The Case of the Missing Letter

by Alison Golden

  Janice held eye contact with Rosa, building an intimacy with her that would encourage her to speak. “San Marcos is where exactly?

  “In Central America. We came to Jersey in 1978.”

  “Why did you leave your home country? Were you not happy there?”

  Rosa’s face darkened. “San Marcos came upon very difficult times. The forces from the neighboring state of Suriguay assaulted our capital and took control. Eventually, we had to flee.” Rosa looked down at her hands in her lap for a long moment. Janice waited for the older woman to resume her story. “We lived through horrible years that followed the ‘revolution.’ That’s what they called it, the junta’s propagandists.” Rosa’s face hardened. She spat out the word, “junta.” “It was a military coup. A period of great difficulty. Felipe’s parents were professors and were constantly harassed.” Rosa’s mouth turned down at the corners, paying no attention to Janice as she stared into space, lost in her memories.

  “Felipe had dreamed of college, even as the ‘education department’ closed down almost every institute of higher learning in our country. There was a new government-sponsored curriculum. Dissent wasn’t tolerated. Students were encouraged to inform on their classmates and even on their teachers. Many professors were taken away for ‘reeducation’! They never came back.” Rosa clasped her hands to her chest and rocked gently. “There were rumors of secret political meetings at Felipe’s parents’ apartment. They were being watched and eventually they were arrested in the dead of night.” Tears rolled down Rosa’s face.

  “Poor Felipe! His parents were idealistic and brave, always defying the authoritarian thugs who had come to dominate our country. I was in awe of them! My family was poor, uneducated, but Felipe’s parents taught me that democracy was not a radical, unhinged, sinful experiment, that social mobility was my birthright!” Rosa’s lips quivered, and she raised the handkerchief in her hand up to her mouth. Janice leaned in and put her hand on the older woman’s forearm, concern etched on Janice’s face.

  Rosa calmed herself after a few sobs and spoke again. “Felipe said we had to leave, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay with my family, but he insisted. He said that it would be worse if we stayed. His parents had always warned him it would be so. We used our last money to board a fishing trawler in the middle of the night. There were so many people, little children, babies. We were all crying. I was so scared we would drown. But somehow, the boat carried us to Jamaica. I have never prayed so hard in my life.”

  “And how did you end up here? From Jamaica to Jersey?”

  “An embassy official took pity on us. He allowed us to make one phone call. Felipe called Mr. Steadman. He worked so hard to get us here, paid money, filled in forms, and hired lawyers for us. We made it, and we’ve been here ever since.”

  “Mr. Steadman owned the business Felipe now has?”

  “Yes, they met when Felipe was a boy. Back then, San Marcos was popular with tourists, and they would come to fish and snorkel. They liked to taste the best rum in Central America. Mr. Steadman, just two days into his holiday, was found on the beach with blood coming from a wound on his leg. Felipe was the first to reach him and understood enough English to realize what had happened.” Rosa looked at Janice knowingly. “Sea snake.”

  “Felipe cared for him as an intense fever took hold of Señor Steadman. He was his constant companion through the pain and tremors. He brought Mr. Steadman water and broth, and when Mr. Steadman’s fever passed, he fed him meals. He never left his side. Later, Mr. Steadman said he owed his life entirely to Felipe. He promised to help him in any way he could, and he was true to his word. We owe him our lives. But it was a terrible time.

  “When we arrived here on the island, exhausted, heartsick, and cold, Felipe was told that his parents had been executed by the regime. For many weeks, Felipe spoke to no one except me and Mr. Steadman. It took a while, but eventually he began to explore Jersey and settle here. He polished his English by taking courses at the local college, and Mr. Steadman taught him woodworking and cabinetmaking. He eventually allowed Felipe to work on his own projects, and just before Mr. Steadman died, Felipe completed a beautiful dining table set, his first major commission. Oh, it was wonderful! So beautiful! Felipe’s true passion, though, was repairing old furniture. He was humbled to be working on a piece designed by Ezekiel Satterthwaite.”

