The Art of Deception b-8

by Ridley Pearson

  “His lips?”

  “Believe me, I’d rather not admit this office made a mistake.”

  That word from Dixon’s mouth electrified Boldt. “The source of this mistake?”

  “My guess is that it resulted from this coming in as an accidental death. Head trauma. ‘Suffocation due to immersion of the nostrils and mouth in a liquid.’ There are no pathonomic findings for drowning. We put head trauma way up our list.

  Chen suffered head trauma, ergo, the drowning fit. We sometimes look for what we’re told to see. It happens. Someone has a lunch date, he goes through the motions and lets his expectations determine his findings. We see a fine white froth or foam in the air passage, evidence of vomiting-a drowning is a drowning. A fall, a fall.”

  “His lips,” Boldt repeated, wanting Dixon to translate the purple bruise that surrounded Chen’s mouth.

  “Michael, one of my best assistants, overlooked two items.

  The lividity is inconsistent with the suspected cause of death.”

  Dixon drew Boldt’s attention to the clown’s face of discoloration around the man’s mouth. Then he unzipped the rest of the body bag, snapped on a pair of disposable gloves, and lifted the corpse at the waist. “Notice the buttocks?”

  Boldt observed a purplish, orange-black doughnut of discoloration on the dead man’s left buttock. “Lividity.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Buttocks and lips?” Boldt asked.

  “That’s the point. One is either sunny-side up or over easy when one dies. We can’t be both. This lividity,” he said, returning Boldt’s attention to the dead man’s buttocks, “probably occurred while he lay waiting to be found. Not after he was bagged. Not while he awaited his turn on the slab. Long before all that.”

  Boldt remained confused, and said so.

  Dixon explained, “A head trauma drowning means that Chen took a blunt object to the head-an I-beam, a slab of cement-probably as a result of the huge volume of water down there.

  He’s either dulled or unconscious. The lungs fill with water. He coughs and vomits. At this point he’s unconscious for sure. The heart stops pumping, the blood settles to the lowest spots and coagulates. In this case, his heels and buttocks.” He hoisted the cadaver’s stiff left leg. The bottom of the man’s heel showed a similar discolored circle.

  Boldt prompted him, “Which brings us to the lips.”

  “The discoloring around the mouth is not lividity, but more likely a hematoma.”

  “Asphyxiated?”

  “His lungs contained only a few cc’s of water. Enough to kill him, to be sure, but not the lungfuls we’d associate with accidental drowning.”

  “Resuscitation?”

  “The EMT report doesn’t indicate resuscitation, no. Chen was flat-lined when they found him down that hole. No vital signs. They never got far enough along with him to attempt ventilation. The patient was unresponsive to their initial attempts at CPR.”

  “Maybe they left something out of the report,” Boldt said.

  “Any of the various procedures would have showed up indirectly with inventoried equipment charges. We’re not seeing that on Mr. Chen. Check, if you want to check.”

  “I’ll check,” Boldt agreed.

  “Ask them about oxygen at the same time.”

  “Oxygen?”

  “Michael missed this as well. He read the accident report, the EMT report, and he saw what he expected to see. What he missed was an elevated oxygen level in Mr. Chen’s venous blood gases. We expect to see levels at right around seventy-five percent. Mr. Chen’s venous oxygen level was eighty-eight.”

  “He’s in shape? A runner?”

  “No way. Supplemental oxygen is the only explanation for levels like that.”

  “We’re going around in circles. So you’re saying it was the EMTs. They did attempt resuscitation.”

  “No, not according to their report they didn’t. What I’m telling you is we’ve got inconclusive evidence to support a clear-cut method of death. It’s entirely possible that Mr. Chen was caught from behind,” Dixon said. “Whoever it is, he’s pretty strong. Chen struggles, winning the hematoma surrounding the lips. His assailant manages to drop him. Chen encounters the blunt object. He’s unconscious and he’s about to drown, and don’t ask me how, but the air around him is spiked with O. I’d check to see if anyone was welding down there. Oxyacetylene.

