Evidence of Murder

by Lisa Black

  And Evan would not stop playing. Not now, with world domination within his grasp.

  So he would take that risk, that one, unavoidable risk, and drive to Edgewater Park in the middle of the night. With Jillian in the passenger seat? The backseat? The cargo area? The answer might lie upstairs, in the material she had collected from Evan’s vehicle. But would he take his car? Why not Jillian’s? If the bored 7-Eleven clerk saw her car in the area, then that would support the theory of suicide…except, how did the car get back to the carbon company, idiot?

  Besides, Jerry had said that Jillian told him the locks on her car had frozen shut. Her car might have been unavailable or too risky to use.

  His car, then. Was there anything left on the body to show it had been transported?

  The body had been washed, autopsied, and washed again, so the odds of finding any trace evidence had gone from slim to none. Theresa had already collected samples of the not entirely natural blond hair to compare to hairs found on the clothing. She wasn’t sure what else to do. Other than berate herself for not having gotten on board with the homicide theory earlier…maybe there would have been something to find, at the scene, at the apartment, maybe Evan had made some slip that she would have noticed, had she been paying attention.

  “Sorry, Jillian,” Theresa said aloud, startling herself. She didn’t usually talk to her victims. It didn’t pay to get on a first-name basis with people who could not respond. Still, she persisted. “I won’t let Cara go the same way. I won’t.”

  Jillian’s blue eyes had clouded. As before, her perfect nails showed no signs of a struggle; however, bluish circles had developed on the forearms, which had not been there before. It could have been decomposition artifact, but the color didn’t seem consistent with the other patches on the body.

  She left the body in the hallway, with a piece of paper reading DON’T TOUCH on top of the body bag.

  “Her again.” Christine stood up from the microscope, the movement releasing a light wave of perfume through the tiny office. “I’ll be happy to take a look if it will help you figure out what killed her.”

  “That’s your job, missy,” Theresa told her as they pounded down the back staircase like unruly schoolgirls.

  “I gave up.”

  They reached the ground floor and Theresa held up Jillian’s left arm. “Is this a bruise?”

  Christine examined the dead woman’s skin. Then she pushed the gurney into the autopsy room-crowded, but the most brightly lit room in the building. Three other doctors, three dieners, and three dead people paid no attention to them. Once more Christine examined the skin.

  Theresa couldn’t wait. “Is it decomp?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But there’s only one way to be sure.” The young pathologist donned latex gloves, unwrapped a fresh scalpel, and plunged the blade into Jillian Perry’s flesh.

  “Eew!”

  “You can’t say ‘eew.’ You work at a freakin’ morgue.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t say ‘eew’ when it’s warranted.” Nevertheless, Theresa leaned closer to the exposed muscle.

  Christine pointed out the tiny blood clots, visible-with difficulty-against the darkened tissues. “There are some abrasions here. I’d say this is a bruise.”

  “But it didn’t show up at autopsy?”

  “Sometimes they do that.” She picked up Jillian’s other arm.

  “What do you think it means?”

  “By itself, probably nothing. It’s vague and nonacute…unlikely to have occurred in some life-and-death struggle. There’s a bit forming on this arm as well-see here? Almost sort of a streak, a pattern about an inch wide. See it?”

  “No.”

  “Along here.”

  The strip of discolored flesh ran at a slight angle across the undersurface of Jillian’s right arm, the differences in color so difficult to distinguish that they could have been a trick of the light. Theresa would never have noticed it without the pathologist’s more discerning eye.

  “Someone tied her arms. Left over right, the binding against the outer surface of the left arm and the undersurface of the right. Not very tight. Not very tight at all.”

  Christine positioned the dead woman’s arms over her stomach, then abandoned them to slide back onto the steel gurney with gentle thuds. She unzipped the body bag the rest of the way and examined the feet.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  “When someone’s arms are tied, their legs usually are as well. Doesn’t make much sense to do one without the other.”

