At the Scene of the Crime (26 page)

Things’ll change, honey,
Pamela had said.
They always do
.

Only Jenny hadn’t moved on. She’d liked the military. After the First Gulf War, she’d gone to officer training, one of the first women to do it.

I’m a feminist, Mom, just like you
, she’d said when she told Pamela.

Pamela had smiled, keeping her response to herself. She hadn’t been that kind of feminist. She wouldn’t have stayed in the military. She wasn’t sure she believed in the military—not then.

And now? She wasn’t sure what she believed. All she knew was that she had become a military mother, one who cried when a flag was burned.

Not just a flag.

Jenny’s flag.

And that’s when Pamela knew.

She wanted the crime to mean something, so she would make sure that it did.

 

She brought her memories to court. Not just the scrapbooks she’d kept for Jenny, like she had for all three kids, but the pictures from her own past, including the badly framed front page of the
Oregonian
.

Five burly boys had destroyed Jenny’s flag. They stood in a row, their lawyers beside them, and pled to misdemeanors. Their parents sat on the blond bench seats in the 1970s courtroom. A reporter from the local paper took notes in the back. The judge listened to the pleadings.

Otherwise, the room was empty. No one cheered when the judge gave the boys six months of counseling. No one complained at the nine months of community service, and even though a few of them winced when the judge announced the huge fines that they (and not their parents) had to pay, no one said a word.

Until Pamela asked if she could speak.

The judge—primed by Neil—let her.

Only she really didn’t speak. She showed them Jenny. From the baby pictures to the dress uniform. From the brave eleven-year-old walking her brother to school to the dust-covered woman who had smiled with some
Iraqi children in Baghdad.

Then Pamela showed them her
Oregonian
cover.

“I thought you were protesting,” she said to the boys. “I thought you were trying to let someone know that you don’t approve of what your country is doing.”

Her voice was shaking.

“I thought you were being patriotic.” She shook her head. “And instead you were just being stupid.”

To their credit, they watched her. They listened. She couldn’t tell if they understood. If they knew how her heart ached—not that sharp pain she’d felt when she found the flag, but just an ache for everything she’d lost.

Including the idealism of the girl in the picture. And the idealism of the girl she’d raised.

When she finished, she sat down. And she didn’t move as the judge gaveled the session closed. She didn’t look up as some of the boys tried to apologize. And she didn’t watch as their parents hustled them out of court.

Finally, Neil sat beside her. He picked up the framed
Oregonian
photograph in his big, scarred hands.

“Do you regret it?” he asked.

She touched the edge of the frame.

“No,” she said.

“Because it was a protest?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t articulate it. The anger, the rage, the fear she had felt then. Which had been nothing like the fear she had felt every day her daughter had been overseas.

The fear she felt now when she looked at Stephen’s daughters and wondered what they’d choose in this never-ending war.

“If I hadn’t burned that flag,” she said, “I wouldn’t have had Jenny.”

Because she might have married Neil. And even if they had made babies, none of those babies would have been Jenny or Stephen or Travis. There would have been other babies who would have grown into other people.

Neil wasn’t insulted. They had known each other too long for insults.
Instead, he put his hand over hers. It felt warm and good and familiar. She put her head on his shoulder.

And they sat like that, until the court reconvened an hour later, for another crime, another upset family, and another broken heart.

I WATCHED THE NEWSCAST OF THE WILDFIRES
winding down the mountain as I held the model in my hand. My fingers probed the impressions of the bite marks that I was sure were Fernando Montoya’s. He now had a minimal overbite, the fortunate byproduct of porcelain veneers, which I was certain hid the peg laterals that I knew would convict him. Or at least I hoped they would. The search warrant for the original plaster impression of his bite had yet to be issued.

My lab assistant, Rachel Pruit, sidled up next to me and squinted at the television.

“That where you’re going, Doctor?”

Her unruly crop of red hair and freckled face made her look like a life-size Raggedy Ann doll. I’d hired her to do small jobs around the office, like pouring models and setting up articulations.

