by Kathy Brandt
I had little doubt that the small circular wound in the head was a bullet hole. There was a deep gash in the knee. Maybe it had occurred when the victim had fallen after being shot, or maybe when he’d been tumbled overboard off a boat. Arms and legs were scraped. I’d seen enough of this sort of injury to know they were travel abrasions from the body being washed over the coral beds until it had caught. These lacerations are markedly different from defensive wounds that are usually deep cuts or blunt trauma injuries. Travel abrasions are like scuff marks from the skin being worn away. The coroner would look for pieces of sand or coral in these wounds as further confirmation of the source of injury.
All the wounds were in the process of being enlarged by hungry saltwater shrimp. A few sea lice were gathered around the nose and mouth. Based on the extent of feeding, I’d guess Robsen had been in the water no more than twelve hours. That meant he’d been killed shortly after leaving the Calypso. I’d retrieved bodies that had no flesh remaining after twelve hours, but that was when there was an abundance of crustaceans present in the water, which was not the case here.
Postmortem rigidity was consistent with the position of Robsen’s body in the water, his torso twisted with the current. He’d been dumped in the water within an hour or two of death, before rigor mortis had a chance to set in.
I was just completing the visual examination when another diver approached. It was Edmund Carr. I’d met him during my investigation in January. He was a banker and an expert diver who volunteered for the island rescue team. I’d learned to trust Carr. He gave me the thumbs-up.
I had given Carr a few pointers in underwater investigation and evidence collection. Until then, as a rescue diver, he’d go down, find the victim, and bring him up. That was it. Now he understood the importance of careful observation and preservation of the crime scene. He let me take the lead, hovering nearby to assist.
First I gently moved Robsen’s right arm from his face so that I could look at his watch. If we waited until he was brought to the surface, jarring, or change in water pressure, or any number of other factor might alter the evidence. It was a cheap digital with a canvas band that you could buy in any discount store. On the rim it indicated it was waterproof to twenty feet. It was flooded with saltwater and had stopped at 2:17. Probably about a minute after the body had hit the water and sunk.
Although I was sure that Robsen was dead when he went in the water, I followed routine. I checked carefully around his head, looking for vomit or bloody foam, signs of drowning. Robsen’s jaw was opened slightly. I shined my light inside, checking for inhaled bottom debris or vegetation. I could see bits of sea grass and algae around his teeth that I was sure had been washed in by the current. His jaw resisted when I pushed it closed to preserve the contents of his mouth for closer examination.
Carr and I enclosed Robsen’s head and hands in plastic bags and secured them with a Velcro strap; then Carr carefully pulled the victim’s foot out from between the coral. He’d be as concerned about damaging the coral as he would about tearing flesh. Carr, like most of the local divers, had a tremendous respect for the fragile reef. It took decades for coral to develop, and the big ones here were centuries old.
We had to force the arms alongside the body in order to get it into the body bag. God, I hated this. The left arm, well-established in its outstretched rigor, resisted. I could feel the weird stubbornness of the death posture shift subtly right before the limb gave way.
We placed the body into a yellow canvas bag that had mesh vents to allow the water to drain out. Underwater, the average adult male weighs between nine and sixteen pounds. Robsen was no exception. Carr and I swam easily to the surface, with the body between us. Dunn and Snyder were waiting to pull it into the boat. They hefted the bag in, careful not to bang it against the side.
Carr and I climbed in after.
“Good to see you, Hannah,” Carr said. It was the first time since we’d seen each other below the surface that we’d actually been able to speak. All our communication had been through hand signals.
“Thanks for your help down there, Ed,” I said as we struggled out of our dive gear.
“You know who the guy is?”
“Yeah, wife reported him missing this morning.”
“Amazing how the sea sometimes gives up its dead so quickly,” he said. “Other times she holds on forever.”
I knew that Carr had lost a couple friends years ago. Evidently they’d gone out on a dive and never returned. The boat was found floating bottom up, but no sign was ever found of either of the divers.
