Murder 101 (9 page)

“I didn’t see any wagon outside. Has anyone from the coroner’s office been here?”

“Mike would know.” He pointed in the direction of an open door. “There’s where all the action is.” Kevin shook his head. “This must be one hell of a welcome for you.”

“Maybe it’s me, Kevin. I just bring sunshine and good cheer wherever I go.”

“ANGELINE MOREAU, TWENTY-TWO,
a student at Littleton.” Mike ran his hands through his hair and looked up. “That’s according to the school ID that we found in her desk. It’s kind of hard to make a definite ID because the face is distorted. We may need dental or DNA.”

Decker was looking at the surroundings as the captain spoke. It was a brutal scene. “Did you find a purse and a cell phone?”

“Nope . . . we looked. That immediately brings to mind a robbery, except that she had cash and jewelry in her desk. Maybe he was looking around when she surprised him by walking inside her apartment and all hell broke loose. He took her phone and her purse and made a beeline for the door.”

Decker nodded. “Do you know if the body has been moved?”

“I was here when the manager opened the door and I haven’t left except for a piss. Believe me, no one has touched her. Since it’s a homicide, I’m waiting for a city coroner with homicide experience, not the local doctor who certifies death.”

“Good idea.” Decker’s eyes were on the walls: blood spatter was everywhere. There was ripped bedding and upended furniture—a battle had taken place. “Has anyone started interviewing the neighbors to find out what they heard or saw?”

“I put Jack and Carol on it.”

“And?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Mike, look at this place. It’s a war zone. There had to be plenty of bumps and thumps. We got nosy neighbors in this town. Someone must have parted their blinds.”

“The problem is that the apartment is mostly student rented even though it’s off-campus. It’s a noisy environment—lots of parties with music blasting all the time.”

Decker was still dubious, but he kept it to himself. He didn’t know how the captain would react to being challenged. “This is a huge mess. Do we have tech people who know forensics?”

“We’re working on that as well.” Mike was troubled. “I want to do justice to this girl, Pete. No one wants this screwed up.”

“We all want the same thing.” Decker stared down at the heap that once was a human being. She was already deep in a state of decomposition. “How were you notified? Did someone complain about the smell?”

“Yep.”

“Who opened the windows?”

“I did. It must have been a hundred degrees inside when I got here.”

“Okay.” Decker paused. “Someone cranked up the heat to help the body rot. Did you happen to notice the exact temperature before you opened the windows? If you take into consideration the stage of decomposition and the temperature, it might give us an idea of when she was murdered.”

Mike looked pained. “No, I didn’t. This is what I mean by screwing things up. Can I be frank with you?”

“Always.”

“I can work a homicide. Ben can work a homicide. Kevin can work a homicide. But none of us has done it in years. I’m thinking about calling in reinforcements.”

“Up to you.”

“But then I start thinking, this is my town. I don’t want hotshots walking all over us and telling me how to handle my people. You, on the other hand, are fresh from the trenches. So if you’re up to leading, I think we should give it a go. What do you think?”

“If this were LAPD, I’d say no problem. I could do the whole thing solo. But I am new here . . . neighbors don’t know me well . . . and we’re not exactly high tech.” Decker shrugged. “Give me twenty-four to forty-eight hours to feel everything out and I’ll let you know.”

“Fair enough.”

“Right now, we need a police photographer.”

“Jenny photographed every inch of the body that we can see. Like I said, we haven’t moved her.”

“Just make sure that we have doubles and triples of everything and from every angle. It might help us down the line. How long do you think it’ll be before someone from the coroner’s office gets here, Mike?”

“No idea. We’re in New York so it should be them. But we’re closer to Boston. I called both cities. Let’s see who shows up. And I also called CSI and Forensics. If you can think of anything else, I’m listening. Want me to close the windows?”

“No. Keep them open. It’ll slow down the decay.” Decker thought a moment. “She was a student at Littleton—that’s the fine arts college, right?”

“Yes, it is: arts, theater, and acting. You’re thinking about a connection to the cemetery theft?”

