Dead in the Water
Page 12
“Hold up there!” Greta says, moving toward Alison with her hand held out.
“It’s okay,” I say. “She’s with the local paper. Let her through. She can be trusted.”
“I know who she is,” Greta grumbles, making me suspect Alison has ticked her off at some point in the past.
“She’ll work with us,” I say. “Trust me.”
Greta doesn’t look happy, but she lets Alison through.
“You guys left me,” Alison says with a pout, slowing to a walk as she approaches. “If I hadn’t heard one of the firemen say something about another search up this way, I wouldn’t have known what was going on.”
“Sorry, Alison,” I say. “We were a bit distracted.”
“That was Hal you found down at the dam, wasn’t it?”
I don’t know how she figured this out, but I see little sense in lying to her at this point. “It was.”
“I thought so. One of the bystanders had one of those drone things with a camera and he got a good shot of the face.”
That answered one question. These days, nothing could be kept secret.
“It looked like his throat had been slashed,” Alison goes on, her eyes big. “Was he killed?”
“It appears that way,” I say, “but it’s not official yet. You can’t—”
“I know, I know,” Alison says, holding up a hand to stop me. “I won’t print anything unless you guys okay it.”
“Did you get anything out of the bystanders you talked to?” Hurley asks.
“Only the image of Hal’s body. I offered the guy money for the shot, but he refused.”
Greta clucks her disapproval at this and Alison shoots her a look. “I didn’t want the picture so I could print it,” she says irritably. “The paper wouldn’t put anything that gruesome out anyway. I wanted it so the guy couldn’t sell it to some other news outlet.”
Greta rolls her eyes in disbelief.
“Is that Hal’s boat?” Alison asks, nodding toward the bobbing flotilla out on the lake and dismissing Greta’s blatant disapproval.
“It is,” I say. “We’re about to go out and have a look at it.”
“Mind if I hang here and wait for you to come back?”
“That’s fine,” I say. “But don’t pass on anything you know about this case until we give you the okay, got it?”
It’s Alison who rolls her eyes this time. “I think I have the rules of the game down pat at this point,” she says with a hint of impatience. She then steps aside, settling in at the base of a nearby tree.
After donning gloves and loading our scene kits into the Zodiac, a grumpy Greta takes us out to the boat. The sound of the Zodiac’s motor and the roar of the wind make conversation difficult without yelling. If not for that, I’m sure Greta would be expressing her displeasure over our tolerance of Alison.
There are two techs and another sheriff on the boat already. It’s a twenty-four-foot outboard with two seats and a bench going around the back. It could easily seat eight people, but with all of us standing and trying not to contaminate the evidence—a large pool of mostly dried blood just behind the driver’s seat—it’s a bit awkward. The sloshing of the boat in the waves makes for unsteady footing and doesn’t help us any.
I shoot pictures of it all, my heart heavy as I imagine Hal seated behind the wheel, the wind blowing his thinning hair back, a big smile on his face. What the hell happened? There is a fishing pole on the deck, fully rigged with a hook, weight, bobber, and a dead minnow on the end. A second pole is lying over the bench seat on the starboard side, its line in the water. The pole is at an odd angle, the reel resting on the boat deck, and it looks like it was dropped rather than positioned there intentionally. On the bench on the port side is a tackle box, open, its trays scissored up, exposing all the contents. On the floor behind the passenger seat is a cooler, the lid of which is closed.
“Have you guys moved anything?” I ask the men on board.
The sheriff nods. “We opened the cooler to have a look, but we didn’t touch or move anything inside it. Then we closed it again. It’s just some beer and soda on ice, though there was some kind of oily substance on the lid. It’s probably some kind of fish lure scent, but we went ahead and swabbed it. Other than that, all we’ve done is dust the handles on the rods for prints and obtain a bunch of swab samples from the blood.”
I look at the blood pool again. There is a lot of it, and my nursing eye makes a rough estimate of about three pints. The perimeter of the pool is irregular, tentacles of blood running out from the main splotch, presumably a result of the boat’s bobbing motion. There is also blood that has run down both sides of the back of the captain’s chair. Along the top rim of the chair back, the blood is smeared on one side with what looks like the faint impression of a palm print. Along the starboard side of the boat and on the driver’s control panel, I see several spray patterns of blood, some of which looks like castoff from whatever was used to cut Hal’s throat, and some that looks like arterial spray. I wince, angry and sad over what happened to Hal, but also a smidge grateful knowing that, at least, his end came quickly.
“We need to find out Hal’s blood type,” I say aloud, snapping a picture of the palm print. “And we need to know if Tina was out here with Hal, try to find her, and get her blood type, too.”
The sheriff who was on the boat frowns. “Are you saying there might have been two people on this boat originally?”
“It’s possible. We know the victim. He works with me in the medical examiner’s office. He said he and his girlfriend were planning to go out in the boat today.”
I remember the ring box we found in Hal’s pants and his comment this morning about how he had some fun stuff planned for the day. Had he proposed to Tina out here on the boat?
“Do you think she might have killed him?” Greta asks.
I give her an equivocal shrug. “It’s possible, I suppose, but I doubt it.” Then I tell her about the ring box.
