by Chris Mooney
Had the killer cleaned up in the bathroom after the family was dead?
Darby moved behind Samantha’s chair and examined the young woman.
‘Coop.’
8
Darby pointed to a pair of burn marks along the side of the woman’s scalp.
‘Look like Taser marks,’ Coop said.
‘I agree.’
‘So the guy sneaks into Samantha’s bedroom, and while she’s sleeping he hits her with the Taser. During those few seconds when she’s incapacitated, he binds her wrists and tapes her mouth shut.’
‘Then he goes upstairs and subdues the parents.’
‘To get everyone to co-operate, he had to have had a gun.’
Darby nodded. ‘Binds and gags everyone in the bedroom, then goes downstairs and brings up the chairs.’
Coop pointed to the red dots covering the right side of Samantha Downes’s face. ‘We’ve got numerous petechial haemorrhages, which are consistent with strangulation.’
‘Face is cyanotic above the noose imprint,’ Darby added.
‘Could you explain that?’ Not Coop – Detective Williams. He had entered the bedroom, wearing booties, latex gloves and a paper facemask.
Darby said, ‘Cyanotic refers to the blueness you’re seeing in the face – lividness caused by imperfectly oxygenated blood.’
Darby studied the furrows the rope had left on the young woman’s neck. As was most often the case with strangulations, the rope had left its weave imprinted on the skin.
‘Weave looks like a braided pattern.’
‘My money’s on a nylon rope. Look under the chin.’
Darby did. ‘Figure-eight pattern.’
‘That’s probably from whatever knot he used. But here’s where it gets weird. Look at the back of the neck.’
Darby studied the mark. ‘It’s a single, braided twist,’ she said.
‘And those same figure-eight patterns are underneath each ear.’
‘Definitely not your standard noose.’
Darby moved to the mother. Laura Downes had exactly the same rope imprints on her skin, in exactly the same locations.
‘For a knot like this,’ Darby said, ‘our guy had to have used two strands of rope.’
Coop nodded. ‘You notice anything else about the furrows?’
‘Yeah. I’m not seeing the typical abrasion patterns.’
Williams spoke up. ‘You guys mind explaining that?’
Coop put down his camera. ‘When you strangle someone,’ he said, moving behind Samantha Downes’s chair, ‘generally you’re using a single piece of rope. You stand behind them and twist. Maybe you even go so far as to loop one end of the rope underneath the other – like you do when you tie a shoe – and then you give it a sharp tug to maintain more pressure around the neck.’
‘Okay.’
‘You’re holding on to the rope, tightening it, and the victim’s struggling. Doesn’t matter if the vic is bound to the chair, he or she is still going to struggle. She’s twisting her head this way and that, you’re pulling the rope, tightening it – maybe even pulling the rope up towards you, depending on your height. Either way you’re going to see abrasions around the furrows – the result of the rope slipping and sliding around during the struggle. With the daughter and the mother, there are barely any abrasions.’
‘Meaning our guy wasn’t holding on to the rope while she struggled,’ Williams said.
‘Correct. This knot our guy used, I think it was already in place – meaning the rope was already tied around her throat.’ He placed his hands near Samantha’s ears. ‘Then he grabbed each end of rope and gave it a hard yank.’ He jerked his hands sideways and outwards. ‘The knot did the rest.’
Williams looked at Darby and said, ‘Guys who are into this shit, my understanding is it’s the rope that gets them off. They prolong the strangling, wait until the vic passes out and then revive her so he can do it all over again.’
‘That’s true. Watching them suffocate, though, could be what gets our guy off. You find semen at any of the scenes?’
Williams shook his head. ‘Forensics did a thorough job. They checked the floors, the vics and their clothing, nothing.’
‘What about the bed-sheets?’
‘Sent them to the state lab, figuring he, I dunno, rolled around in them or something. They found dried semen stains but they all belonged either to the husband or to the daughter’s boyfriend. If our guy’s getting his rocks off in the homes, he’s real careful about it.’
