Chaos

CHAPTER 17

THEY’RE EASY TO DISCERN when you’re accustomed to looking for disturbances in soil or foliage. It’s second nature for me to scan for anything that might suggest an area was trampled on and disturbed either accidentally or deliberately.

The drag marks indicate the body was moved but not much, and that’s another oddity to add to a list of them. Her upper body is in the grass. Her hips and legs are on the path, and I can see the displacement of the gritty surface that begins inches from the backs of her low-cut socks. What immediately comes to mind is at least one person began pulling her and either was interrupted or stopped for some other reason. And I wonder what happened to her shoes.

Her shoes like her shirt seem to be missing, assuming she was wearing them prior to her death. Maybe they’re out here somewhere, I decide. There may be quite a lot of things we find once we have proper lighting, and I envision the cyclist in the blue helmet again.

I remember her sneakers. I’ve been hoping the dead woman isn’t wearing Converse. I can’t be sure since something has happened to her shoes. She’s not wearing a blue paisley bandanna or gold necklace like the cyclist was. But something could have happened to those too, and it’s an act of will not to take a close look right now, to stride right up and satisfy an unbearable curiosity mixed with dread.

I could get inches from her. I could shine my flashlight on her face to see if it’s the woman with the British accent. And if both of them are Elisa Vandersteel. But I know better. I need to work my way to the body one little piece at a time, patiently, carefully. Pretending I don’t know what might be up ahead in the dark. Pretending not to care. I’m not supposed to have feelings or reactions about anyone I take care of or investigate but of course I do.

I glance back at the distant racket of Harold and Rusty unloading the trolleys and unzipping the big black vinyl bags. I hear the low murmur of the two of them talking.

“Do you mind?” I trade my small tactical light for Marino’s big one.

I crouch down in the middle of the path, looking all around, making sure I don’t compromise or interfere with whatever might be out here. The turbo six-thousand-lumen light is made of metal and weighs several pounds. It has a wide lens with six LEDs, and the brilliant beam paints over the path, igniting hard-packed sandy minerals like quartz and silica.

They sparkle like something alive wherever the light touches, and bits and slivers of broken glass flicker and flare when I illuminate the area around and under the bicycle. I do this slowly, thoughtfully, and I pay attention. Once a scene has been entered and intruded upon, there’s no going back. There’s no undoing it, and when possible I take all the time I need no matter how much it might irritate everyone else. I point the light past the bike, another ten feet to the body.

I can see more clearly where her heels dragged through the loose surface as she was pulled a short distance; at most eight inches, it looks like from here. I can only suppose this must be what Investigator Barclay misinterpreted as evidence of a struggle. She has on grayish-looking footie-type socks similar to what the cyclist had on but I won’t be able to tell until I get closer.

“I’m not sure what’s happened out here but I’m not liking it,” I say to Marino. “Something’s very off about this. It’s as if her bike went down right here where the lamp’s access pane is open, the bulbs shattered and glass everywhere. Yet her body’s over there? And I doubt she rode a bike in her socks. I need to get closer. If you don’t mind hanging back for a minute, and keep taking pictures.” I get up from my crouched position.

I make scraping sounds as I move about in my ill-fitting jerry-rigged shoe covers. I direct the beam along the path, following it to the body, and from several feet away I see the long brown hair is in disarray. I see her attractive young face with its turned-up nose and delicate chin, her pale skin, the dirt on her parted lips, and her eyes staring dully through barely open lids. The sunglasses she had on earlier are missing, assuming the dead woman and the cyclist I met are one and the same.

I’m increasingly convinced they could be, and that’s thinking of it conservatively. That’s not including what my gut is telling me. In the intense light I can see that the shorts are light blue, and there are pinstripes in the socks. Soaked into the grass under her neck is blood. From where I am I don’t see a lot of it, and I don’t notice bruises, lacerations or other injuries to her face. Only dirt and vegetable debris, as if she took a tumble.

But the position of her arms is telling. They’re over her head, wide-spread and palm up, and that corroborates my growing conviction that she was pulled by her wrists. It never ceases to amaze me what people don’t think about in the uproar of the moment. It would have been simple to brush away the drag marks and position the body, making it not quite so obvious what was done after the fact. I glance at the twins again, and their faces are riveted to me. I have a bad feeling they’re lying.

They claim they didn’t get near the body, no closer than three feet, according to Barclay. But somebody did. It may have been more than one person. There may have been two people of similar strength and each one of them pulled the dead woman by an arm, then stopped. I wonder again about the helmet some twenty feet away, upside down in the grass like a beached turtle. Did someone toss it there? What happened to her shoes and shirt? What about sunglasses, a necklace, a bandanna? If she had them, where are they?

I paint the light over the bicycle as I slowly make my way around it. I look for damage to the tires, the white frame with blue accents and a racing stripe, and the gel seat. I don’t notice dents or scrapes. But the black plastic phone holder clamped to the flat handlebars is empty. The clamp that would have held a phone in place has been released. There’s no phone in sight, and I get that feeling again, only more strongly. It comes back as a pang in my stomach accompanied by a sinking sensation, and I take a deep, slow breath.

I try to control my thoughts about the woman I encountered twice today as I brace myself for an inevitability that’s crashing over me like a tidal wave. The bike’s definitely familiar. I didn’t have a reason to study in detail what she was riding but I’m certain there were blue markings on a light-colored or white frame. I remember noticing the blue was the same shade of robin’s-egg blue as the helmet she had on, and my light picks it up again in the grass near a Japanese maple tree.

“That’s just weird,” I say to Marino, and I envision the face of Elisa Vandersteel in the ID I just looked at. “The helmet’s some twenty feet from the body. Why?” I ask.

