She Who Watches (31 page)

He and Dana needed to stay on duty until the crime lab responded to recover the car and the house was secured. Once they were done, they could have Sergeant Bledsoe return the warrant to the judge, which was required after the warrant had been served, with a complete list of evidence that had been seized.

“The lab will be here by eight,” Mac told Dana.

She was photographing the outside of the Buick with her digital camera. “Good, I'm dead on my feet. How long do you think it'll take them to process?”

“Couple of hours, I suppose, unless they find an area they really want to dig into. I can hang out if you want to go back home and grab some sleep. We'll need to let Sara's family know about Sinnott and look for any connections there.”

Dana arched her back, placing her hands on her hips to stretch. The digital camera hung from her neck by a narrow strap. “Actually, that sounds pretty good. The only problem is I'm not leaving my partner behind while I go home to sleep.” She brought the camera to her face and continued with the photos. “Besides. We came together in the van, remember?”

Mac appreciated her dedication. He walked back to the van to let Lucy out, taking a few tosses with the tennis ball so she could stretch her legs. Then after putting her back into the vehicle, drove it up to the house and into the driveway. The blue crime lab pickup pulled up behind him. Mac got out and waved. Angela was sitting in the passenger seat, and the driver was a male lab technician who would act as her assistant while she processed the vehicle and whatever else Mac and Dana requested at the scene.

“Morning, Mac. Heard you got our guy.”Angela exited the truck with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Sorry it turned ugly in the end, but Sinnott probably saved us taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars by getting himself killed. I feel bad for the trooper; he must be kicking himself. At least Sinnott didn't take one of you with him.”

“For sure.” He shook hands with her and then greeted the driver. “Thanks for coming out. I'm Mac.”

“Morning. I'm Richard Anderson.” The man shook Mac's hand.

“What happened to the house?”

“We had a minor standoff with Mr. Sinnott, which took us into the wee morning hours. You can see the patch job we had to do on the front door after the V-150 came knocking.” Mac pointed to the front door. Uniformed troopers had covered the gaping hole left by the rammer bar with two plywood sheets and some two-by-fours to protect the integrity of the house.

“SWAT does tend to make a mess at a crime scene.”Angela took a sip of coffee from her lidded cup. “Almost as bad as firemen with their water hoses and axes.”

Mac laughed at the observation. “Sinnott kept us busy for a while, but we were able to perform a thorough search of the house.”

“Yield anything?” Angela asked.

“We didn't find much in there, just some porn and a little dope in his bedroom. No smoking guns. Oh, before I forget,” Mac said. “Sinnott had what looks like three scratches on his face, consistent with our theory about Sara fighting with him when she received the DNA transfer under the fingernail.”

“I knew it.” Angela slapped the hood of the truck. “Good for you, Sara. At least you hurt him.”

Mac nodded toward the back yard. “We found the Buick he'd listed on his registration form in a pole barn at the back of the property. We haven't gone through it yet, just photographed the outside. I have a key, and we'd like you two to give it the once-over if you don't mind.”

“Sure, glad to. Anything concrete that tells us Sara was transported in the car?”

“If Sinnott worked alone, this was probably his only means of transportation. As you know, Kristen is thinking the cause of death is asphyxiation. There were ligature marks on her neck and some bruising. Also, there's an indication he used duct tape to restrain her. I'm not expecting a big pool of blood or anything, but we are still looking for any connection between Sinnott and Sara. And the Indian reservation. I'd like to know why he stuffed that bag and stone into her mouth.” It still bothered Mac that there had been no prints at the crime scene, but a seasoned criminal like Owen Sinnott had probably used gloves.

“Right. That is bizarre. Wonder what the connection is.”