Darby moved into the bathroom. The vanity had his-and-hers sinks. She removed her facemask, leaned close to the sink and sniffed. Williams watched her from the doorway.
‘What’re you looking for?’
‘Bleach,’ Darby said, and turned to the other sink.
‘You think he tossed one off here and dumped bleach down the drain to destroy the DNA?’
‘Maybe. I worked a case back in Boston where a guy broke into an elderly woman’s house. After he strangled her, he went into the bathroom, ejaculated into the sink and tried to wash it away with bleach. You or the forensics guys find bleach at any of the other crime scenes?’
‘No, but I’ll recheck the forensics reports just to be sure. Speaking of which, I’ve got one of my guys making copies for you, pictures and everything. You’ll have them later today.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I don’t think our guy would have had his own one-on-one private party in the bathroom. He’s got too much restraint.’
‘You’re probably right. I don’t smell any bleach, but we’ll take apart the drainpipes and swab them just to be sure.’
Darby ran the blue beam of her forensic light across the vanity and sinks. Nothing fluoresced.
When she turned her attention to the toilet, its seat lifted, the bowl glowed with faint green dip marks.
9
Darby frowned, thinking.
Bleach wouldn’t fluoresce unless it had been sprayed with luminol. When that chemical reacted with bleach, it gave off a blue glow. Here inside the toilet she was seeing a dull green glow. Some chemical other than bleach had been dumped inside the toilet.
But what? She doubted the killer had brought his own stuff to clean up with. More than likely he had used something here inside the house.
Darby examined the floor around the toilet. Nothing fluoresced, but she found a residue of a white, powdery substance. It definitely wasn’t talc; this was more granular. After she collected a sample, she placed an evidence marker next to it, got to her feet and moved to the linen closet across from the shower. She used a pen to open the bi-fold doors.
Five shelves. The bottom two packed with an array of cleaning products bought in bulk from a warehouse club like Costco. Darby went down on one knee and, with her gloved hands, rooted through the rolls of paper towels, cans of disinfectant, and bottles of Scrubbing Bubbles, Mr Clean, Windex and Clorox.
In the far back of the bottom shelf, tucked against the wall and hidden behind rolls of toilet paper, she found a blue bucket with a handle.
Darby removed the bucket. It was dry and empty, and it didn’t smell of bleach. When she ran the forensic light inside the bucket, dull green patches glowed from the plastic walls.
‘Did he use that bucket?’ Williams asked.
‘Maybe. Why else hide it in the far back of the bottom shelf, behind all the rolls of toilet paper? The bucket and the toilet have the same green glow.’
‘Bleach?’
‘No. Something else.’
Darby rooted through the rows of chemicals on the shelves and in the cabinets underneath the sink. Then she returned to the bedroom. While Coop set up his camera to take close-up shots of the victims, she ran the forensic light across the hardwood floor and walls, the victim’s clothing, the bedding and furniture. The blood appeared black in her goggles.
The wall to the right of the ivory armchair glowed with dull green patches. She found more green patches and smears on the skirting board, and in
and around the chair.
‘This is where he cleaned up,’ Darby said. ‘He wiped down almost everything in this corner.’
She told Coop and Williams about the green marks she’d found inside the bathroom.
‘Bleach doesn’t fluoresce under an FLS unless it’s been treated with something like luminol, Coop said.
I found a bottle of Mr Clean in the linen closet,’ Darby said. ‘That product does react to FLS – it glows green. The marks along the wall and floor are faint, which, if I had to guess, means that there was a faint residue of Mr Clean or something similar in the bucket – and he moved the chair to clean behind it. I found a few drip marks along the side and the back – splash marks from when he used a rag or sponge or whatever to wipe down this area. He moved the chair so that he could clean the wall, floor and skirting board with a rag or sponge. Whatever he used, I didn’t find it in bathroom trash can.’
‘Might have used the Mr Clean, or taken it with him.’
