Bones in the Backyard

by Lois Blackburn

  Sgt. Nesbitt interviewed Watson and searched the surrounding grounds. Tire marks were found near the entrance to the trail, some of them belonging to the jogger’s car, but no footprints could be found on the mossy trail, half-covered with dry fallen leaves. Several other policemen soon arrived and spread out to search for clues in the remote area, a hilly, dense forest with deep ravines gouged by glacial boulders. The nearest home was three miles away.

  One hour later, the report continued, the CPAC medic crew and van arrived, followed by the medical examiner in his own Mitsubishi. Dr. Victor Vantage, the Medical Examiner from the University of Massachusetts Health Center had been on call. One of the medics took numerous photographs, while another measured and diagrammed the scene. Sgt. Nesbitt shadowed Dr. Vantage and took copious notes. In the gully, the coroner examined the body, and identified it as a young woman, a Jane Doe, apparently strangled during the night. No bullet wounds were visible. Face and neck a deep red, the body still in the state of rigor mortis. Obvious abrasions and lacerations around the larynx; her neck could be fractured.

  No identification, but a stainless steel key ring was found in her skirt pocket. It held two keys and a molded miniature dog’s head. Nesbitt reported Dr. Vantage said, “I think that’s a foreign car key and a house key,” as he handed Nesbitt the keys.

  When Dr. Vantage finished his initial examination, two hospital-garbed and gloved CPAC crew members stepped forward with a black body bag and took the unidentified victim to the UMASS Health Center’s morgue in Worcester. The case now came under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts State Police.

  Mark looked up from the report. “Damn it!” he sputtered, then continued reading.

  Sunday morning someone in the Douglas Police department had noticed the teletype report of a missing woman from Auburn and thought there might be a connection. The age and sex of the body seemed to match the description in Nesbitt’s report. Sgt. Nesbitt contacted Auburn about the possibility that their cases were more than a coincidence. When the Auburn police learned the animal hospital was closed, they called Jill Donigan, who had filed the report on the missing person, but she wasn’t home either. They notified CPAC and, after obtaining a warrant, two Auburn policemen went to the address of the missing woman.

  When they located the resident landlord, he pointed out Terry Vaselekos’s car parked in front of her apartment, number 33. One of the keys on the ring fit the aged Honda. But a glance inside gave no immediate clues about the car’s owner.

  With the landlord’s permission, the policemen entered the apartment, using the other key. There was no evidence of forced entry; everything was in order–college books neatly stacked on the table, clothes hanging in the closet, dirty dishes in the sink. There were no family pictures about, and a small address book listed only a few names with local numbers, which the police took with them. A worn, brown cloth fanny-pack lay in a dresser drawer, containing a driver’s license issued to Terry Vaselekos, age thirty.

  “Hell, there goes one suspect.” Mark thought as he dropped the report on his desk. Brooding over his recent interview with Terry, he wondered why she had been killed. He immediately made plans to visit her place of work and contact CPAC directly.

  * * *

  At the Auburn Animal Hospital, Trooper Jankowski introduced himself to Dr. Dorman, explaining his reason for stopping by. He asked about Terry’s work record and if any of her co-workers were around.

  Dr. Dorman had been stunned to read the article about Terry and quickly called Jill Donigan. “There’s only one person she worked with. I’ll get her.”

  Jill came into the office, still upset over Terry’s disappearance. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Terry. Can we sit down somewhere and talk?” Jankowski asked. Dr. Dorman offered his office, turned his computer off, and left them alone.

  “What can you tell me about the last time you saw Terry?” he asked as they sat down in the soft leather chairs.

  “I’m so mixed up, like my world has turned upside down! Is it really Terry that’s been killed? Why did this happen? She was so quiet, wouldn’t hurt a mouse, and someone kills her! I don’t understand this at all.” Jill shook her head and blinked near-tears from her eyes.

  “Sometimes we don’t know why things happen, but that’s what we’re trying to find out now. Did you know her very well?” Jankowski spoke in a low, calm voice.

