At the Scene of the Crime (14 page)

“This is where fishermen and their helpers can gut and clean some of the larger fish, so it can get to market quicker. Refrigerators make the ice and are used for temporary storage.”

I looked around. “I guess you didn’t find her head or hands anywhere, did you.”

She crossed her arms. “No. And we didn’t find anything else. Not a damn thing.”

“Theory?” I asked.

“Best guess we have is that he took her in here, subdued her by a blow to the head or something similar. Then it gets interesting. According to the theory.”

“Best theories are always the most interesting ones.”

She took a breath, walked over to the collection of stainless steel tables and sinks. “We believe he took her over here after he subdued her. Draped her head over the edge of the sink. Slit her throat. Then, well, note the collection of knives and cleavers. If you take a look over here—”

Which I did, gazing into the sink, which had quite a wide drain.

“—you’ll note the drain.”

She flipped a switch on the side of a console. There was a whirring, grinding noise that I recognized, and when I nodded, Diane shut the switch off. The large room was quiet again.

“Industrial-strength garbage disposal,” I said.

“The same. With water running, with cool nerves and steady hands, we think he dismembered the body and shoved it into the disposal.”

“Where does it dispose to?”

“The harbor, right beneath us. There’s a water flushing system that works with the grinder, flushes everything out.”

I looked down the open drain. “Nothing?”

She shook her head. “Not a damn thing. Luminol shows some trace blood evidence, but not enough for DNA analysis. Not a drop, not a smear, nothing. We’ve gone through the entire building. Nothing. We even searched the overhead framework and lighting, in case an artery was sliced at the right time and we got arterial spray. Not a thing. Give any semi-competent defense attorney a crack at what we have found, some trace of blood in a place where men work day in and day out with knives and cleavers.

Lots of room there for reasonable doubt.”

“I suppose you’ve taken apart the disposal system.”

“Piece by piece. Each one examined. No bone splinters, no tissue, no dental fragments and again, we exposed every piece of metal to Luminol. Faintest traces of blood. Again, a good lawyer would claim that it was fish blood. Or something that dripped from somebody’s hand or fingers as they worked on gutting a fish last week.”

I backed away and took in the scene. “He was very thorough.”

“For a fisherman who didn’t finish high school, he was quite smart. And here, I haven’t shown you the best.”

Diane went around to the other side of the center island of sinks and machinery, and picked up a hand-held cleaning device of some sort, with a triggering handle and long, wand-like apparatus. She pointed the wand away from her and squeezed the handle. A burst of steam came out, droplets falling to the clean concrete.

“We’re sure that after he cut up and disposed of the body, everything within reach of this piece of equipment was steam-cleaned. There’s also some bleach in a rear storage area. Combine the two and we have a very troubling crime scene.”

“The disposal outflow,” I said. “Was it checked?”

She replaced the steam-cleaning unit back into its cradle. “Yes. Twice. By divers from the state police. With the tides and the muck down there and the time that passed since she was reported missing, not a damn thing. We even borrowed a ground-suction device that divers use, to clean up an area for exploration. Sucked the mud and muck out, passed it through a grate on land. Looking for teeth, bone fragments. Like before. Nothing.”

I looked around the room again, noting where everything was located, how it was set.

“All right. Who’s the witness, and what did he tell you?”

“Witness is one Joshua Thompson. Age fifty-one.”

“Who is he?”

She folded her arms. “An old-timer. His family has been in Tyler for
generations, fishermen all. But he doesn’t fish anymore. He just drinks and smokes and hangs out at the docks, day in and day out, rain, snow, sleet, doesn’t matter.”

“Why was he here, the night she disappeared?”

“Just happenstance, that’s all. He was here and when word got out that she was missing and that her boyfriend was a fishermen with the cooperative, Joshua came forward to let us know what he saw. Which was Samuel driving up in his pickup truck with a young woman, whom he later positively identified as Cassie. The two went in. A few hours later, only Samuel came out. End of story.”

“Was he drunk at the time?”

“No doubt about it.”

“What’s his background?”

“Like I said, a fisherman. Went out one stormy day with his brothers on a stern trawler. Stayed out too long. Rogue wave capsized the boat, his two brothers drowned, and he was the only one left. I think he hangs around the docks to punish himself, maybe, and gets drunk to have the time pass quicker.”

“At least he’s found a way,” I said.

“What kind of way?”

“A way of coping,” I said. “Not many people do, when faced with a trauma like that. Anything else you want to show me here?”

She shook her head. “No, there’s nothing else.”

“All right. Let’s go, then.”

I started walking to the main door that led to the small meeting room. “Where?” the detective asked.

“I want to see Cassie Malone’s residence, if that’s all right.”

She said, “Already been searched. There’s nothing there.”

I turned and gave her my best smile. “On the contrary, everything is there. Everything.”

Outside, it was still damn cold.

Cassie Malone had lived in a condo complex on the other side of Tyler, near the prep school town of Exonia, and the moment I walked into her residence, it hit me. I was in the home of a dead person. Nothing new—I had been in the homes of many a dead person—but there was always that little shock to the system when you walk in and realize that everything here had been chosen and picked and decorated by a man or woman no longer alive. There’s a darkness and coolness to a home or apartment or condo unit that is no longer owned by a living person.

