My Sister's Grave (30 page)

“And could you draw any conclusions from that?”

“What I can conclude is that the plastic was either placed underneath the body prior to the body being placed in the hole, or—”

“Why would someone do that?”

Rosa shook her head. “I don’t have any idea.”

“What is the other possibility?”

“The body was buried in a plastic bag.”

Tracy struggled to control her breathing. She felt flushed. Perspiration trickled down her sides.

“Did you find anything else?”

“Jewelry.”

“What in particular?”

“A pair of earrings and a necklace.”

The crowd stirred. Meyers reached for his gavel but resisted rapping it.

“Can you describe the earrings?”

“They were jade, teardrop shaped.”

Dan presented Rosa with the jewelry in question. “Would you show us on your diagram where you located each earring?”

Rosa used a pointer to note the two locations. “Near the skull. The necklace we found near the top of the spinal column.”

“Did you reach any conclusions from the location of the jewelry?”

“I concluded the deceased was wearing the jewelry when placed in the grave.”

Vance Clark left his tortoiseshell glasses on the table and moved purposefully toward the witness chair. He held no notes, arms crossed across his chest. “Let’s discuss for a moment, Dr. Rosa, what you don’t know. You don’t know how the deceased died.”

“I do not.”

“You don’t know how the deceased received the blunt-force trauma to the back of her skull.”

“I do not.”

“The killer could have banged her head against the ground while strangling her.”

Rosa shrugged. “It could have happened that way.”

“You have no evidence to determine whether the deceased was raped.”

“I don’t.”

“You have no DNA evidence with which the killer could be identified.”

“I don’t.”

“You believe the victim was killed sometime before burial but you don’t know how long before.”

“Not with any certainty.”

“So you don’t know if the killer buried the body immediately after death, then went back some time later and moved the body to where it was ultimately found.”

“I don’t know that,” Rosa agreed.

“That could be a potential reason that rigor mortis had set in before the body was placed in this particular location, correct? Edmund House could have killed her, buried the body, then later went back to move it, and found that rigor mortis had set in, correct?”

Dan stood. “Your Honor, now the State is clearly asking Dr. Rosa to speculate.”

Meyers looked to be pondering the scenario. “I’ll allow it.”

“Dr. Rosa, do you need me to repeat my question?” Clark asked.

Rosa said, “No. The scenario is possible with one clarification. Rigor mortis dissipates after approximately thirty-six hours. So under the scenario you’ve posed, Mr. House would have had to have moved the body relatively quickly.”

“But it is a possibility,” Clark said.

“It is a possibility,” she said.

“So there’s quite a bit of speculation on your part, in addition to the science.”

Rosa smiled. “I’m just answering the questions asked.”

“I understand. But the only thing you can state definitively is that the deceased is, in fact, Sarah Lynne Crosswhite.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what clothes the victim was wearing when she was abducted?”

“No.”

“Do you know what jewelry the victim was wearing when abducted?”

“Again, I can only offer an opinion based upon what I located in the grave.”

“I see you’re wearing earrings today.”

“I am.”

“Have you ever put on a pair of earrings and then, perhaps undecided, brought a second pair?”

Rosa shrugged. “I don’t know that I have.”

“Have you known women who do that sort of thing?”

“I have,” she said.

“It is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, is it not?” Clark smiled. “God knows my wife does.”

The question brought a few snickers. It was a light moment in the darkest testimony so far and those in the gallery responded with nervous laughter. Even Judge Meyers smiled.

“That’s what I tell my husband,” Rosa said.

“And you have no idea whether the deceased had more than one pair of earrings or more than one necklace when she was abducted?”

“I do not.”

Clark smiled for the first time in two days as he returned to his seat.

Dan stood. “No further questions,” he said.

Meyers considered the clock on the wall. “We will end for the day. Mr. O’Leary, who do you intend to call tomorrow morning?”

Dan stood. “Weather permitting,” he said, “Tracy Crosswhite.”

CHAPTER 45

T
he media for the most part left Tracy alone, perhaps heeding Judge Meyers’s warning that everyone get to where they were staying before nightfall. The inside of her car was cold as an icebox. Tracy started the engine and stepped out to clear the windshield while the defroster blasted hot air from the inside.

Dan called her cell phone. “I’m going to get Rex,” he said. “The weather is supposed to get worse. No one is going to be out tonight. Stay at the house.”

She flexed her fingers against the cold and looked at the cars departing the parking lot and lining the adjacent streets. “Are you sure?” she asked, but she was already contemplating making love to Dan and sleeping soundly beside him.

“I won’t be able to sleep and Sherlock misses you.”

“Only Sherlock?”

“He whimpers. It isn’t pretty.”

Rex greeted her at the door, his tail whipping the air.

