she was typing a report, and we went right to the evidence locker. Ugh. It did smell, but not as much as I'd feared. My nose told me that the residents at the Mansion had recently thrown out onions, garlic, and some meat.
My nose was only two thirds right. They'd thrown out onions and garlic, all right. But the third one wasn't meat. It was a bloody body bag. I stopped as soon as I saw it, and called for a little help.
Chris Barnes and the rest of the lab crew were at breakfast, just about to leave for Des Moines. He got to the office in five minutes.
We all stood looking at the bag. It was a white nylon bag, with black nylon handles, and a black zipper. A small label proclaimed it to be a “500 VSA.” A good bag, it was one of the expensive double-thick ones, with reinforcements at the ends and on the bottom. There was quite a bit of blood in it, and a darkish smear on the outside of the bag. Chris looked very closely at that, and said it looked like a wood stain, possibly from where it had been stored.
“Well,” said Chris, “this goes a long way toward explaining the lack of a blood trail.”
“Except for the spots, next to her tub, on the carpet outside her room, and at the bottom of the back stair,” I said.
“Right. Where somebody rested the body, and it was bent forward or to a side, and put pressure on the bag, and forced a bit of blood out of the zipper.” Chris shook his head. “I'd just guess that she hadn't bled out all the way when they bagged her,” he said. “Don't quote me on that, not yet. We gotta test the blood first. See if it's human, and then see if it's hers.” Using a gloved finger, he stirred a little pool of blood that had accumulated in one of the folds of the bag. “It sure as hell should have clotted by now.”
“Right.” That was from Hester. “How long till we can have the results?”
“For human, maybe today, depending on when I get to DM.” He paused when she cleared her throat. “Okay, today, then, for sure. As for the DNA match… hard to say, but as fast as we can get it done.”
“You know,” I said, “having a killer with his own body bag sure makes a case for premeditation. You just can't plan much farther ahead than that.”
We filled out the evidence sheet for the bag. It consisted of a copy of my logging, where I had entered the time I pulled the bags from the big blue box; the time I placed them in the evidence locker, the time I took them out, and the time I signed the body bag over to Chris. My signature by every entry, and his and mine on the last set. Maintaining the chain of evidence is crucial, but a pain in the butt, regardless. Like they say, the only time it's going to be important is the time you forget to do it.
We all pitched in and did the contents of the rest of the garbage bags. We found one bloody bath towel, a bloody washcloth, a bloody bottle of shampoo and one of conditioner, a bloodstained bar of soap and a hanging soap dish, a bottle of bath oil with a blood-encrusted rim, a brass rack with a curved section to enable it to be hung over the edge of an old-fashioned tub, and a bloodstained pink lady's razor. All in a white plastic sack, in a brass wastebasket. Even the wastebasket had matched, apparently.
“I'll bet they knocked the stuff into the tub when they put her in,” said Hester, her voice distant with thought. “Maybe snagged it with the bag, then grabbed for some of it before they thought, and then pitched it to make sure they hadn't left prints. Wiped some of the mess up with the towel.”
“No wipe marks on the tub,” I said.
“They could have wiped their hands on it,” said Barnes, not looking up from his itemization of the evidence. “Hard to say just how it got there.”
“They had the presence of mind to put the knife in the tub, to keep us from looking for the real weapon.” I shook my head. “Pretty cool, whoever it is.”
“Yeah,” said Hester, disgusted.
“Well,” I said, “I guess we could start with who sells 500 VSA body bags, and see if there's any chance they might have a limited sales area… ” It was pretty weak, but we had to begin somewhere.
Another thing we found was a bunch of old e-mails that had been tossed out. They appeared to be from several people, and addressed to the following: OnceLost@gottadance. arts, WailingSoul@gottadance. arts, MagikBoi@gottadance. arts, DealerofDarkness@gottadance. arts, Clutch@gottadance. arts, EtherialWaifGurrl@gottadance. arts, Choreographer@gottadance. arts.
They were addressed to a wide variety of people and places, from bookstores to eBay, from names similar to their own, to simple ones like DarcyB2@UIU. grp. edu. Some were long, some very brief, and they appeared to be pretty innocuous. Nonetheless, I saved them all, to read for content, and to check names and addresses.
“I wish,” I said to Hester, “that that search warrant had included computers and information thereon.”
“Well, we didn't have any evidence pointing to computer involvement then. We still don't,” she said.
“Give me a little time.”
We went through the rest of the bags, snagging about a half dozen more e-mails, and about a thousand items of generic debris that could have come from just about anywhere. We relooked, hoping for anything else. Nothing. Not one more item that even appeared to have bloodstains or marks on it. No phone bills, no notes other than common, everyday grocery receipts. Lots of political pamphlets from a bumper crop of politicians, from Bush and Gore to Nader and Buchanan. Not to mention the local and state candidates. It looked like the residents of the Mansion had been deluged just like the rest of us. The political pamphlets probably accounted for half the paper in the bags. I did notice, though, that all the political mail was addressed to “Occupant.”
“Doesn't look like anybody living at the Mansion was registered to vote,” I said.
“Huh?” That had taken Hester by surprise.
I explained.
She went back to sifting through garbage. “The things some people consider important… ”
“Hey! I'm a trained observer, that's all.”
“Focus, Houseman,” she muttered. “You just got to focus.”
Finishing the garbage survey didn't take as long as I'd expected. I looked over at Hester as we were both taking off our latex gloves. “Not much, was there?”
“Good Lord, Houseman. You got a body bag out of this! What more do you want?”
“Well, yeah.” What more, indeed? “Something identifying the suspect, though, would sure have been good.”
Chris and the rest of the lab team headed for the Iowa Criminalistics Laboratory in Des Moines, body bag in hand, so to speak. That left Hester and me to begin our scheduled business.
Hester phoned the Mansion while I sorted the e-mails into some coherent order. I just sorted by recipient name. There were two double entries, as I termed them, that were from a “gottadance” to a “gottadance.”
The first was from Choreographer to OnceLost. It was dated September 16, 2000, and timed at 21:56. The text was brief and to the point.
“Hi.
We should be there either next weekend, or the one following. Checking to see that you have a good supply of fresh vegetables and that wine we like.
Hope all is well. Got your August report and approved the payments.
Oh, and try to get George Hollis for the furnace. He's more reliable than Norman Brecht, and charges the same.”
No doubt who Choreographer was. Apparently “gottadance” was a wide area network, and seemed to include Jessica Hunley's terminal in Lake Geneva, as well. Judging from the content, I assumed OnceLost was Edie. Had to check, to be sure.
The other double entry was from Choreographer to Clutch. It was dated October 2, 2000, and timed at
22:40. The text read: “Hi. I think it did go well. Thought about it all the way back. I agree with you. Many thanks.”
Like that told me a lot. Unfortunately, people just don't annotate e-mails for the cops.
In the rest of the e-mails, content identified Clutch as Huck since she talked about her job on the gaming boat. DealerofDarkness had to be Kevin. Kind of left MagikBoi for Toby, which I thought was a bit of a hoot. WailingSoul and EtherialWaifGurrl were up for grabs, but I was willing to bet the former to be Hanna and the latter Melissa.
Hester got off the phone, and said the group was expecting us after lunch. She sat down on the other side of my desk, and started going through e-mails with me. I told her that I had pretty well identified Choreographer as Jessica, and OnceLost as Edie. We started in from there.
