County coroner’s meat wagon. A guy still wearing a dripping wet suit was in the process of helping two other people load a zippered body bag onto a gurney. There was a parking place next to the coroner’s van. I guess it’s simply the nature of the beast, but relations between the attorney general’s office and the Lewis County coroner haven’t always been any more cordial than relations with Larry Mowat, the coroner’s counterpart up in Thurston County. When I saw Sheriff Tyler standing outside one of his patrol cars, I approached him instead of going to the coroner directly.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Not well,” Tyler said. “We’ve got ourselves another dead girl. This one looks a lot like Rachel Camber, but I doubt it’s her. Mid-teens, brown hair. Sounds like the same MO.”
“Bruising on her neck?”
Tyler nodded. “And dead before she went into the water. We located a spot about a hundred yards south of here where we think she was rolled out of a vehicle and dumped.”
“So she wasn’t killed here?”
“No sign of it.”
“How long has she been dead?”
Tyler shrugged. “So far we don’t have an exact time of death, but the coroner’s initial estimate is that this victim has been dead for less than twelve hours. That means she was still alive yesterday afternoon when you were in my office showing me the video of Rachel being strangled.”
Sheriff Tyler continued. “Same age, same victimology, and same MO, but this has to be a different girl unless Bonnie’s way off about the time of death.”
“Bonnie?” I asked.
“That’ll be Bonnie Epstein, the new Lewis County coroner,” Sheriff Tyler said. “Dr. Bonnie Epstein.”
Tyler’s emphasis on the doctor part was designed to get my attention.
“Do you think she’d mind if I take a look before they haul the body away?” I asked.
Tyler shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But you should know that Dr. Epstein doesn’t take kindly to having people looking over her shoulder.”
“In other words, do so at my own risk. Does Dr. Epstein realize Special Homicide is involved?”
“If she does, it’s not because I’ve told her,” Tyler said. “And I also failed to mention that this incident might well be related to Josh Deeson’s death up in Olympia, which, in case you’re interested, is front-page news all over the state this morning.”
The suicide of the governor’s grandson was bound to be big news. It also meant that Mel’s and my ability to conduct our operation under the radar was about to come to a screeching halt.
I looked back toward the coroner’s van and saw they were getting ready to load the gurney into the back of the vehicle.
“I guess I’ll go try my luck.”
Tyler smiled and shook his head. “You do that,” he said. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Chapter 16
With Sheriff Tyler’s words of caution in mind, I approached Dr. Bonnie Epstein with my ID wallet in hand and my missile defense system fully operational.
“Excuse me, Dr. Epstein,” I said. “If you could give me a moment.”
She whirled around. She was nearly as tall as I am and wore her long dark hair in a frizzy style Mel and I refer to as the light-socket wave. She was dressed in a kind of orange jumpsuit with the word CORONER stenciled across the back. Unfortunately, in other jurisdictions, that same jumpsuit with slightly different stenciling probably works very well as jail inmate attire.
When we were face-to-face, I saw that the zipper on the front of the jumpsuit wasn’t zipped up far enough to cover completely some very impressive scenery. Bonnie Epstein had the kind of cleavage that encourages men to gaze longingly in that direction. I’m old enough to understand how entrapment works and smart enough to disregard the bait. Instead, I looked directly into Dr. Epstein’s glacially blue eyes.
Turning away from the loading process, she favored me with an appraising glance. “And you are?” she asked.
The question was asked in full push-back fashion. As soon as she opened her mouth, I knew she was from New York City. Other people with more East Coast experience could probably hear those three words and be able to identify the speaker’s exact borough, by being able to differentiate between the accent of someone from the Bronx, for example, or from Queens. All I could tell was NYC somewhere. That knowledge told me a lot about the culture clash between Sheriff Tyler and the coroner. It also made me glad that I had looked into her eyes and nowhere else.
“My name’s J. P. Beaumont,” I said, handing her my identification wallet. “I work for the attorney general’s Special Homicide Investigation Team.”
She studied my information and then handed it back. “It says here you work for S.H.I.T.”
I tried to take the long view of the situation. She was probably relatively new to the state. I had no idea how she had come to be in rural western Washington, which seems like the exact antithesis of New York City. I wondered if she had come here on purpose, or had she arrived unwillingly? It was possible that she had been dumped in Washington at the end of a marriage that hadn’t worked out to anyone’s satisfaction, but she was here now, and she needed to learn to play by western Washington rules.
The longer I work for Special Homicide, the less patience I have with that tired old S.H.I.T. joke. This morning in particular, without having had enough sleep, breakfast, or even my morning dose of Aleve, I was in no mood for joking around.
“I’d like to get a look at the victim before you haul her out of here.”
“And I’d like to win the grand prize on
“I’m with the attorney general’s office,” I said. “I’m here at his request. This case may be connected to a related homicide.”
“This is a Lewis County homicide. .” she began.
“It’s a Washington State homicide,” I corrected. “Ross Connors is the chief law enforcement officer in the state of Washington. He’s also my boss.”
Mel chose that moment to arrive. I don’t know how she got dressed and ready that fast, but she did.
“What did I miss?” she asked.
“Who’s this?” Dr. Epstein asked.
“My partner,” I said. “Melissa Soames. She works for the same guy I work for.”
“Is there a problem?” Mel wanted to know.
“Yes, there’s a problem,” Bonnie Epstein said. “This is my jurisdiction and my case. I don’t appreciate having people I don’t know come horning in on what I’m doing and second-guessing my every move. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’ll go ahead and transport the victim to my morgue. Once I’ve completed the autopsy, I’ll be more than happy to give you and your boss the results. In the meantime you, your partner, and your boss will all have to take a number and wait.”
While the coroner was delivering this speech, Mel was reaching into her purse. As Dr. Epstein ended her tirade, Mel extracted one of the photos of Rachel Camber and passed it in front of the good doctor’s nose. Bonnie Epstein was quick, but not quite quick enough to cover the jolt of recognition that instantly passed across her face. Sheriff Tyler had noted the similarities between this new victim and Rachel, but the disparity in the timing of the two deaths had caused him to discount the connection. Dr. Epstein instantly assumed that the girl in the photo and the girl on her gurney were one and the same. Now so did we.
“If you know who she is, you have to tell me,” Epstein said, reaching for the photo. “As the coroner, it’s my job to identify the victim and notify the family.”
By then Mel had already slipped the photo back into her purse. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I understood you weren’t interested in working with Special Homicide on this. Cooperation is a two-way street.”