  Jill related her feelings and concern over Terry. They worked together quite well for almost three years. She knew little about Terry’s life outside of work, except that she wanted to be a veterinarian. She told Jankowski about the conversation she and Terry had on Friday afternoon and Terry’s excitement over a meeting with a gentleman she knew. Jill said she teased her about it being a date, but Terry denied it, saying he was too old for her.

  “Did she say who it was or where she was going to meet him?” Mark leaned forward, hoping to get an answer.

  “Uh, not really. She said they were going out to dinner and she hoped it would be the new Hawaiian restaurant on Route 16.” Jill nervously twisted her handkerchief.

  “That’s down Webster way, isn’t it? Any reason for them to go there when Auburn restaurants are closer?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Lots of people go down that way instead of going into town or Worcester. I like it better myself. It doesn’t seem to be as crowded, except, of course, in the summer, with all the tourists around Sturbridge.” She nodded thinking of the many times she and her husband had taken the children to Win Tiki in Webster. The popular Chinese restaurant was just over the Massachusetts line.

  “Did she say who this man was or why she was meeting him?”

  “No, she only said she had known him when she worked for a wealthy woman with those show dogs in Connecticut. But she was pretty hyped up about it, expecting something good to happen, and this happens instead!” She threw up her hands in frustration.

  * * *

  Jankowski next made a courtesy stop to the Auburn Police to fill them in on a possible connection with his Stoddard case. He called CPAC headquarters and asked for the detective in charge. Detective Brad Higbee agreed to see him in an hour when he mentioned the Vaselekos case. Jankowski said he was already in Auburn and Higbee told him to come right over.

  The CPAC headquarters was housed next to the State Police barracks on Route 20, convenient to the turnpike entrance. The one-story brick building, set back from the street was built in the colonial style similar to many nearby buildings. Tall pillars flanked the entrance. Jankowski was quickly directed to Higbee’s office.

  Brad Higbee extended his hand, saying, “Trooper Mark Jankowski?” The tall forty-year old man wore his reddish-blonde hair in a regulation cut, short-but-neat. He looked like one of the new breed of officers, those required to have a college degree before entering the police academy. Mark guessed he was in top physical condition, probably six feet, six or seven inches, but not much over 200 pounds–very solid and trim. Jankowski sucked in his gut instinctively and introduced himself.

  “Have a seat,” Higbee said, as he returned to his desk, a disaster area of various colored files scattered every which way. Pink “while you were out” messages were stacked on a spindle and yellow sticky notes surrounded the entire frame of his computer monitor. A sign on the wall read, “One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” Leaning over to read the small print, Mark saw it was by A.A. Milne, author of Winnie The Pooh. Mark laughed at the sign and decided he was going to get along just fine with this guy.

  “So you think there are connections with the Vaselekos case and yours?” Higbee asked, and listened intently as Jankowski related his involvement with the six-year-old missing persons case.

  In spite of the disarray on his desk, Higbee reached down into the paperwork and seemingly without looking, pulled out a red file on Terry from under two yellow ones and a manila folder. Higbee had considered the homicide an incident of random violence, perha
ps a robbery. Perhaps she had been walking in the forest with an aggressive date. He shared the file with Jankowski and, when they had finished discussing possibilities, invited him to go to UMASS with him to talk to the medical examiner.

  “Is that a battle wound you have?” Higbee asked as they headed for the patrol car. Mark thought he had corrected his gait to hide the limp, but it was obvious to Higbee’s observant eye.

  “Hell, I caught a bullet in a shoot-out with a drug dealer, and then got transferred to northeastern Connecticut.” He thought of telling him some war stories of cases he’d worked on through the years. It would be easy to talk down to this younger man, but Higbee’s obvious self-assurance silenced him. As Higbee drove, the two officers began talking about their own lives instead. It struck him that Higbee was just a little older than his son, making him acutely aware of his own age.

  “What about you, married?” Jankowski asked.

  “Oh yeah, married almost as long as I’ve been in the service–fifteen years! I have two sons and a daughter and a wife who used to be a dispatch officer. She quit when we had the babies. God, the oldest is almost a teenager already!” Higbee said, startled with his own revelation.