  “Did he tell you anything about the desk? Was there anything unusual about it?” Janice asked, bringing out her notebook.

  “He was very excited,” Rosa said, brightening before almost immediately clouding again, “but something strange did happen yesterday. There was a phone call. About the desk. That’s all I know. The person didn’t say who they were and Felipe didn’t come up to the house again.” She paused for a moment and looked closely at the Sergeant. Her tired, brown eyes were puffy now from crying. “It wasn’t just a robbery?”

  Janice was making a discreet note. “I’m not sure what you mean, Mrs. Barrios,” she said, setting down her iPad.

  “The person who came to the workshop last night. The one who attacked him. They were… looking for something, weren’t they?” she asked, focusing intently on Janice.

  “We don’t know at this point, Mrs. Barrios, but I can assure you we will do everything in our power to find out who did this to your husband.”

  Rosa reached out and took Janice’s hand. She had short, broad fingers that were extremely soft, but her grip was surprisingly firm. “God knows,” she said slowly, “what happened to my Felipe. I pray that he will guide you and your colleagues to uncover the truth,” she added, tears coming again.

  Janice never quite knew what to say when burdened by such hopes. “We’ll do everything we can,” she said in the end. “DI Graham is one of the best investigators in the country.” She held onto Rosa’s hand for a long, quiet moment, praying that her boss would once again prove himself equal to the task.

  Graham met Janice at the hospital. She found him in a dark and brooding mood. She suspected it wasn’t due only to the unnecessary and tragic death of Felipe Barrios. Although Graham had never said so, Janice harbored a belief that hospitals held dreadful associations for the DI. She knew better than to quiz such a private person, but more than once, she had found herself speculating at what might lie in Graham’s past.

  She recounted everything that Rosa had told her, including the mysterious phone call. Graham’s face darkened as she spoke. “Poor guy,” he said when she’d finished. “To go through all that and then get taken out by some animal.” They walked silently along the hospital corridors to the morgue.

  “Marcus?” Graham said as the two officers arrived.

  “Sorry, old boy,” the pathologist said again. “I know you had hopes on this one.”

  Graham shrugged just slightly. “What can you tell me?”

  “It’s early days but definitely blunt force trauma, as we thought,” Marcus explained. “A long, relatively thin metal object. My guess is a file or maybe a sharpening steel. In any event, he was hit pretty hard from behind by a right-handed assailant.”

  “What else?” Graham said, memorizing the details and bringing to mind his observations from the workshop.

  “He was struck once and then left on the ground. The victim took a well-aimed and ferocious thwack to his head. I can’t know if the attacker meant to kill him or simply incapacitate him.

  “Could it have been a woman?”

  “With a tool like that, yes. It’s not heavy, and with sufficient force and precise placement, it could be deadly wielded by a male or a female.

  Janice interjected. “So they broke in quietly and attacked him, unawares? Or perhaps,” she tried, “Felipe knew the attacker, invited them in, and they hit him when his back was turned?”

  “Either of those explanations is possible,” Tomlinson said. “Based on our preliminary findings, you understand.”

  “What about the injury?” Graham said.

  Marcus showed him a diagram of a skul
l, with a star-shaped fracture radiating out from an impact point above the right ear. “The bleeding was very sudden and severe, but because the skull is a rigid container,” Tomlinson ringed the diagram with his closed pen, “the blood has nowhere to go except out through the small cut made by the impact, or down the foramen magnum.”

  “The where?” Harding asked.

  “The hole in the bottom of the skull,” Tomlinson replied, tapping the back of his own neck, “through which the spinal cord passes. Everything gets forced down that way. There’s no other escape route. It causes herniation, an increase in pressure. This shuts down breathing and other vital functions. The results aren’t usually survivable.”

  Harding, feeling distinctly queasy, stepped out for a moment while Graham listened to the rest of Tomlinson’s findings. “Are there any similarities,” Graham asked, his voice grave, “to the death of Mr. Norris at the museum?”