“Friction, Arizona,” I said. “Second hottest place in the United States.”

“Second hottest? What’s the first?”

“Bullhead City. It’s a couple miles south.” I articulated the maxillary and mandibular models using the bite registration material.

“Want me to mount that for you?”

I shook my head. It would create too many openings on cross-examination for Montoya’s attorney to impugn my investigative techniques. I’d learned that the hard way many trials ago, and this was one trial I didn’t intend on losing. The victim, Sandra Tilly, had been a beautiful nineteen-year-old coed when she’d begun her walk from the college library a year ago. Now she was a statistic, a bright smiling face in a photograph on her
parents’ mantel. A beacon of lost hopes and dreams of a shattered family. The killer had left his bite marks on her shoulder and breasts at some point during the brutal rape and murder, and although there was a mountain of inconclusive trace evidence, his distinctive bite pattern would let the truth shine through. Even the most skillful defense attorney wouldn’t be able to ease that indelible image from the jurors’ minds. All I had to do was find conclusive proof that it matched up to Montoya’s.

I set the yellow die stone models between the metal tongues of the articulator and began mixing some plaster. I’d have to mount the maxillary model first, and then, once it had dried, mount the mandibular.

“You sure you don’t want me to do that for you, doc?”

“Very sure,” I said. Just then my hygienist, Roland Vanderberg, walked in and gave me an equally perplexed look.

“Doctor Link,” he said, still staring at the rubber bowl in my hand, “there’s a phone call for you.”

I’d just gotten the plaster mixed with the right amount of water so that I could slap it on the die stone-model and then affix it to the articulator. It wasn’t a good place to stop.

“Just take a message,” I said, realizing that I’d let my receptionist go home a tad too early today. “I’m in the middle of something.”

Vanderberg gave me one of his customary looks of smug superiority. As hygienists went, he was capable and talented, and he was applying to U of I Medical Center, my alma mater, for dental school. He was handsome and charming to the patients, but I had taken a dislike to him. Usually, when someone enters the field of dentistry, they are imbued with an urge to help people. Or at least, in my opinion, they should be. Vanderberg seemed motivated more by venality than altruism. His first words to me, after I’d hired him, was a disparaging remark about the Buick I drove. He’d asked why I didn’t drive a Porsche. When he found out I did forensic dentistry for the police, he seemed dumbfounded, asking if it was lucrative. He had a lot to learn.

“It’s some guy who says he needs an emergency appointment,” Vanderberg continued. “Says you were recommended to him.”

I tried to control my frown as I used the spatula to scoop enough of the soupy plaster on the yellow model.

“I’m going out of town tomorrow, remember?” I said. “Dr. Major is taking all my calls for the next few days.”

“Okay, doctor,” he said, his tone not masking his disapproval.

I set the metal tong in place, then slathered on the plaster. It would take a few minutes to harden, and then be ready to trim down. When I was finished, I wanted to place it in a special locked cabinet that I used for my forensic investigations. Then I’d be ready to go home and pack for my early-morning trek to the airport. This was one trip I wasn’t looking forward to, even though weddings are supposed to be joyous affairs.

“Excuse me, Doctor.” It was Vanderberg again. “You got a second phone call.”

I’d just finished trimming the excess plaster off the model. “Another patient with an emergency?”

“No, it’s that cop. He says it’s urgent.”

I grinned, despite myself. “He always says it’s urgent. Send it into my office.” The call wouldn’t take more than five minutes, which would give enough time for the plaster to set before doing the mandibular. Eventually, I’d need the original model, without the veneers, to demonstrate the articulation of the peg laterals over a life-size photograph of the wound site to the jury, but we had to obtain a search warrant before I could get it from his dentist. It was either that or I’d have to drill off Montoya’s new veneers and get the impression, which wouldn’t be as exact a match as the original plaster model. That was probably what Detective Keldon wanted to talk to me about.

I sat behind my desk and answered with my most professional sounding, “Dr. Link.”