  “We need to get a gurney in here,” a diener interrupted. One of the autopsies had been completed, and the finished corpse had to be removed from the steel table. Jillian’s gurney partially blocked the door.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Christine muttered.

  Theresa pushed the wheeled contraption. “Anything there? Do you have to-aw. Now I have to say ‘eew’ again, and I know how that annoys you.”

  “I’m going to have to amend my report. Evidence of binding of both hands and feet. Here, just above the ankles. But why such light bruising? She didn’t struggle at all.”

  “It could have been some sex thing,” Theresa brainstormed.

  “It would have been difficult to have sex with her ankles crossed, and we found no sign of sexual activity, forcible or nonforcible. No state of undress, no bruising or tears, no semen. Yet someone tied her very gently.”

  “Maybe she was unconscious? That’s why she didn’t struggle against the bonds.”

  “Then why tie her?”

  “In case she woke up?”

  “Then why not tie her tighter?”

  Every question made Jillian’s death seem more bizarre. “Because he knew she wasn’t going to wake up. Could she have been dead already?”

  Christine said no, but without certainty. “These shouldn’t form after death. Bruises are weird, though. You can never be sure. Besides, if she was already dead, why tie her up?”

  The room suddenly seemed too bright, and overcrowded with death. “He didn’t tie her limbs together to keep her from escaping. He tied them together to make her body easier to transport.”

  The two women stared at each other over Jillian Perry’s body, ignoring the talk, movement, and slicing scalpels around them. “So she didn’t walk into those woods on her own.”

  “It explains a lot,” Theresa said. “Why her shoes were clean-”

  “Why no frostbite on the extremities, or rime around her mouth.”

  “Why she showed no signs of depression…because she wasn’t depressed. Because she wanted to live.”

  Another deskman entered the autopsy suite, glancing at the busy tables with distaste before asking Christine, “Are you two guys finished? The guy from the crematorium is here for her.”

  “In a sec. Help me turn her over.”

  The two women examined Jillian’s dorsal surface, but found no more bruising. They had to release the body. Theresa could only hope they hadn’t missed anything else. Surely all bruising would show by now. It had been over a week…

  Christine began to zip up the bag. “Uh, Theresa? She has to go now.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You’re holding her hand.”

  With a start, Theresa released the cold fingers, and watched the dead woman disappear under a layer of clean white plastic.

  CHAPTER 16

  “I need a search warrant,” Theresa told her cousin. She could hear other voices in the background, and the city sounds of cars and wind.

  “What for?”

  “For the carbon company grounds. All the buildings, not just the apartments.”

  “What are you looking for? Just some mustard, thanks.”

  “You’re not eating a hot dog out of an aluminum cart parked on the sidewalk, are you?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Mystery meat and botulism-it’s quite a combination.”

  “This poor guy’s standing outside in subfreezing temperatures, trying
to eke out a living, and you’re criticizing his wares? He’s giving the radio a dirty look right now, and so am I.”

  “I had to get up in the middle of the night and bring you ginger ale the last time you had food poisoning.”

  “Well, I couldn’t call my mother-you know she needs her sleep. What do you want a warrant for, and how do you know that whatever you’re searching for is there?”

  She outlined the conclusions of the morning. “I need to find evidence that Evan transported Jillian’s body to the woods. He must have carried her in something, something that wouldn’t attract attention. Even wrapping her in a blanket would have looked completely suspicious.”

  “I thought she disappeared during the day.”

  “Supposedly.”

  “You think he had someone else move the body from the apartment while he was at the meeting? It would have been a perfect alibi.”

  “Maybe. But this guy is used to creating his own world. He’s a control freak. I can’t believe he would trust an accomplice. He doesn’t seem to have any close friends other than Jerry Graham, who was at the meeting with him.”

  “So you think it was Drew?”

  “Swallow before you talk. Why would I suspect Drew?”

  “Because he wasn’t at this meeting on Monday. He had all day long to move Jillian around before Evan came home, and he might have liked the idea of Jillian in his woods. He could sit on his boat and know she was there.”

