by Lis Wiehl
Thinking of trace evidence that might have been carried here made Leif think of evidence that might have been carried away. Blowing on his hands in a vain attempt to warm them, he walked over to one of the Portland police officers stationed at the perimeter.
“Can you get someone to find out where all the trash cans in the park are and when they were last emptied? Someone could have dumped something.”
The cop nodded. Leif was turning to go back to the body when Tony Sardella, the medical examiner, said, “Aren’t you guys done yet? How long until I can take custody?”
Leif had done this difficult dance before. Before releasing the body, the ERT had to be sure that they had gotten all necessary information from it. But MEs typically got impatient with the painstaking process.
“I should be done in about twenty minutes,” he said, pretending not to hear Tony’s sigh.
He had to be sure he wasn’t missing anything. People thought they could remove all traces of a crime scene, but it couldn’t be done, not really. With the help of luminol, Leif had seen blood fluoresce on a kitchen floor even after it had been scrubbed with bleach, observed bloody handprints glow under fresh paint. Killers missed the blood spatter on the ceiling as they pulled the knife back to stab again, or the super-fine blood mist left by a shotgun. But with this body, if you didn’t count the chewed face and hand, there were no signs of blood.
Finally, he got to his feet and signaled to Tony that he was ready. His heart lifted when he saw Nic standing behind Tony. He raised his eyebrows to ask how it had gone, and she gave him a twist of the lips to let him know the answer was about as well—or as badly—as could be expected.
He waited while Tony bagged the hands and feet, tying them securely at wrist and ankle. Given the glove, Leif thought it was probably a wasted effort, but you never knew. Then Tony spread out a clean sheet for the body. Next, they would wrap it around her to catch any trace evidence, and then Katie’s body—still facedown—would be placed in a body bag and then on a stretcher. Leif didn’t envy the two guys who would carry the stretcher. It was going to be a long, rough walk.
As they lifted the girl, Leif looked for any wounds on the front of the body, or any evidence underneath it. He saw nothing and was about to tell Tony to wrap her up when Nic said, “Wait.”
She knelt beside the body, focusing on a long smear of mud on the front of Katie’s coat. With her gloved hand, Nic lifted the edge of a horizontal crease almost obscured by the mud. Inside the fold, the fabric was clean.
“Somebody dragged her,” Leif said, embarrassed that he hadn’t noticed it himself.
“Before or after she was dead?” Nic asked, although he thought she probably knew the answer as well as he did. Maybe she was just trying to help him save face.
“It’s too regular. Whenever it happened, she wasn’t struggling.”
Leif took a photograph, then pinned the fold in place. Then he and Tony finished transferring Katie to the stretcher so that the girl could begin her long journey out of the forest.
“Do you think it’s suicide?” Nic asked.
“It’s hard to say. No note, but no signs of a struggle. The problem is there’s no sign of where the leash was fastened. There’s nothing on this tree to show that she hung herself—no snapped branches, no moss or bark that looks disturbed.”
“Hey!” Karl called. “Look at this!”
Leif and Nic turned, as did the rest of the ERT. Karl’s flashlight was pointed up into the tree he was standing under. It lit up the white, splintered end of a broken branch about six feet off the ground.
Six feet off the ground—and thirty feet from where they had found Katie’s body.
FOREST PARK
January 4
It was so quiet up here in the woods that Nic could hear the sound of a nearby creek babbling over stones. Scarves of mist wrapped around the trees. The scene was still lit up by the generator-powered lighting system. If anything, the light just made the blackness around them darker. Over-head, the stars were sparkling pinpoints. Each time Nic took a breath, it felt like the cold air was pulling her lungs inside out. She was marching in place just outside the perimeter, stamping her feet in a futile effort to get some feeling back in her toes.
Leif was taking exit photos to show what the scene looked like after it had been processed. Other than Leif, the ERT had left. The team would be back tomorrow to do a final line search in the daylight. On hands and knees, each agent an arm’s length from the next, they would make sure they hadn’t missed anything.
