through them quickly, hunting for a specific type of injury. And there it was.
Pinpoint burst blood vessels in the conjunctivae of her eyes. I looked again at Roper’s report. He’d made note of the petechial hemorrhaging in the sclera and had also noted its presence in the inner lining of Raya’s lips and mouth. But he’d written off the injuries as being caused by the accident.
I’d learned a lot about cause and manner of death while working in Mortuary Affairs. But Raya’s photos took me back to a class I’d taken on domestic violence. Mauer had sent all of his railroad cops to the two-day course so we’d recognize the signs when we went through the homeless camps.
“Petechial hemorrhaging,” I said, handing the photos back to Mac. “And look at the bruising under her chin.”
Wolanski sat up. “She was strangled?”
“I’ll be damned,” Mac said, studying the photos. “Didn’t Roper catch that?”
“He attributed the hemorrhaging to the accident,” I said. “But with that bruising . . . there should have been an investigation.”
Wolanski flushed. “All this time, and you’re telling me it’s murder?”
CHAPTER 20
We are hardwired to be afraid. It sucks. And it saves us.
—Sydney Parnell, ENGL 2008, Psychology of Combat.
I asked Wolanski if he had a fax machine. He said he had one of those fancy all-in-one printers that should do the trick. He led Clyde and me to his study, then went to make more coffee while Mac checked in with her team. I called the medical examiner, Emma Bell, and asked if she could look at a report I was faxing to her office, along with some photos I’d send with my phone.
“If they’re linked to the Davenport case, of course,” she said. “I’ll look at them as they’re coming in and call you right back.”
It took fifteen minutes to send the relevant documents. Bell called a few minutes after that.
“You have the picture with the image of the heart in front of you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You see the patchy bruising under her chin?”
“I do.”
“That looks like injuries from external compression of her neck prior to the accident. Now look at the photograph you sent of her eyes. Petechial hemorrhaging. Another sign of strangulation. Even more damning are the photos of the oral mucosa. Not just the hemorrhaging you see there, but also the bruising of the submentum under the chin and along the jawline.”
“Couldn’t those injuries have been caused by the accident?”
“That’s what the coroner ruled at the time. Given the damage there, I can’t definitively say no. But I think it highly unlikely, especially given the location of the bruising. Plus there’s something else. Look at the photographs of her arms.”
I pulled it out. The inside of Raya’s forearms were bruised and scraped. “Defense wounds?”
“Exactly. In my opinion, the coroner’s exam was sloppy and incomplete. He should have asked a doctor to do an internal examination.”
“So you’re saying it’s possible she was dead before the train struck her?”
“If this were my case, that’s what I’d be looking at. Anything else I can help with?”
I looked at the photograph of Raya’s clothes. Lancing Tate had mentioned growing up with dogs. Raya’s top and skirt both had white hair on them, as if she’d been around animals. It was a look I was familiar with.
“The victim had animal hair on her clothing,” I said. “Can you tell from a photograph if it’s dog or cat hair?”
“I wouldn’t be able to give you a definite answer without looking at samples under a microscope. But in general, dog hair is coarser than cat hair, if it’s from the outer coat. Cat hair is finer even than human hair. You own a dog. How does the photo compare with your own clothing?”
I peered at the picture again. The quality of the photo was poor, but it looked like dog hair to me. “I can’t be sure. I’ll send you the picture, and if you can figure anything out from it, let me know.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks, Emma. You’ve been a huge help.”
“Before you hang up, I have more news. I was just about to call Cohen. We got an ID on the second body from the kiln. A man named Zach Vander.”
Well, shit. There went Cohen’s top suspect, cleared by virtue of being dead. I figured this meant we could officially clear Vander of trying to frame Stern, too.
I sent Mac a text about Vander; she was in the next room, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of Wolanski.
Where the hell, she texted back, does that leave us?
After agreeing to let us keep the files for the time being, Wolanski walked us to his front door.
“I still can’t believe she was murdered,” he said.
“What happened to the mother after Raya’s death?” I asked.
Wolanski shrugged. “No idea. I never followed up. I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
“And no other family?”
“Raya was an only child. There was a nephew of Esta’s who came to stay with her on and off for a few years. I heard that Esta had a sister back east somewhere. Sorry I can’t tell you more.”
“What about Raya’s friend?” Mac asked. “Jill Martin. Do you know if she’s still in the area?”
“She is. She left the railroad and took over her husband’s taxidermy business. Ever After Taxidermy in Thornton. One of my friends took his elk there.”
Mac offered Wolanski her hand. “Thanks for everything. You’ve been a great help.”
We shook all around. Wolanski followed us outside. The day was warm but gloomy, with a high, thin scrim of clouds and pale shadows on the ground. When Clyde made use of one of the bushes in his front yard, Wolanski waved it off. He bade us farewell at the truck and trudged back toward his front door. His step was considerably heavier than it had been when we arrived.
I let Clyde in the back, then paused with my hand on the driver’s door.
“We’ve just lost our main suspect,” I said to Mac.
Her composure remained in place. Only the black eye suggested any weakness. Weakness being a relative term. She didn’t look like liver pâté.
“We didn’t lose him,” she said. “He’s just pointing us in a different direction.”
“The dead speak,” I murmured. Sometimes more than we might wish.
“Exactly. Look at the volumes Raya has just shared with us.” She slapped the roof of the truck. “Come on, let’s go see what we can learn from Jill Martin. Then we can track down Esta Quinn, if she’s still around. I feel like the answer is just around the corner. And with the answer comes Lucy.”
We got in the truck and I pulled away from the cu
rb, merging with the traffic heading south. Toward Thornton. And hopefully some answers.
CHAPTER 21
The wisdom of war comes, over time, to resemble the wisdom of life. Stay calm. Aim well. Don’t get attached to anything.
And always know who your enemies are.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
“Of course I remember Raya,” Jill Martin said. “She and I were best friends from third grade. Right up until the night she died.”
We were in the back room of Ever After Taxidermy, standing around a bobcat sprawled facedown on the table. All of us watched the cat like we were waiting for it to get back up. With its legs spread-eagled and its head propped to the side, the dead animal looked like it had gone down after an uppercut in a drunken brawl.
Jill lifted her gaze and frowned at us. “But I’m not going to talk about that night.”
I’d left Clyde in his air-conditioned carrier, figuring this place would give him the willies. It gave me the willies. The dead watched us from every corner of the room. Deer and pronghorn and coyotes, and even a bear eternally trapped midgrowl. A large walk-in freezer suggested there were plenty more slated to join them.
My eyes kept returning to an enormous timber wolf near the front window. I was thinking about the animal on the TIR tape. Cohen had sent the tape to a wildlife expert, and the biologist said he thought we were looking at a hybrid animal—a wolf dog. He couldn’t venture a guess as to what species or subspecies of dog or wolf had gone into the mix. But his expert opinion was that the animal was “damn big.”
“We’re sorry to dredge up bad memories,” Mac said. “I’m sure it’s painful. But Raya’s death might be relevant to another case we’re working.”
“How could that be? Wrong place, wrong time. End of story.”
“We only need to ask you a few questions about that night,” I added. “Then we’ll get out of your way.”
Jill made a sound that might have been a derisive snort or even a sob and selected a whip-thin knife from a block on the table. She was fifty or so, her gray-streaked hair cut short, her freckled face lively and intelligent. Her rolled-up sleeves revealed strong forearms and hands ropy with tendons, the fingers knotted and callused. Her brisk motions conveyed a don’t-mess-with-me vibe that I imagined kept a lot of people at arm’s length.
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