“Someone was making phony stained glass. Even if it has nothing to do with the theft, we need to get a team out there to start questioning friends, teachers . . . her classmates. Find out more about who Angeline Moreau was.”

Mike raised an eyebrow. “This is going to be an issue, Pete. It’s not that I don’t have faith in my staff. I think we’ve got a great bunch of guys and gals here. And if this was a homicide that had to do with a bar fight or a domestic or even burglary, I’d feel good about assigning any one of our people.

“Problem is, handling the colleges is a delicate situation. We need a seasoned guy. I know you can’t be two places at once, but I can supervise the techs once they get here. I can talk to the coroner. Maybe you should do the interviewing.”

“That’s fine. Just give me a few minutes to think. Do you have a tablet?”

“You mean like an iPad? Not on me, but I suppose I can authorize the money.”

“I was thinking low tech: a notebook and something I can write with.”

Mike smiled and handed him his pad and a pencil. Decker took it and squatted next to the body.

Angeline Moreau was fully clothed and wasn’t positioned sexually: Her pants hadn’t been pulled off and although her top had flipped up, Decker could see that her bra was clasped. There was nothing to suggest sexual assault, but a rape kit would be ordered anyway. Sometimes the killer orders the victim to put her clothing back on. Or maybe she had recent, consensual sex and that could be a lead.

Since it was wintertime and the windows had been closed tight, there was no insect activity. No flies, no maggots, and no way to date the body using the critters. The flesh hadn’t been eaten up by external factors, but the body gases were exploding from the inside out. She had a bloated, eggplant-colored face that was shedding skin. Eyeballs had sunk into her sockets. Because of the swelling, it was hard to decipher things like ligature marks and bruises. Even things like knife wounds close up with the swelling. But Decker could discern dried blood that had leaked from the nose and a split lip. As he examined the face further, he noticed dark spots that could have been bruises.

“Looks like she might have been punched hard in the face.” Decker stood up. He ripped out a few blank papers of the tablet and started scribbling. “This is your department and your call. But this is what I’d suggest.”

“Please.”

“First of all, Stacy is freezing out there. Rotate a couple of people every two hours outside so no one gets frostbite. Second, let’s cordon off the area. If you don’t have crime tape, have someone get some traffic cones and we’ll tie string around them. We need to keep whatever we have left intact. Third, get everyone out of the apartment except a few of your select chosen. Put all the rest on canvass duty. Assign them to talk to every single neighbor within a couple of blocks. If this is mostly a student apartment, the kids aren’t going to feel loyal to Greenbury so we may hit a wall of silence. There’s a dead girl here and we need to push. I’m not saying we run roughshod over the kids, but we need them to know that we’re not going to go away. So if they know something, they’d better come forward now. No one wants to feel idiotic. Last . . .”

He sighed and shook his head.

“We’ve got to do a notification. It’s the proper thing to do, and maybe talking to her relatives will give us a direction.”

Mike nodded. “I’m sure the school has the name of her parents.”

“I know you didn’t find a cell phone. Did you find bills in her desk?”

Mike walked over to the desk drawer and pulled it open with a gloved hand. Inside was a massive pile of paperwork. “Be my guest.”

Decker gloved up and took out the stack. He found what he was looking for and held it up. “Her phone bill from last month . . .” Scanning down the list. “You know, let me go to the station house and I’ll start calling some of these numbers. I could use some help with that.” He looked around. “Uh, where’s McAdams?”

“He was looking green around the gills so I sent him home.”

“He went
home
?” Decker felt his fury rise. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

“Pete, he didn’t come to the department through usual channels. The mayor put him with us as a favor to his father. He didn’t sign up for this shit, and frankly I don’t want flak from the town biggies. I told him he could leave.”

“You are way too nice.”

“If you need him, I’ll call him back.”

“I don’t need him, but he needs to be here. I’ll make the call.” Decker pulled out his cell phone. “Because if I don’t see his sorry ass down at the station in fifteen minutes, he’ll have a lot more to worry about than losing his lunch.”