The coroner unzipped the body bag as I knelt on the other side. A few sea creatures scattered as he gently pulled the plastic bag off of Robsen’s head. I asked him to examine the eyes before the dry air altered their appearance. Again, standard procedure. If the eyes were open after death and exposed to air, a film will form on the cornea. If closed after death or if the victim was immediately submerged in water, the eyes will retain a glistening appearance.
Normally I would have examined them myself, but I didn’t want to alienate a man I’d want to work with me. As he carefully pulled the eyelids opened, I leaned in for a closer look. I could a horizontal line between the clear and cloudy areas on Robsen’s cornea. Just one more indication he’d died on land. Again, nothing too surprising. Not too many people could survive a bullet to the brain. The small round hole was even more apparent above water. He replaced the plastic bag around the head, zipped up the body bag, and stood.
“I’ve seen enough,” he said. “Let’s get him in for a closer look.”
“Snyder, you go back with the coroner,” Dunn said, starting up the Wahoo. “Come on, Detective Sampson. Let’s go talk to Mrs. Robsen.”
This was the absolute worst part of the job. I’d hoped to go back to Road Town with the body, but Dunn was right: I needed to accompany him to break the news to Trish Robsen.
***
As we approached it was clear she’d heard us coming. She was standing on the stern of Wind Runner ready to grab our lines.
“Did you find Allen?” she asked, a mixture of hope and dread in her voice.
“I’m afraid we did,” I said.
She knew right away. She crumpled onto the cockpit bench, leaned over, head in hands, and rocked, whimpering quietly.
I went over and sat next to her. Put an arm around her. Let her cry it out. There wasn’t anything to say. Never was. As soon as she got past the shock, she’d start asking questions. For some it took hours, for others minutes. I’d learned to just be there and wait it out.
Dunn went below and brought up a glass of water and a towel and sat down on the other side. He’d done this before too. Finally she took the towel from him, wiped her face, and then sipped at the water.
“What happened? Where did you find him? How could this be? We were on vacation! I knew something was wrong when he didn’t come back.”
“Some snorkelers found him in the water over near Jost Van Dyke,” Dunn said.
“In the water? You mean he drowned? Allen was an excellent swimmer. He wouldn’t drown.” She said it like people had choices in these things.
“It appears he was shot, Mrs. Robsen,” Dunn said. “We can’t be sure until the coroner examines him, but that’s pretty much what it looks like.”
“Shot! No one would shoot Allen. That’s just not possible. How can you be sure it’s him?” Time for hope to spring. More like denial. Almost always happened.
“We found his wallet, and the description matches yours as well as the picture on his driver’s license. I’m afraid you’ll have to come in to identify the body.”
“All right,” she said, standing, “let’s go.”
“You don’t have to do it now,” Dunn said. “Maybe you want to take it slow.”
“No, now. I want to see Allen. Oh, God,” she cried, sinking back on the bench. “Just give me a minute.”
“Take all the time you want,” I said. I understood why she wanted to go.
She needed to connect with her husband, know it was real. See him. It wasn’t something you could put off.
She went below quickly, and came back up with a skirt on and carrying a pair of sandals. She glanced around the boat. Habit. Making sure everything was secure, then realized she didn’t care. Dunn helped her into the police boat and we headed over to Road Town in silence.
***
When we got to the coroner’s office, I went in first to make sure the body was presentable. Robsen was laid out on a cold metal table, even grayer and more ghost-like than he’d looked in the water. His lower body was damaged by sea life and coral, but his face was untouched except for the small hole in his forehead above the left eye. The bullet had not exited the back. It had to be a small caliber, probably a twenty-two. It would have hit the back of his skull and ricocheted around inside, slashing at brain tissue until it lost momentum. As I studied the face, a couple of sea lice crawled out of his mouth.
I told the coroner the wife was here. Asked him to get the body set up for viewing. He brushed the errant sea life off the face and stuffed cotton way up into the nose and mouth to keep anything else from escaping, and threw a sheet over the body.
