Evidence of Murder (7 page)

“Her throat’s clear. I don’t see any of the foaming you usually get with an OD.”

Jesse offered his opinion. “She froze to death.”

Theresa peered down the throat as well. “That would take a long time. It wasn’t
that
cold out.”

“Just long enough to screw up my day. If she’d been here this morning, I’d be going home by now.”

Theresa had often proposed a law restricting all crimes to only daylight hours to keep from being dragged from bed, and didn’t blame him. “It sucks to be you.”

“Not as bad as it sucks to be this chick today,” Christine said, clicking off the flashlight with a brisk snap, similar to the way she discouraged potential suitors. The young, black, brilliant pathologist was too interested in studying for her board exams to be distracted by romance. “It seems we have a rash of people freezing to death in the woods all of a sudden.”

Theresa said, “Not really. We have a thirty-year-old, half-clothed, throttled prostitute, a warmly dressed fifteen-year-old boy with a single blow to the head, and now a lightly but fully dressed twenty-four-year-old mother dead of—what?”

“Good question. I’ll let you know what I find.”

Theresa relinquished control of the body and went next door to the old teaching amphitheater which, by virtue of its size, availability, and the fact that it had a table in the middle, doubled as the trace evidence department’s examination room. She covered the table with fresh brown paper and spread out the aqua sweatshirt, noting its size, color, and brand. It smelled faintly of perfume, a light and undoubtedly expensive floral scent. Would a woman intending suicide wear perfume? Sure, why not? No need to save the good stuff for a special occasion, as Theresa did. She still had perfume from high school.

Aside from a little dirt and some dead leaves, almost certainly picked up when they rolled the body, the shirt was clean. Theresa turned it inside out—more of the same, except for a smear above the right cuff, on the inside of the forearm. It could have been a minuscule amount of oil. Perhaps Jillian had had something in her hand when she pulled the shirt on? But the victim’s hands were clean, and no spots appeared on the shirt’s waistband, where she would have had to tug downward.

The pink polo shirt under the sweatshirt had become discolored from the seepage of the decomposing tissues. Theresa hung it on a wheeled rack; when it dried she could tape its surface to pick up any loose hairs or fibers. Odd that it hadn’t been tucked into the jeans underneath the sweatshirt, which would have kept her warmer, but perhaps the victim had dressed in a hurry, or it had something to do with the current fashion.

The jeans were a designer brand, size four, making Theresa think there might be something to the rumor that clothing manufacturers had downgraded all women’s clothing sizes to make customers feel better about their bodies, and, by extension, better about parting with the cash to clothe them. Jillian seemed slender, but by no means undernourished for her height. A close look at the back pockets yielded a tiny dusting of white powder, which Theresa dutifully scraped into a paper fold to be tested for the presence of cocaine. The left front pocket contained some lint. The right front pocket held a single stud earring—a small cubic zirconium, as near as Theresa could figure—and a phone number with a Cleveland exchange scribbled on a piece of paper.

Don Delgado poked his head in. “What’s that?”

“This is what we, in law enforcement circles, call a clue.”

He dropped his six foot three frame into an amphitheater seat too small for him and ran two hands over his shiny olive skin. “Clue to what?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe to whoever left Jillian Perry to freeze to death at the base of an oak tree.”

“I thought she did that herself.”

“She probably did. I’m just not so sure.”

“Why not?”

She did not own up to any guilt over her first harsh assessment of Jillian Perry; Theresa’s ex-husband had taught her the folly of exposing any personal weakness. So she told Don merely this: “I have a hunch.”

“You don’t get hunches.”

“I thought I’d start. It will help me keep up with all those TV detectives.”

“You’ll have to start wearing high heels and low-cut sweaters too.”

“Forget it.”

“That’s a pity. You’d look good in them.” He clasped his hands behind his head and watched her work. He did not offer to help, no more than she would have offered to help him. The lab tried to maintain one forensic scientist per case—it cut down on staff time spent in court when the defendant came to trial.

Jillian had worn white Keds with socks. Not the sort of thing Theresa would have picked to walk three miles in, especially in very cold weather. The treads seemed clean for having traveled through the woods, but then it had been much colder on Monday than today and even mud or slush would have been frozen to an icy solid. “Are you hiding from Leo?”