CHAPTER 9

W
HILE WAITING FOR
McAdams to make an appearance, Decker downloaded the photographs from Jenny’s camera to the station-house computer. She’d done a thorough job, taking dozens of pictures from all different perspectives. It gave Decker a chance to really study the body without distraction and noise since the place was basically deserted. Then he started going down the phone numbers. He picked out a few with out-of-town prefixes that were frequently called.

The first number kicked into a male voice:
Leave your name and number and I’ll call you back if I feel like it.

Obviously not her parents. After the beep, Decker said, “This is Detective Peter Decker from Greenbury Police. Call me back as soon as you can.”

The next number also went to a voice mail, but this woman on the message was soft-spoken and sounded older. Decker tried to be as gentle as he could. “This is Peter Decker from Greenbury Police. If someone could please call me back as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it. Thank you very much.”

He hung up the phone and thought about the case. He had to give kudos to Mike. The captain wasn’t territorial. He wanted a quick resolution: to do justice for the victim, to put the town at ease, and to do a good job.

Decker picked up the receiver to make a third call just as McAdams walked into the station house. The two of them exchanged looks. Tyler sat down at his desk and said nothing, fiddling with paperwork while wearing a hound dog face. The kid wasn’t much older than Hannah and something about Tyler’s expression brought out the parent in him. He hung up the phone and tried to keep his face neutral. “You okay?”

McAdams looked up and then he looked down. “Yeah, fine. What do you need?”

Decker crossed his arms and regarded him until the kid looked up again. “Tyler, first times are the hardest. Almost everyone gets a little sick when you see something like that. Nothing wrong or embarrassing about it. But should something like this happen in the future—which is very unlikely here—this is what you do. You grab a nearby bag and place it over your nose and mouth to try to slow down your breathing. Sometimes that works. If not, and you have to throw up, you throw up in the bag, not in the toilet because there might be forensic evidence in there and you don’t want to contaminate anything. Then afterward, you wash your face with cold water and go back and do your job. No one will say anything because we’ve all been there, okay?”

“Yeah . . . yeah, you’re right. Sorry.”

“No problem. So take out a notebook and let me bring you up to speed. Let me get everything out before you ask your questions.”

Decker recapped his conversation with Captain Mike Radar. The kid was silent but he did take notes. “I have the victim’s phone bill. I’m going down the list, trying to find her parents so I can do a notification. That’s a lousy job even for someone experienced, so I’ll do that.”

He slid the phone bill across his desk over to McAdams’s desk.

“This is last month’s phone bill so it’s out of date, but right now it’s all we have. What I’d like you to do is to go down the numbers and find out what matches to what. If you find her parents, give the call to me. As soon as I make the notification, we’ll go to Littleton and start interviewing friends and acquaintances to see if we can get a feel for who she is—”

“Sorry for leaving, Decker. That was really unprofessional.”

“It’s past history, Tyler. Let’s just move forward because we have a lot of work—” His cell rang. Decker looked at his phone window. “This may be the parents. Hold on.” He depressed the button. “Greenbury Police.”

“I’m looking for a Peter Decker.”

A woman’s voice. He said, “This is Peter Decker. Who am I talking to, please?”

“This is Karen Bronson. What’s going on?”

“Are you related to Angeline Moreau, ma’am?”

“I’m her mother. Is Angeline in trouble?”

The expected panic. “There’s no easy way to tell you this, ma’am. There was an incident in her apartment. I’m very sorry, but Angeline is deceased.”

The wailing was immediate. Over the phone, Decker heard a male voice asking what was wrong. Then the female voice screaming, “Angeline is dead!” Then there was a lot of shouting and even more voices followed by sobbing. No matter how many times Decker did this, it never, ever got easier. It always made him sick in his gut.

The man came on the line. “Who is this?”

“Detective Peter Decker from Greenbury Police. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Are you positive it’s her?”

Decker paused. “Sir, I’ll tell you everything I know, but it would be better to do this in person. Who am I talking to?”

“Jim Bronson. I’m Angeline’s stepfather. You didn’t answer my question.”