The residence was standard, and I suppose it made no sense to come here—Diane and the major crimes unit no doubt had tossed the place thoroughly and professionally—but I still liked to get a feel for the person, so that she was more than just a faceless vic. I saw from her place that she liked science fiction and fantasy novels, subscribed to
Cosmo
and
Self
magazines, and that her refrigerator was fairly well stocked, with fruits, vegetables, and the usual condiments, and some containers from a previous Chinese meal.

And according to Diane, nothing was out of place. No blood spatters or smears. No journal or computer diary indicating her fear that Samuel was going to kill her someday. Just a lived-in and reasonably tidy place.

Nothing here, really, but a sense of who she had once been. Which is why I had asked to come here.

Before we left, I saw something dangling from a coat rack near the door. It was an identification badge, showing a smiling young lady with blonde hair and bright blue eyes. CASSANDRA MALONE, the identification showed, and it was her ID from the Falconer nuclear power plant. I held the badge in my hand for a moment and turned to Diane.

“What did Cassie do at the nuclear power plant?”

“Health physics technician, worked in the health physics department.”

“I see.”

“What do you know about that kind of job?”

I put the badge back on the rack. “I know some things. The shorthand term for her job is HP tech. Responsible for maintaining radiation records,
dosimetry, radiation work permits, anything and everything involving the nuclear power side of the plant.”

“You mean there’s more than one side to a nuclear power plant?”

“Sure,” I said. “There’s part of the plant where the reactor system and all the supporting systems are located. Called the radiologically controlled area. That’s the nuclear side of the plant. Everything outside of the RCA—the steam turbine, the generator, the power lines, the office buildings—that’s the non-nuclear side.”

Diane smiled, opened the door. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

“Of course,” I said, surprised she would say such a thing. “The true sign of intelligence is knowing what you don’t know, and I don’t know a lot.”

“Could have fooled me,” she said, and as we left the dead woman’s condo, I wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or humorous, and decided not to ask.

 

We were in the unmarked cruiser again, heading west back to Tyler Beach and no doubt to my condominium, since she hadn’t offered to bring me back to the crime scene. Or alleged crime scene. Diane stayed quiet as she drove, and I thought and pondered and after a bit said, “Ever hear of John Dickson Carr?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.”

She glanced over at me. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Aren’t you going to tell me who he is?”

“He was an American-born mystery author, lived for a while in England. Wrote during the so-called ‘golden age’ of detective stories, in the 1930s through the 1950s. He was famous for his locked-room mysteries.”

“Sorry,” she said, “you lost me there. A locked-room what?”

“Locked-room mystery. The type of mystery story when a body is found in a locked room, murdered, with no murder weapon in view, and with the room having been locked from the inside. Hence, the term, locked-room
mystery. Supposedly an impossible crime that’s unsolvable. What we have here is a derivative of the locked-room mystery. We have a murder with no body, with very little evidence, and a sly fisherman who thinks he’s gotten away with it.”

“So far,” Diane said glumly, “the little bastard has gotten away with it.”

I looked out over at the marshland, at the square and functional buildings of the Falconer nuclear power plant, and thought for a moment longer. I thought of Cassie, going in every day, working with people she liked and trusted, dealing with radiation and everything else associated with it that remained so much a mystery to so many people. And to end up dead, within eyeshot of your place of employment. . . .

“This fisherman. Samuel. How many times have you questioned him?”

“Twice.”

“Has he gotten a lawyer yet?”

“Nope.”

I turned to her, with a surprised look on my face, I’m sure. “Really?”

“Really,” she said. “I think the son-of-a-bitch is so confident that he doesn’t have to have a lawyer with him. After all, he keeps on saying he’s innocent, over and over again. As he told me the first time, an innocent man wouldn’t need a lawyer. Just a guilty one.”

“Interesting philosophy,” I said. “This Cassie Malone. How long had she worked at the nuclear power plant?”

“Four years,” she said. “Was on her way to being promoted, to a supervisory position.”

I looked back to the marshland, but we had gone too far along the roadway. The power plant was now out of sight.

“All right,” I said. “Look, are you taking me home?”

Diane said, “Well, it’s too early for lunch.”

“Any chance I can talk to your witness?”

“Joshua? Sure, I don’t see why not. Do you think he’ll help?”

“I don’t know. I just want to be thorough.”

Diane eyed me strangely. “I guess you do.”

We met up with Joshua Thompson at the Honeydip Donut & Coffee shop, one of the few places still open at Tyler Beach in the middle of winter. He sat in the rear, with a mug of coffee and six honey-dipped doughnuts before him. As we talked, he slowly ate the doughnuts and sipped his coffee. He was in his late fifties, with a thick black beard streaked with gray, and his clothes were old and carefully mended. After the exchange of names and such, he raised one eyebrow and said, “I like your last name.”

“Thanks,” I said. “So do I.”

He nodded, ate a piece of doughnut. “Same last name as a famous astronaut. Sure you know that.”

“Yes, I do. But not many people remember who he was.”

“Sure. People don’t remember much. But I remember him, and how he died. Awful. Dead things happening . . . a man will remember that forever.”

“Of course.”

He leaned over the table a bit, lowered his voice. “I remembered the night my brothers died. A cold night in April. I was sleeping and the two of them were working. We were dragging about two miles out from the Isles of Shoals. Damn nets must have caught on a wreck or something. Flipped our boat over. Still don’t know how I got out. But I did, and floated and called for them and called for them, all up ’til Manny Harris picked me up, a nice fella from Portsmouth, lobsterman. But they never did find my brothers. They’re still out there, and that bothers me a lot.”

“I’m sure it does.”