“Yep. He has to meet with the companies bidding to handle the move to the new building, doesn’t want to leave his office or the coffee machine, and is looking for a handy substitute.”

“That doesn’t sound that bad, really. At least you could get away from test tubes for a while.”

“I like DNA. It don’t talk, just stays in its little incubator and multiplies. Besides, he wants you to take the moving companies—least you could do after bailing on that defense expert. He wants
me
to search the deep freeze for a piece of bone from a 1994 case.”

Theresa cringed. The deep freeze, a walk-in subzero room used for long-term storage, smelled bad enough to sicken strong men, and anything placed there before she was hired could not be located without hours of work. Organization, like supervision, had never been Leo’s strong point. She turned on the alternative light source and a blue beam of light at 420 nanometers flowed out of the flexible head. She donned a pair of orange plastic goggles and said, “Hit the light switch, would you?”

Jillian’s underwear did not glow, indicating an absence of semen. One errant fiber lit up on the sweatshirt, but the taping had removed most of them. The embroidered words stood out as the optical properties of the threads reacted with the ultraviolet light. Then Theresa turned it over.

She heard Don approaching in the darkness. “What’s that?”

The smudge on the right cuff glowed brightly under the light. “I think that’s the smear of oil I saw. Why the heck is it glowing?”

“It’s not just glowing. It’s signaling the mother ship.”

She marked the area with a Sharpie in case it became difficult to see in regular light. “Sounds like a job for the FTIR, Robin.”

“Don’t call me Robin. You can be Batgirl if you want, but I ain’t going to be Robin. Stupidest name for a superhero ever.”

A knock sounded at the door. The building’s receptionist, an older woman with the physique of a wren but not the sweet voice, cracked it open, turned on the lights, and gave them both a suspicious look, as if wondering just what the two had been up to in the pitch black. “That suicide you just brought in, name of Perry?”

“Yeah?” Theresa asked.

“There’s a guy here wanting to claim the body, and giving me the impression he’s going to stage a sit-down strike until he gets it.”

“He’s working fast. She’s still on the table. Has he made an arrangement with a funeral home yet?”

“No, and I doubt he’ll be able to. He’s not next of kin.”

“Is his name Evan Kovacic?”

The receptionist wrung her hands, though from daily contact Theresa knew that this action came as naturally to the woman as blinking. “No, Drew something. He told me he’s not the husband, but he wants the body, which of course he can’t have, but every time I tell him that, he asks more questions about her death, which of course I wouldn’t answer even if I could. Can you talk to him?”

“Me? I can’t tell him anything either. The autopsy isn’t even—”

“But the phones are ringing off their hooks and this guy just stands there, sniffling, half giving me the creeps, if you know what I mean. I need some help up there. I’ve got too much to do.” She cocked her head as if she could hear the switchboard buzzing, though of course she couldn’t, not without some sort of psychic ability.

“But I—”
avoid grieving people
, Theresa wanted to say. Though she wondered if the man could shed some light on why Jillian would have left her daughter and sat down in the middle of a frozen forest. She’d feel more comfortable with a finding of suicide if there were some history to back it up.

“Please?” the receptionist added, then piled on more hand-wringing until Theresa relented.

“Good luck,” Don said. “I’m going to stay here and hide some more.”

Theresa folded the jeans over their hanger and shoved the whole clothes rack into the storage room, locking the door. The receptionist waited, bobbing her head in gratitude, and then led the way back to the front lobby. Theresa had to trot to keep up.

The man waiting there could have used another ten pounds and a J. Crew catalog. And a box of Kleenex. Straight brown hair hung past his shoulders. He paced the worn linoleum with fists plunged into the pockets of a jersey jacket, the outline of each finger visible beneath the taut cloth.

“Mr.—?” Theresa prompted.

“Drew Fleming. I’m here to claim Jillian’s body.” He made no move to shake hands and neither did she.

“Jillian’s not ready to be released yet.” She did not tell him that Jillian currently lay on a table in the autopsy suite with her torso flayed open for all to see. “If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Fleming, are you here on behalf of Evan Kovacic?”