I was sorry Trish had to see her husband the way he looked. She was a strong woman but this wasn’t going to be easy for her. Dunn and I stood next to her as the coroner pulled the sheet off of his face.
She grasped the edge of the gurney to keep herself up. Disbelief and pain crossed her face. She didn’t know what to do. I could see that she wanted to touch him. Finally she did, placing one hand on his chest and the other on his head, bending over him.
“Allen,” she said, “what happened?” She looked at me for an answer.
All I could do was shake my head.
“I’m so sorry, Trish.”
Dunn took her arm and led her out to a chair, where she hunched over, rambling on about Allen, the trip, how could this happen, she must be having a nightmare, they should have never come down here. “God,” she said, “I wish we were home. Allen mowing the lawn or something. Me inside fixing lunch. How can I make it without him? We’ve been together practically our entire lives.”
Her pain hung in the air, so thick I could practically touch it. I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to lose a life mate. I’d never been lucky enough to find one. I’d been with Jake only two years when he’d died.
Finally, she sat up, wiped her eyes, and tried to regain some control. “I’ve got to call home,” she said. “What will I tell the children?” I could see she needed to connect with her family, the people she loved. Not be so alone. At the same time, she clearly dreaded it.
I helped her find a phone and get the international operator. I was about to leave her alone when she grabbed my arm and shook her head. She wanted me to stay with her.
She called her son. She didn’t shed a tear as she spoke. I could tell her son was crying on the other end. She was comforting him. Telling him it would be okay. Typical parent, sucking it up even for her adult son. He planned to get the first flight down. I was glad she wouldn’t be alone. She refused Dunn’s offer to arrange a hotel for the night. She wanted to stay on her boat.
I brought her back over to Cane Garden Bay and got her settled on the Wind Runner. Although she insisted she was fine, I worried about leaving her alone. I could see the Manettis lounging in the cockpit of the Celebration and decided to stop.
“Anything wrong, Officer?” Manetti grabbed my line when I tossed it to him. Don Manetti was hairy chested, with a belly that hung over his shorts. A cigar hung out of the side of his mouth. At three-thirty, it was already cocktail time on the Celebration, looked like martinis.
I didn’t bother to step aboard. I was anxious to get back to talk with the coroner and didn’t want to play Twenty Questions with the Manettis.
“We found Trish Robsen’s husband. He’s dead.”
“Dead?” Melissa Manetti was stunned. “My God, we never dreamed. We saw Trish earlier. She said he hadn’t come home last night, but dead… What happened?”
“We’re investigating. I’d like to come by and talk with you tomorrow morning, if that’s okay.” I asked them to look in on Trish and headed back to Road Town.
There was nothing else could I do except find out who killed her husband.
Chapter 9
I went straight back to the coroner’s office. I figured I knew as much about forensic medicine as he did. In other words, nothing. He surprised me, though. He had already opened the chest and stomach cavity and was examining the stomach.
“Looks like the contents are only partially digested, well preserved in alcohol too. He died about four or five hours after his last meal. By the condition of the body, I’d say he was in the water twelve hours, maybe less
I agreed. I’d brought enough victims out of the water to be familiar with the appearance, and his analysis matched my underwater observations. The photos had already been developed and were spread out on a nearby table.
“Pretty obvious what killed him. Bullet to the brain. Died right away. Probably never knew what hit him, though I guess he’d have seen it coming. It’s a contact wound—gun was directly against the forehead. You can see the star pattern, kind of a circular pattern with radiating breaks.”
“Did you get the bullet?”
“Yeah,” he said, pulling the cylindrical object from a tray. It’s a twenty-two-caliber. Amazing what a small hole it makes going in. Did a lot of rattling around in his head, though. Pretty typical—a twenty-two lacks velocity to penetrate the skull a second time; does lots of damage ricocheting inside instead.”
“Any other injuries?” I asked. I wondered if Allen Robsen had fought for his life.
