Death in the Secret Garden

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Death in the Secret Garden

A Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mystery

Richard Forrest

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

For Patricia Hale Forrest

One

‘Spook did this!'

There was a slight quiver in the young patrolman's voice as he stooped to look more closely at the naked corpse. The flesh around his cheek bones tightened. His fists clenched and unclenched as he turned toward his superior who paced a dozen yards away. His first words had been inaudible due to a stiff breeze blowing from the river in eddies that swept through the high stand of pines lining the promontory.

‘Spook killed her!' he repeated in a louder voice.

Police Chief Rocco Herbert acknowledged the statement with a nod. He continued to pace a slow parabolic path that traced an orbit a dozen yards from the body. He carried his large bulk on a massive frame with surprising lightness. He walked with a supple grace that belied his six-and-a-half-feet height, which was matched by a body weight that was closer to three than two hundred pounds.

Patrolman Jamie Martin stood rigidly erect. He exhaled with a snorting vent of air. Although he had been on the Murphysville, Connecticut police force for several years, Jamie presented a naivety and innocence. Town residents still referred to him as ‘that nice young policeman.'

‘Spook ripped her clothes off, raped her, and then killed her.' He delivered the assessment in a near shout that bounced off the large glacial boulders that bounded the perimeter of the small wooded cove. ‘I don't know, maybe he raped her after he killed her,' he said in a lower tone.

Rocco stopped at the foot of a black and white checkered blanket spread neatly on the ground on the far side of the clearing. A carefully folded pile of clothing—panties, bra, simple white blouse and jeans—was placed to the side. ‘Think not, Jamie.'

The police chief had purposely not advanced further toward the body. He had recognized the young woman from a dozen feet away. He had faced her at least once a week for the past six months as she worked the express checkout counter at the town's only supermarket. He knew her as an attractive, flirtatious young woman, with a ripe voluptuousness and zest. Her darting eyes at men of any age were the merriment of a girl passing over the cusp of youth into womanhood. The flirting gestures did not promise future commitments as much as they expressed feminine vitality. The live girl of the express check-out line had somehow come to represent all young women of that age. He had casually enjoyed her youthful energy, which was now dissipated by the obscene position that signified a violent death.

The nude girl sprawled in the clearing was nearly the same age and build as his own daughter, who was a rising sophomore at a small liberal arts college in upper New York State. It was this similarity that kept him from an immediate examination of her body. ‘Why do you think it's Spook?' he asked tiredly.

Jamie Martin reached toward the corpse's outstretched hand and prized the fingers apart. He removed a small piece of cloth containing yellow and black markings. He waved it overhead like a miniature flag. ‘Here's the evidence that proves it!' he crowed.

‘Oh, my God,' Rocco muttered as he turned away. This violation of the rules of evidence made him want to bang his head against the nearest rock in complete frustration. ‘Jamie,' he finally managed to say after a pause that was long enough for him to regain control. ‘During your training at the Police Academy, did they not casually mention, in passing, something about the proper method to establish a proper chain of evidence? Did they not touch on the rules of gathering said evidence?'

The young patrolman looked sheepishly at the patch of yellow and black clutched in his fist. ‘It's a First Cav army shoulder patch, Chief. Look.' As if in propitiation, he thrust the patch reverently toward Rocco. ‘Everyone knows how Spook is about the First Cav. He hands these things out to anyone who will take one. It was clutched in her fingers.'

As he knew he would eventually be forced to do, Rocco approached the body. He walked gingerly as if the ground beneath him were brittle enough to shatter and hurl him into a deep abyss. He avoided her as long as he could while he looked toward the distant Connecticut River below the cliff. He took the patch from Jamie and glanced at it long enough to establish that it was a First Cavalry Division shoulder patch. He gently placed the cloth in the dead girl's outstretched hand and folded her fingers shut.

‘You never touched her, understand, Jamie?'

‘Yes, sir. I never got close to her.' He backed halfway across the clearing. ‘She died hard, Chief.'

