Strangers (13 page)

“B-positive. Which isn’t good news for Lex Tifton.”

The pretty doctor nodded her agreement. “So we know that it’s completely possible that he lost a heckuva lot of blood yesterday morning. So I guess you used the same magic blood-detecting fluorescent chemicals in the parking lot that you did in the gardening shed. Those two people that were bleeding have gone somewhere. Did they leave a trail?”

Overstreet liked to talk shop with a cigarette in his hand, and he was really missing it about now. “That fluorescent stuff only works well in the dark, so we had to wait hours to use it in the parking lot, and who knows what data we lost in the meantime? The bed-and-breakfast’s damn sprinkler system ran at 7:30 a.m., according to a maid who got wet trying to take out some trash. God only knows what the sprinklers washed away before we even knew Glynis was missing.”

“I remember Kirk grumbling about an inch of water standing in the test pits that morning. I asked Daniel to change the sprinkler schedule, but it never occurred to me that this water had made Glynis harder to find.”

Overstreet nodded and continued walking his consultant through the evidence, as he knew it. “The B-positive bleeder left a clear trail for the first few feet away from the car, but everything’s been washed away once the trail leaves the lot. The A-positive person, probably Glynis, also left a few drops until she got to the sprinklers. That’s all we got.”

“So we know that two bleeding people walked—”

“—or were carried—” Overstreet interjected.

“—across the parking lot. Big hairy deal. Of course, they left the parking lot. They certainly weren’t there any more by the time anybody realized there was a problem.”

The woman didn’t miss much, and she didn’t mince words.

“That’s about all the physical evidence we’ve got right now. The lab’s working on some hair and fiber evidence from the car, but every indication is that the hairs belong to Glynis and Lex, two people who had every reason to be sitting in that car and leaving hairs behind. I—”

Faye looked out the window, then interrupted him without a visible qualm. It occurred to him that she might need to learn to kiss up to her clients if she hoped to be successful as a consultant. Blithely ignorant of her client-relations
faux pas
she said, “You know, we’re almost at the growth management office. We really should talk about what we’re going to say to these people.”

The egg-headed archaeologist was doing a better job of concentrating on the reason for this interview than he was.

The closely trimmed fingernails were still drumming on her armrest as she talked in that singsong tone people use when they’re really just thinking out loud. “We want to talk to somebody who knows how the artifacts were found. Was the cross just lying on the ground? Or did someone dig it up?”

He nodded and just let her keep thinking aloud.

“Was that someone working on a large development that required permit approval? Or was it just someone with a shovel in his back yard? The laws distinguish between those things.”

Despite their very short acquaintance, Overstreet felt completely confident that Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth would thoroughly investigate the fine points of those laws.

This brief conversation had more than discharged her duty and earned her paycheck, but God love her, now she’d moved on to ruminating over the list of suspects, and she was doing a damn fine job of it, too.

“If you could’ve heard the argument between Glynis and Lex…” she mused. “I’d be tempted to just presume he took her and be done with it, but that would be intellectually dishonest. There are the antipreservationists to consider, with Dick Wheeler the ex-commissioner first among them. And I really don’t like her father, but maybe I’m just prejudiced against self-involved rich people.”

Overstreet allowed as how she was not alone.

“I don’t know what to think about Daniel and Suzanne. They were close to Glynis, and I can’t think of any reason for them to hurt her…”

“But you include them on the suspect list out of…let me guess…intellectual honesty?”

She smiled at his teasing. “Yes. So we have to include Levon and Kirk to maintain that honesty.” The smile dimmed. “The poor guys are beside themselves with worry. They really liked her for herself, aside from that pretty face.”

“And your husband Joe?”

She was woman enough to bristle at the suggestion. “Yeah, but then we’d have to include Magda and me. We are each other’s alibi, and we could be in cahoots, you know.”

His cell phone chose that moment to ring, and in that moment Overstreet and Faye lost their leisurely afternoon surrounded by boring files.

The voice of Overstreet’s boss boomed out of his cell phone. The boss never had much to say when he was pissed off. Like now. He just got straight to the point. “We’ve got a body, and that’s all I know. Some old fart called in, damn near hysterical because he found a rotting corpse in his usual fishing spot.”

Overstreet wondered if Faye could hear the grisly information moving out of the phone and into his ear.

“You know the boat ramp at Lighthouse Park? The medical examiner’s office has somebody there already, talking to the guy that pulled the body out of the river. Get over there now.”

