The Theory of Death

by Faye Kellerman

  “No one found any vehicle, but we haven’t checked beyond the immediate area.”

  Decker started looking for vehicle tracks. He didn’t find anything. McAdams walked over. “I took about twenty pictures of his face. Before I go on to the shoe prints, do you want to look-see?”

  Decker scrolled through the snapshots. “These are good. When we get reception, we can send them to my computer at the station house and make some leaflets from them for ID purposes.” He fished out keys to his car. “After you’re done taking snapshots of the prints, go fetch the kit.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

  McAdams smiled. “I’m fine, Decker. When I’m not fine, I’ll let you know.”

  “Fair enough.” Decker regarded the high-tops on McAdams’s feet. That was good. But he wasn’t wearing a scarf or a hat or gloves other than the latex gloves provided to him to prevent evidence contamination. “Go put on some warmer clothing, Tyler. You’re gonna need it.”

  “We’ll be here for a while.”

  “Yes. Hypothermia is the enemy.”

  “I’ll fetch some warm stuff from my duffel.”

  “Since when did you become so agreeable?”

  “Don’t worry. I can turn very quickly.”

  “And you’re sure you want to do this? Mike Radar will be down soon. You can take the car and he’ll drive me back.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Not at all. I could use another set of eyes.”

  “Ones without cataracts?”

  “Your funeral is destined to be a very small affair.”

  McAdams shrugged. “I’ll be right back with the kit.”

  “How good are your Boy Scout skills?”

  “They’re horrible, but I can get GPS on my phone.”

  “I don’t think we can get good reception. If not, I have a compass.”

  “Wow, that’s really old-school.”

  “I am old-school. Go suit up and I’ll show you how to take a shoe-print mold. And don’t attempt to take all of them . . . pick out the best one you can find per shoe. I don’t want us running out of material. We’ll meet up when we’re both done.” Decker pointed to a set of single footprints that trailed into the forest. “See that?”

  “It looks like footprints.”

  “The person was walking not running and they only lead one way. Once Mike gets here to direct the forensics, you and I are going to take a little hike.”

  CHAPTER 2

  KID WAS WAY too young to end it all.” Radar shook his head while staring at the body. “I’m assuming suicide, but I suppose we’ll have to wait for the autopsy.”

  The coroner was John Potts—a sixty-five-year-old retired doctor who began a new career servicing the small towns of upstate New York. His lab was fifteen miles away in the bigger burg of Hamilton, where the bus station was located. He said, “What I can tell you is that there doesn’t seem to be any kind of blunt-force trauma, strangulation, suffocation. There are no other bullet wounds other than the one shot to his right temple, and no stab wounds. Of course, with all this animal activity, something might have been eaten away. Then there’s the tox screen, of course.”

  The captain nodded. Radar was in his late fifties, a tad less than six feet tall, a strong build except for a slight paunch. His face was saggy with light eyes, thin upper lip covered by a gray mustache, and a cleft chin. He raked whatever white hair he had left with his fingers. To Decker, he said, “What do you think?”

  Decker said, “Single gunshot with no other bruises or wounds. Probably suicide. And it probably happened in the late night or early morning. I’ll split the difference and say around midnight.”

  Potts looked up. “What drew you to that conclusion?”

  “Flurries fell around two A.M. He was dead before that happened because he had been covered by a light sprinkling of snow. The exposed skin is cold and hard but there is still warmth underneath with nothing frozen solid except for the toes and fingers. Also, in my experience, this isn’t something people do during the daytime. They think about it, they get drunk and start brooding, and then they crawl away to end it all. When you do a tox screen, I bet you’ll find alcohol or drugs. How close am I to your time estimate?”

  Potts had already put a thermometer into the liver. “From eleven last night to three this morning using an average outside temperature of twenty-five degrees.”

  “If it’s suicide, it’s an odd duck,” Radar said. “Alone and naked in the deep part of the forest. This isn’t going out in style. It’s more like ‘don’t anyone take notice of me.’ ” To Potts: “What do you make of it?”

  “My department is the how, Mike.” Potts stood up and snapped off his gloves. “Your department is the why.” He nodded to his assistants to load the body onto the gurney. It was a five- to seven-minute walk to the clearing where the van had parked. The coroner said, “I’ll have to thaw the body thoroughly before I can do the autopsy. It shouldn’t take too long to get him on the slab. Even so, it’ll take at least a couple of days if nothing else comes up.” A pause. “Poor kid. And you have no idea who he is?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll keep you updated when I know something.” Potts rubbed his arms and hurried to keep up with his assistants.

  Radar turned to Decker. “What’s next?”

  “Do you mind finishing off the forensics?”

  “Not a problem. What’s your plan?”

  “McAdams and I are going to follow the pathway and see if we can figure out how he got here. It’s a long way to come by foot.”

  “There isn’t any vehicle nearby. If he walked, it was an all-day affair. Maybe he camped out.”

  “That could be. It’s cold but easily survivable with the right clothes and provisions. Anyone check Missing Persons around the area?”

  “Ben Roiters is on it. He’s working from a desk in a warm place, the lucky stiff.”