  “We got married while I was still studying for a degree in criminal justice at Florida State University. Met Lucy while she was on vacation down there. We thought we’d stay down there, but both of us missed the change of seasons and our own families here. I was hired into the state department right out of the academy, so we’re settled in now, with plenty of family around the area. It seems there’s always other kids at my house, or my kids are at my brother’s. He’s a cop, too, so they’re in good hands. How about you?”

  “Oh, I’m hanging in for two more years until retirement. Right now I live alone; my wife died four years ago and my children are scattered across the country.” Jankowski privately thought of his past and wished he were Higbee’s age again. He had let things slide when his wife died, and the children had grown more distant. He vowed to call his children when he got home.

  He liked Higbee, his professionalism and friendliness. He promised himself he’d keep in touch when this investigation was over.

  “I love this city. Worcester, the city of seven hills! Except it’s easy to get dead-ended coming down a hill and facing the expressway,” Higbee explained as he maneuvered through the busy, hilly streets. The UMASS complex sprawled out at the top of Shrewsbury Street overlooking the city, and Higbee cautiously drove around several buildings until they came to the morgue.

  “I’ve been through Worcester a few times, and recently came up to interview André Lizotte, one of the principals in the Stoddard case,” Jankowski confided. “I’m glad you’re driving, I never did know where the medical center was.”

  They walked through the office and into the long, large autopsy room with a tiled floor. One length of the stainless steel walls, with large compartment doors, reminded Jankowski of an oversized filing cabinet. He had attended a few autopsies in his career and it was never a pleasant experience. They were greeted by a medical assistant wearing a name badge, “Marge Snell.” Her lab jacket hung straight from her shoulders, unencumbered by any noticeable curves. At the other end of the room Dr. Vantage, short and white-robed, peered over his mask and thick glasses as he looked up from a body he had been autopsying. It lay on a stainless steel table with large drains along each edge to catch body fluids. Strong fluorescent lights glared from the ceiling. Several other tables were lined up at one end of the room, some had bodies on them covered with a sheet. The odor assaulted the nose. In spite of the ventilation system the smell of formaldehyde, blood and decaying flesh was sickening. Mark noticed a large clock and thermometer, which read sixty degrees.

  “How’s things going?” Higbee asked Dr. Vantage in a friendly manner. “Seems pretty quiet in here!” He introduced Jankowski, saying Mark thought he could give a positive identification on the body that was brought in Saturday.

  “That one’s right here,” said Dr. Vantage as he removed his gloves and opened a door in the wall of refrigerated boxes. He pulled out a slab with a shroud-covered body on it. The cold air from the box was much lower than sixty degrees. “It’s tentatively identified as one Terry Vaselekos,” he said, reading from a yellow toe tag.

  “We won’t do an autopsy until the end of the week. Stacked up, you know.” He laughed at his joke as he pulled the sheet down to reveal a face. Jankowski sickened. It was the same young woman he had talked to so recently. Black matted hair was plastered to a very red and black-blotched face of Terry Vaselekos. A neck burn was partially visible at the edge of the turned-back sheet.

  Jankowski nodded, “That’s Terry Vaselekos all right. I interviewed her just two weeks ago.”

  Doctor Vantage said, “Clothing was intact, messed up a little, but not torn off, except one shoe was missing. Little evidence of a struggle. When we took fingerprints, we found skin fragments and some short strands of brown hair under her nails. We’ll be doing comparison tests–I don’t think it’s her own skin.”

  Repulsed by the sight, Jankowski asked for the case file, giving him an excuse to leave the morgue and sit in the adjacent office. Ms. Snell brought out a twelve-by-fourteen-inch envelope. She slipped the contents onto the desk. “This is what we’ve got so far.”

  Curious, Dr. Vantage left his work and joined Mark and Higbee. “What do you know about her?” he asked.

  “Terry was one of the people I interviewed on a case I’m working on.”

  “Is there any connection? Was she a suspect?”

  “I don’t know. It was a five-year-old missing persons case–until a skeleton recently showed up in a septic tank!”

  The UMASS evidence envelope Ms. Snell had emptied on the desk contained photos of the body showing the red streaks about the neck as well as abrasions at the base of the neck. “Probably caused by the murderer’s hands as she was strangled. He would have had to be pretty strong. It wasn’t done with a rope,” Dr. Vantage explained.