“I wouldn’t cross the street on behalf of Evan Kovacic.” The man shifted from side to side and had difficulty meeting her eyes for more than a glance. She would assume the influence of some drugs, but his words were clear and his pupils weren’t dilated or jumpy. He was not under the influence but crying, lightly and without pause.

“He
is
Jillian’s husband.”

“The guy she married, yeah, I know that.”

“Then I’m afraid—”

“Because I loved her! Not him! He never loved her. He probably won’t even claim her body.” His eyes welled up, making the blue irises even bluer, and a shudder ran through his body. “
I
loved her.”

Theresa considered him, balancing the discomfort of conversing with a distraught bereaved with a sudden and intense curiosity about the circumstances of Jillian Perry’s life, as well as her death. It was not Theresa’s job to talk to witnesses, but on the other hand, no rules prohibited same. “If you’d like to come upstairs, Mr. Fleming, there’s a conference room where we can talk.”

He followed her without a word.

Once they were settled in the central conference room, a musty-smelling area furnished in dingy 1950s decor, she asked, “How did you know Jillian was dead?”

“I think I’ve known for four days. Everyone said she was nowhere to be found—”

“Who’s everyone?”

“Her work, Evan—”

“You spoke to her husband?”

“Yeah. He’s in the apartment in the evenings, though I used his cell too.”

“He didn’t mind you calling?”

Drew Fleming seemed surprised by the question. “Why should he? She married him, not me. Anyway, no one knew where Jillian had gone and I knew she’d never just walk off and leave Cara. She was an excellent mother. Even if she’d had some kind of total freak-out and run away, she’d have told me.”

“But how did you find out that we’d found her body?” Theresa persisted.

“I checked in with Vangie at the agency, to see if they’d heard from Jillian, and she told me.”

“How did she know?”

“Evan called them.”

“He called Jillian’s boss? Ex-boss?” In the first few hours after learning his wife was dead? Most people would be too busy with family members and funeral arrangements. But then perhaps they didn’t have much family.

He snorted and gave a hopeless chuckle. “Yeah, but did he call
me
? No.”

Legal complications could no doubt ensue from questioning a witness without his lawyer or a reading of his rights, except that Theresa was not questioning a witness, she was gathering information about a victim’s history and possible state of mind. Therefore she asked without hesitation, “When did you last see Jillian?”

“Last Friday. I went to visit, she made lunch.”

“Was Evan there?”

“At work. Out in the barns, I guess.”

She left that for a moment, shuffling topics as she’d seen her cousin do. “How did Jillian seem that day?”

A burst of laughter floated up the hallway from the busy records department. Theresa’s stomach rumbled. Fleming seemed to be thinking back, and his eyes grew wet with each memory. “Fine. Cara had been spitting up a lot, Jillian worried about that, but she’d gained another pound and she had just had a checkup. Cara’s perfectly healthy, her doctor said so. She got a new pair of shoes—Jillian did—at DSW and she loved the color, but they rubbed on the back of her ankles, so she planned to take them back. She complained about not having any sunlight for so long, not that she gets that seasonal affective disorder or anything, but the gray skies get to everybody by this time of the year. Does it always smell like that in here?”

“Yes, it does. She didn’t seem upset or worried about anything in particular, then?”

“Just being married to Evan.”

“Why would that upset her?”

“Because he didn’t love her! He just wanted a piece of eye candy to show off to his clients and his friends, none of whom have matured past the age of thirteen. They play games all day, for Pete’s sake.”

“I wouldn’t think a woman with a newborn would be ideal eye candy.”

The man gave her a pitying look, as if sorry for anyone who could be that clueless. “Jillian would be eye candy if she had five newborns, if she were ninety, if she had leprosy.”

Theresa had seen Jillian’s picture, and felt he overstated the case. “You dated Jillian before she met Evan?”

His gaze dropped. His finger traced the fake wood grain on the table. “Not really, no. We were friends. We’ve been friends for four years, since we met at Tri-C.”

The local community college. His occasional lapse into the present tense when referring to Jillian didn’t surprise Theresa. Most people had trouble adjusting immediately after a death.