Spider's Web (2 page)

“I guess,” Daniel said, looking at the dog in irritation. “She pulled me over there and started digging. I let her dig—I was just messaging with my girl, so I didn’t really mind stopping for a bit. But then I noticed something in the ground. It… it was the head. I called the police right away.”

“Do you live nearby, Daniel?” Mitchell asked.

“Yeah. I mean, about fifteen minutes from the park.”

“Do you often come here to walk your dog?”

“Sometimes, on weekends,” Daniel said, shrugging.

“Even when it rains?”

“Dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do.”

“Okay, so you found the body, and called us. What did you do then?”

“Nothing. I just waited. The cops got here about twenty minutes later.”

“Did you see anything unusual while you were waiting?”

“No.”

“Did anyone go by?”

“No.”

“Okay. Thanks, Daniel.”

“Can I go?”

“Sure,” Jacob said. “Just give us your details so we can contact you if we need anything.”

Daniel gave them his address and phone number and turned to leave.

“Hang on,” Mitchell said.

“What?”

“Give me your phone for a second, Daniel.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Glumly, Daniel handed Mitchell the phone. Mitchell opened the picture gallery and looked at the most recent pictures. He sighed. The last three images were selfies that Daniel had taken, the head of the uncovered body prominent in the background. Mitchell showed the images to Jacob, who shook his head.

“Daniel, a selfie with a dead body? Seriously?” Jacob said.

“I was just going to—”

“No,” Mitchell said, “you weren’t.” He deleted the images.

“Did you share these images?” Jacob asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure? We’ll check.”

“No! I didn’t share them with anyone.”

“Okay,” Mitchell handed the phone back to Daniel.

“Look,” Daniel said, “can I take a selfie with one of you, then? I just want something to show my friends.”

“Sure,” Jacob said. “Take a picture with Detective Lonnie.”

Mitchell sent Jacob a scathing look, but Daniel was already happily edging next to Mitchell, tapping his phone. He slung his arm around Mitchell’s neck as if they were long-lost friends and took some photos, all the while trying to make Mitchell act a bit more “detective-y.”

Finally, to Mitchell’s relief, Daniel left, the dog plodding after him.

Mitchell approached Violet, who was pacing around the scene now, examining the ground carefully. “Found anything interesting yet?” he asked.

“A used condom,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his. “And two beer bottles.”

Mitchell made a mental note of the condom and wondered briefly if this was a sex crime. He turned around and looked at the grave again.

Matt still knelt next to it, his face grim, patiently scraping the dirt off the body. He turned toward Jacob. “Strange place to hide a body,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jacob said. “This area is usually full of people.” He stared into the distance, and Mitchell followed his eyes. Three figures drew nearer, two men carrying a stretcher and a woman by their side.

“Assuming the killer came here with the body,” Mitchell said, “he’d have to carry it all the way over to the grove, dig a hole in the ground, dump it, and cover it without anyone noticing.”

“And why would he even do that?” Jacob answered. “There are a million better places and ways to get rid of a body.”

The three figures were close now. Mitchell recognized Annie Turner, her red hair completely soaked.

“Hello, Detectives,” Annie said as she reached them. Annie was Glenmore Park’s medical examiner. She was easy to work with, and did her best to explain any medical findings until even the thickest of detectives could follow what she said.

She wore a yellow raincoat over her white pants and shirt. The square eyeglasses she always wore were spattered with rain drops, and Mitchell wondered if she could really see anything through them. He showed her the way to the grave. Matt had removed most of the soil from the body’s torso. Tatters of what had probably once been a sports bra covered very little of the woman’s decaying flesh. Despite his nine years on the force, Mitchell found the sight distressing, and averted his eyes, looking at Annie instead. She approached the grave hesitantly, her steps small and careful.

“Uh… hello Matt,” she said.

Matt cleared his throat. “Hello Annie,” he said.

Annie crouched next to the body and looked at it intently.

“I see you already bagged her hands,” she said softly.