“The jury's still out. We were thinking a connection to the Indian casino or the Warm Springs Reservation because of some other evidence, but this really throws me for a loop. There's no obvious connection with Owen Sinnott and the tribe or with Senator Wilde. On the other hand, Sinnott claims to be of Native American descent. Every indication is that this guy is a predatory sex offender who raped and killed Sara and then got rid of the evidence. It may be as simple and horrible as that. But why bury her that far east? And why stuff a carved stone and beaded leather pouch in her mouth as if he were making a statement? I don't see a guy like Sinnott taking up the plight of the tribe or being politically motivated. He strikes me more as the type who's only in it for himself. You should have seen him last night—pure arrogance.”

She glanced at the house. “All right, what say we get started, Richard?”

Richard and Angela pulled their truck around and then opened the canopy to access their tools. Both applied latex gloves and grabbed separate tool kits from the back of the car and followed Mac to the barn.

While Angela dusted for prints on the exterior, Richard took a second set of photographs, far more detailed than the set Dana had taken. He would photograph every inch of the car, giving special detail to the tire tread and the areas where Angela was able to lift prints. Once the car was released and the warrant returned, their authority to search the vehicle would end, so they took meticulous care to capture all the evidence they might need.

They started by processing the driver compartment of the vehicle. The interior of the car was a mess, fast-food wrappers and want ads tossed in the backseat. There was so much filth in the car that fruit-fly-type bugs were swarming all over the vehicle. Apparently, Sinnott had created his own ecosystem in his grandmother's car by failing to throw out his refuse. Richard and Angela donned masks in an attempt to cover the sickening smell of the garbage.

While Angela was printing the front passenger area of the car, Richard began examining each item of garbage in the backseat. “This is why we get the big bucks,” he muttered under his respiratory mask as he searched through the trash.

Angela printed the front driver and passenger portion of the car, then began vacuuming the area with a special tool that gathered the collected items in a receptacle for future examination. Angela maintained DNA and hair samples from Sara Watson back at the lab, so finding evidence in Sinnott's car that matched Sara's would put the nail in the coffin and they could officially close the case.

When Angela turned off the vacuum, Richard emerged from the backseat. “I think I've found something.” He pulled the mask down and lifted up a torn paper bag with a half-eaten corn dog inside, garnished with hardened mustard.

“A corn dog?” Dana asked.

“Not the corn dog, the receipt that was inside the bag. Look at the date on the receipt. He got ten bucks in gas, a forty-ounce Coors, a lotto ticket, and two corn dogs,” Richard read from the receipt before handing it to Dana.

“It's dated the day after Sara was reported missing,” Dana said. “At eight in the evening from the Summit Chevron.”

“Isn't that the gas station between Government Camp and the reservation?” Angela asked. “The stop-and-rob place that looks like it's in the middle of nowhere along Highway 26?”

“That's the one,” Richard said. “I always stop there for a Big Gulp when I'm heading to Bend.”

“Right, and it's only about twenty miles from where Sara's body was dumped. Good job, Richard.” Mac slapped the young tech on the back. “This will be one more piece of circumstantial evidence to close out this case. We'd better take a trip up to the Summit Chevron tomorrow, Dana. In fact, we should get a trooper up there in case there are some surveillance tapes we want to check out.”

“Good idea. I'll get on it right now.” Dana pulled her cell phone from her vest to call dispatch and make the request for a Government Camp trooper to contact the store manager. They would still have to make a personal visit to the location, but they didn't want to find out the owner had recycled the videotape. Five weeks—almost six weeks now—was a long time. They would also have to make sure the receipts the cash register was issuing had the correct time and date.

After Richard and Angela completed their search of the backseat garbage, Angela vacuumed the floor like she had done with the front seat area to collect trace materials like crumbs and hairs. There was so much debris, she filled up three of the hockey-puck-sized canisters before completing the task. Most of it would be plain old filth, but there may be a hair or two belonging to Sara. For this hope, Angela would assign a scientist the painstaking task of searching through all three canisters for trace evidence. Once the vacuuming was complete, they photographed the vehicle in a cleaner state before returning all the non-evidence items to the backseat.

