Rose City Free Fall

by DL Barbur

  So far I had a body with no ID and an earring that might not even be related. I needed information bad and one source was an autopsy. Normally it wouldn't have mattered if the autopsy waited until Monday, but if the girl had indeed been dumped last night, our twenty-four-hour window would be closing soon.

  Fairbairn checked his watch. I'd already looked at mine. It was almost nine o'clock. A Friday night. "I'll see what I can do, see who answers the phone."

  "Thanks, man."

  He rolled the girl into the back of the unmarked, nondescript van and left. Jeannie and Roger were just finishing their sweep of the upper lot and surrounding area. They came walking over to us.

  "Find anything?" Mandy asked.

  Jeannie shook her head. "Nothing of note. Four pieces of chewing gum. They look old. Two coffee cups and a soda bottle in the trash can. Five cigarette butts."

  Jeannie would take these things and catalog them. It would be up to us to have them tested or not. If any of them had been discarded by the killer, there would possibly be DNA evidence, or fingerprints. But most likely they were trash and not evidence. I had hoped for some stroke of luck. Sometimes killers were nervous. They vomited or even defecated at scenes. They left weapons behind with fingerprints or articles of clothing. Once I'd even worked a burglary where the burglar had dropped his own wallet in the middle of the living room. It didn't look like we were going to get lucky tonight.

  "We got some good pictures and measurements of the tire tracks," Jeannie said.

  Jeannie motioned us to follow. She pointed to the twin tracks in the grass. "As you can tell the grass is really thick, so we have two tracks of depressed vegetation, but no tread imprint. On the sidewalk, we have some rubber transfer as the tires went up over the edge, but again no tread impression. I'll take scrapings of the rubber. We'll also measure the width of the tracks and how far apart they are. We can identify some possible vehicles from that."

  I nodded. That was something. I was willing to go out on a limb and guess we were looking for the ever-popular dead body transport vehicle: a van. The way the vehicle had been pulled up over the curb suggested it had been backed up to the edge of the embankment, the rear doors opened, and the girl pushed out like she was garbage. My jaw worked for a minute. Nobody deserved that.

  I thought about the white van I’d seen as I pulled in, and cursed myself for not getting a plate.

  This was where real life deviated from all the forensics TV shows that had become so popular. On the TV, whenever there was a murder, there was always a mountain of evidence to be found, usually with some cool laser or alternative lighting source. In real life, I never seemed to get that lucky.

  We spent the next couple of hours doing a secondary search. It rained harder, so we all put on raincoats and kept looking for anything that could be important.

  Despite all my frequent thoughts of quitting, I loved this job because of the people I worked with. For every Steve Lubbock or Officer Bloem, there were quiet professionals like Fairbairn, Jeannie and Roger.

  I’d just decided it was time to end the search when my phone started vibrating in my pocket.

  I answered it. "Miller."

  "Dent, hey. It's Alex Pace. Fairbairn tells me you need some help." I could hear the sound of an engine revving up and down in the background. Alexis Pace. Man, she had a nice voice. I grew a little warm picturing the face and especially the body that went with it. But what got me the most excited was the fact that she was a pathologist and I needed an autopsy done.

  That was kind of screwed up if I thought about it, so I didn’t.

  "I'm in a little bit of a jam here, Alex. I've got a body of a young woman, bound and dumped out at Kelley Point Park. That's pretty much all I've got. I've got no ID, no physical evidence at the scene. She's been dead almost twenty-four hours already. It's like she dropped out of the sky. I was wondering what I could do to get one of you guys to do her this weekend. Maybe as early as tomorrow?"

  "Hell, Dent, I'll do it tonight."

  If I could have reached through the phone and hugged her, I would have.

  "I'm just leaving Judo class at the MAC club. I'll meet you at the office."

  "You're the best, Alex. What can I do to make it up to you?"

  “Grande wet cappuccino, double shot, skim milk. See ya."

  She hung up.

  I smiled. This would be the cheapest cup of coffee I ever bought.

