Sullivan’s Evidence

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  One of the uniformed officers stopped her. “Lieutenant Sawyer asked me to meet him here,” Carolyn said, showing him her ID before she attached it to her belt. “Do you know where he is?”

  “The grave,” Officer Wyman said, glancing behind him. “Over by those trees where everyone is standing. Sawyer was right next to Stevens a few minutes ago. I can’t see him now.”

  Carolyn started to walk away when the officer stopped her again. “You’ll have to suit up before you go out there, Sullivan,” he said, glancing down at her tennis shoes. “The CSI van is open. There are some extra jumpsuits, caps, and gloves in there. The paper boots aren’t working out that well with the water, but that’s all we’ve got right now.”

  “Thanks,” Carolyn said, walking to the van and digging out the smallest suit she could find. Once she put it on, she shoved what little hair she had inside the cap, and tucked her pants legs inside her paper-covered tennis shoes in an attempt to keep the water out. Finally, she made her way to the grave site.

  Elbowing her way through the crowd of officers, Carolyn spotted Hank peering down into what appeared to be a three-by-four-foot hole. Metal supports had been placed against the soggy walls to keep them from collapsing, and the reeds and brush had been cleared to give the investigators space to work. Other officers’ heads could be seen weaving in and out between the tall reeds.

  Several tables had been set up on the side of the road, and large circular sieves were being used by the CSI team to sift through the mud and debris for evidence.

  Charley Young, one of the top pathologists in the county, was dictating notes into his cell phone, which would be uploaded through his wireless connection directly to the word-processing pool. The notes would be typed and waiting for him by the time he returned to his lab. One of the reasons Charley was so efficient, Carolyn thought, was his knowledge and use of sophisticated technology. In that respect, Hank was a dinosaur.

  A man Carolyn had never seen before was recording the proceedings on video for the person she assumed was his boss, Dr. Martha Ferguson. She’d never met Ferguson, but she’d read about her in newspaper articles and seen her once on television. Since the body was skeletonized, Ventura had brought in the renowned forensic anthropologist. Ferguson was a small forty-something redhead, her weather-worn skin speckled with freckles. Her eyes were partially obscured behind goggles, and she wore knee-high rubber boots.

  Charley was a small Korean man, barely five six, who probably weighed less than one forty fully clothed. In all the years Carolyn had known him, she’d never seen him lose his temper. And with the police constantly pressuring him for autopsy reports, maintaining his composure couldn’t have been easy. No one could push harder than a cop.

  She’d read in the paper that Robert Abernathy’s funeral was scheduled for tomorrow. She almost felt obligated to go, but she hardly knew the man. She wondered if they’d ever find out who had killed him. When Hank had called her that morning, he’d advised that Oxnard had basically nothing to go on, outside of the bullet removed from Abernathy’s head and a partial print discovered on the gate to his front yard.

  “Jog your memory?” Mary Stevens asked, blotting the perspiration off her face with a white cotton scarf. The scarf served multiple purposes. If the stench was intolerable, the detective used it to cover her nose and mouth. If she got close to a body, she tied it around her head to make certain no hairs would contaminate the crime scene. Today, however, she was wearing a cap, probably at the insistence of Dr. Ferguson. The Santa Ana winds had blown in Saturday, and the temperature had risen into the mid-eighties. That, coupled with the intensity of the sun, made it seem like summer instead of fall. But, of course, Southern California didn’t really have seasons. “Excuse me, but I’m sweating buckets,” Mary continued. “According to Hank, this is where Carl Holden buried his first victim. A guy staying at the Pierpont was out walking his dog Sunday when he got loose and jumped through a hole in the fence. He had to chase him to keep him from getting hit by a car on the freeway. He twisted his ankle when the soil caved in on top of the grave.” She chuckled. “The man, not the dog. I’m sleep deprived, okay? Excuse me if I don’t make sense.”