  Tomlinson shook his head. “No, other than the obvious proximity of the desk,” Marcus summed up.

  “There was a hidden compartment in one of the drawers,” Graham confessed.

  Marcus looked closely at Graham. “Compartment?”

  “Yes. Adam Harris-Watts was quite beside himself about it. The maker, Satterthwaite, was known for incorporating hidden drawers in some of his pieces, but no one had been able to find one in this particular desk until now.”

  “It was empty, wasn’t it?” Tomlinson said.

  “Yes it was… How did you know it would be?” Graham asked.

  Marcus led him from the room. “Come with me, Detective Inspector.” They changed out of their surgical scrubs, “I need to introduce you to our new forensics expert.”

  Tomlinson led him to his own car, parked outside the hospital’s front entrance. “It’s easier just to show you. Young Mr. Oxley has something that you really need to see.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  TOMLINSON LED GRAHAM through the double doors and into the forensics lab. It was a place the DI had been to many times before, but Tomlinson’s eagerness gave the lab an air of expectancy. “A Dr. Simon Oxley. New chap,” Tomlinson had told him on the way over, “based at Cambridge University but loaned out to the Metropolitan Police for consulting on cases that need his expertise. Miranda happened to be in a meeting with him when she took my call. He popped straight over.”

  Dr. Miranda Weiss was the Head of Forensics for the Jersey Police. She resided on the mainland, so Tomlinson sometimes found himself doing double duty as a forensics investigator, or at least overseeing some of the more rarefied tasks that landed on his mortuary table. They were tasks he usually relished – intellectually challenging and generally cutting edge.

  “Did you know him while you were at the Met?” Graham shook his head. Tomlinson continued, “Anyhow, he arrived a couple of hours ago. Smartest young man I’ve met in a while.” Tomlinson tapped his temple. “Listen to him, David. Don’t let his looks deceive you,” he said, ushering Graham into the room.

  “Looks?” Graham asked, noticing the faint chemical smell as he walked into the lab. “How do you mean?” He turned to find an extremely tall, fresh-faced young man smiling down at him.

  “How do you do, DI Graham?” the youthful-looking giant asked, extending his hand. “I’ve heard a great deal about you.” Simon Oxley was nearly seven feet tall, with an enthusiastic, genuine smile, and glinting, excited eyes that were magnified by thick, steel-rimmed glasses. “I’m hoping I can be of some assistance,” he said, as Graham’s hand met his own. The young man’s grip was surprisingly dainty given his intimidating height.

  “I’m hoping so, too,” Graham said. “Marcus seems to think highly of you. We’ve got ourselves a very special and particular case here.”

  “Felipe Barrios. Yes,” Oxley said soberly.

  “It was the jacket he was wearing when he was attacked that proved to be of the greatest interest,” Tomlinson said. He took Graham’s arm and steered the DI to an examination table. On it lay a single piece of clothing. “We’re hoping that this jacket is going to teach us why Barrios was killed,” Tomlinson said.

  Oxley showed them two large, glossy photographs. One contained an image of a single piece of paper, the other, a curled-up Polaroid. Graham could see it had originally been black and white but had faded to shades of gray and pink. Oxley placed them next to the jacket on the metal table. “You found these in the pocket?” Graham surmised. It wasn’t a staggering feat of detective work. The jacket and the paper pictured in the photograph were almost completely soaked in blood. The Polaroid was relatively unscathed.

  “The originals,” Oxley explained, “are in cold storage now. We’re focusing on the paper that contains the handwriting.” Graham looked carefully at the photograph with the handwritten paper. There were only three legible sections that he could see, only a handful of words, he estimated.

  “We’re going to use a process called lypophilization to freeze dry the document and then sublimate the frozen water present in the blood’s plasma by turning it to vapor.”

  Graham stared at him briefly. “Okay.”

  “Dr. Oxley is an expert on document retrieval, storage, and reconstruction,” Tomlinson told him. “When paper gets wet, as this has with blood, the best method of restoring it is to freeze away the water present, leaving just the original material behind.”