  We reached the front gate of the park and found nothing. Mandy and I stopped there and waited for Roger and Jeannie to catch up.

  Mandy was quiet, thoughtful. Normally Mandy wanted to talk about things, a little too much for my tastes, to be honest. But now she was silent. It was interesting to watch cops work their first homicide. For most, it was different than all the other cases they had worked before, even the bad assaults and sex crimes. There was finality to this, a weight that was hard to describe.

  "Alex Pace from the ME's office is gonna come in tonight and do our victim."

  "Good." She nodded. "I don't think I've ever met him."

  "Not a him, a her. Remember Captain Pace? Retired a few years ago, ran North Precinct for a while, and then Special Operations?"

  She nodded. "Sure. He retired right after I got off probation."

  Jesus. Way to make me feel old.

  "Well anyways, this Alex Pace is THAT Alex Pace's daughter."

  "Cool." She still looked pensive and distracted. Jeannie and Roger came walking up, looking miserable in their ponchos. The temperature had probably dropped ten degrees since we started this.

  "You guys come up empty too?" Mandy asked. Jeannie nodded, shivering with the cold.

  "I think," Mandy said, with a glance towards me. "We're about done."

  "Ok," Jeannie said. "We'll be around at Central, drying the cigarette butts and stuff. Call us if you need us." Jeannie and Roger still had a couple of hours of work ahead of them: drive back to the precinct, babysit the evidence in the dryer, do the ever popular paperwork.

  I watched them walk away, let my mind drift, become unfocused. I could see Mandy staring at me like she wanted to say something but could tell I was thinking and didn't want to interrupt.

  Out on the river, a ship horn sounded, echoed off the water.

  “Why?” I asked aloud.

  "Why what?"

  "Why dump her over the embankment?"

  "It's a dead body. He had to get rid of her."

  "Yeah, but why here? Why Kelly Point Park? This place isn't that big. Why not Forest Park? Why not up in the mountains? Why does he leave her in a place where anybody looking over from the parking lot will see her?"

  She stood there, staring. I could all but hear the gears turning. The wind picked up. It was cold and damp down here by the river, felt like dead fingers caressing your face.

  "The water," she said. "He was going to dump her in the water."

  "Yeah. I think you're right. If you draw a straight line from where we're standing, it's the shortest path to the river. Dumping her down the embankment was just a way to get her down there. She ain't that big, but I'd hate to carry a hundred, hundred and ten pounds of dead weight down that slope. Maybe he's not a big guy, maybe he's just lazy."

  "So he was going to dump her in the river. He probably had chains or something. To weigh her down."

  "Maybe. Even more weight to carry in that case. So what happened?"

  "He dumped her out. She rolls down the hill. Somebody came."

  "I think so. He sees headlights, maybe a person. Maybe it's the guy from Parks Bureau, here to check the lot for cars before he locks the gate. But anyway, he's interrupted. And for some reason, he doesn't come back."

  She walked over to the tire tracks, shined a light on them. "His wheels didn't slide because the grass was wet. He was excited, scared. He threw the van in drive and stomped on the gas. That's why the divot is there."

  "It all fits. So what does that give us?"

  "Maybe a witness. Whoever drove in and scared hi
m off."

  "Exactly,” I said. “But still, why here? Why Kelley Point Park? Nobody comes here. It's in the middle of an industrial wasteland. Only the City of Portland would put a park in a spot like this. I bet the dude who walks his dog here is the only one who uses it all winter. In the summer some people come here to launch their canoes. Hell, there aren't even any hookers out here for guys to bring over for a quickie on their lunch hour."

  "My first thought is to say he lives out here," she said, turning in a circle as she looked around the lot. "But nobody lives out here. It's gotta be a job. He has to work out here."

  I told her about the van I’d seen on the way in.

  “Christ,” she said. “Do you think that was him? Did you get a plate?”

  I shook my head and she looked disappointed.

  “Why would he come back?”

  “If it was him, he might have been coming back to move her the rest of the way to the river, with help.”