  “I know Holden buried Tracy Anderson somewhere out here,” Carolyn said, glancing around the area. “I’m not sure it was in this same exact spot, though. Hank should know better than me. I only saw the crime-scene photos.” Surprisingly, not much had changed. The trees had grown taller next to the freeway, and the scrub brush was denser. A sign was now posted that read Alessandro Lagoon, as if it were something other than a swamp. The naturalists had probably turned it into a refuge for some type of animal life. What it looked like was a breeding ground for the West Nile virus.

  The area was far from the perfect place to bury a body, being this close to a heavily traveled highway. If the victim had been tossed out of a car, it might make more sense. But, then again, Holden had picked this location to bury Tracy Anderson. There were no street lights, so at night the area was dark.

  Carolyn adjusted her sunglasses on her nose. She assumed the CSI team had already photographed the position of the remains, but Dr. Ferguson was standing inside the grave taking her own shots in case the police screwed up theirs or somehow misplaced them. Determining cause of death was always difficult in cases like this, and knowing the exact position of the remains was mandatory.

  “How long do you think she’s been dead?” Carolyn asked Mary, swatting a mosquito away.

  Hank heard her voice and turned around. His white suit was soaked with perspiration and stained with mud, his hands encased in plastic gloves. “Glad you could come,” he said. “Charley and Ferguson believe the body has been here for some time, but we can’t be certain. She’s going to start packing up the bones soon, so maybe we can clear before dark.”

  “Bringing in someone like Ferguson was a good call,” Carolyn commented.

  “That woman’s something else, let me tell you,” Hank said. “She wouldn’t even let me get near the body until a few hours ago. She personally took samples of all the vegetation over the grave.” His eyes were outlined with dark circles. “You know how long we’ve been wading around in this shit? Since two o’clock yesterday. Ferguson’s been using dental picks and bamboo sticks. She insisted we remove the soil five inches at a time instead of the normal ten, then put it through six or seven different sized sieves. I don’t know why Charley insisted on calling in this obsessive broad. We’re not exhuming King Tut here.”

  Mary Stevens’s eyes flashed. “It’s demeaning to refer Dr. Ferguson as an obsessive broad. You refuse to accept the way things are done today—you know, right. What did you want us to do? Dig the body up with a backhoe?”

  The detective scowled. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m sick of being bullied by women. Smart off to me again, and it’ll show up on your next performance review.”

  After Mary dropped her head and ducked behind another officer, Carolyn asked, “What can I do here, Hank?”

  Hank ignored her question. “The victim may have been killed, buried somewhere else, and then dug up once the body decomposed. Her teeth are gone. Looks like he’s trying to keep us from identifying her. He waited until the gums were soft enough so he could pluck out her teeth with his hands, sort of like picking kernels off an ear of corn. Lazy bastard, huh?”

  “Your garden-variety killer wouldn’t revisit the body,” Carolyn noted. “Someone could have seen him. This crime could have been committed by someone other than Holden, Hank. The location is probably nothing more than a fluke.”

  “Fluke, my ass,” he said. “We checked the coordinates, and the grave is within fifteen feet of where Holden buried Anderson.” He removed the plastic glove on his right hand, then pulled a toothpick out of his pants pocket and placed it between his teeth. “Want one?” he asked, producing a small plastic container. “I dip them in cinnamon. When I was a kid, they sold them this way. Now I have to do it myself.”

  Carolyn accepted, hoping
it would help calm her churning stomach. Usually, it was the stench of the body that made people sick. There was a stench floating around this case, but it had nothing to do with rotting flesh. As hard as she’d tried to warn everyone that Holden would kill again, the reality of it actually having happened was so horrifying, she found herself trying to believe it wasn’t true.

  “I doubt if he came back,” Carolyn said. “It seems more logical that he knocked her teeth out when he killed her.”

  “All her teeth are missing, not one or two. And her jaw isn’t cracked. You’ve had a tooth pulled, haven’t you? It’s not easy to get those suckers out. He’d have made a mess of her if he’d used a pair of pliers or some other crude tool. He waited until her gums began to decay before he removed them.”

  “Don’t they just fall out when the body decomposes?”