The two Portland cops who had been assigned to keep out any trespassers were talking quietly at the far corner of the perimeter. Nic was waiting for Leif.
She was here because Leif had asked her to stay behind. He had offered no explanation, and she had asked for none. To her surprise—and she thought to Leif’s as well—she had agreed.
So what would they talk about during their long hike back? And what would happen once they got there? Nic’s senses were still heightened, her body still keyed up, first from viewing the body, then from speaking to the Converses. Saying yes to Leif was the scariest thing she had done in years—and she didn’t even know what she was saying yes to.
Leif snapped one last picture and then began to walk slowly toward her, stowing his camera gear. As he did, Nic thought she heard a noise on her left. She whipped her head around. It was just the faintest of sounds, a crackle, a pause, another crackle. Like someone moving slowly and cautiously toward them.
Leif shot her a puzzled look. His mouth opened as he started to ask a question, but she put her finger to her lips.
Putting her left palm out flat, Nic walked the fingers of her right hand on it. Then she pointed in the direction of the noise. She took her gun from its holster and turned on her flashlight, although she shone it at her feet, not in the direction of the noise.
Leif froze, and they both listened for a long time, perfectly silent, barely breathing. Nic was about to dismiss the idea that she had heard something, but then the sound came again. And this time she was sure of what it was: slow, stealthy footsteps.
Leif and Nic ran toward the sound. Brambles snagged their clothes and branches scratched their faces. To their right, Nic heard the two cops shout as they realized that something was going on. Then she caught a glimpse of a white-haired figure.
Leif, with his longer legs, was already well ahead of her. “Halt, FBI!” he yelled.
Instead of stopping, the man turned and tackled Leif at the knees, knocking him over.
Intent on getting to Leif as fast as possible, Nic caught her toe on a tree root and went sprawling. She managed to hold on to her gun, but the flashlight flew from her hand and went out. She heard the explosive sounds of a scuffle. Shouts, a curse word, branches snapping.
No time to find her flashlight, not when Leif needed her. Nic got to her feet and ran blindly. About fifty yards behind her, she could hear the two cops. Their flashlights sliced through the dark, lighting up two men rolling around on the ground: Leif and a man with thick white hair, who looked like a transient.
“Hands up in the air or I’ll shoot!” Nic was ready to, adrenaline ramping through her body. Time had slowed down. She caught a glimpse of Leif’s gun and kicked it away.
The two cops ran up and dragged the man off Leif. The man bucked, struggled, shouted incoherently. Something about the stars shining.
“Cuff him,” one of the cops yelled.
The cops were half dragging, half carrying him away when Nic yelled, “Wait!” She ran in front of them and turned to face the man. His eyes were rolling, as wild as a bucking horse’s. “What are you trying to say?”
“Starshine!” he said urgently. “Starshine!”
The cops sighed, exasperated by his nonsense, but Nic held his gaze.
And then he said, “My daughter! I can’t leave her!”
“Your daughter,” Nic echoed. “Where is she?”
“In the cabin.”
Cabin? What ca
bin? He was probably delusional. Starshine would turn out to be a naked plastic baby doll, the cabin a cardboard box.
He pointed. Leif swung his flashlight back. Nic looked and didn’t see anything. Just as she was about to turn back, something took shape right in front of her.
Hidden beneath tall fir trees was a wood-framed shelter. Covered by a green tarp, it blended in with the ferns and undergrowth around it.
“Your daughter’s in there?”
He nodded, still panting.
“How old is she?”
“Ten.”
Just a year older than Makayla.
“I’m Tim Chambers. My daughter’s name is Starshine.” His breath came in gasps. With his white hair and lined face, he looked too old to have a ten-year-old daughter. “Let me loose and I’ll go get her.”
Leif shook his head. “Sorry, no can do. Nicole can go get her.”