  “Luckier stiff than this one,” McAdams added.

  Radar’s face turned sour. “Are you officially working, McAdams? If so, I’m going to figure out how to pay you.”

  Decker said, “He just happened to be in the car with me when you made the call. He’s giving me the day and then he’s back to civilian life. He has finals to study for.”

  “Ah, law school,” Radar said. “How’s that going?”

  “It’s going.”

  “So you’re not working for the department.”

  Decker answered first. “No, he’s just here for the ride.”

  McAdams said, “Uh, last I heard, I’m of my majority and capable of making my own decisions.”

  “This isn’t why you came down here,” Decker said.

  “Things change, Old Man. As you always say, flexibility is a virtue.”

  “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “So you are working on the case?” Radar said.

  “I’ll work with Decker if he wants me. If it’s a suicide, it won’t take long to wrap it up, right?”

  “Once we find out who he is,” Decker said. “If it’s not suicide, it gets complicated. I’m not pulling you away from your studies.”

  “Not to worry. I could probably take the exams right now and pass . . . albeit a low pass. Besides, I could use a break for a day or two. Clear my head of all that legal nonsense.”

  “So are you working or not?” Radar asked.

  “Yes, I’m working. And don’t worry about the money. We’ll use the bartering system. You can teach me all you know about ballistics, fingerprinting, and blood splatter pattern, and I’ll give you my time gratis. But only if the Loo wants me around.”

  “You can tag along today.” To Radar, Decker said, “Did you find out the identity of the anonymous caller?”

  “Carson Jackson, age sixteen. The other set of footprints probably belongs to Milo Newcamp, also age sixteen. They claim they were out hiking, but they were probably hunting illegally.”


  “Hunting what?” McAdams asked.

  “Turkey, fox, deer . . . which would be okay except it’s not hunting season. They’re coming down to the station house with their parents at around six in the evening.”

  “Tell them to bring the shoes they hiked in this morning.”

  “You’ve got shoe prints?”

  “We do,” Decker said. “We’ll probably be back by then. I don’t want to be here in the dark. It’s disorienting enough in the daylight. Plus there’s no phone reception. If I’m not at the station house by six, come look for me, please.”

  “I’ll do that.” Radar smiled.

  Decker looked at McAdams. “Give him your phone.”

  “What?”

  “You have the snapshots of our victim on your phone.”

  “So do you.”

  “You have more. Give it to him.”

  McAdams made a point of sighing as he handed his phone to Radar. Decker said, “When you get to your computer, could you download the snapshots and send them to my computer? Also have someone make leaflets with Doe’s picture so we can start passing them around.”

  “Do you think he’s local?”

  “McAdams thinks he’s probably a student at one of the five colleges of upstate. I suspect he’s right. Since no one has reported him missing, I want to pass the pictures around the campuses. If you could get someone to grease the skids at the colleges, we can move efficiently.”

  “I’ll call in the mayor. He’ll want to know what’s going on . . . especially after last time.”

  “Yeah, I have a feeling he doesn’t like me very much,” McAdams said.

  “On the contrary, Tyler, your father just donated more money for a new emergency computer system.”

  McAdams turned to Decker. “Did you know about this?”

  Decker was staring at the depression where the body had sat. “Pardon?”

  “Never mind. What are you looking at since there is no longer a corpse?”

  “I was just wondering what was so bad in his life that he couldn’t bear to wake up and face another day.”

  THE SUN WAS casting long shadows as darkness waited in the wings. The footprints had stopped in a thicket of bare oaks, the trees identifiable by the brown, dead lobular leaves that they had shed during the fall. Decker’s feet sank into the patches of snow and earthy detritus: clammy and cold. Neither he nor McAdams was wearing hiking boots. Decker broke a ski heat pack and gave it to McAdams. Then he broke another one for his numb feet. His gloved hands and covered head were warmer, but not by much.

  McAdams looked around. “There’s nothing out here and the ground is covered with leaves and snow. How are we going to figure out what direction he came from?”

  “I don’t know and it’s getting late.”

  “Pack it in?”

  Decker didn’t answer. “The bottom of John Doe’s pants were wet but not muddy. If you were tramping through all this slush and leaves, there’d be some muddy residue on the cuffs, don’t you think?”

  “Well, he had to have trudged through some of it because his shoe prints stop here.”

  “I certainly don’t see any tire tracks.” Decker thought a moment. “The guy comes out to the woods and kills himself away from civilization. He has no ID, nothing to give us any idea who he is.”

  “He wants to go out anonymously.”

  “Yeah, and a car would ruin the anonymity. You can’t lose a car. It’s too big to hide and it can be traced. The same with a motorcycle.”

  “Okay.”

  “Look at all the dead stuff on the forest floor, Tyler. Between the leaves and the snow cover, you could easily bury a bike and no one would probably notice until next spring if at all.”

  “Gotcha. So where do we start digging?”

  “Like I said, his pant cuffs were wet but not dirty. I’m saying he buried it somewhere near his footprints.” Decker picked up a long stick and gave it to McAdams. Then he found another one. “You sweep the area to the left of the footprints, I’ll sweep the right.”