Rocco ignored his subordinate. ‘Go back to the car and radio Communications to send an assistant medical examiner out here. And for Christ's sake, tell them not to send laughing Lars this time.' Jamie gave a half salute. ‘Bring an evidence bag and tweezers from my car,' Rocco yelled after him. ‘I want the ME to take the patch from her fingers. Go!' Rocco turned his attention back to the sprawled cadaver as Jamie jogged toward the logging road.

Her painful progress across the clearing was obvious. A trail of blood flecks and disturbed leaves led from the blanket to the far edge of the clearing. She seemed to have fallen midway across and crawled the last few yards with the last shreds of her strength. Her direction seemed to be toward the cliff path that led down to the river.

He forced himself to kneel for a closer examination. She lay on her side while the hand clutching the patch stretched beyond her head. An apron of blood below her waist covered the belly and pelvic area. The injury seemed to indicate a low wound near or through the umbilicus that possibly severed the lower abdominal aorta. The autopsy would confirm that and indicate any sexual activity as well as the exact cause of death.

There was no question that the patch Jamie had taken from her fingers was a First Cavalry Division shoulder insignia. Every resident of Murphysville knew that Spook was obsessed with the First Cav, which was his old Viet Nam unit. The traumatized veteran had forced the patch on countless adults and numerous children. Its appearance clutched in the dead girl's fingers could be very significant or perfectly innocent.

He took a last look at the young woman's face before he stood and turned away from the body. Her after-image haunted him. The final freeze of expression had multiple meanings: a look of astonishment at the ferocity of her attack, utter disbelief in her mortal wound, and a look of despair that only the young can create when their past visions of immortality are shattered.

He walked the perimeter of the clearing. This small cove was only one of many scattered through the thousand acres of state forest that ran in a narrow band along the promontory above the river. It was an undeveloped park area traversed by a few old logging and maintenance roads. There were no formal recreational facilities for camping or hiking. Rocco knew that the area was used by only the most ardent naturalists, illegal hunters, and lovers. The neat pile of clothing near the spread blanket indicated the latter possibility for the dead girl.

If there had been a sexual attack there might be signs of a struggle or perhaps other evidence. He mentally divided the small clearing into grid squares and began a methodical inspection. He found tiny blood spatters on a six-foot-high boulder that squatted near the blanket. These markings were consistent with the trail that led across the cove to the place where she had finally expired.

He imagined her reeling back against the boulder after the wound. The blood on her hands indicated that she had probably clutched her belly while she stumbled across the clearing until she fell. Unable to stand, she began a painful crawl on hands and knees in a desperate attempt to escape.

A deep cackle from the nearby logging road shattered the glen's quiet. Rocco cringed. His request had been ignored. That laughter signaled that Happy Hansen was the assistant medical examiner assigned to the case.

The doctor stepped into the clearing and thumped Rocco on the back with sufficient force to stagger the large man. ‘What say, little guy?' Hansen chortled.

‘I'm saying,' Rocco said over the medical examiner's shoulder, ‘that Jamie Martin had best check out that old car parked on the shoulder since it may belong to the victim.'

‘Now that makes sense,' Hansen said with his usual chuckle. He looked at the distant body. ‘I pronounce the victim female, young, and unclothed.'

Rocco frowned. ‘Lars, didn't medical school, the state health commissioner, or anyone else ever teach you to show a modicum of respect for the dead?'

The medical examiner turned abruptly serious as he sauntered toward the body. ‘The school of tragedy taught me that if you are to survive in my business you have to laugh. Men like you, who work and live in pleasant little towns, don't face this type of thing two or three times a day. You guys have coffee with friends at a neighborhood breakfast table, run a school crossing at noon, check out the library for loitering problems, stake out a stop sign, and handle a drunk in the late afternoon. My patients are always dead and have departed in more ways than you can possibly imagine.' He knelt next to the body. ‘Yep. This one is dead like the others.' He tried to restrain his laughter, but his shoulders convulsed and squirts of merriment bubbled through.