by Casey Hill
“And I’m also betting he left something behind,” she said, thinking of Locard’s Exchange Principle and how the perpetrator of a crime will always bring something into the crime scene and leave with something from it. Turning to Rob, she continued. “Has the homeowner returned yet?”
“I’ll check with Mayridge.”
Rob duly placed a call to the investigating officer, and discovered that no one had been able to reach the homeowner Barbara Smith, who was on a long sojourn via private boat. The police chief had left a message for Ms Smith about the incident at her house at the next scheduled port of call, which was about three days hence. Apparently, she had just departed her last stop the night of the party.
“Okay, we’re set,” said Rob as he hung up the phone. “The chief gave me permission to go back in as long as I make sure everything is left the way I found it. But I was only able to convince him to allow one other person to come with me to assist, and I really had to sell him on it, which wasn’t easy.”
“Mind if I go?” Reilly raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Jake, asking for his permission.
“No problem. Like I said I want to lay low, and I don’t think the cops would appreciate my nosing around anyway.”
Faye looked a little chagrined to be left out, but took it in her stride. Knowing she was too keyed up and full of questions to go back to her dorm room and study, she pulled out her cell phone and called fellow classmate and computer geek Jordan Nance. She wanted to research Jackson Halvorsen III, the organizer of the party and also the homeowner of record, and she needed Jordan’s expertise.
“OK then Reilly,” Rob announced, heading for the door. “Let’s do another sweep of the crime scene, see what we find this time.”
He didn’t have to ask her twice.
Chapter 9
When Rob and Reilly returned to the house, it was deserted. Rob retrieved the house key from a nearby lockbox, and using the code the police chief had given him, broke the seal on the front door. Ushering Reilly into the house he closed and locked the door behind him. Then pulling several latex gloves from his jacket pocket, he offered her a pair. Snapping them on, they moved on into the dining room.
Reilly had brought a proper camera this time, and used it now to snap several photos of the dining area, table, bottles and cans, and once again the vodka bottle Jake had watered down.
She also took some wide-angle shots of the room, as well as close-ups of stains on the chairs and carpet from spilled beverages. Investigating the spills and sniffing them, she concluded that most of the stains came from beer. Spills from hard alcohol seemed to be confined to the table. The room was beginning to smell unpleasantly stale, and that sickly cologne was now making her stomach roil.
Moving into the kitchen, they took stock of the kitchen supplies, primarily refrigerator and cupboard contents. Other than a few bags of chips and some dip, which it appeared the partygoers had brought themselves, no food seemed to have been consumed. Cabinets containing alcohol had clearly been raided, and two empty cardboard cases from a domestic canned beer, one in the fridge and one crushed in the garbage, bore testament to the prolific alcohol consumption of the attendees. Reilly was once again glad she and Faye had missed all the “action.”
“I want to take a closer look at that upstairs balcony,” Rob said when they’d finished with the kitchen, “then work our way down the stairs and out to the patio. Follow Jake’s footsteps, see what he saw.”
Reilly followed him upstairs and into the master suite. Again, it bore all the hallmarks of a scuffle. A reading lamp had toppled from a small table, the chair beside it was overturned and the draperies hung askew, as though they’d been pulled, perhaps to prevent a fall.
He and Reilly began to move around the room, looking for anything pertinent or relevant, although they weren’t sure what they should be looking for. Other than a few objects overturned, the room seemed normal. Reilly snapped pictures of the room as a whole and took close-up shots of all the disturbed and overturned items.
“I want to look for trace from the Man in Black’s shoes,” she said, referring to Jake’s description of the unsub. “I take it you brought some evidence bags?”
Rob smiled. “Remember that officially we’re only here to observe,” he chided her. Then, dropping his gaze, he indicated his right jacket pocket from which he pulled out a small stack of about half a dozen evidence bags.
She grinned at him, but only said, in what she hoped sounded like a disappointed tone, “Of course. I’ll just look.” Getting on her knees near the sliding door, she began to search the carpet. In the meantime, Rob went into the en-suite master bathroom.
Reilly moved along the edge of the sliding door’s track, using a flashlight to illuminate the area so she could see more clearly. She didn’t have far to go; there were a few clumps of mostly dried mud on the carpet near the sliding door track.
She took several photos of the dried mud. The CSI team had already combed the area, so Reilly had no compunction about picking up a small piece. She carefully placed it in the evidence bag and marked it exactly as Rob himself had taught her.
Looking further, she noted that a bit of the dried mud had also fallen into the sliding door track, and there was a blade of grass there as well. She again took photos but did not disturb the evidence.
Meanwhile, Rob had gone into the master bath to look for clues. The toilet seat was down which made sense to him. Jake, for all his bad habits was perpetually neat, and one of his pet peeves was an open toilet seat. According to his testimony, Jake should have been the last person to use this toilet, so a closed seat rang true to Rob.
He looked on the floor, around the toilet and near the bathtub, but it seemed clean. Rob took photos of the floor and toilet using his own camera, checked and bagged trace with a cotton bud, then opened the medicine cabinet.