“Yeah, Jim, it’s Keldon. Just calling to check if we’re on for Monday’s performance.”

Keldon had asked me to accompany him before the judge to describe exactly what was needed for our search warrant regarding the importance
of getting the original model of Montoya’s bite. Once we had that, I could do a dog-and-pony show for a grand jury and he’d be indicted quicker than the blink of an eye. We figured the grand jury would allow Keldon to swoop in and arrest Montoya before he could sneak away to Mexico.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. “I’m catching my flight to Arizona early tomorrow, got the rehearsal Friday night, the wedding Saturday, and the return trip Sunday. I’ll be back in plenty of time.”

“Okay,” he said. I detected something in his voice. Apprehension, maybe? “Doc, you’re sure about those things, aren’t you?”

The question didn’t surprise me. Keldon had called me in as an accredited forensic dentist after the bite marks were discovered during the autopsy. I’d gone to the morgue and examined the body, something I don’t like to do unless I have to. She’d been stripped and dumped in a pond, which destroyed or tainted any DNA residuals in the bite marks, but the distinctive patterns gave me hope. When Keldon pulled Montoya in for questioning, because he’d sought “a dating relationship with the victim” and had been rebuffed, I sat in on the interview due to the bite marks. Montoya sat across from us, a perpetual smirk on his face, as his lawyer monitored our questions and translated his responses from Spanish. We both knew Montoya spoke English, but it was obvious he was enjoying the game. He figured he’d covered all the bases. It was when he got up to leave that his smile betrayed him. An almost perfect alignment of dentition, which I knew immediately had to be attributed to porcelain veneers. Later, Keldon and I sifted through the collection of Montoya’s previous arrest photos and found one where he’d been grimacing at the camera in defiance. I used a magnifier to examine the exposed array of teeth and confirmed what I already knew: he had a pair of peg laterals hidden beneath the new veneers.

“Peg whats?” Keldon had asked.

“Peg laterals,” I said, pointing the picture. “Underdeveloped incisors on the maxillary.”

Keldon had looked at me like I was speaking Klingon. I imagined his
expression wasn’t too much different on the other end of the phone today.

“I won’t know for sure until I can get the original plaster impression of his bite from the dentist who did them,” I said, pausing to look at the careful re-creation of maxillary and mandibular impressions the purple Impregum displayed of the bite pattern I’d taken from the wounds on Sandra Tilly’s body. “But I’m as sure as I can be at the moment.” I heard him sigh. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to trust my gut instinct on this right now.”

“It’s not that, Jim. I’m just a bit concerned, is all.”

“Why’s that?”

“Montoya’s got a new shyster representing him. Donnie Plutarch. I wouldn’t put nothing past him. He’s the best that all that drug money can buy.”

“Once we get those X-rays and the impression, it won’t matter if he knocks his client’s teeth out.”

I heard Keldon’s low chuckle. “He’ll have to stand in line if he wants to do that, with me at the head. Still, if he gets wind of our plans, he’ll have a motion to suppress before we can say brush your teeth.”

“I’ll be coming back Sunday afternoon. I’ll meet you at the courthouse early Monday morning.”

“Great. Have a nice trip. See you then.”

 

The plane banked steeply after the initial takeoff, and I watched the white clouds against the blue sky outside my window, while the other side showed a square frame of rapidly diminishing buildings and fields. The pilot straightened the big jet and we continued to climb, angling west as we sought our cruising altitude. We passed through the cloud layer and I leaned back in my seat, trying to relax. Trying to put all the thoughts of the Montoya case behind me. I’d left my family at home on this trip, my wife Donna electing to stay and help set our daughter up in her new dorm room at college. I figured it would be a good mother-daughter bonding experience, and I would only be in the way. But thoughts of Debbie away at college brought the unpleasant memory of Sandra Tilly, and how her college
experience had netted death instead of a degree. His stubby lateral incisors sinking into her flesh from the tearing, mandibular closure. All the more reason to put an animal like Montoya behind bars for good.