“Well, I can see myself quickly becoming second fiddle around here,” Dan said. “But at least they have good taste in women.”

Tracy put down her suitcase and knelt to gently caress the dog’s head beneath the plastic cone. “How are you, boy?”

When she stood, Dan said, “You doing okay?”

She stepped to him and let him wrap his arms around her, holding her. She’d felt the impact of Kelly Rosa’s testimony more than she’d thought she would. Trained to disassociate herself from a victim, over her years as a homicide detective Tracy had investigated horrific crime scenes with a practiced detachment. She’d become desensitized in order to deal with very visual depictions of evil manifested in man’s inhumanity to man. For years, she’d investigated Sarah’s disappearance with the same learned detachment, not allowing herself to consider what despicable things her killer could have done to her. That detachment had had holes poked in it when she’d hiked into the mountains and seen Sarah’s remains in the shallow grave. It had collapsed when she’d seen her baby sister’s skeletal remains on the courtroom television and had to come to grips with hard evidence of the horrors Sarah had endured, and the indecency of her being stuffed in a garbage bag and dumped into a shallow hole like a bag of trash. Now, out of the public eye, away from the intrusion of the cameras into her personal life, Tracy wept, and it felt good to do so while being held by someone who had also known and loved Sarah.

After several minutes, Tracy stepped back and wiped her tears from her cheek. “I must look like a mess.”

“No,” Dan said. “You could never look like a mess.”

“Thanks, Dan.”

“What else can I do for you?”

“Take me away.”

“Where?”

She tilted back her head and met his lips, kissing him. “Make love to me, Dan,” she whispered.

Their clothes were spilled across the bedroom carpet, along with the decorative pillows. Dan lay beneath the sheet catching his breath. They’d kicked off the covers and the down comforter. “Maybe it’s a good thing you stopped being a teacher. You would have broken a lot of high school boys’ hearts.”

She rolled over and kissed him. “And if I was your teacher, I would definitely have given you an A for effort.”

“Only for effort?”

“And the results.”

He put an arm behind his head and looked up at the ceiling, chest still rapidly rising and falling. “My first A, how do you like that? If only I had known back then that all I had to do was sleep with the teacher.”

She punched him lightly and laid her chin on his shoulder. After a comfortable silence, she said, “Life has a way of throwing us curves, doesn’t it? When you lived here, did you ever think you’d marry someone from the East Coast and live in Boston?”

“No,” he said. “And when I lived in Boston, I never thought I’d be back in Cedar Grove sleeping with Tracy Crosswhite in my parents’ bedroom.”

“Kind of creepy when you put it like that, Dan.” She ran her fingers over his chest. “Sarah used to say she was going to live with me. When I asked what she would do when I got married, she’d say we would live next door to each other, teach our kids to shoot, and take them to competitions just like we did with my dad.”

“Would you ever consider coming back?” Her fingers stopped. He moaned and visibly cringed. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

After a moment, she said, “It’s hard separating the good memories from the bad.”

“What was I?”

She tilted her head to look into his eyes. “You were definitely one of the good memories, Dan, and getting better and better.”

“You hungry?”

“Famous bacon cheeseburgers?”

“Carbonara. Another of my specialties.”

“Are all your specialties fattening?”

“Those are the best kind.”

“Then I’ll jump in the shower,” she said.

He kissed her and slid out of bed. “I’ll have it on the table awaiting your arrival.”

“You’re going to spoil me, Dan.”

“I’m trying.”

He bent and kissed her again, and she was tempted to pull him back down to the bed, but he slipped away to descend the stairs. Tracy fell back, hugging a pillow to her chest, listening to Dan rummaging about the kitchen, drawers opening and closing, and pots and pans clanging. She’d been happy once in Cedar Grove. Could she be happy here again? Maybe all she needed was someone like Dan, someone to make Cedar Grove feel like home again. But even as she thought it, she knew the answer to her question. There was a reason for adages like “you can never go home again,” just as there was a reason for stereotypes—because they were usually true. She groaned and threw the pillow aside, getting up. Now was not the time to consider the future. She had enough to worry about in the present.

She would be on the stand first thing in the morning.

CHAPTER 46

T
he storm did not hit Cedar Grove. For once, the weathermen had got it right. That was not to say the weather had improved. The morning temperature had plunged to eight degrees, one of the colder days on record in Cascade County. Still, it did not deter the spectators from filing into the courtroom for day three of the hearing. Tracy wore her black skirt and jacket, what she referred to as her trial suit. She’d brought heels in her briefcase, and once inside the courtroom, she removed her snow boots and slipped them on.

With reports that the predicted storm still continued to bear down on the region, Judge Meyers seemed more determined than ever to get the proceedings moving. His seat had barely hit his chair when he said, “Mr. O’Leary, call your next witness.”