You could tell a lot about a person from what was in their bathroom medicine chest. In all Rob’s years of crime scene work, he’d had several occasions where simply the contents of a medicine cabinet provided useful evidence.
Looking through it, he discovered a variety of items one would typically expect to see in a bathroom cabinet: bandages; antibiotic ointment; calamine lotion; a bottle of rubbing alcohol; and a dark brown bottle containing hydrogen peroxide. He also found a toothbrush holder containing one toothbrush, a nearly full prescription in the homeowner Barbara Smith’s name for a benzodiazepine, and a bottle of men’s cologne with a brand name he didn’t recognize.
Returning to the bedroom area, Rob told Reilly what he’d found and she showed him the dried mud on the carpet and the bits of mud and grass in the track. He was pleased she had left the evidence in the track alone, as he wanted to make sure the CSI team hadn’t missed it.
Then he mentioned the bottle of medication. “Odd that someone on an extended trip would leave their medication behind?” she commented.
“Especially an anxiety/sleep medication.” Rob agreed. “But maybe she doesn’t need it anymore. The date is eight months old.”
Moving back into the bedroom, Rob said, “Before we check out the balcony, I need to confirm something.” Locating the bedroom’s walk-in closet, he opened the door, turned on the light, and stepped inside.
Reilly could tell he was rummaging around and taking pictures. He then emerged from the closet. “There are no men’s clothes hanging in there and what few things there are is limited to socks, underwear, a couple T-shirts, and a pair of jeans in one drawer. Also some cologne in the closet. But I don’t see any men’s shoes either.”
“So the guy who threw the party doesn’t live here,” she concluded. “Ms Smith lives alone but has someone staying over now and again?”
“That’s what I was thinking. Come on; let’s take another look at the balcony.”
The duo walked over to the sliding door, and stepped out onto the patio balcony from where the victim fell.
It was dark now, but Rob quickly located a porch light, which illuminated the
area well. He began to walk around the balcony area, inspecting the disarranged patio furniture and paving, while Reilly concentrated on the balcony railing. They worked in silence for several minutes, checking for trace, snapping photos and looking things over.
It seemed quite natural to Reilly to work this way, and she found she was very comfortable working side-by-side with another investigator collecting evidence. Being somewhat of a loner, she always felt her weakest area was working with others, so she was glad she felt relaxed instead of tense, as she’d expected.
Finally, she called Rob over to the balcony railing. It was wooden with intricate carving along the handrail. Pointing to a small section, she said, “This area is damaged, so it’s a good bet our victim went over here.” The rail, which was of considerable thickness and well-made, was cracked in one spot as though someone had slammed against it. “I took photos from several angles,” she said. “There’s no trace that I can see — the wood didn’t splinter as you’d expect. It cracked, but it held.”
“And what would you deduce from that?” Rob asked. Ever the tutor, he wanted to see if she’d draw the same conclusions he had.
“It suggests that the victim hit the railing hard,” she replied, “hard enough to crack a wooden railing that was made to withstand cracking.” She paused and then continued, “Which leads me to believe the fight intensified quickly, and the victim was shoved very hard from a fair distance.” She thought for a few moments, wrinkling her nose and staring at the railing. Finally she said, “I’m not sure this was accidental after all. Looks like the victim was slammed against the railing and shoved over on purpose.”
“I wonder if the police came to the same conclusion,” Rob said, nodding. “I looked over the paving out here and I checked the furniture,” he told her. “However, I think we should do a more thorough inspection of the ground near the damaged railing, see if we can find relevant trace to support the theory.”
They both got down on their hands and knees, inspecting the area, but found nothing of immediate interest. Rising to their feet, Rob looked down to the pool area below.
“I’m still wondering how the doer got into the house. It’s possible he snuck in the front door, but I’m betting not since he picked up some debris from the lawn. It seems to me he came in from the back through the sliding door, which again fits Jake’s theory that he wasn’t one of the partygoers. I want to figure out how he got up here.”
Trooping downstairs and to the back of the house, Rob found the porch light and turned it on. This light also proved to be more than adequate for their purposes, but they still kept their flashlights at the ready for inspecting dark corners.
Again, they moved and worked in silence, looking over various areas of the yard.
Reilly went toward the gate on the side of the house that separated the back yard from the front, while Rob gravitated toward the far end, where a tool and potting shed stood. Turning on his flashlight, he inspected the area around the shed. Quite quickly, he found a small folding ladder tucked in the shadows nearby. Suspecting the man in black might have used it to obtain access to the house, he carefully inspected the steps. No clumps of dried earth were present and there were no specific footprint patterns, but the steps themselves were dirty. The dirt could easily be from several seasons of gardening, Rob thought, yet he didn’t want to risk damaging potential evidence, and he wasn’t sure if the CSI team had noticed the ladder. Still, he needed to test his theory.
Just then Reilly returned. “The gate was unlocked,” she reported, “and there were some footprints with a waffle pattern in the mud near it on the front yard side. I took measurements and photos of the tread and a sample of the mud.”
“Good job,” Rob told her. “Now maybe you can help me with a little theory I have.” Taking the ladder to the area below the balcony, he opened it up and said, “I found this tucked in a dark little cubbyhole near the shed. I figure the location of this ladder is either awfully convenient by chance, or awfully convenient on purpose, and I’m not one to believe in chance.”