‘But not the bucket. Decided to hide it instead.’
Outside, Darby heard an approaching car engine.
Williams had heard it too. ‘Probably some of my guys,’ he said, shutting his notebook. ‘Them, or the coroner. Excuse me.’
Coop was on his knees, his gaze roving across the wall and floorboards.
‘What the hell would he be cleaning up here, in this corner?’ he said, more to himself than to her.
‘I don’t know,’ Darby replied. ‘But we’re going to tear this room apart until we find out.’
10
The two agents on loan from the Denver office were a Mutt-and-Jeff pair named Eric Hayes and Victor Ottaviani. Hayes was the short one. He had piercing blue eyes and short and shaggy blond hair, and, while his sharp black suit had been tailored for his pencil-thin frame, Darby thought he looked like a skateboarder who had dressed up for a court appearance.
Ottaviani – Otto, as he liked to be called – was the polar opposite. He was an inch or two shy of six feet and he had a shaved head and a sizeable paunch. His eyeglasses had metal frames that were considered out of style in the eighties, and he wore a drab navy-blue suit that, had it been donated to either Goodwill or the Salvation Army, would have immediately been tossed into the ‘discard’ pile.
Otto went to help Coop dismantle the bathroom drainpipes and swab them for semen, while Hayes joined her inside the MoFo. Darby had worked in her fair share of vehicles billed as rolling crime labs, but she found them to be haphazard affairs, a desk or two with only basic forensics equipment hastily installed inside the back of a van or box truck.
Not so with this one. It was housed in a long semi-trailer, and everything inside, from the worktops to the equipment, had been carefully laid out. Smelling of fresh paint and metal, and with its strong lights, white counters and floors, and glass cabinets, it had a Steve Jobs/Apple store design vibe about it. Everything Darby saw looked showcase perfect, not a scratch anywhere. She wondered if this was the mobile lab’s inaugural run.
‘MoFo’s got pretty much anything you might need stocked in here,’ Hayes told her. The soundproofed walls filtered out the dull roar of the vehicle’s running diesel engine, but she could feel it rumbling beneath her feet. ‘You need any help, just shout.’
Hayes retreated to one end of the trailer to use the mass spectrometer, which would identify the composition of the oil from the sliding glass door and the white, powdery residue she had found on the floor near the toilet. Darby took the evidence bags holding the duct tape to a workstation equipped with a Superglue Fingerprint Fuming Chamber.
For the next twenty minutes Darby oriented herself with the equipment and the locations of the tools and chemical solutions. Hayes was right: pretty much everything she needed was inside the trailer, including a tank of liquid nitrogen. Perfect. She went to work on the tape.
In addition to fingerprints, epithelial cells, hair and dead skin, the adhesive side of duct tape also picks up an array of trace evidence. Darby examined all six strips for hair and fibres. She found plenty, along with a lot of blood. After meticulously collecting and labelling each sample, she made very detailed notes on her clipboard.
Duct tape is notoriously sticky. Even if a killer wears gloves, often the adhesive is strong enough to pull off a piece of a latex. Tucked into a torn edge of tape she discovered a sliver of latex half the size of a pencil eraser; on one ragged end was a nearly invisible, pin-sized black smear. After marking and photographing it, she used the tip of a knife to carefully prise it away.
Darby examined the smear underneath a microscope. Given what she saw, she suspected it was ink. The mass spectrometer would be able to identify the sample.
She placed black fingerprint powder, distilled water and washing-up liquid inside a glass beaker and mixed everything together using a fingerprint brush made of camel hair. She put it aside and, slipping on a fresh pair of gloves, moved to the nitrogen tank. She released the tank’s locking tab, removed the metal dipstick with the cone attached to the end and poured the liquid nitrogen into the stainless-steel container she had placed on the worktop near the sink.