“Just postmortem, torn-up ankle from where his foot was wedged in the coral. Gash in the knee, abrasions, all occurred after death, mostly travel abrasions, as you guessed. Sharp pieces of coral and bits of sand embedded in the wounds.”
“Did you find anything under his fingernails?” I asked.
“Nothing. No hair, no skin. Like I said, he probably had just seconds to react. Nothing that indicates there was any struggle at all.”
He motioned toward the dinghy anchor and line that now lay on a nearby table. “We’ll have that anchor analyzed for prints.”
Good luck, I thought. The chances of finding a print on that anchor were slim to none. Though in rare cases we’d been able to lift prints from firearms submerged for weeks, the chances of lifting suitable prints are slim, even with a fingerprint expert at the recovery site. In the case of this anchor? Christ, it was so severely pitted and corroded that I was sure there’d be no prints.
“What about his clothes? Anything there?”
“Haven’t had a chance to look. Be my guest,” he said, pointing to a pile on a nearby chair.
There wasn’t much. A pair of khaki shorts, the white T-shirt with the chart of BVI, a plaid overshirt. He probably put it on when it got cool in the evening. I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and checked the pockets in his shorts. Nothing but one of those utility gadget things with every tool known to man in one handy little device—needle-nose pliers, knife, file.
In the shirt pocket I found a scrap of soggy paper, glossy, beige. It had typing on it and a photograph but nothing distinguishable. The salt water had done its work. It was about four by four inches and looked like something torn out of a magazine. Could have been something that caught Robsen’s interest the night he died or days before. Hell, it might have been in there when he’d packed the shirt for the trip.
His wallet was there too. I found his driver’s license, charge cards, and $87. Clearly robbery had not been a motive. In a side pocket protected by one of those plastic folders were photos: a family shot of him and Trish with three grown kids, two girls and a boy; an old picture of the couple, arms around each other, dressed in formal attire, celebrating something.
I placed the wallet, its contents, and the torn slip of paper on the counter to dry out, and asked the
coroner’s assistant to take care of them. I’d seen enough. I headed back to the office. Stark, Mahler, and Worthington were there, hunched over a map of Tortola, doing the same thing I’d been doing earlier, marking the location of the break-ins.
“You guys are working late.” I was trying to be sociable.
“Yeah,” Stark mumbled.
“Finding a pattern?” I asked.
“Maybe.” I was beginning to think that Stark was incapable of a sentence composed of more than one word.
Worthington just glared.
“Could be we’re looking at more than one set of perpetrators, or else they have changed their approach. Last couple of times they’ve been armed, threatening residents instead of breaking in when folks are gone,” Mahler said.
“Hear you got a murder on your hands.” Worthington was gloating. “You need any help you just let us know. Between the three of us, we probably got forty years of experience.” He was rubbing it in, my remark about having worked robbery.
I considered an acerbic comeback but refrained. At some point I would have to find a way to make a truce with these guys.
“I might just do that,” I said, and left them to their mapping.
I booted up one of the two computers in the office. They were set up in a corner gathering dust. The BVI police shared information with the United States because of the proximity to the U.S. Virgins. Saint John was within spitting distance, and a good portion of the tourism and offshore banking activity involved the United States.
I started with Robsens. I didn’t expect to find anything, so I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t. It seemed that the Robsens led the squeaky-clean life that Trish had indicated. Nothing on the Manettis either. Jack Rodriguez had two DUIs in the past couple of years—both dropped. All it takes is enough money and a good lawyer, I thought wryly. Rodriguez had both. Nothing on Guy Pembrook either. Not even a jaywalking. Nothing in any of their backgrounds spelled murder.
It was apparent that Robsen had been killed the night of the party on the Calypso sometime after Trish had gone home and everyone had gone back to shore. The last time that the Pembrooks had seen him he’d been motoring to shore, but the Texans said he never showed up at the bar while they were there. Where had he gone after he’d left the Calypso? Had he met up with a woman or run into someone else on shore?