  “Yeah,” Hank said, “but the teeth aren’t here. We thought they might have floated away, but we’ve searched every inch of this place and we can’t find even one tooth. They could be in the first grave, although this guy probably kept her in the cellar or something until she ripened.”

  Carolyn’s cell phone rang and she excused herself, stepping a few feet away. She had thought about Marcus ever since they’d met. When she’d called the garage that morning to check on her car, Emilio had told her the car was ready and the repairs had already been taken care of by Mr. Wright. Such a magnanimous gesture was a good reason to call and express her gratitude. “Is this Carolyn Sullivan?” a low male voice said. “You left a message on my voice mail. Something about your car.”

  “Hi, Marcus,” Carolyn said, excited he had returned her call so soon. “I’m going to pick my car up after work. I drove my son’s Honda today. You must let me reimburse you for the repairs. If you refuse, the very least I can do is take you out to dinner. I was supposed to pick up the tab for our lunch yesterday, but I forgot. You know, the run-in with Troy Anderson was upsetting. Now things are going to really blow up. Ventura PD exhumed the remains of a woman yesterday in almost the same spot where Holden buried Tracy Anderson. I’m at the Alessandro Lagoon now.”

  The line fell silent. Carolyn could hear phones ringing and people talking in the background. He must be busy, she thought. He’d asked her so many questions about herself and her job that she’d failed to ask what he did for a living. When he still didn’t say anything, she decided they must have a bad connection. “I can’t hear you that well,” she said. “Did you say something?”

  “You said they found a woman’s body. What happened to her?”

  “She was murdered, Marcus,” Carolyn said, thinking it was odd he hadn’t made the connection. “The police think Carl Holden killed her.” He must have a lot on his mind, she told herself. And some people who were talkative in person clammed up when they were on the phone. She glanced at the caller ID, but his number was blocked. “I thought we might be able to get together tonight. That is, if you don’t have other plans.” Again, the line fell silent. This wasn’t going very well. Now she knew how guys felt when they called girls up for a date. “I can tell you’re busy. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you. If you’re in town again, give me a call.”

  “Don’t hang up,” he said. “Where do you want to meet tonight?”

  “Oh,” Carolyn said, happy that things were turning around. “You could pick me up at the house. Is six too early?”

  “Yes,” Marcus said. “I’m in LA right now. Where is this lagoon?”

  “In Ventura,” she said.

  “Depending on traffic,” he said, “I think I could get there by eight. Since I might be running late, why don’t I meet you in the bar at the Holiday Inn, the one next to the pier? Is this your cell phone?”

  “Yes, but eight’s a little late for dinner, don’t you think?” Carolyn said, not wanting to sit around in a bar waiting for a man who might not show up. “Why don’t we get together another time?”

  “Make it seven,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I have to go to a meeting. I’ll see you tonight. What will you be wearing?”

  “Clothes,” Carolyn said, laughing. “I don’t know, something casual.” She knew she couldn’t wear what she had on, as she was standing in a foot of mud. He was probably trying to find out if he should wear a jacket. “A dress,” she told him, “a red dress.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Seven at the bar in the Holiday Inn.”

  Realizing he’d disconnected, Carolyn remembered the problems she was having with Rebecca, and wished she hadn’t arranged to go out tonight. Too late now. She wasn’t going to call him back, not when she’d almost begged him to see her. At least John didn’t work on Mondays, so he could play policeman and make certain her wayward daughter didn’t fire up another joint.

  She’d called Veronica on Sunday to ask her how she thought she should handle the situation with Rebecca. Veronica’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Jude, drove her crazy, and she’d become a master at innovative parenting. Veronica knew how vain Rebecca was about her appearance, so they’d concocted what might turn out to be a unique form of punishment. When Rebecca left to walk to school that morning, she’d been dressed in the tackiest and most unflattering outfit Carolyn could dig out of the back of her closet, a pair of striped bell-bottoms and a blouse with an empire waistline that made her look like she was pregnant. “I hate you,” Rebecca had shouted. “If you make me wear this, I’ll ditch school, run away, and you’ll never see me again.”