“Starshine,” Nic called out as she picked her way to the shelter. “Starshine, please come out. I promise we won’t hurt you.”
Even to her own ears, the words didn’t sound reassuring. After all, this kid had just spent five minutes listening to four cops taking down her father. Trying to imagine how Makayla might react, Nicole found her mom-voice, reassuring but no-nonsense.
“Starshine?” The door didn’t have a handle, just a hole. There were no windows. The whole cabin was probably ten by ten. “Starshine—please come out.”
Slowly, the cabin door opened and a girl appeared, moving as lightly and carefully as a deer in hunting season. Skinny, with blonde hair in two crooked braids, eyes so wide that Nic could see the whites on each side. She was clearly frightened, but so brave that it nearly broke Nic’s heart.
After making sure the child’s hands were empty, Nic bent down to look into her face. “Hi, my name’s Nicole. We need to talk to your father about something, but we can’t leave you here alone. That means we need to take you with us.”
The only answer was the sound of Starshine’s too-fast breathing.
Leif radioed ahead. The police would take the man to jail. He could be held for up to forty-eight hours without charge while they determined exactly what he had to do with Katie’s death. Starshine would be put in the custody of Children’s Services until that could be determined.
They left behind one of the cops, and then the five of them made their way back to the main part of the park. Nic, Leif, and the other cop, who were all wearing boots, had difficulty navigating the trail. Chambers and his daughter, wearing only street shoes, were as nimble as mountain goats—even though the father’s hands were handcuffed behind his back.
The first words Nic heard Starshine speak were a protest when they put her father in a cruiser.
“Please, please don’t take my father away! No!” She tried to run to him, but Nic caught her and wrapped her arms around her.
“We just need to check on a few things,” she told the girl, her heart aching for her. “If everything is okay, you can go back to your father.”
It was such a big if it might as well have been a lie.
MULTNOMAH COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE
January 5
Can you hear me okay?” Medical examiner Tony Sardella looked up over the edge of his surgical mask at Nic and Owen Simmons from the Multnomah County sheriff’s office.
Nic and Owen were seated in the special observation room that over-looked the autopsy suite. Below them were the dead girl, Tony, Leif, and a pathology assistant.
“Coming in loud and clear,” Owen said, combing one hand through his black hair, which Nic was pretty sure was dyed.
“Have you seen an autopsy before?” Tony asked.
Owen nodded, and Nic said, “Lots of dead bodies, but no autopsies.”
“You guys should be glad you’re behind the glass,” Tony said. “It’s a little ripe in here.”
Nic was glad of the window in another way. It gave her the illusion that the girl on the metal table was as artificial as an image on TV or a movie screen. She could pretend that when this was done, the girl would pull the special-effects moulage off her face and sit up with a smile.
Still wearing the clothes she had been found in, Katie lay faceup on the waist-high, stainless steel autopsy table. Slanted, it had raised edges to keep blood and fluids from spilling onto the floor. Nic was grotesquely reminded of the carving platter at her folks’ house, with the channel that ran around the edge to catch the juices.
Tony put his hand on one of Katie’s knees and wiggled it back and forth, then did the same thing with her other knee and then her elbows. “Her joints move freely,” he announced. “There’s no rigor mortis, and the body is cold. That means she’s at least thirty hours dead.”
“Do you think she died the same day she went missing?” Nic asked. “That was December thirteenth.”
“We’ll see. With luck, I’ll be able to narrow it down for you to a day or two.”
Tony pressed a pedal on the floor and began to dictate into the transcribing machine. He reeled off the facts of the husk that had once been Katie Converse: her race, sex, age, hair color.
“Eye color unknown; eyes are missing,” he said before continuing. “A red leash is found looped around her neck. Decedent is wearing a hip-length dark blue Columbia parka, a black V-necked sweater, jeans, and Nike sneakers. No signs of disturbance to her clothing.”
Tony tapped the foot pedal again to turn off the transcription. As his gloved fingers teased the noose away from the puffy discolored flesh, he said, “If we get lucky, you guys might find fingerprints on this.”