  Something that might explain it.”

  “A sloppy EMT report explains it.”

  “We work closely with these people. I’m not going to mud-sling.”

  “Help me out here, Dixie. I’ve got a pair of missing women.”

  “With that sinkhole raining down around them, the EMTs could have hurried him out of there, and then later covered it up when it came report time, because they realized the guy died in their care. Improper care. You never know.”

  Boldt wasn’t sure that helped him. He had no desire to prosecute a couple EMTs.

  Dixon suggested, “A fireman would have supplemental oxygen. Who responded to that cave-in?”

  “A fireman killed Chen,” Boldt said in total disbelief.

  “I know it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Not unless it was someone who didn’t want to be found.”

  “Then why apply the oxygen?” Dixon asked, as frustrated as Boldt.

  “That’s what we need to answer.”

  “We?”

  “You’d better write it up, Dixie. I may have to stick it to those EMTs.”

  The Gift

  “Lieutenant, we got a delivery at the Third Avenue entrance for you.”

  Matthews, who wasn’t expecting anything, said, “Just sign for it and send it up, would you, Pete?”

  “Can’t do that anymore, Lieutenant, sorry. New regs.”

  She’d read that memo at some point. What a pain in the neck. “Well, at least sign for it, then. I’ll be down to get it.”

  “Guy says he won’t leave it for anyone but you.”

  “Then he’s going to have to wait.”

  “He’s been waiting, Lieutenant. This is my third call up there.”

  She’d been in meetings and hadn’t checked her messages. It seemed possible. “Ask him what it is, who it’s from.”

  She heard the inquiry through the receiver. Then Pete said he was going to put the guy on the line.

  “Hey, Lieutenant.”

  She knew the voice, but it took her a moment to identify it.

  “Mr. Walker?”

  “I told you I could help.”

  She suffered a chill like a small shudder rippling through her. The image that filled her imagination was that of the family dog leaving a dead squirrel on the doorstep. “We discussed this.”

  “You had to say those things. I understand that … I understand the way things work.”

  “I’m not sure you do. What’s in the package, Mr. Walker?”

  She took a wild guess. What would the adoring student bring the teacher? “Some fish? Fresh fish?”

  “Fish? It’s hers,” he said sadly. “Proof that sack of shit is lying if he says he didn’t do anything to Mary-Ann.”

  “Mr. Walker … Ferrell, it’s illegal to involve yourself in an active investigation. We went over all this.” Another chill swept through her. This wasn’t the first time a bereaved relative had attached him-or herself to a case, but she’d never personally experienced it. Instead of celebrating the cooperation, she felt boxed in.

  “You’ve got snitches, right? So, I’m a snitch. Don’t knock it ’til you check it out.”

  “If you leave the package for me, Mr. Walker, I’ll pick it up later.”

  “No way. I get to see you, or I take it with me. What’s wrong with you? You want to get this guy or not?”

  “You have to leave the package, Mr. Walker. There’s nothing I can do about it. They X-ray them, electronically sniff them-there’s all sorts of security now that I can’t do anything about.

  It takes a couple of hours. I�
��ll look at it and I’ll call you.”

  “No way. I’m waiting.”

  “What happened to your double shift?”

  “New arrangements.”

  “Mr. Walker-”

  “I’m waiting, like it or not.”

  She could hear the phone being passed back to Pete.

  “Lieutenant?” the gruff voice inquired.

  “Tell him I’m on my way down. Go ahead and start it through security, okay, Pete?” In fact, such security took only a matter of minutes. She wondered if it was stupid to show Walker she’d exaggerated the situation. To hell with it: She’d accept the package, get Walker out of there, and warn him not to try it again.

  A few minutes later she passed the lobby coffee stand and approached the busy security checkpoint at the building’s main entrance on Third Avenue. Ferrell Walker stood waiting-there were no chairs-just on the other side of the twin metal detectors, to the left of the lumbering X-ray machine. He wore the same sweatshirt and blue jeans that she’d seen him in earlier the same day. She could imagine that smell even at a distance.