  “And the remainder of the blood, presumably,” Graham said, dubiously.

  “Yes, that’s true, but blood comprises fifty-five percent plasma, of which ninety-two percent is water, so we should see a great improvement in the legibility of this document.

  “It will take at least a day, perhaps two,” Oxley said, “even with the new technique we’re using. But we’ve had a very pleasing success rate,” he beamed.

  “After that, we’ll use an X-ray scanner. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see what the paper was about,” Tomlinson added. Graham could see the pathologist had warmed to this new and interesting project. “Tell him about the papyrus from that Roman villa, Simon.”

  Oxley was all set to launch into what Graham was certain would be a fascinating tale, but he was far too engrossed in the murder investigation to pay it any mind at this moment. “Tell me about this,” he said, standing over Felipe’s blood-soaked jacket, his index finger pointing to the metal tabletop.

  “This jacket is one of a kind that a carpenter or painter might wear,” Tomlinson told him. “Lots of pockets for brushes and tools, and a comfortable fit so his arms aren’t constrained. It isn’t the kind of thing you’d wear outside the workshop,” Marcus said. “And, at first glance, I saw no earthly reason to think that it was anything other than what it appeared to be. But then I noticed this,” he said. Slowly, Tomlinson used tweezers to lift some fabric where the stitching at the seam under the armpit had been removed to leave a three-inch opening. “See here? The fabric had been freshly sewn. We found the letter inside the lining of the sleeve, presumably placed there through this gap.”

  Graham peered at the photo of the document once more. According to the scale placed next to it, the paper was letter-sized, and the few fragments that remained free of blood showed handwriting in a very neat, educated script. Graham’s first impression was that it might be a college graduation certificate. “So, what is it?” he asked Oxley.

  “My doctoral thesis discussed methods of analyzing documents that were illegible or damaged.” Simon told him, peering down at the DI and the document.

  “Very high-end stuff,” Tomlinson whispered to Graham. “X-rays and such. You wouldn’t believe the things they can do.”

  “Yes, but what is it?” Graham repeated. He wasn’t as enamored by the scientific brilliance of the process as much as he was by its outcome.

  “I’m not sure yet. This is a very difficult case, but I do expect to be able to glean something from the remnants.” Dr. Oxley handled the photograph with a soft, measured touch, his long, pale, soft fingers lingering over the image. Graham imagined those hands at the keyboards of
a church organ perhaps, or expertly wielding a surgeon’s scalpel. “After the water has been extracted, we will have a clearer picture of what we are dealing with. There are other layered techniques we can use to recover the contents of the document if necessary, including ascertaining the chemical composition of the ink.”

  “Something in which,” Tomlinson explained, “Simon is also a noted expert.”

  “Gradually,” Oxley said, “we should be able to build a picture of what this paper originally communicated.”

  Graham looked up at the man, once again doubting that someone who couldn’t possibly have yet turned thirty had already gained such a reputation, not to mention a doctorate in the sciences. “How long will it take?”

  “As I mentioned earlier, a day or so.”

  Graham sighed. “Is there anything you can tell me now?”

  Oxley looked down at the bloodied paper. “We can make a few deductions, yes.”

  “I’m interested to hear what you have to say,” Graham persisted.

  Oxley set down the photo and reached for his laptop on the opposite table. “The author was highly educated, probably in the nineteen-forties. We can tell this from aspects of his letter formation. There’s also a rigor to the penmanship that spoke of many patient hours of practice, probably under the watchful eye of a strict tutor.”

  Tomlinson gave Graham a wink. “Told you he was good, didn’t I?”

  Oxley continued. “The author was a meticulous person, someone for whom the effort of writing a letter by hand was considered a worthwhile investment.”

  Graham stared at the document again.

  “The words we can read suggest that it is a letter of some kind. The formal, rather archaic language supports the idea that the author was educated and disciplined, and I also suggest that this was a letter to an acquaintance, possibly a friend, more than a business or official communication. All of this helps us to date the letter, even before we receive the results of chemical analysis on the ink and the paper.”