All that remained now was the trunk of the car, which Mac thought bore the greatest potential of holding evidence. He popped the trunk after ensuring that Angela had completed her search for latent prints. After turning the key and lifting the trunk lid, Mac peered inside. “The trunk looks pretty clean.” A spare tire sat in the back, along with a set of jumper cables and some motor oil. Off to one side, Mac spotted a roll of duct tape and pointed it out to Angela, who took photographs and bagged it. They also found some dirt. Mac stepped back to let Angela complete her forensic examination.

She pushed the trunk lid all the way up, lifting her camera to photograph the top. “Whoa. What do we have here?”

Mac and Richard leaned forward. “What is it, where?” Richard asked.

“On the trunk lid.” Angela bit into her bottom lip.

Richard shined his flashlight to highlight several scratch marks. The scratch marks had gone through the paint, in parallel patterns of three or four scratches.

Angela grimaced. “These were made by human fingernails, guys.”

Mac whistled. “If these were made by Sara Watson, she was still alive when he transported her.”

He looked around for Dana and found her just outside, taking pictures of a flower garden.

“What are you doing?” Mac asked. “Find something?”

“I don't know.” Dana pointed to the flowers. “I was admiring Alma's flowers and noticed that all the beds were overgrown except for this one. Look how the soil has been disturbed.”

“Maybe Sinnott was getting the yard in shape so he could sell the place.” Mac doubted that was the case.

Dana shook her head. “Beautification would start in front of the house. Sinnott doesn't strike me as the type to care about the flowerbeds in front or back for any reason.”

“You're right about that. Do you suppose he's buried something there?”

“Like bloody clothes?” Dana looked hopeful.

“We'd better have a look. I'll go back to the van and get a shovel. Say, Angela,” he stepped back into the barn. “Dana might have something. Someone's been digging in the flowerbed. Disturbed soil in this guy's yard is mighty suspicious.” He glanced at the smaller shed. “Maybe we'd better take a look at the shed. Confiscate any shovels we might find. We should do a soil analysis of those as well as the dirt we found in the trunk. We might be able to put one of his shovels at the body dump.”

“Good thinking, Mac.” Dana took several more photos of the flowerbed. “There's a good shoe print here. Let's capture that too.”

“Will do,” Angela said. “We'll finish up the car first. You guys can do the print if you want.”

Dana photographed the print, exchanging her digital camera for a 35 mm in their crime-scene kit so she could photograph in black and white. The black-and-white film was always the best for tire tracks and footprints, almost bringing a 3D appearance to the image. Mac mixed up some plaster from a box of the powder in his kit, applying the sticky solution to the ground on and around the print. After it dried, they would be able to lift a plaster cast of the print for future analysis.

“You ready for Big Foot now?” Dana joked as Mac stood up to admire his handiwork.

“I've wanted to try this out for some time; it looks easier in training class. I've never done it at a real scene, because the prints have never been in good soil like this. They're always in sawdust or mud or something.”

Mac got a shovel from the van, while Dana grabbed the supplies needed to secure the shoe print cast after the plaster dried. Once they'd salvaged the print and gotten a soil sample, Mac started moving the soil. In less than five minutes, he had unearthed a human hand.

THIRTY

M
ac made a call to their sergeant, who promptly turned this new crime over to the East County Major Crime Team, an investigative group comprised of city and county investigators within Multnomah County. Mac was a member of the team, representing OSP, but their resources were maxed with the investigation involving so many victims. They were also down one homicide team with Philly out of the game and Russ placed in a support role for him. The jury was still out on whether the captain would place Mac and Dana on administrative leave, complete with a mandatory psych exam, just because they had witnessed Sinnott's shooting.

With a new crime scene, Dana and Mac would need to go back and write an addendum to their warrant. While Angela and Richard completed the forensic examination of the Buick, Mac and Dana made one more cursory search of the house and then released their scene to the local police, who would deal with the new crime and the body they had found. They did, however, stick around to assist the OSP lab, a deputy medical examiner, and the local authorities in exhuming the body.