Greta snorts a laugh. “I’ve been married and divorced three times already. A proposal would be enough to make me want to kill someone.”
The other cops on the boat let out a few polite sniggers.
I manage a wan smile, but it’s hard. This one is too personal for me and the typical morgue humor that tends to surface at scenes like this is lost on me today. To get everyone back to serious, I say, “If we go with the idea that Tina did kill him, how did she leave the boat?”
One of the techs, a short pudgy guy dressed in a bodysuit, mask, gloves, and booties, says, “There are some scratch marks and paint smears on the port side of the boat. Looks like they might have been made by a second boat coming alongside this one.”
“Show me.”
He does so, the two of us attempting to lean out over the side of the boat and peer down. It’s awkward because neither of us wants to touch the edge of the boat or the bench seat in case there might be evidence there. By bending as far as I can, I just make out several scratches and what looks like smears of silver paint running about two feet along the side. I try to shoot some pictures of it, but the angle makes it difficult.
I look back at Greta. “Can you take me around to this side of the boat in the Zodiac?”
“Sure.” We get back into the smaller boat and a minute later we are bobbing a few feet away from the port side of Hal’s boat. I’m able to get some good pictures from this angle, and after I snap them, I ask Greta to circle the entire boat slowly so I can examine the rest of the exterior. There are no other marks we can see, but I notice something along the back of the boat, just to the right of the outboard motor.
“Look there,” I say to Hurley. “It looks like hair.”
He peers at where I’m pointing and nods. There are two long blond hairs caught between the edge of the motor and the boat body.
“Hal’s hair is reddish brown and not that long,” I say.
The implication is obvious. “You think those might be Tina’s hairs,” Hurley says.
Hurley nods and makes the call. In the meantime, Greta eases the Zodiac up closer to the back of Hal’s boat and we go about collecting the strands of hair. With that done, we tell the guys on the boat to stay put until our return, and Greta takes us back to shore.
“What did you find?” Alison asks as soon as we step ashore.
I defer to Hurley, letting him decide how much to reveal. “It’s definitely the scene of the crime,” he says. He purses his lips and frowns, and I know he’s debating whether or not to tell her about Tina. “It’s possible more than one person was on Hal’s boat,” he says finally.
Alison looks confused for a moment. “Are you saying someone who might have killed him was out on the boat with him?”
“Possibly,” Hurley says, hedging.
It doesn’t take Alison long to make the connection. She’s shrewd, intelligent, and good at digging out the truth. “You think there might be another victim,” she says. “I heard you talking on your phone and asking for the dive equipment to be brought out here.”
“You heard that?” Hurley says, looking irritated.
“Sound travels quite well over water,” Alison says, shrugging. “Is it his girlfriend, you think?”
“Do you know her?” I ask.
“A little,” Alison says. “I’ve seen them out and about together in the past. They seemed like a solid couple.”
“I don’t want to speculate anymore,” Hurley says, shutting down the information flow. “Let’s wait until we’re done here and see what we find.”
While we wait for Dennis to arrive, Hurley makes some more calls to see if anyone has found out anything about Tina’s whereabouts. “She’s not at her house,” he reports when he’s done. “At least she’s not answering the door, but her car is there. That suggests Hal might have picked her up. We need to check the marinas and see if we can find his car.” With that, he’s back on his phone, assigning more duties.
Dennis arrives and he and I are once again suited up and ready to go a short time later. As Alison settles in by her tree again, we climb into the Zodiac and put our flippers on as Greta runs us back out to the boat. She stops about ten feet away, and after doing a final safety check, Dennis counts down from three with his fingers. Holding our masks and regulators in place, we simultaneously roll ourselves backward, out opposite sides of the Zodiac. As soon as I’m situated in the water, I give the diving okay sign, which isn’t an actual okay sign. I raise one arm up and curl it over my head. Dennis does the same, and then we release the air in our buoyancy vests and begin to descend.
The depth of the lake here is twenty to twenty-five feet, not deep enough for us to have to worry about the bends, and shallow enough to make an emergency ascent if we have to. After the dive in the river, I had Dennis add a little more weight to my belt, and I can feel the difference. My body’s fat content makes me too good a floater and that makes it hard to achieve the neutral buoyancy needed to dive. But this time we seem to have hit on the right mix.
The water is green—a product of the runoff from all the neighboring, fertilized fields—and murky with a visibility of twelve to fifteen feet. It’s enough for me to be able to make out Dennis’s shape on the other side of the Zodiac. When we’re about four feet below the surface, we start swimming toward Hal’s boat. In a matter of seconds, the boat’s bottom comes into view, and Dennis and I stop just beneath the hull and take a few moments to examine the underside of the boat. We find nothing of interest on the bottom of the boat after doing the full circuit, so I look over at Dennis and point along a line running from the back of the boat down to the lake bottom—presumably the anchor. He nods, and we deflate our vests and descend some more.
I see something that looks like seaweed, or a weird type of grass emerging from beneath me. Seconds later, I grab my regulator to keep from spitting it out.