  The words gave her a shiver, and yet she protested, “Drew is no bigger than I am. Jillian weighed a hundred and ten pounds, and someone moved her three miles without dragging or damaging the body, without even getting her clothes dirty.”

  “Maybe Drew had an accomplice.”

  She hadn’t considered that idea. “I suppose it’s possible. I just don’t think so.”

  “Because Drew’s one of those harmless stalkers.”

  The sarcasm in his voice made her stubborn. “Yes.”

  “And because you think Evan did it.”

  “Two-hundred-and-fifty-pounds-if-he’s-an-ounce Evan, yeah. The one who stands to inherit all Cara’s money.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Great. I’ve got to go assist with some interrogations, kiddo. I might lose this call in the elevator, so one more time, what do you want a search warrant for?”

  “For fibers that match those found on Jillian’s clothing, fibers from some item used to transport her body. Ones that match what I found in his car, as soon as I have time to go through what I found in his car. I’ll have that done before you get the warrant, and then I’ll know what to look for.”

  “Back up. Car?”

  She explained her activities of the previous evening. From the sounds Frank made into the phone, her activities had caused him to choke on his hot dog.

  “You’re asking me for a search warrant, Theresa, so I assume that means you understand the concept of one.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You searched Evan’s car without a warrant.”

  “I didn’t search it. I removed detritus.”

  “So what? It’s still inadmissible evidence.”

  “No. It’s abandoned property.”

  A slight pause. “Come again?”

  “The car wash attendant would have vacuumed and scrubbed away all the items I collected, and disposed of them. He had Evan’s permission to do so-in fact, his instructions to do so. It’s exactly the same as when you see the suspect drinking from a cup and toss it in the trash can, and then you pick it up and have us swab it for DNA. You can take abandoned property. The hairs and fibers from his upholstery and the dirt from his tire treads were abandoned property.”

  “They hadn’t been abandoned yet,” he protested, but weakly.

  “He had left them there for disposal. Therefore, abandoned.”

  Her cousin remained silent long enough that she wondered if the Nextel connection, always tenuous, had been broken. “Interesting, cuz. I’m not sure it will work, but it’s interesting.”

  “I’m also looking for narcotics or poisons or anything that would have made her unconscious or dead. We should probably grab the bank statements showing Cara’s account, as well. That’s his motive.”

  “Question-what about Georgie? He’s also two-fifty if he’s an ounce, could carry a one-ten body without straining, and Jillian would have opened the door to him. She would have even hopped in his car and driven off to Edgewater Marina without a care.”

  “And without her baby? Not likely. And does Georgie strike you as clever enough to murder someone without leaving a trace?”

  “How did Evan kill her without leaving a trace? What did she die of? I thought she froze to death…I’m not hearing an answer. You still don’t know why she died?”

  “No, and that’s just it. Do you know how difficult it is to kill someone without leaving any trace? It could only be done by a control freak who’s trained himself to plan every last detail. A former chemistry major who needs that million and a half for his new company.”

  “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”

  “That’s cute.”

  “It’s also true. Can you prove Jillian didn’t walk out into those woods and freeze to death? Yes or no, Tess.”

  She could hear the schtick of the revolving doors as he walked into the police department side of the Justice Center, the sudden deadening of the outdoor sounds, the frustration in his voice.

  “No,” she said, hating the word.

  “What you want to do is go fishing, and a judge isn’t going to let you. You have to have probable cause to show that A, a crime occurred; B, this person is likely to have committed that crime; and C, evidence is likely present on the property that would help you prove same. You don’t even have A, much less B or C.”

  She sat at her desk with the phone pressed to her ear, her forehead held up by the palm of her hand. Frank was right, and she knew it. “So he’s going to get away with it.”

  “A search warrant is definitely out unless you can get me some probable cause. Now consider an alternative theory for me, just for a minute. Have you found any trace in common between Jillian and Sarah Taylor?”