“It could have happened when she resisted, maybe tried to run from whoever grabbed her,” he proposes, but so far I’m not seeing evidence that she fought anyone or ran anywhere.

“Or did the sisters toss it there, and if so why?” I reply. “And it would seem unlikely that they would remove the victim’s shirt, but where is it? Where are her shoes?”

I don’t mention the phone, bandanna, the necklace or the sunglasses, because I wouldn’t know about them if I’d never seen the woman before. I’m not ready to introduce the subject to Marino. If it’s even remotely possible I’m mistaken about having met the victim earlier, it could launch him in the wrong direction. It could hurt the case in court. I shine the light and comment that the area around the bicycle and the body aren’t very disturbed except for the drag marks.

“I see nothing so far including blood that might indicate there was a pursuit or a struggle,” I’m explaining. “But what I do see isn’t making sense as I continue to point out. It’s chaotic.”

Then my light flicks past what looks like two shiny threads curled on the path inches from each other.

THE SEGMENTS ARE SIX or seven inches long, and I realize what we’ve found is a delicate gold chain that’s been forcibly broken into pieces.

“Possibly part of a necklace,” I say to Marino as I look back at the overturned bicycle.

It’s close by, several yards behind us, and I scan the path around the broken chain, looking for any sign of a confrontation, a struggle. But the tan unpaved surface is smooth and undisturbed as if nothing dramatic happened here.

“A necklace someone ripped off, and it doesn’t look like it’s been out here long.” Marino sets down another tiny evidence marker, a blue cone with the number 7. “I wonder if something was on it, a locket, a cross or whatever that might have looked valuable. Or maybe it was taken as a souvenir.”

“Possibly,” I reply, and I sweep the area around the pieces of the chain, looking for a pendant, ring, lucky charm, anything at all that might have been part of a necklace.

A skull, for example, like the cyclist had on. It was hard to miss when we met at the box office and then again on the sidewalk. I noticed a necklace with a gold skull, a cartoonish whimsical one. I remember she flipped it around to her back as she pedaled off, making sure the dangling chunk of metal was out of her way and didn’t hit her in the teeth as she rode, I can only suppose.

As I walk through the grass I don’t see her shirt, and I remember it was a beige tank top, a Sara Bareilles tour souvenir from several years earlier, I’m pretty sure. I see nothing like that. But I finally find her sneakers scattered, one here, the other way over there, off-white Converse, the laces still tied in bows as if she literally were scared out of her shoes.

I may not be sure of her name but I have little doubt that she’s the cyclist I saw earlier at the theater and then in front of the Faculty Club, and I keep myself in check. I can’t react to it. I can’t give any indication I have a personal reaction to anything I’m doing out here. And I make a decision as we set down cones, making notes and taking photographs. It’s time to give Marino a heads-up.

“I can’t prove this,” I say to him, “and I’m not sure it matters. But I may have seen her earlier tonight.”

“You’re shitting me.” He stops walking and stares at me as if I have five heads.

I briefly explain it to him, starting with my encounter at the American Repertory Theater, and then later in front of the Faculty Club.

“Benton and I both met her on the sidewalk,” I add. “And this would have been about six forty-five as the sun was setting. But it wasn’t dark yet.”

“If that’s who it is then she couldn’t have been dead very long when the girls found her,” he says. “We got the nine-one-one call at about seven thirty.”

“Which is why what Barclay said is illogical,” I answer. “If she’d been dead less than an hour when he checked for a pulse, she shouldn’t have been in full rigor or even an easily discernible stage of it.”

I glance back at the twin sisters, and their attention is all over the place as Barclay talks to them. I’m reminded that they aren’t as comfortable with him as they were with Marino, and it’s obvious. Since he was with them they’ve turned into a matching pair of frightened bookends, weary and wild-eyed.

I catch Barclay saying something to them about their mother. He’s asking about her in a way that makes me suspect he was asking earlier. They shake their heads, and if there’s a father in the family mix, I’ve yet to hear a mention.

“She usually asleep this early… at eight thirty?” Barclay says.

“It depends.”

“Sometimes.”

“When she doesn’t feel good.”

“Maybe that’s why she’s not answering the phone…?” he asks, and I can’t tell which girl is responding to him.

“No,” one of them says. “Don’t wake her up if she’s asleep. She won’t like that.”

“When she doesn’t feel good she doesn’t like it,” the other echoes, and I sense they’re accustomed to taking care of their mother.

I can catch only snippets of the conversation but it’s enough to indicate trouble. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Mom is divorced, and the reason she’s not answering the phone is because she’s drunk. She probably hasn’t a clue that her daughters haven’t returned home, and I hope I’m wrong. I unlock my phone and I send a text to Harold:

Heading your way.

I say to Marino, “I think we’ve seen enough for now. Let me make sure Rusty and Harold are on the same page with us about how to set up. I’ll be right back. Then we can suit up and hopefully get the lights turned on in a few minutes.”

Marino stares in the direction of crime-scene tape in the woods, about the length of a football field from where Rusty and Harold are waiting. Then he looks at the twins some fifty feet ahead to the left, at the outer edge of the grassy clearing, close to trees. Their eyes dart around restlessly as Barclay continues saying things I can’t hear.

“I’m going to wander over and talk to them,” Marino lets me know.

“I’ll meet you there.” I look at the twins looking at us. “It would be very helpful if they told me in their own words what they might have done out here. That’s what I’d like to find out before anything else if you have no objections.”

“Yeah,” Marino says. “I think we already know there’s something they’re hiding. Like why the dead lady was dragged, and why her shit’s everywhere or missing.”