Floating in front of me, her feet tied around an anchor, is the lifeless face of a blond-haired woman.
CHAPTER 13
Dennis sees her, too, and the two of us float, suspended in the water just above the lake bottom, staring into her dead eyes. I’ve only met Tina a couple of times before, but I can tell it’s her. After recovering from my initial shock, I gather my wits enough to snap some pictures. It’s a grim tableau, her eyes wide open, her hair billowing out around her head in a corona of wavering death, her mouth gaping open in a final, terrifying scream for air. The sound of my own ragged, frightened breaths makes me aware that I’m on the verge of panic. I tear my gaze away from her face and focus on her feet.
I stare at the anchor sitting on the lake bottom and focus on slowing my breathing. There is two feet or so of yellow nylon rope extending up from the anchor to Tina’s feet. It’s intertwined around her ankles with several knots, tied so tight it has caused indentations and abrasions on her skin. I snap a few close-up pictures of the anchor, the rope, and her lower legs. When that’s done, I take a moment to survey the lake bottom, looking for anything else that might have gone over with her. I find a pair of eyeglasses and place them in a mesh bag I have attached to my waist. Tina wore glasses, and I remember Hal telling me how she didn’t like to fish, but she did like going out on the boat to sit and read. I try to recall if there was a book anywhere on the boat and don’t remember seeing one, but it might have been collected and bagged already by the sheriff’s evidence techs. I move up higher on Tina’s body, noting her hands are also bound, this time with fishing line. A bright glint of light catches my eye and I zero in on the diamond ring on her left hand: an engagement ring.
A wave of sadness washes over me. Given the ring box we found in Hal’s pocket and the shiny bauble on Tina’s hand, it seems obvious Hal chose today’s boat ride as an opportunity to pop the question. I think about Tina planning for her wedding, her first wedding at the age of fortysomething. How excited she must have been for whatever brief amount of time they had before their happiness turned to tragedy. The thought makes me feel a sense of urgency about finalizing the plans Hurley and I are making. For a moment, I’m distracted by my mental list of things to do. I recognize my brain’s attempts to escape the horror before me by dwelling instead on something more mundane and task oriented. I give myself a mental slap and refocus my brain on the job at hand, though the list remains a nagging reminder in the back of my mind.
When I’m done taking pictures, I give Dennis the sign for us to surface. We slowly inflate our vests and let the buoyancy bring us up. When we break the surface, I see the Zodiac that we came in floating some ten feet away, and the hull of Hal’s boat a few feet from my face. I remove my regulator from my mouth and look at Dennis.
“How should we bring her up?” he asks.
“Let’s head back to the Zodiac and let Hurley and Greta know what we found. Then we can brainstorm on the best way to get her out while preserving as much evidence as we can.”
He nods, and I stick my snorkel in my mouth and proceed to kick my way back to the Zodiac. When we get there, I take my face out of the water, spit out my snorkel, and give Hurley a grim look.
“Tina is down there, tied to an anchor. I didn’t see any obvious wounds on her, so my guess at this point is she was tossed in and drowned.”
Hurley and Greta both grimace with anger, disgust, and horror.
“How do you want us to bring her up?” I ask.
We discuss the options for a few minutes while Dennis and I float in the water. A shiver shakes me, and I’m not sure if the temperature or the situation caused it. Eventually we decide to cut the nylon rope somewhere between the anchor and Tina’s legs, and then Dennis and I will bring up the body and place it on the same sled device we used on Hal. The anchor can then be winched up onto Hal’s boat.
One hour and some extra manpower later, we have Tina’s body on the sled being towed to shore, and the anchor with all the rope attached to it is safely ensconced in an evidence bag. A helicopter has been flying low overhead for the past half hour, and there is a TV news van with a satellite on top parked behind Alison’s car, just beyond the scene perimeter. A reporter and cameraman are hovering at the edges of the police tape, chatting with the sheriffs assigned to maintain the scene. Alison has remained on the sidelines on our side of the tape, watching and listening, and occasionally glancing back at the other reporter with a smug expression. I have no doubt the story will be on the evening news, but I don’t know how much the other agencies know at this point.
I place a call to the Johnson Funeral Home to arrange a pickup and get them on their way. Then I call Otto and give him an update on what we found, letting him know there will be another autopsy to perform.
“This is a horrible mess,” he says when I’m done. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m doing okay,” I say, wondering if I am. I can’t shake off the image of Hal’s and Tina’s bodies floating pale and lifeless in the water. “Have you started on Hal’s autopsy yet?”
“Not yet. There’s been a delay in getting someone here to help. I had someone coming from Milwaukee, but there was a big smashup on the interstate, apparently involving a truck carrying some sort of chemical, and they have it shut down in both directions. My help is sitting in the middle of it, so I might have to call someone else to come in. Or maybe I’ll just wait until the morning.”
“What do you want me to do once I get Tina’s body back to the morgue?”
“Check her in and then leave the rest up to me. Why don’t you focus on helping the cops with their investigation? You knew Hal, so you might be able to provide some insight into the case. I don’t want you or anyone else in your office involved in the autopsies. You’re all too close.”
“Understood. I should be there within the hour.”