Missing: The Body of Evidence

By Declan Conner

This book is a work of fiction. Characters,
names, places, and incidents, either, are products of the author’s imagination,
or they are used fictitiously. Any reference to actual locales, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any
electronic, or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, to include, but not exclusive to audio or visual recordings of any
description without permission from the copyright owner.

Missing: The Body of Evidence

Copyright © 2012 Declan Conner

UK English edition.

For information on subsidiary rights, email in the first instance.

[email protected]

Robbery
Homicide Detective Nancy Roberts looked at the strange scene before her. In her
fifteen years on the force at LAPD, it was like nothing she had ever
encountered. An acrid smell of toxic fumes lingered in the apartment living
room; irritated the back of her throat and her stomach churned. She retched,
short of vomiting, bent over and coughed from the depths of her soul. The fire
investigator tapped her on the shoulder, and offered her a paper facemask to
breathe through, but she declined his offer with a wave of the hand. She turned
and headed for the exit. Thoughts that she had inhaled the very essence of
someone’s death hung heavily in her mind.

The echoing
sound of her heels clip-clopped on the ceramic steps as she hurried down the
stairway to the outside of the apartment block, leaving a bemused fire
investigator and the Crime Scene Investigation team to carry on with their
work.

Under the entrance canopy, sheltered from
the drizzling rain, Nancy sucked in lungs full of sweet-tasting moist air. A
pain stabbed the left side of her chest; she grimaced and unfastened the single
button of her black trouser-suit jacket. Her 9 mil Glock pistol dug into her
breast; she adjusted the shoulder holster and refastened her jacket.
Bet the
guys don’t have this problem.
A smaller, more lightweight calibre would
have been preferable to the standard issue firearm, but then, she thought, it
would seem like a sign of weakness to colleagues and felons alike if she was
packing anything less. A shudder ran through her body at the notion that she
had succumbed to the fumes and shown frailty in her strength of character in
front of the investigation team.

A rueful sigh escaped her lips. Nancy
removed her protective paper cap and booties and stuffed them in her pocket. A
flick of her shoulder-length black hair, followed by a few teases at her fringe
with her fingers, soon had her feeling comfortable. A glance at her reflection
on the glass doorway confirmed that she appeared to have some semblance of
normality. An approaching vehicle caught her attention and she turned around.
Coroner’s
body-snatcher van
.

The rain stopped and she looked up at the
sky. The sun rising on the horizon seemed to be winning the battle for
supremacy of the new day. Its rays penetrated chinks in the dark-clouds, which
threw a few final salvos of lightning and grumbled in the distance as they
started to disperse in retreat. Hope lingered in the recess of her mind that
the change in the weather was an omen as to how her day would progress.

With her six-month probationary period
over, she wasn’t sure why Logan, her boss, had given her the case on her first
day as a full member of the team, when she knew there were plenty of unsolved
murders on the board. ‘Just go and see how CSI handles an investigation,’ he
had said. ‘And don’t go snooping...watch, listen and learn. Tracy Gibbons is
the investigator in charge.’ At this stage, no one could tell if it was
actually a homicide, accident, suicide, or... well... sort of something else.

Gibbons had given Nancy the task of
overseeing the uniformed officers as they took statements and secured a
boundary. With the danger over, and after the all clear given by the fire
department crew, the residents had returned to their apartments. Nancy could
not believe how some of them had argued about vacating their homes.

The coroner’s office’s blue striped white
van pulled up outside the apartments. Two people exited and pulled a gurney
from the back of the van.

‘John Carter, Coroner’s office. Where’s the
body?’

Although pleased to get a handle on his
name, where they were from was self-evident with ‘Coroner’s Dept.’ emblazoned
on their van and baseball caps.

‘Body?’

‘Yeah, as in dead corpse... duh.’

Nancy wondered if Carter, the coroner’s body-bag
guy, who stood at six foot, felt empowered with those extra six-inches of
height he had over her.

‘You won’t need the gurney for this one.
CSI has probably bagged it in a sandwich bag.’

The two coroner guys looked at each other
and back at Nancy.

‘What’s left?’ one of them asked.

‘See for yourself, follow me.’

The fire investigator met them at the
doorway to the apartment, where a uniformed police officer stood to one side,
guarding the entrance.

‘Damndest thing I ever did see,’ said the
fire investigator.

‘Any ideas?’ Nancy asked.

‘No accelerant, no faulty wiring, not even
an ashtray to show he smoked and no sign of a forced entry... beats me. I ain’t
seen nothing like it in thirty years on my watch, where a fire is confined to a
body in such a closed space.’ He hustled past them, mumbling.

They all donned booties, gossamer-gloves
and made their way through a small hallway into the living room.

‘There’s your body... duh,’ said Nancy.

Her lips pursed and she stabbed a look at
Carter.

‘You’ve got to be kidding. Is that it?’

‘Afraid so, one boot, containing one foot.’

A smirk developed on her face, directed at
Carter, and she felt good that she had jabbed one back at him.

‘Found anything, Tracy?’ she asked the CSI
team leader, who was busy snapping photographs.