Leif snapped pictures as Tony worked.
After the leash was bagged for evidence, Tony leaned down, examining the indentation on Katie’s neck more closely. “What will help is figuring out whether we are looking at a hanging groove or a strangulation groove.”
“What’s the difference?” Nic asked.
“A hanging groove will be deepest opposite the suspension point. So in a typical hanging, that would be here.” Straightening up, Tony pointed to his Adam’s apple. “Then it fades away as it approaches the back of the neck. Now if someone strangled her, the groove should be more marked—and it won’t disappear at the back of the neck.”
He squinted, lifted Katie’s shoulder, peered closer, walked around the table to look at the other side, and finally sighed. “It’s hard to tell. Even though it’s been cold, there’s too much decomposition. Hopefully it will be more clear when I open her up.”
Next he tugged off Katie’s single glove and slipped it into a paper bag for the evidence lab. Her exposed hand looked like a cleverly fashioned wax replica.
He inspected it carefully before looking up at Owen and Nic. “No defensive marks and nothing under her nails.”
Leif snapped a photo of Katie’s hand. He was so quiet that, between flashes, he faded into the background. But his eyes didn’t miss anything. Including Nic watching him. He lifted his head to look directly into her eyes, and Nic felt her cheeks heat up.
“What about her other hand?” Owen asked.
“I already examined it, but it’s a chewed-up mess. Two of her fingertips are gone, and there’s nothing under the remaining three nails. About the best we’ll be able to do is match it up to her.”
“Let’s keep that out of the media,” Nic suggested. “If we need to, we can bluff a suspect by saying we found DNA.”
Owen and Leif nodded.
Tony and the pathology assistant began to remove Katie’s clothes. They unzipped her coat and then rolled her from side to side to take it off. It reminded Nic uncomfortably of undressing a sleeping Makayla. Next the assistant lifted up Katie’s legs while Tony tugged off her pants. The pathology assistant put each item of clothing in its own paper bag, stapled it closed, and labeled it with the case number. They would be shipped off to the lab to be examined for trace evidence—bodily fluids, soil, glass, paint residue, chemicals, illicit drugs.
They were pulling her arms overhead when Nic remembe
red Wayne’s certainty that this couldn’t be his daughter. She leaned forward. “Is there a scar on her right knee?” Maybe there was some tiny chance that he was right. Maybe this girl had borrowed Katie’s clothes, or simply dressed liked her. Heck, didn’t all the kids dress alike these days?
Tony moved down the table and leaned over her knee. “Yup. A little over six centimeters long. Does that match what the parents told you?”
“Yes,” Nic said in a soft voice.
Owen shot her a curious look. Of course she had already known the answer, just as Wayne and Valerie had. Still, it was hard to let go of hope.
The girl was completely naked now under the merciless fluorescent lights. Nic felt embarrassed on her behalf. But nakedness also restored Katie as a human, offset some of the strangeness and horror of her mauled face and missing hand. Three weeks ago, she had been living, moving, dreaming. Nic pushed the thought away.
But it wouldn’t stay gone. This damaged body had once been some-body’s daughter. With an effort of will, Nic could sit in this room and not have it affect her—but only if she didn’t imagine it was Makayla lying on that slab. If she ever lost her child, then all bets were off. She would howl at the moon, try to throw herself into her daughter’s grave, slit her own throat.
But first she would hunt down whoever was responsible and make them pay.
Of course, this girl wasn’t Makayla. Still, Nic knew that before she fell asleep tonight, she would let herself imagine for a few seconds what it would be like. A secret part of her believed that imagining Makayla in various horrible scenarios—leukemia, bike accident, child molester—somehow magically protected her. If Nic walked herself through the horror, then it could never happen. She knew it was illogical, but a tiny part of her still believed it might help. And another part of her was ashamed that after everything that had happened, she still held on to such an irrational belief.