  Pete, a burly patrolman in his early fifties who’d worked the front entrance for years, indicated a somewhat soggy brown cor-rugated cardboard box that waited on a folding table. The noise generated at the entrance by all the security questioning and the signing in and the beeping of the metal detectors and the grinding of the X-ray machine’s conveyor belt created a jagged tension in the air that Matthews always felt in the center of her chest as a threat of violence. She used the garage entrance on most days, appreciating the calmer approach taken there as a result of an officers-only policy. But here, in the coffee-scented foyer with its high ceiling, standing under the faint light of overhead fixtures with dull bulbs chosen for their low consumption of energy, she felt more like a tourist at the security check of an airport in a foreign country.

  The cardboard box seemed to grow in size and significance.

  She lost sight of Walker, due to the security installation, but could feel him standing over there staring at her.

  “Bring him through, please, Pete.”

  The officer on duty signaled for Walker to step through the metal detector, but Walker refused.

  Matthews stepped around to where she could see the kid and said to him, “You can leave it with him. In the plastic tray.

  They’ll give it back to you when you leave.”

  Walker looked skeptical.

  “They’ll give it back to you,” she repeated.

  Walker removed the long fishing knife from a hand-sewn leather sheath tucked inside the waist of his pants and hidden by his sweatshirt. He seemed impressed that she should have anticipated this. He placed it in the dirty plastic tray, and Pete, making a face of open curiosity, moved it aside and out of reach.

  Walker passed through the metal detector and Pete fanned his hand in front of his face, making light of the man’s fish odors.

  Matthews and Walker stood in front of the cardboard box and she asked that he open it. Pete drew closer, protective of his lieutenant.

  “You open it,” Walker said somewhat childishly. But there was a menace to his voice as well.

  “It’s policy that as long as you’re here, you open it yourself, Mr. Walker. I gave you the chance to drop it off.” She checked her watch, merely to drive home her next point. “We either do this now, or not, but I haven’t the time to stand here discussing it.” She wanted to show him a firm hand, dispel any notions that he might have that they had formed a personal friendship. She knew all too well that if she didn’t watch it, Walker could attach to her, letting her fill the void left by his dead sister. She didn’t want any part of that.

  “It was behind the Dumpster, in the alley behind his place,”

  Walker said, digging into the box. He pulled out a navy blue Michigan sweatshirt, with yellow block letters. Matthews tried her best not to react. Neal had mentioned the possible existence of a sweatshirt. This fit with that part of his statement, and she felt elated with the discovery. He tried to pass it to her, but Matthews refused and then called to the security officers, “Gloves!” She directed Walker to hold it at the shoulders, pinched between his fingers, attempting to initiate as little contact with him as possible. She fired off questions at him: “How much contact have you had with this?” “Can you identify it as your sister’s?” “Exactly where and when did you find this garment?” He answered her crisply that he’d boxed it for her, that it was his sister’s, and that he’d found it behind the Dumpster in a search he’d done that same morning following their encounter at the ME’s. Once protected by the gloves, Matthews took possession of the sweatshirt, turning it around to inspect the random pattern of dark brown orbs that speckled its fabric and a similar, but larger stain on the neck of the sweatshirt.

  Dried blood.

  “I’m going to need an evidence bag here,” Matthews instructed one of the gate personnel. This person took off at a jog toward the bank of elevators.

  “I done good, right?” Ferrell Walker asked, testing her.

  “You may have contaminated a vital piece of evidence.” Matthews would not acknowledge that Walker had accomplished what she had not, could not, without a court order to search Neal’s residence. Without probable cause-hard evidence against Neal-they still lacked that court order. Ironically, the sweatshirt, if found in a public area as Walker claimed, might present the necessary probable cause.

  “I’m telling you: He did this.”

  “You have to leave this to me. Your participation has to stop here. Are we clear on that?”

  “You helped me, I helped you,” he said, looking a little wounded. “We’re helping each other.” Only his tentative tone of voice gave away that he was testing the situation, the relationship. “I help you just like you help those girls.”