“I know. We don’t have a positive ID because of the condition of the body. We may have to do a DNA test. I can get a twenty-four-hour turnaround if you bring me her toothbrush or hairbrush.”

“So it’s possible that it
isn’t
her?”

The expected hope. “Yes, it’s possible. But we’re proceeding as if it were her. Because we found her in her apartment with ID on her. I’m so sorry, but I do need to talk to you and it would be helpful to talk in person. Where are you located? This looks like a Florida prefix.”

“It is. We’re on our way as soon as I hang up. God, can’t you tell me anything?” He lowered his voice. “Murder?”

The wailing in the background had intensified. “The coroner does the official ruling . . . but it looks like a homicide. We can get into the details face-to-face. I know this is very difficult, but did Angeline ever speak to you about having any problems up here?”

“Angeline is an A student.”

“I’m thinking personal problems. Maybe she had a beef with another student or a teacher?”

“I don’t think so, but I’m in a fog right now.”

“I know this is hard, but could you ask your wife? Anything you could give us in this very early stage of the investigation might help.”

“God . . . hold on.” Decker heard muffled conversation and the woman shouting no, no, no. Jim came back on the line. “She can’t think of anyone.”

“Did Angeline have a boyfriend?”

“Uh . . . uh . . . what the hell was his name? Karen, what’s the name of the boy that Angeline was dating?” A female voice and then he came back on the line. “She
was
dating Lance Terry. He had been her boyfriend for several years, but they broke up a while ago.”

“Do you know who broke it off?”

“Hold on.” A moment passed. “Karen said that she did. No problems afterward supposedly.”

“Is Lance Terry a student at Littleton?”

“Somewhere in the colleges.”

Decker said, “Okay . . . what about friends?”

“Hold on.” A pause. “My wife says that her two closest college friends are Julia Kramer and Emily Hall. I can’t believe—” He choked up. “I really have to go. Do you have a number where I can reach you?”

“I’ll give you my cell. Feel free to call it twenty-four/seven if you think of anything else or even if you just want to talk.”

“It’ll probably take us a while to get up there . . . God, I don’t even know about flights at this time of night. I need to call the airlines. If we drive out, we won’t get there until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“No problem. Just call me when you arrive. And if you drive, please drive carefully. Don’t worry how long it takes. I’m not going anywhere.” Gently, Decker hung up the phone. “I’ve got some names for you, McAdams: Julia Kramer, Emily Hall, and Lance Terry. Two friends and the ex-boyfriend.”

McAdams pushed the phone bill back across to Decker’s desk. There were three circled numbers. “The 917 belongs to a male voice . . . no identification in the voice mail. The 314 belongs to a girl named Emily and the 310 belongs to Julia. Not many calls but a ton of texts going back and forth. No one talks on the phone anymore. I’d probably be better off texting them if you want to talk to them.”

“Do it. Then let’s get out of here.”

McAdams looked up. “Where are we going?”

“To Littleton College to talk to Angeline’s friends.” Decker regarded Tyler’s stunned face. “I’ll do all the talking. You just take notes and listen. I want you along because a younger person might inspire the kids to talk a little more.”

“So I’m like your secretary?” When Decker glared at him, McAdams reddened. “I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry. Can I use my iPad to take notes?”

“As long as you don’t get distracted and start looking up mustached babies who dance the tango.”

“Is that a real YouTube?”

Decker rolled his eyes. “Let’s go, Harvard. See what was going on in Angeline’s life. Because right now, we don’t have a clue about her death.”

STEPPING OUT INTO
the frigid night air, the two of them began the slow trek in ankle-deep drifts toward the colleges. Academia sat about a mile away: a pleasant walk in the daytime. But as the hour got late, the damp air seeped into the bones and stiffened the muscles.

McAdams’s phone beeped. “It’s a text from Julia Kramer. She wants to know what’s going on.”

“Tell her we’re on our way. Ask her where we should meet.”

“That doesn’t answer her question.”

“And in not answering her question, we say a lot, don’t we.”