“Well… yes,” Matt said. “Do you want me to wait for you next time? I can definitely do that. You’re right, I should have waited—”

“No, no, it’s okay. No need to wait. You did what you were supposed to.” Annie’s voice became a bit choked.

Mitchell stared at them both, his eyebrows raised. It was like watching two teenagers try to gather the courage to ask each other to the prom. What was up with them?

“You didn’t have to come,” Matt said. “I mean, it’s not like you had to pronounce the death here, right? You’re just getting wet.”

“No, it’s okay. I wanted to see… the body.” Annie bent to touch one of the body’s hands just as Matt cleaned some dirt off it. Their fingers touched and they both withdrew quickly.

“I’ll be done in a minute,” Matt blurted.

“Right! Right.” Annie stood up and turned to the two men who accompanied her. “Let’s open the stretcher,” she said. “Matt will be done soon.”

Mitchell circled the grave, then turned to Jacob once more.

“Looks like she was wearing running clothes,” he said.

“So she was probably jogging,” Jacob said.

“Probably.”

“She went jogging in the park, and the killer waited for her here.”

“I’m guessing it was very early in the morning, or late in the evening,” Mitchell said. “There weren’t many people in the park.”

“And after she was killed, he buried her in the same spot,” Jacob said.

“Right.”

They stayed on the scene while Annie collected the body, placing it in a black body bag. Matt bagged a car key found in the body’s back pocket and gathered some additional samples. The two detectives and two crime scene technicians canvassed the crime scene. In addition to the beer bottles and the condom, they found an old dry pen, a cigarette stub and a candy bar wrap, all within fifty feet of the grave.

There was no ID on the body.

There was no reason to rush the investigation. The crime wasn’t fresh—Annie had quickly determined it was committed at least a week before—and there was no easy way to identify the body, no family to notify. In short, there was no excuse for paid overtime. The chief was quick to inform Captain Bailey that his squad could wait and start working the case on Monday.

Unsurprisingly, no one argued.

What was left of the weekend passed uneventfully. Though they had seen the dead, buried, decaying body, the detectives and the crime scene crew refused to let the incident mar their weekend plans.

But death can trickle in during quiet, thoughtful moments. It doesn’t ask for permission, often sneaking into people’s minds before they notice it is there.

During Saturday dinner, Jacob’s daughter Amy asked him to pass the salad bowl. She repeated the request three times; each time her father stared through her, as if she had turned invisible. Finally, he cleared his throat and passed over the salt shaker. Amy exchanged a look with Marissa, Jacob’s wife. The rest of the dinner was a silent affair.

Matt was driving down the highway when a huge surge of loneliness hit him. He got off at the next exit, and stopped at the side of the road, tears springing from his eyes. He took out his phone and thought about calling someone. He scrolled down the contact list, seeing only one name he really wanted to call. But he didn’t. Instead he opened Twitter, tried to think of something witty or thoughtful to say, found nothing, and eventually retweeted a tweet from the Oatmeal. For some reason, this made him feel better, and he got back on the road.

Mitchell and Pauline were kissing, naked in bed. Pauline’s hand snaked along the back of his leg, her fingers lightly touching his thigh, and suddenly he moved away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, unable to explain that her body suddenly reminded him of the dead body he had seen earlier, the remnants of the sports bra failing to cover the girl’s decomposing flesh. He kissed her lightly on the lips and she smiled, her eyes concerned.

She fell asleep with Mitchell hugging her from behind, listening intently to her deep breaths, wondering if the dead girl had someone who missed her body, her warmth, her love.

Annie, who had seen more death than any of the others, was mostly undisturbed. But there was a moment, just a tiny moment while she was in the shower, that a flashing memory of the girl’s face invaded her thoughts.

She brushed it aside, got out of the shower, dressed, and went to see a movie.

On Monday morning she autopsied the dead woman’s body. She did it by herself, preferring the solitude. She didn’t like using assistants for murder autopsies, though she couldn’t say why. Once she was done, she called Jacob and informed him that she had some conclusions she wanted to share.