  “Or it could have been just two dudes coming out here to smoke dope that got scared when they saw the police car.”

  I nodded. “Could be that too.”

  “Well, we’ll keep it in mind. Can you think of anything else we need to do here?”

  I took one last look around the lot. "I think we're done here. You did a good job processing the scene. All the schools you go to, all the books you read, they'll pound all that CSI stuff into your head. That's not a bad thing; we make good cases that way. But remember to take a few minutes and just get inside his head. Think like he does. Put yourself in his shoes."

  "Ok."

  "Cool. Now let’s go to the autopsy."

  She nodded again. She was still quiet, but I expected that.

  The weight took some getting used to.

  Chapter Five

  Led Zeppelin was on the radio when I got in the car. "In My Time of Dying." Not a bad tune, but in many ways, I preferred Bob Dylan’s original sparse, acoustic version. Hopefully, it wasn't an omen or anything.

  As I drove I kept flipping the case over and over in my head. There still wasn't much to think about. I was hoping if I kept churning the information, I'd get some blinding flash of insight that would open things up.

  I really should have known better. In the movies, the detective always had the sudden revelation that solved the whole case, but in real life, cases were solved by grunt work and hard labor.

  The new Medical Examiner’s office was out east, just past the city limits in Clackamas. The lot was deserted and the building dark. Mandy and I pulled into the lot and parked next to each other.

  Apparently, Alex wasn't here yet. I missed the old days when the morgue had been on Knott Street in North Portland. The county used to let a few college students stay in apartments over the building. In return for free rent, they answered the phone at night and let people into the building. Some of them had been fun to BS with. I could usually count on a recommendation for a new band and maybe a free slice of pizza. Now, the new building was locked up overnight and the phones went to an answering service.

  I heard Alex coming before I saw her. These days she drove a Mustang that sounded suspiciously like it had a set of straight pipes in place of the mufflers. The engine almost succeeded in drowning out the stereo. Somehow the rumble of the engine and Janis Joplin's "Another Piece of my Heart" seemed to go together perfectly. Cool car, cool music, cool girl. She parked nose to nose to me and both the music and the engine went silent.

  I got out as Alex unfolded herself from the car. She was tall, an easy six-footer. Long, lanky, with blond hair that hung almost to her waist, she looked like the archetype of a California surfer girl, with bright blue eyes and a snub nose. I really don't know how that happened. Her dad was an ugly little troll of a man.

  "Hey, Dent! Let's get inside." She ran for the door. Oblivious to the rain, she was wearing a pair of shorts and a hooded sweatshirt. I jogged after her, trying very hard not to stare at her ass as she ran in front of me. Working with Alex presented some unique challenges for me.

  She let us in the office, the sterile, modern lobby a marked difference from the dungeon-like building the morgue had formerly occupied, and I presented her with her coffee.

  "Mmm… You remembered." She blew steam off the top of the cup and took a sip. "Good to see you, Dent." She looked at me over the top of her coffee cup.

  "Good to see you too, Alex."

  I could never tell if the sexual tension I felt between me and Alex was mutual or all in my head. I was pretty good at getting into the heads of murderers, dope addicts, people like that. But women were a mystery to me.

  "Meet Mandy Williams, my new partner."

  They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. Women had a way of sizing each other up that was different than men, but it was still interesting to watch.

  "Let me throw on some scrubs and I'll be back in a minute." She vanished into the depths of the office. I hung my raincoat over a chair to let it dry and shook some kinks out of my back.

  "So how well do you know her?" Mandy said. She had a slight smile on her face that I wasn't used to.

  "What? Why?"

  "You might want to make sure she and Audrey never meet, that's all I'm saying."

  "What makes you say that?" I felt myself growing red.

  "I can just tell. That's all."

  Personal lives rarely came up between me and Mandy. She was pretty tight-lipped. Rumor had it around the department that she was gay, but that rumor usually got started about any female officer that didn't look like a Barbie doll or wasn't sleeping with one of the male officers. It was scary sometimes, how much the police department reminded me of high school.