Carefully she dipped the first strip of tape into the container. She separated the smooth layer from the adhesive side. The smooth layer went into the Superglue Chamber; the adhesive side went on a tray, where she worked the fingerprint solution she’d mixed into it. It went on thick and black, and, after the tape was completely covered, she carried it to the sink. The solution would stick to any fingerprints; the rest would wash away.
Darby held the tape under the running water.
No fingerprints. She bagged the tape and then went to work on the next piece.
‘That white powder you found on the bathroom floor?’ Hayes said. ‘It’s an aminoglycoside antibiotic called neomycin. Not the ointment for skin infections – I’m talking about an actual oral pill, which I didn’t even know existed. It kills bacteria in the intestinal tract. It’s used to treat E. coli infection and a condition called hepatic coma. That’s when the liver stops filtering out toxins and they build up in the blood. It’s also used to treat something called – I’m going to mangle this pronunciation – hepatic encephalopathy, which is a worsening of brain function that happens when the liver fails at removing the aforementioned blood toxins.’
Darby had just finished hanging the last smooth side of tape inside the Superglue Chamber when the back door opened. It was Otto.
‘Cooper wants you in the bedroom,’ he called out over the diesel engine.
‘I bet he does.’
His face coloured slightly. ‘I didn’t mean –’
‘Relax, I was just busting your balls.’
Hayes called out over his shoulder, ‘Hey, Otto, pause the sexual harassment and come on up here and give me a hand with this computer shit. The satellite feed just crapped out. Again.’
11
While Darby had been in the MoFo, the bodies had been removed and taken to the medical examiner’s office in Brewster, which serviced Red Hill as well as four other nearby towns. The ME’s office, Williams had told them, was, because of years of steep cutbacks, woefully understaffed, and there was a backlog of autopsies. The office had only one full-time doctor on staff. The part-time doctor who had been helping out had retired at the end of last year, and the office’s request for a deputy coroner had been denied.
She didn’t need to explain the importance of having an autopsy performed before the organs had completely deteriorated. Williams had followed the morgue van to Brewster to plead his case to Ben Stern, the district coroner and chief medical examiner. Williams promised he’d beg – on his knees, if necessary – to get the autopsies slated for sometime tomorrow.
Darby doubted Ray Williams would have to go to such lengths. Like Coop, the Red Hill detective had been blessed with effortless charm, someone who could get both men and women to do favours, pull strings and jump through hoops with smiles on their faces.
Darby entered the house. She put on a mask, then signe
d the log and moved up the stairs. Coop appeared in the bedroom doorway, his head and face covered by a hood and a respirator mask.
‘Bad news on the duct tape,’ she said to him. ‘No prints on the adhesive side. The smooth side, I don’t know yet; they’re in the Superglue Chamber.’
‘Not that surprising. We know this guy’s careful.’
‘What I did find, though, was a small piece of latex that’s marked with what looks like ink. If we can get sweat or some skin cells off it, we might have a DNA sample.’
‘Otto and I just finished using luminol. Our man didn’t use bleach to wipe down anything inside the bathroom, and he didn’t dump it down any of the drainpipes either. We took them apart and swabbed them just to be sure. Now come and take a look at this.’
She followed him to the corner of the bedroom. A square section of flooring had been removed and then taken apart and placed inside evidence bags.
‘In addition to using Mr Clean on this area, he also used bleach,’ Coop said. ‘I sprayed it with luminol and everything glowed. The hardwood is old and scuffed – it’s probably the original flooring. The poly sealant is pretty much gone, which is good news for us. The chemicals and rag or whatever he used couldn’t penetrate the crevices between the boards.’
‘You find blood?’
‘Yeah,’ Coop said. ‘A ton of it.’
I find Red Hill incredibly depressing this time of year – grey winter mornings and short afternoons where the wind hits your skin like a drill bit, keeping people off the streets and tucked inside their homes. By 4 p.m., the world is swallowed inside a pitch-black darkness.
And yet it is during this time – what I call my ‘black hole hours’ – when I feel the most alive – when the part of me that I keep hidden during the daylight is wide awake, throbbing for attention.
