“No. He didn’t have to. I understood what he meant: If I made trouble for the boys next door, they’d make worse trouble for me. I know they know the mayor.”
“You’ve seen him next door?”
“Once. Came in a SUV with tinted windows. Puck and I peeked through the curtains. Saw him go inside. Probably up to the third-floor deck. That’s where they have the hot tub. And you should see the girls running around over there in their skimpy bikinis. It’s like an invasion of Playboy Bunnies-only Playboy Bunnies wear more clothes.”
“What about last night?” says Ceepak. “Did Officer Santucci come over here again?”
“He didn’t have to. I got the message the first time.”
“Ms. D’Ambrosio?”
“Yes?”
“You are free to call the Sea Haven Police Department any time you have a complaint or problem of any sort.”
“Really? What about Officer Santa Lucci?”
“I would not worry about him.”
“Really?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’d be surprised if he’s on the force much longer.”
We hike next door and join the cluster of State CSI guys outside the shower stall.
“You guys nailed it,” says Detective Botzong. “This is definitely our crime scene.”
“Danny played a hunch,” says Ceepak, giving me all the credit like he does every time I stumble into doing something smart.
“Good hunch, Boyle.” Botzong shows us a bar of Irish Spring in a Baggie. “See the fingernail marks?”
“They’re rather deep,” says Ceepak.
“Yeah. She really gouged it. I figure she tightened her grip on the bar when our doer burst in and surprised her. That’s why we found the soap residue so far up under her nails.”
“And the shampoo?”
“It’s a match.”
“So if she was taking a shower out here-”
“It would explain why we didn’t find blood splattered on her clothing.”
“She was naked when she was assaulted.”
“Exactly. The perp folds up her clothes, stuffs them in the suitcases on top of her severed limbs, maybe keeps the T-shirt for a trophy.”
Ceepak gestures toward the walls. “Did you find blood in here?”
“Yeah. Carolyn Miller scraped off one of those white globs. The guy tried to paint over the evidence. Stupid idea. Carolyn’s in the van, running a preliminary scan with our portable spectrometer. See if we can ID the paint. Run it through the database. Excuse me. You guys ready with the video?”
“All set,” says a CSI guy toting a Sony digital camera.
“We’re about to do the Luminol,” says Botzong.
Luminol is used to detect trace amounts of blood left at crime scenes because it reacts with the iron found in hemoglobin (the oxygen-toting compound in the blood) in a process called chemiluminescence, which sounds like something they’d say in a TV commercial for cosmetics when it’s actually the same thing that makes firefly butts and light sticks glow. The glow show won’t last forever, so the MCU guys will roll video to record the splotches that will show up with a bluish-green luminescence.
“Spray that wall where Carolyn scraped the sample,” Botzong says to another tech.
The guy does.
The wall is splattered with glowing blue-green dots.
“Do the other wall.”
The guy sprays again. More dots glow. It’s almost like somebody flicked a wet paintbrush drenched in blood against the wall.
The Luminol goes on all four walls. All four walls put on a polka-dot lightning bug show.
Ceepak hunkers down. Strokes his chin. Stares into the shower stall.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he mumbles.
“Agreed,” says Botzong, who hunkers down beside Ceepak. They look like two guys playing touch football about to scratch out a play in the dirt.
“Typically,” says Ceepak, “the blood would splatter in a pattern dictated by the movement of the weapon.”
I nod because I studied this in cop school. A guy whacks somebody in the head, pulls the hammer back, swings for the head again, pulls it back. Every time he pulls it back, he sends up a stream of blood droplets off the hammer head that splatter on the ceiling or wall or whatever.
But these splatter patterns are on all four walls.
“Maybe he worked his way around her?” suggests Botzong.
“Or maybe she was thrashing,” says Ceepak.
Botzong nods. “The blood gets in her hair. We get this paintbrush-type pattern.”
“Was there much blood in her hair?”
“Nope. This does not compute.”
“Was there any other evidence in the shower?”
“A couple of hairs. Long ones. We think they belong to the girl. We dusted for prints. The door. The spigots. Nothing.”
Ceepak cocks up an eyebrow. “Not even from the victim?”
Botzong shakes his head. “The doer might have wiped things down when he was done.”
“Doing so would have smeared the blood splatter patterns. We’d be seeing streaks and smudges, not droplets.”
“Yeah. We need to get into the house. Look around. How goes the warrant?”
“Slow,” says Ceepak. “Unfortunately, some high-level locals were involved in the activities that took place in this home.”
“How high up are we talking here?”
“We’ve got the mayor and a couple of state senators,” I toss in. “Plus the guy who owns most of the boardwalk amusements. And the head of the chamber of commerce.”
“What exactly were they all doing here?” asks Botzong.
“Having sex with young women who were not their wives,” says Ceepak, so matter-of-factly, it sounds like they came here to have their teeth cleaned.
He flicks up his wrist. Checks his watch.
“Danny, I think we need to split up. Transport me back to the house. I will contact Chief Baines. Stress the urgency of obtaining the warrant to search the house. Work the phones if need be. Call Judge Rasmussen.”
“What do you want me to do?” I ask.
“See if you can locate your friend Marny Minsky. She was most likely here last night. Perhaps she can fill in some gaps for us.”
“I’ll check out Big Kahuna’s. Some of the other hot spots.”
“Warrant or not,” says Detective Botzong, “we’re locking this house down. No one’s going in until we do.”
“Can we do that?” I ask.
“One of the perks of the job,” says Botzong. “We can restrict entry while waiting for a warrant.”
I turn to Ceepak, my Legal Eagle. He nods. It’s all good.
A pimped-out ride with one of those subwoofers the size of a washing machine crawls up Tangerine Street. It also has a muffler that’s been monkeyed with so it’ll sound like a bass guitar with a bad case of gas. The combination makes the ground shake enough to put us on the Richter scale.
The rolling boom box comes to the end of the street.
Sean O’Malley is behind the wheel. Even in silhouette, I recognize his dorky cab-driver hat. He sees us seeing him. Gives us a wiggly finger wave.