  Her breath caught: He knew about her volunteer work at the Shelter. Had he followed her? “We’ll take it from here,” she said strongly. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Not if I’m in touch first,” he said, voicing the same childish sentiment he had earlier in the day. He stopped at Pete and took his knife back, though Pete required him to reach the other side of the security gear first. Pete said, “It’s illegal to conceal that weapon.”

  “I’m a snitch,” Walker said proudly.

  With that announcement, Pete spun around to check with Matthews, who just shook her head in disgust. When she looked again, Walker was nowhere to be seen.

  Now You See Him, Now You Don’t

  It went against all her training, her substantial education, and certainly the rules set forth for volunteer workers, but upon hearing from an SPD narcotics officer that a street kid-a girl-had invoked her name during a sidewalk shakedown from which the girl had been released, Daphne Matthews found herself personally involved. Her first stop was the Shelter, where she learned that Margaret had been kicked loose after the maximum stay allowed. Where to look next?

  A late March storm swept angrily over the city, driving frigid rain behind a nasty wintry wind that made it feel more like December. She pulled up her collar and ran for the Honda. This wasn’t a night for a pregnant girl to be out in the elements, and Matthews didn’t want Margaret having to negotiate street favors for the bare necessities of warmth and a place to sleep. She knew what these girls did in order to survive. With Margaret putting her name out to an officer-an obvious cry for help-how was Matthews supposed to return for the evening to her houseboat and a glass of wine? She decided to make one loop of downtown looking for the girl. Forty-five minutes, max. It wasn’t as if she had a hot date waiting.

  Once into the driver’s seat she brushed the rain off her and turned toward the backseat in search of her umbrella. Looking out the car’s rain-blurred rear window, she thought she saw a figure-a man, for sure-standing behind the railing of the wedge-shaped concrete parking garage. Standing there, and looking across at her.

  Turning around in the seat, adjusting her rearview mirrors-both outside and in-she pi
cked him up again: a black silhouette like a cardboard cutout, standing absolutely still on the second level of the triangular parking garage.

  After the first spurt of panic iced through her, she thought it was probably Walker, and though disturbed he might be following her, she’d done nothing yet to shatter his regard for her, nothing to turn a fan into a foe, though she knew how fine a line she walked.

  As she calmed ever so slightly, not one to shrink and wither, she decided to face up to him. She threw the Honda in gear, bumped it out of the Shelter’s parking lot, and drove quickly around the block and into the garage entrance. She resented taking the parking stub, realizing it would cost her a couple bucks to get her message across to Walker, but peace of mind was cheap at twice the price.

  She drove up the ramp to level two and parked in the first open space she encountered. She grabbed her purse, locked the car with the remote, and walked quickly toward the area of the garage where she’d just seen the silhouette. No one.

  She called out, “Mr. Walker?”

  She took hold of the railing and eased her head out for a more panoramic view. The new football stadium loomed to her left, dominating the skyline and obscuring a good deal of “The Safe,” as residents called baseball’s Safeco Field. To the right, skyscrapers competed for a view of Puget Sound. She looked above her and below her in the same general location, wondering if she’d gotten the level wrong. When she looked straight down at the sidewalk, she took into account all the pedestrians, alert for anyone hurrying, anyone fitting Walker’s general build, his sweatshirt and jeans, anyone looking back up at her.

  It was during this surveillance that she spotted the rooftop light rack and bold lettering of KCSO patrol car #89. It appeared on the street to her right, immediately adjacent to the parking garage’s exit. Prair? she wondered.

  A daily runner, Matthews ran, and ran hard. She flew past the rows of parked cars, circled down the oily car ramp she’d driven up, all in an effort to keep her eye on that moving patrol car as it cornered the parking facility. She wanted desperately to get a look at its driver. She wasn’t merely running, but sprint-ing down the echoing confines of the garage, the myriad of colorful lights-neon, traffic lights, headlights, and taillights-spinning like a kaleidoscope.