Reilly picked up on his thought. “You think this ladder was left here for someone’s pre-planned use?”
“Indeed,” Rob confirmed, “I’m 6’ tall, about the height of the unsub if Jake’s description is correct. I’d like to see if I can grasp that railing and pull myself up from a ladder this height, but I don’t want to damage any evidence by stepping on it. It doesn’t look like it was processed. I’m betting no one knew it was here.”
Reilly looked around for the picnic table. Spotting it, she took the ladder over to it to compare height. The table was about two inches shorter than the top step of the ladder, but Rob figured it was close enough to be worth trying, so the pair moved the picnic table in place under the balcony. Standing on it, he was still able to grasp the bars of the railing and pull himself up and over the balcony, so he and Reilly concluded the ladder had probably been used, potentially as an access point by the unsub. Rob made a mental note to ask the chief if it had been processed by forensics. But why had the guy come in that way and not through the front door? Jake was right about that much; obviously he wasn’t supposed to be there.
Coming back over the railing and climbing down, Rob looked around the yard. “You know, it really isn’t that far from here to there,” he commented. “This whole thing is really weird.” His gaze landed on the back of the house and rested there a moment. He was about to look away, but something nagged at him.
It seemed there was an awful lot of exterior wall for the size of the bedroom. It was a large master suite, but the wall seemed disproportionally large out here.
Reilly caught his frown. “What’s bothering you?” she asked.
He glanced at her, then looked back at the wall. “Take a look at this wall,” he said. “Does anything strike you about it?”
She stood there, trying to figure out what he was seeing. At first, nothing came to her, but then she spotted it. “That wall is pretty long on the one side of the balcony,” she said, “but I don’t remember the room being that long.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Rob replied. “I want to go back inside and look at that room again. But let’s use the stairs this time,” he added wryly.
Upstairs in the master bedroom, Rob and Reilly stood near the end of the bed and looked around the room once more, keeping in mind the outer dimensions of the rear of the house.
“It seems quite a bit smaller than it should now I’m inside again and comparing it with the outside dimensions,” Reilly said. Scanning the room with fresh eyes, she noted that all seemed in order until her gaze fell on the far side of the room.
Rob seemed to see it at the same time. Their eyes met and by unspoken agreement, they moved to the wall on the opposite side of the king-sized bed. Everything seemed ordinary — a bookcase of average depth flanked by wall sconces, with a comfortable-looking chair and ottoman under the sconce nearest the sliding door. The small table had apparently been knocked over in the fight, and there were several old book volumes on the floor; perhaps pulled from the bookcase during the fight?
“I know this might seem ridiculous, but I think there’s another section of room behind this bookcase,” Rob said.
“I was actually thinking the same thing, but I thought it sounded too ‘haunted house’ to mention.” Shooting Rob a mischievous smile, Reilly said, “I can’t help myself, I have to do this.” She began trying the most cliché attempts at finding a hidden door — pulling on the light fixtures, tugging on various books to see if they operated some kind of lever.
Rob soon joined in the search and they went through the entire bookcase in this manner, but nothing happened.
“That would have been too coincidental and too easy if that had worked,” Reilly mumbled frustrated, “but it was worth a try. I have another idea though.” She began to run her fingers along the outer edges of the bookcase, and he began doing the same on the opposite side. Unfortunately, they found nothing. Figuring they were eith
er wrong about a hidden room or unable to find the controls because they were well-disguised or located elsewhere, they prepared to complete their search. It was getting late, and both had early morning classes to look forward to.
Rob wanted to take a look at the upstairs wing opposite the master suite, so they turned on the hall lights and moved down the hall, opening doors and looking in rooms. Other than the bathroom, which had obviously been used by party guests the night before, no other rooms seem to have been disturbed.
After ensuring that all was in order, they left the house. Rob made sure it was locked, then replaced the key in the lock box.
Reilly was well and truly exhausted by the time she arrived at her dorm room.
Faye was still awake, dying for details, and her enthusiasm gave Reilly a brief second wind, so she uploaded the images from the crime scene on her computer, and she and Faye looked through them together. When Reilly got to the shots of the bookcase, which she and Rob had both photographed extensively, Faye became very excited.
“A secret room?” she exclaimed. “That’s like something out of an old horror movie. But from what you said, it sounds plausible. I wonder where the controls could be.”
“They’ve got to be portables somehow,” Reilly replied. “Remote control, maybe. Or very well hidden in any case. We did look in the nightstands and dresser drawers, but I don’t recall anything that could be a remote for a secret room. Of course, we weren’t considering such a thing when we searched those areas. I should go over the photos of again, see if I can spot anything that might contain a remote.” She paused, yawned conspicuously and said, “But not tonight. It’s way past my bedtime. I need some shut-eye.”
But she couldn’t deny that she again felt disappointed and frustrated that she and Rob had made no eureka discoveries at their second sweep of the house.
Still as Rob told them often enough, this was par for the course with crime scene investigation and she’d better get used to it. Gather pieces of the puzzle little by little until a bigger picture is revealed.
