past thirty-six hours.
Waldron continued.
“She must have been killed instantly. When her body was jolted by the shots we figure the car lurched and went smack into that big tree. That’s just where it was when she was found.“
Wally took over the narrative now, eager to give his men the credit for discovering Isabella’s body.
“Yeah, I went home to dinner ‘bout six. Call came in from your neighbor, Mr. Patterson. He said his dog you know that collie he’s got, Alex? well, he said his dog came home, feet all covered with blood. Wasn’t cut nowhere, much as he whimpered, but he was bloodier than hell. Mr. Patterson said there must have been a big animal killed up there, makin’ so much blood. He was mad can’t stand it when hunters start up your way before the season and asked my boys to go on up to look.”
The secondhand description of the car, and of what remained of Isabella, was gruesome.
“Damn dog was too nosy. Got his front paw prints all over the side of the passenger door where the blood was drippin‘ down, that’s how he got so full of it. The poor young lady’s head or whatever you can call it was resting on the top of that door. She was blown clear out of her seat lucky there wasn’t no roof on that car or she would’ve split that in half. The blood was everywhere.”
Waldron interrupted to tell us that Wally’s crew had done a good job.
“They didn’t touch anything. Just cordoned it off and called for the state police. The troopers brought us in on it because they had assumed you were the victim, Alex. Thought if you were in Massachusetts for business on any part of your trip, it might be federal jurisdiction. Someone in Wally’s office knew you’d been cross-designated a few months back to work on some interstate child pornography case. Anyway, Wally says you’ve always got work with you when you’re up here can’t leave what you do behind you at the end of the week.”
I nodded my understanding.
“Are there photographs of the body in the car?” Mike asked.
“Of course. The scene was thoroughly processed by the team of agents.”
“Anybody hear shots?”
We were still in Wally’s territory.
“Not so’s we know, Mike. This is a pretty lonely hilltop, and nobody’s let us know they heard anything at all. You got some summer people like Alex whose houses are sittin‘ empty this time of year, and some old-timers like Patterson who’s so deaf I could blast my siren in the middle of his living room and he wouldn’t look up from his jigsaw puzzle. Finest kind.”
Mike had already walked over to the wall and was examining the large rocks carefully for traces of the gun or its residue. It was obvious that he would have loved to come up with a significant piece of evidence that the feds had overlooked, and equally obvious that Luther Waldron, who eyed him closely, wouldn’t give him that chance.
“Let’s go on up to your house, Alex. That’s where we hope you can be helpful. You’ll know what belongs to Miss Lascar and whether anything is seriously out of place or missing.”
“Sure.” My eyes swept the area once more as we headed for our cars. No body, no blood, no Mustang, no gun, no killer just yellow tape strung out in an enormous square to bring home the reality that a murder had been committed on that isolated piece of road, less than five hundred yards from my house.
I led the way as I steered our rental car around the taped area through the tall weeds, behind the tree into which Isabella’s car had crashed, and back onto the uneven dirt path that climbed to its peak and then rolled over and started downhill toward the clearing beyond the thick cluster of evergreens. In less than a quarter of a mile we emerged from the shadows of the trees and Mike was able to see, for the first time, the incredible vista at the end of Daggett’s Pond Way.
“Spectacular!” he gasped, as I paused at the divide in the roadway where my drive split off from the others and the granite gate post to my house defined the beginning of my paradise.
“There are lots of great views on this island, Mike, but not one of them is any better than this.”
The old farmhouse is a very simple building, gray shingled and unpretentious, sitting on a green rise that flows down to the water, at the point where Daggett and Nashaquitsa ponds meet. Over the years I had added border gardens along the stone walls, filled with day lilies and nicotiana, astilbe and asters, and had replaced an acre of untamed weed with a wildflower field that threw up a colorful sea of poppies, loosestrife, and cosmos. Indestructible lilacs rooted beside my front door as they had for more than a century, and impatiens a flower perfectly suited to my temperament lined the sides of the original foundation and bloomed till the first fall frost.
But it was the view beyond that took my breath away every time I came back to it, so I watched with delight as Mike tried to take it all in.
“What direction are we facing? What body of water is that?“
”You’re looking north over the pond. There’s a tiny fishing village there called Menemsha, then beyond that is Vineyard Sound. Another strip of land the Elizabeth Islands and off in the distance is America. Cape Cod.“ The combination of dozens of subtle shadings of blue and green was endless today, as the sun danced on the water and the sweeping scope of almost three hundred degrees gave us the illusion of being, literally, on top of the world. Wally and Luther pulled in behind us and drew me back to the real purpose of our visit. It was a strange and uncomfortable feeling to see Luther walk to the front door of the house and hold it open for me. I had never met him until one hour ago and yet he had already been inside and knew his way around my home, without ever having had an invitation.
“Why don’t you walk us through, Alex, from room to room. Perhaps your eye will catch some detail we’ve overlooked. And if you recognize any objects that belong to Miss Lascar, or that don’t belong to you, point them out for us, will you?”
“Of course.” I hadn’t been to the house since Labor Day, not quite a month earlier, but no one else had been there since, except my caretaker, and then Isabella.
“Does it matter if we touch things now, Luther?”
“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to see that my team has, uh, dusted quite a few items for prints already. Obvious things. Drinking glasses in the kitchen and bathroom, mirrors and metal surfaces…'
My stomach churned. Another thing I hadn’t focused on, despite all my professional experience. The police and agents would have been looking for clues inside the house, especially if they thought Isabella had been killed or set up by her traveling companion. Hundreds of victims in cases I’d worked on had described to me the painful intrusion caused by their well-intentioned investigators, rifling through drawers and brushing black powder on possessions to see whether the oils from someone’s fingers had left latent prints prints not visible to the naked eye that could link an assailant to a crime scene.
Waldron continued, “We got some lifts, Alex, so we’ll have to do a set of eliminations before you leave. I directed the coroner to get Miss Lascar’s prints, too. Sorry about the mess that black powder is terrible. You’ll need someone to clean it up after we’re out of here.”
It was routine for the cops to take prints of anyone who had legitimate access to the location, to eliminate them from the latent prints found. It would be expected to encounter my fingerprints as well as Isabella’s on some of the surfaces.
And once we were eliminated, the inquiry would tighten to find the source of the unidentified whorls and ridges that might be hiding on glassware, porcelain fixtures, and cabinet doors throughout the rooms.
I stepped through the front door into the tiny hallway central to most colonial farmhouses, with its staircase leading up to the guest bedrooms. I led the solemn troupe past that to the left, into the living room, its crisp Pierre Deux upholstery and clean lace curtains looking just as I had left them.
“She must have used the fireplace,” I observed aloud, assuming that was the kind of detail Luther might want to know.
“Those cinders weren’t there after my trip. It wasn’t cold enough to want a fire.” And I had been alone Labor Day weekend, conscious of how romantic the setting becomes with a fire lighting that cozy room.
“That candle is Isabella’s, too,” I added. “I’m sure there’s one in the bedroom just like it.”
“You’re right about that,” Luther said.
“She always travels with them. Rigaud. Takes her own scent wherever she goes to create the feeling of being at home.” I had seen those tiny green votives – cypres was the one she favored in every hotel suite or guest room Isabella had ever planned to stay in for more than an hour.