  “Why do you say that?” Higbee asked.

  “The wide bruise around the neck indicates a piece of clothing was used, something like a tie or scarf, not a rope.” Dr. Vantage passed the rest of the contents toward Jankowski. “You can check what we’ve got here. We won’t have a final report until sometime the end of next week,” he said as he left the room and returned to his work. Jankowski sifted through the photos, a fingerprint card, the preliminary medical report, and police report. Nothing that would give any clue as to why she killed.

  When they returned to Auburn, Higbee said he planned to check the college and animal hospital to see if he could learn anything more about Terry. Why had she been killed; what was the motive and who did it? “Homicides are motivated by something but, so far, we’re up against a blank wall. This one doesn’t seem to be robbery and there’s no indication of rape. We’re still trying to find next of kin.”

  “Keep me in the loop, please, and I’ll do the same for you,” Jankowski said, frowning as he climbed into his own car. The same questions ran in his mind. Heading back down the highway to Connecticut, he thought, O.K., CPAC has Terry and they need to address that. But I’ve got to figure out how this all connects with the skeleton of Ms. Stoddard. There’s got to be a connection!

  En route home, he spotted the Route 16 sign and quickly turned off the highway onto the narrow two-lane road, heading east. He planned to check in with the Douglas Police, but instead slowed down and pulled in at the sign for the Douglas State Forest. It was a wild and uninhabited section, remains of the ravages of ice glaciers centuries ago which tossed huge boulders, carved out ravines and mowed down trees like bowling pins. Few efforts had been made to make it accessible to visitors. A Civilian Conservation Corps project during the Depression had provided a few stone picnic benches, and rough trails, which wandered up and down the ravines. The whole area was dark and gloomy from the dense overgrowth of trees and foliage.

  Reaching the spot where Terry had been found
, he stopped and looked back. He could no longer see the road, just a few hundred yards away. Leaves crackled under his feet, along with pine needles and bits of trash. Apparently the undeveloped area was known to others. The ground in the gully was now roughed up by dozens of footprints. There was no other indication that a murder had taken place here. A dead silence surrounded him. Turning, with his head down, Mark retraced his steps, hoping to find something on the trail.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Bashia? Mark here. Would you care to go out to dinner tomorrow night? I have the day off.”

  Bashia grinned when she heard Mark’s voice. It was the first time in a week that they had talked and she had begun to wonder if he had lost interest in her. “Oh, that would be nice. Did you have someplace in mind?”

  “There’s a new Hawaiian restaurant on Route 16 outside of Webster. Or would you rather go to Win Tiki for Chinese? I know you like that type of food.”

  “Mmm, the Hawaiian sounds good. I haven’t been there, let’s try it. I read an ad about their sculptured garden on the grounds. Let’s go early so we can see what that’s all about, all right?”

  “Sure, I’ll pick you up around four-thirty. It takes about half an hour from your house, don’t you think? It’s starting to get dark earlier, now that winter is almost here. See you then!” Mark let out a deep breath of satisfaction as he put down the phone. That was easier than he’d expected it to be. It had been a long time, he couldn’t remember how long, since he asked a woman for a date.

  * * *

  It seemed strange to see Mark in civilian clothes. Bashia studied him as he got out of the car and strode to her door. Was it her imagination or did he seem thinner? He had on gray slacks and a black turtleneck jersey. Sexy, she thought. I don’t even see a paunch! Maybe it was his uniform that had made him seem so ample.

  She checked herself in the full-length mirror before going to the door and wondered if she could go through with this. Apprehensive and exhilarated at the same time, she was determined to conquer her private demon. She thought she looked pretty good in the pale green blouse that matched her eyes and slimming tan slacks. But she still felt as if her body was shaped like a fire hydrant, one solid block! Nervously, she smoothed down her unruly hair, picked up her camel hair coat and hurried out the door. She beamed, enjoying the fact that he opened the car door for her. Apparently chivalry wasn’t dead among police officers of Polish descent. It was a good omen.