Chapter Two

To avoid any embarrassing moments in the morgue, Mitchell decided to smear some VapoRub under his nostrils to mask the body’s smell. As he stood by the metal gurney on which their Jane Doe lay, it occurred to him that VapoRub was supposed to open up his nasal passageways even more, and that it might have not been the best idea he ever had. The smell was overpowering, and his stomach turned.

He tried to push the feeling away and pay attention to what Annie was telling him and Jacob. She gestured at the body as she talked, the harsh white light in the morgue emphasizing the corpse’s discolored skin.

“The deceased was twenty-one years old,” Annie said. “She was Caucasian, five foot seven, red hair. It’s difficult to determine exact weight, but she was quite thin. I can’t really give you an accurate time of death yet. The ground at the burial site was moist, and summer temperatures fluctuate wildly. However, Matt extracted several larvae from her cavities and from the surrounding dirt, and we’re consulting a forensic entomologist this afternoon. I think we’ll be able to give you an approximate time of death this evening.”

“Okay,” Jacob said.

“The stomach and intestines were already liquefied when we uncovered the body, so I can’t really tell you anything about their contents. However, I did find some interesting samples in the body’s sinuses.” She walked over to a shelf which held several jars and picked one of them up to show them.

“What is it?” Mitchell asked, squinting at the small patch of black matter.

“It’s some sort of vegetation,” Annie said.

“She inhaled it?” Jacob asked.

“So it appears,” Annie said. “This could have happened for several reasons, but one of the most likely possibilities is drowning. Victims of drowning sometimes inhale aquatic vegetation when they are trying to breathe. She also had some sand particles in her mouth that didn’t match the soil she was buried in, which I collected in the jar over there.” She indicated a different container. “But that doesn’t tell us much, since she would have inhaled the particles if she was running during a windy day with some dust in the air. I also checked her bone marrow and found some diatoms there—”

“What’s that?” Mitchell asked.

“I’m getting there,” Annie said testily. “Diatoms are one-celled phytoplankton that sometimes live in water. When people drown, they inhale these organisms, which later collect in the bone marrow.”

“But wouldn’t a drowning victim have water in her lungs?” Mitchell asked.

“Not necessarily,” Annie said. “About fifteen percent of drowning cases are dry drownings, which leave the lungs completely dry.”

“So she drowned?” Jacob asked.

“Well…” Annie hesitated. “The diatom test is not exactly conclusive. But it does indicate a likely possibility of drowning. Couple that with the plant I found in her sinuses, and we have high likelihood for drowning.”

“How high?”

Annie shrugged.

“Could the vegetation and the dust have come from the pond water in the park?”

“Absolutely,” Annie said.

“Can you check if they match?”

“I think so. I’ll contact an expert I know.”

“Okay,” Jacob said. “A twenty-one-year old female who probably died from drowning. What else do you have for us?”

“I sent DNA samples to the lab to check in CODIS.” Annie said. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t recover any fingerprints. I did find a root canal which seems to be quite old. Probably from childhood. If we do have a suspicion for a match, we can check against dental records.”

Jacob and Mitchell both nodded. This was helpful, though they had hoped for more.

“Anything else?” Mitchell asked.

“I think she was abused as a child,” Annie said.

“What makes you say that?” Jacob asked.

“See here?” Annie said, and walked toward one of the walls where some X-ray images hung. “Two old fractures on the third left rib, and one additional fracture on the fourth. Her left hand was broken twice, and there were several fractures in the fingers as well.”

“Maybe she was involved in some sort of accident,” Mitchell suggested.

Annie shook her head. “The fractures occurred at different times. No, this was a case of someone who for some reason got her bones broken over and over. I see this sometimes with people who do extreme sports, but these are really old fractures, so she had to be about ten or eleven when some of them occurred. This makes me doubt the extreme sports theory.”

“Okay,” Jacob nodded.

“Is there a way to know if she was sexually assaulted before she was killed?” Mitchell asked.