“True that.” McAdams texted her back. They walked for another minute in silence until his phone beeped again. He read the text aloud. “
Come to my dorm. Maple Hall, 4D. What’s going on?
”

“Tell her we’ll be right there. Don’t tip her off. I want to read her face when we get there and break the news.” Decker tightened his scarf and rubbed his hands together. “Tyler, ask her if she has a roommate? We may want some privacy.”

“Sure.” The kid’s hands flew over the pop-up keyboard of his smartphone. A minute later, he said, “
Angeline Moreau. Why?
. . . Okay, then. What should I text back?”

“Tell her we’ll be there in ten minutes,” Decker said.

“Done.”

“It looks like Angeline has an official dorm room on campus. The apartment is officially registered in her name. Is she paying for the off-campus place or is someone else footing the bill?”

“Should I write that down as a question?”

Decker smiled. “I was thinking out loud, but sure write it down. And write this down as well. Did her parents know she was living off-campus? Probably not. Why would they continue to pay the college for her room and board? And if she was mostly living off-campus, it might explain why Julia, her roommate, wasn’t worried when Angeline hadn’t shown up after the weekend.”

“It’s only Monday night,” McAdams said. “Maybe Angeline didn’t have class on Monday and she is a senior. Maybe she goes away for the weekends. Maybe she has a boo who goes with her.”

“By boo you mean boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“That brings us to another question. If Lance Terry is out of the picture, does she have a current boyfriend?”

“I still don’t know who the male voice is. Maybe he’s the new guy in town.”

“Could be. Mike, Kevin, and Ben are combing her apartment and the complex for any information they can dig up. But there still may be something in her dorm room that can help us out.” Decker held up a package. “Hence the gloves and evidence bags. Don’t touch anything without latex fingers.”

“Don’t you need a warrant or something to search the room?”

“First off, she’s dead and that changes everything. Second, the dorm is the school’s property. If I need it, someone can surely grant me permission in these circumstances.”

“Does the school even know about the homicide?”

“Mike has contacted the school. And the school should know it’s in its best interest to keep this
very
quiet.”

“Are we going to keep it quiet?”

“Depends on how cooperative Littleton is.”

“Are you going to threaten to expose this if they don’t cooperate?” A pause. “And if you do that, isn’t that the definition of blackmail?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Decker said. “Blackmail, besides being against the law, is a very loaded word.” He smiled to himself. “I prefer to think of it as . . . leverage.”

THE FIVE COLLEGES
of Upstate were not all built in a day. Duxbury was the oldest and most elite was originally founded as a men’s college but went co-ed fifty years ago. It most closely resembled the prototype of an eastern college: imposing limestone buildings, a magnificent brick and stone library with stained-glass windows, and of course the stadium where the five colleges played football among themselves. It took up the most real estate, leaving the other four colleges as stepsiblings. Clarion—the women’s college—was built forty years after Duxbury. Morse McKinley was erected in the postwar boom in the late 1940s when brick and concrete and straight lines were all a building needed to look modern. Now it just looked like a big dingbat apartment house. The smallest of the colleges was Kneed Loft and was nicknamed Nerd Loft because it specialized in math, science, and engineering. The architects more or less gave up on this one. It was way more bunker than building, but it didn’t stop the college from turning out brilliant students, most who went on to graduate school or government labs.

The last college was Littleton, noted for its artsy teachers, its spacey students, and its clear-cut agenda of social activism. It was considered the only college composed of co-eds who
cared
. It prided itself on being different. The students had palpable disdain for Morse McKinley and its greedy Wall Street ways. They were way cooler than the robotic dweebs of Kneed Loft, and of course, they were much less pretentious than the snobs at Duxbury. Clarion didn’t even factor into its equation.

Ten years ago, Littleton underwent a massive successful campaign to retrofit the college and turn it all green—from solar energy that ran the generators to the organic food in the cafeteria. Now it almost seemed like an aggie school with its numerous outdoor gardens—dead in the wintertime—and its four greenhouses happily providing tomatoes and zucchini squash to the cafeteria for its vegan entrées. The school’s four main buildings had quilted roofs of thatch reed intermixed with solar panels that frequently had to be wiped down from the snowfall.