  “I’ll be calling the principal’s office in about an hour,” Carolyn had told her. “If you’re not in class, I have another outfit you can wear tomorrow.”

  Pulling herself out of her thoughts, Carolyn turned around and saw Hank standing right behind her. “My office needed some information about one of my cases,” she lied, watching as Dr. Ferguson bagged, labeled, and sealed each bone, handing them up one by one to a CSI officer, who then carried them to one of the tables to be placed in an evidence box. “Do you think they’ll be able to tell how the victim died?”

  “Don’t know,” Hank told her, frowning. “Charley thinks she may have been strangled. The killer dumped trash on top of her to make things more difficult for us, particularly as to DNA.” He looked around, then added, “As if it isn’t bad enough. We’re not catching any breaks here, know what I mean?”

  “How would Charley know if she’d been strangled?”

  “Just the words I love to hear,” he said, his voice tinged with sarcasm. “Diagnoses of exclusion. There’s a slight chance of a fractured bone either in the neck or the spinal vertebra. Won’t know until we piece her back together. No sign of gunshot wounds. She could have been stabbed, of course. Once the Ferguson woman and Charley examine the bones under a microscope, they might find some nicks to indicate the killer used a knife. A person can be stabbed numerous times, though, without any of the wounds penetrating to the bone.” He paused, then added, “You know, now that I think about it, Holden did the same thing.”

  “He didn’t use a knife, Hank,” Carolyn said, thinking the detective should have spent more time reviewing the old case file. As dangerous as Holden was, they couldn’t use him as a scapegoat for every crime that came along. She wanted to get him behind bars, but this time she wanted him to stay there. “Tracy Anderson was strangled, not stabbed.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Hank, scratching a mosquito bite on his wrist. “We decided Holden emptied a pile of trash on top of her before he buried her.”

  “I remember.” Of course, back then, Carolyn thought, the spot of land they were standing on hadn’t been a lagoon, and homeless people had been known to live there in cardboard boxes.

  Just then her eyes focused on something white on one of the tables across from where they were standing. Mary was helping the CSI officers pack everything up so it could be logged into evidence. She acknowledged Carolyn with a nod but refused to look at Hank. “What is that? A golf glove?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Hank grumbled, moving the toothpick to the other si
de of his mouth. “We’ve got every kind of trash imaginable. It’ll take us weeks to sift through all this crap. We don’t have the manpower. There’s some kind of gang war going on in Oxnard that’s spilling over into Ventura. Two kids were shot last weekend on the West Side. I’ve also got a masked perp robbing convenience stores. At least Abernathy wasn’t killed in our city. My guys are working six days already. Guess they’ll have to work seven. Such a deal, huh?”

  Carolyn remembered the crime-scene photos from the first homicide. She distinctly recalled a white golf glove resting on the Anderson woman’s stomach. The police had been unable to lift any prints because no one had ever worn it. They decided it was just another object someone had tossed out. It had stuck in Carolyn’s mind because the glove was brand-new, and she couldn’t understand why a person would discard it. “The golf glove,” she said, animated. “Don’t you remember, Hank?”

  Hank rubbed his forehead. “Now that you mention it, there was a glove similar to this one. Didn’t we decide the person threw it away when they lost the matching glove?”

  “Golf gloves don’t come in pairs,” Carolyn said, raising her voice. “A golfer only wears one glove. God, Hank, everyone knows that.”

  The detective’s jaw thrust forward. “I’m not an idiot just because I don’t know golfers only wear one glove. And I don’t take personal calls when I’m working a homicide.”

  Carolyn was hurt. “That was uncalled for, Hank. Why did you call me out here if you didn’t want my opinion?” Then she blurted out, “Holden has to be the killer. The glove is his calling card. This is tantamount to a confession. He’s boasting, don’t you see? He wants us to know he murdered this woman. At the same time, he’s either eliminated or contaminated all the evidence.”

  The detective glared at her, spitting his toothpick out onto the ground before turning to walk back to the grave. Their loud voices had caught the attention of the officers gathered around the evidence table.