‘Not sure, but you guys can go, I’ll need
to extract the foot from the Doc Marten back at the lab,’ she said, glancing at
the guys from the Coroner’s office. ‘I’ll get the foot to your people, and
report my findings.’ She carried on photographing the boot from different
angles. ‘Everything of interest that we can find is bagged up. We’ve taken
prints and checked out all the rooms with luminol under ultra violet for signs of
blood splatters, but none were found. The door was locked when the fire
department turned up. The janitor had to use his master key to let them in and
there is no sign of forced entry through the windows. We found the keys for the
apartment in the ashes, so he must have had them on his person. His wallet was
on the coffee table with a stack of different denomination bills and a business
card, but no credit cards or driver’s license. We’re going to bag the wallet if
you want to take a look first.’

‘His?’

Nancy walked over to the table, took out a
notebook and pen from her purse, flicked open the wallet with the ballpoint and
teased out a business card. She noted all the details and slipped the card back
into the sleeve.

Gibbons stopped photographing, threw Nancy
a stare and scoffed. ‘His’... excuse me... Doc Marten boots, or should I say
boot... size, twelve and a half. The shoes in his closet are all the same size
as the boot. However, you’re right, we can’t say for sure. Everything points to
it being Professor Tom Reynolds, who owns the apartment.’

‘Yeah, I saw the name on the business card.’

Nancy thought she detected a terse attitude
in the way Gibbons addressed her, but she ignored her and carried on scanning
the scene.

Something didn’t feel right about the look
of the room. It was furnished in a functional manner, devoid of memorabilia.
There were no photographs or ornaments, not even a book, or a newspaper.

‘Don’t know why they sent you along; we
can’t really say if it comes under the jurisdiction of robbery and homicide,’
Gibbons said.

Me, neither.
Nancy shuffled away from the table and replaced her notebook and ballpoint in
her shoulder purse.

‘So are you saying it’s more likely to be
suicide, or an accident and he set himself on fire?’

‘I’m not saying anything unless you can
find a python under the bed and it showed signs that it devoured him. Got to
say though, spontaneous combustion comes to mind.’

‘What the hell’s that?’

‘It’s a difficult subject, I only read
about a few cases in books when I was studying at college. There have been rare
cases recorded where bodies have just ignited spontaneously, but no one can say
for sure what causes it, or the science behind it. I’d need to read up on it to
answer properly. But really, we can’t rule anything in or out until all the
tests are finished. Someone could have murdered him elsewhere, brought the foot
here and set fire to his chair. The debris could be just ashes from the chair
and a pile of his clothing.’

‘So, it would have to be someone who gained
access to his key to make a copy, or someone he knew and he gave a key to?’

‘Like I said, it could be anything. No
point worrying your pretty little head unless we come up with something.’

Nancy wanted to kick her ample behind for
that last remark, but she took a deep sour-tasting breath instead, and put her
touchy remark down to the early hour and broken sleep. Gibbons used some
oversized tweezers to manoeuvre the boot with the foot into a paper bag. She
looked on as Gibbons stowed her camera in her aluminium box of tricks, picked
up the rest of her sample bags, and headed for the exit with the rest of her
team.

‘That’s it, it’s all yours,’ said Gibbons,
as she reached the door. ‘I’ll let you know when the case meeting is to be
held. Don’t forget to have someone make the entrance secure. I’ve left some
crime scene tape on the table. My boss will be in touch if needed.’ She paused
and struck a pose for effect. ‘Incidentally, if you re-enter one of my crime
scenes again, at least tie your hair back and wear a paper hat.’

Nancy’s cheeks flamed, with the heat making
her think she was having her own mini-spontaneous combustion. Gibbons shook her
head as she walked out and Nancy heard her banter with her assistant in the
hallway. ‘Size twelve and a half Doc Marten...bah... ‘His.’ Some detective
she’ll make.’

Nancy wondered what it was with everyone,
thinking Gibbons verbal-jab unprofessional and bordering on childish. It wasn’t
as if she was a Rookie now that she had finished her probationary period. She
took one last look around the scene.

The victim had been sitting in an armchair,
which in turn sat on a ceramic tiled floor. All that remained was the blackened
chrome frame of the chair and the rest was just a pile of ash, intermingled
with the spray from a fire extinguisher. The ceiling immediately above the
position of the armchair had a stain with the appearance of
thick-black-yellowish grease.
Thank God the fire didn’t spread to the other
apartments
. Smoke residue from the fire thinned out over the rest of the ceiling
and ran down the walls. A thin film from smoke damage covered what little there
was in the way of furnishings. Nothing else had caught fire; apart from the
smoke alarm on the ceiling that had melted. The cover was missing and there was
no battery. She dropped her gaze.

Head bowed, Nancy retreated inwardly,
considering all that she had seen and heard. A cold blast surged in a wave
through her body and she shivered. Nancy shrugged her shoulders at the feeling,
as if a ghost had passed through her, and she stepped out of the room. She
scoffed at the thought.
Spontaneous combustion? No Way.