  There were a lot of tree roots, but after ten minutes of searching, Decker hit something solid about a hundred yards from where the footprints disappeared. He took off his winter gloves and slapped on the latex. Then he bent down and brought the object to the surface, shaking off leaves and dirt and bugs. The bike was painted electric blue and had ten gears. Definitely not a mountain bike: it was meant for short distances like tooling around downtown Greenbury.

  “It’s a Zipspeed,” McAdams stated.

  “The bicycle rental place?” Decker said.

  “Exactly. You can see the logo on the front fender. I’ve rented their bikes before. The company specializes in franchises in college towns.”

  Decker studied the handlebars, the seat, and the wheels. He found what he was looking for etched into the wheel rims of both tires. “We’ve got an ID number: 19925.”

  “I don’t have anything to write it down with.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The bike comes back with us. It’s evidence.”

  “We’re lugging it back with us?”

  “Well, you are.” He handed the bike to Tyler. “You’re younger and stronger.”

  “I was shot.”

  “That pity card was used up a long time ago. When we get it back, call up the local Zipspeed office while I talk to our hikers who found the body.”

  “The place will probably be closed by the time we get back.”

  “Then you find who’s in charge and get them to open up.”

  McAdams held up the bike. “How do we get this back to town? It won’t fit in the car.”

  “It’ll fit on top of the car. I’ve got some bungee cords in the trunk.”

  “Suddenly law school doesn’t seem so bad.”

  Decker laughed. “You can beg off any time you want, Harvard.”

  “I know. I guess I forgot how much tedium is in an investigation. But it’s better than the tedium in law school right now.”

  “It’s your choice. You can think about it as we walk back to the car. It’s getting late. So get a move on.”

  The kid heaved a big sigh and picked up the bike. “Why does this always happen to me? Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

  “You can’t fight the devil.” Decker put his arm around his shoulder. “So you might as well learn how to swim.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE BOYS WERE all arms and legs, gangly in the way that teenage boys are before the muscle comes in. Carson Jackson was fair-haired with adolescent acne. He looked like his mother, who sat next to him, throwing her son poison arrows with her eyes. Milo Newcamp was short with scruffy hair and a long nose, and was accompanied by his father. Both parents were impatient to get the interviews over. Their expressions were weary, conveying that the boys had been in trouble too many times before. Decker had placed them in one of the two interview rooms at the station house. It held a rectangular table and six chairs surrounded by unadorned walls painted off-white. The room did have a one-way mirror that had been installed five years ago. Decker had only been with the department for a little over a year, and in all that time, he never remembered anyone sitting on the other side while an interview was being conducted.

  Once the shoe prints had been taken off of the teens’ boots, Decker started the interview by asking them the basics: time, place, reason for being there on a school day, where they came from, where they were going. Then he went over his notes.

  “So you both decided to skip school and go for a hike.”

  “It’s not the first time they’ve been truant,” Carson’s mother interjected.

  “Okay,” Decker said. “Mrs. Jackson, I’d like them to answer the questions. Once I’m done—and it shouldn’t take too long—you can deal with your boy however you want.”

  “Let’s just get it over with, Julia . . . again.” Mr. Newcamp frowned. “We’ve both got better things to do.”

  “That’s for certain.” Julia muttered, “Morons!”

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nbsp; Decker said, “So you boys biked to the forest and started the hike around eleven, leaving your bikes in a thicket off Millstone Road.”

  Again the boys nodded.

  Decker looked down at his notes. “And you weren’t on any mapped trail?”

  “No, sir,” Milo said. “But we’ve hiked the backcountry before.”

  “From where you started to where you ended up, it’s about fifteen minutes.” Decker looked up. “What took you so long?”

  Milo’s father chucked the back of his son’s head with two fingers. “Tell them what you were doing. They probably went hunting. No matter it isn’t hunting season and it’s dangerous to go shooting when you can’t see the orange jackets. Idiots!”

  “Mr. Newcamp, let me ask the questions so we can all get going with the rest of our day,” Decker said. “So you found the body.”

  “Yes, sir.” Milo answered for both of them.

  “And then what did you do?”

  “We couldn’t get phone reception. So we turned around and went back to our bikes and went home and called from there.”

  “Not home,” Mr. Newcamp said. “You went to the Arby’s until school let out.” Again he chucked his head.

  “Ow!” the boy exclaimed.

  Decker said, “Stop hitting him, okay? You’re in the presence of the police.” Newcamp looked down, another sour look on his face. Decker continued. “Did either of you touch the body to see if he had a pulse?”

  The boys shook their heads. Milo said, “His face was covered with snow. He wasn’t moving. I didn’t want to mess anything up.

  Decker leaned across the table. “We didn’t find anything on the body, boys: no wallet, no cell phone, no pad, no backpack, and no personal identification.” A pause. “This is important, so don’t lie. Did either of you take anything?”

  The boys shook their heads emphatically and said no several times.

  “You didn’t go through his pockets?” Decker said. “Because if you did, we’ll find your fingerprints.” Not always the case, but the kids didn’t know that.