  Alex came back in, wearing a pair of blue scrubs. I noticed that they matched her eyes. Stop it, I told myself. Her hair was bound up and tucked down the back of her shirt.

  She led us through a set of doors marked "Staff Only" and down a long corridor. At the end was a pair of heavy double doors.

  She took a quick detour off to the right into a small office. We followed and she waved us into a pair of seats on the other side of the desk.

  She turned on the computer and called up the report Fairbairn had already completed.

  "Ok, let me get up to speed," Alex said. She read and sipped her coffee for a few minutes. I looked around the office. It had very little of a personal nature. Diplomas, professional books, case files, a few generic art prints. There were only two personal touches that I could see: one was a bokken, a wooden Japanese practice sword; the other the picture on the computer desktop. It showed her on a mountain peak, probably Mount Hood, judging by the background, dressed in mountaineering gear. I wondered who had taken the photo. A boyfriend maybe? Stop it.

  Alex finished her coffee in one last gulp. She stood up and closed the folder. "Let's get you guys some gowns and get started."

  We followed her into another room, right outside the double doors. One improvement over the old morgue was that this place didn't stink. At the old morgue, the smell of rot had soaked into the walls. It had been built around the turn of the last century and no amount of updating or new equipment could get the funk out of the walls. At any given time, a sizable portion of the staff had some kind of head cold or raging sinus infection. Nobody had ever caught anything fatal, but the health of the staff had been a major motivator behind finding the money for the new building.

  Alex handed us gowns, caps and masks. She rooted through a storage cabinet and pulled out booties that went over our shoes. I gowned up, helped Mandy with tying her mask. She helped me with mine. Mandy looked a little grim.

  We followed her through the double doors. Everything was brightly lit and polished stainless steel. Overhead fans constantly sucked air upward and out of the room.

  Alex donned a pair of gloves, then wheeled a gurney over to a locker in the wall. She pulled the bag out and onto the gurney, pushed it over to the table. I helped her lift the body bag over to the table. We unzipped it and maneuvered the girl out.
She looked very small on the table.

  Alex walked over to a bank of switches on the wall and pointed to a circle taped on the floor. "Anything inside the circle will be picked up on the microphone, ok?" Mandy and I nodded. Alex flipped the switch and a red light next to the word "record" came on. Pathologists used voice recorders during their work. It was difficult to keep notes with gloved, bloody hands. The recording would become part of the legal record and could be played in court, so you wanted to be careful what you said.

  Alex gave the time and date, then narrated a brief description of the girl’s height, weight, and other physical identifiers. She motioned for me to help and we rolled her over on her stomach. The left side of the girl's body was blotchy and bruised looking from the post mortem lividity. The right side was pale white.

  "Hands are bound behind the back with handcuffs, Smith and Wesson brand, both shackles are double locked. Handcuffs are removed at this time with a key provided by law enforcement officers in attendance." I pulled off a glove, dug awkwardly under my gown until I came up with a key and dropped it in Alex's hand. I hurried to put a fresh glove on and stuck out an index finger. Alex hooked the cuffs over the finger. The polished metal surface of the cuffs was a prime candidate for prints so I didn't want to touch the outside edges. Mandy was ready with an evidence baggie. I dropped the cuffs inside with a wish that they would show something worthwhile.

  Working quickly but carefully, Alex removed the body’s outer clothes.

  I looked over each piece as we took it. The boots were in rough shape, the leather cracked and gouged, the heels worn down. The pants and shirt were dirty and torn. The dirt was ground in. These clothes hadn’t been washed in a long time. All this suggested to me that the girl had been out on the streets for a while.

  Socks and a black t-shirt were next. Both were full of holes and dirty. I would have thrown the socks away if they had been mine. They couldn't have been doing her feet any good.

  I turned back to where Alex was working on the body. The girl was almost totally undressed, except for her underwear. They were a surprise. They were a matched set, deep blue, all lacy and fancy.