  “None. Sarah favored jewel tones over Jillian’s pastels. Pieces of vegetation were consistent with the location of the body. No diatoms. Sarah smoked, and ash and tobacco particles were consistent with her own brand. No mysterious smears of phenol,” she added.

  “What?”

  “Long story. Did she own a dog? A good-size black thing, maybe a Doberman?”

  “Honey, Sarah Taylor barely had a place to live. She flopped in a one-room no-tell motel off of East 117th without a toothbrush and about ten articles of clothing, all told. No pets allowed.”

  “Then I’ll bet your killer does. The press is still connecting these murders, the two women and the boy.”

  “I’m wondering myself. Word on the street is, Sarah Taylor used to work for Georgie. In his less reputable days.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Years. But now Sarah Taylor finds she’s down to her last dime. If she knew where a body or two were buried, she might have tried to shake down her former pimp. I know exactly how Georgie would react to that.”

  “Possibly. But she was a hooker, Frank. Their daily work is to get in a car with some stranger and drive off without telling anyone where they’re going. They’re tailor-made for sick and violent men. And if Georgie killed her, then why did he kill Jillian? She certainly wasn’t down to her last dime.”

  “Yeah. I know. But you’re getting yourself stuck on Evan, and you’re not usually so…inflexible. Do you have any results on Sarah Taylor?”

  “The rape kit came up positive for semen. So say your prayers tonight for a CODIS hit. We should know in a few days. But it’s not a serial killer, Frank-the MOs are different, and then there’s the kid-the boy didn’t have any connection to the women, right?”

  “Nope. He stuck
to his own neighborhood, and if he could have afforded Georgie’s rates, then he could have afforded a damn cell phone. I’m getting into the elevator, in case we get cut off. Hang in there, Tess. It’s nice to see you-” The rest of his sentence disappeared into a cloud of static and broken syllables. Theresa hung up the phone.

  She prodded her chin with the top of a retractable pen. She did not put it in her mouth. One learned very quickly at a medical examiner’s office never to put a writing implement in one’s mouth. You never knew where it had been.

  The rules of Sarah Taylor’s life also applied to Jillian Perry. Her clients might have been more nicely dressed and had better table manners, but they were still a group of strangers often with less-than-laudable purposes. She could have met her killer through the same channels as Sarah Taylor, and Evan could be merely unlikable, but innocent.

  But she didn’t believe it.

  Don dropped himself into the chair at the opposite desk and eyed her over a short bookshelf littered with texts, family photos, her Beanie Babies, and a box of disposable pipettes. “What’s the matter, babe?”

  “I got nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You’re beautiful, intelligent, relatively young-”

  “I’ll ‘relatively’ you, you supercilious-”

  “Did I mention beautiful?”

  “I need proof, and I don’t even know what it is I’m trying to prove.”

  “Jillian Perry?”

  “Yep.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  She moved a bean-stuffed tiger to see him better. “What?”

  “Don’t you have a plan?”

  She stared at him for a few more moments before speaking. “I don’t. That’s been my whole problem.” She dug through a desk drawer and pulled out a legal pad. At the top she wrote, in block letters, MEANS, OPPORTUNITY, MOTIVE. Then she added a fourth column, PROOF.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to show Evan Kovacic that he’s not the only detail-oriented control freak in this city.”

  “What do you want?” Oliver discouraged visitors to his corner of the toxicology lab. He kept all the spare gas tanks clustered in a fencelike barrier. He had removed all task chairs except his own, which he rarely left, his extra flesh overflowing the seat and his ponytail brushing the armrests. He displayed printed epigraphs such as I’LL TRY BEING NICER IF YOU’LL TRY BEING SMARTER and IT MAY BE THAT YOUR ONLY PURPOSE IS TO SERVE AS A WARNING TO OTHERS. He varied neither wardrobe nor hygiene. But he seemed to know everything in the world, particularly the chemical world. “I suppose you’re here about that piece of solder.”