No wonder the boss was so thoroughly pissed off. The poor guy that found the body was probably just a nice retired man out for a day of fishing. He’d done what he considered to be the right thing by hauling the body out of the water and getting it to shore…and it couldn’t have been an easy or fun job.

The guy was probably a pretty fine boatman, come to think of it, if he managed this without capsizing his craft. But his good deed meant that every abrasion on the body would come with a question. Did it happen when the body was salvaged from the water? Did it happen during the past day-and-a-half, while the body was presumably floating free in the river? Or did it happen as part of an assault or murder?

Overstreet was almost as pissed off by his own awkward situation. What precisely was he supposed to do with the highly paid and well-qualified consultant sitting to his right? It wasn’t fair to shut Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth out of the investigation, not when she was truthfully a real asset to the team, and he had no time to drop her off on his way to the boat dock, anyway.

He looked her over. She looked about as emotionally stable as a person can look, which was quite some accomplishment in her condition. And the woman’s air of quiet security said she was convinced that she could take care of herself, no matter what. But she was wrong.

Faye Longchamp-Mantooth sat in the car next to him, barely big enough to carry the child in her belly. Even when she wasn’t pregnant, an average-sized man with no scruples could flatten her without half-trying. There was a reason that some policemen kept their own women on a short string, constricting their social circle and limiting their freedom to move around the world until there was really nothing in their lives but their husbands. It was sick and it was wrong, but Detective Overstreet could understand it.

In a law enforcement career, a person saw up-close what havoc an evil person could wreak on a woman. Or on a man.

Still, there was no help for it. He was going to have to take a pregnant lady to see something awful.

Chapter Thirteen

The condition of the body was…well, no corpse that had been in the Matanzas River for that long was going to look good. Faye would have thought she’d be nauseated by such a sight but adrenaline seemed to be keeping her lunch in her stomach.

The body, still dressed, was wrapped loosely in a blue tarpaulin. The skin was white and flabby. The throat wound seemed to have monopolized the attention of the fish and crabs attracted by this big tasty morsel of dead human being, which might have been a good thing and it might not. The medical examiner and the CSI people and Detective Overstreet had all commented on the corpse’s exceptionally good condition.

“That brackish water in the Matanzas keeps a floater looking good for an extra day or so,” the medical examiner, Butch Benedict, had said.

Sometimes, when Faye got all dolled up for an evening on the town, Joe whistled and said, “Mmmm, looking good…” She devoutly hoped that his definition of “looking good,” was night-and-day different from Butch Benedict’s.

Not wanting to seem like a prissy girl, Faye leaned over the side of the boat one more time and took a good long look at something mind-bendingly terrible. Squinting at the body’s destroyed throat, three words came out of Faye’s mouth without conscious thought.

“Call my husband.”

Overstreet lurched in her direction. “Are you sick? Do you need to sit down?”

Bewildered, Faye blurted, “What? Oh, that. You know, you should really just try to forget that I’m pregnant.”

He looked at her as if she were speaking Sanskrit. He also looked like he expected her to faint and hit the ground at any moment.

“Okay, so maybe you can’t help but notice that I’m as big as a barn. But try.” She waved a hand in front of his mild blue eyes, with their incongruously long gray lashes. “And try to focus on what I’m saying. Let’s call Joe. It may be that this throat wound was made with that stone blade that Glynis found. The other half of it, anyway. I don’t see anything about that wound that says it wasn’t.”

Faye thought that maybe talking about mortal wounds and how they were made might start him to thinking more about their job and less about her condition, which would be a nice change. Most detectives spent a fair amount of time obsessing over the murder weapons that generated their caseload.

Faye plowed ahead. “Joe knows more about primitive tools and weapons than most anybody. He makes them. He uses them. He digs up old ones. High-falutin’ archaeologists pay him outrageous sums for his opinions on flintknapped tools. Let him look at that wound and tell us what he thinks about how it was made.”

Overstreet seemed like an innately reasonable man, and that trait won out over his innate need to protect her. His gentle eyes just looked at her, while he nodded his head. Faye snatched her phone out of her pocket and speed-dialed her husband.

She looked the body over one more time, then she went back to the car to wait for Joe—not because she couldn’t handle the corpse’s horrific condition, but because there was no sense getting in the way when she couldn’t think of anything else helpful to do. And because she was dead-certain that Overstreet would get progressively happier with every step she took away from the rotting human being who had, until an hour before, been floating free in the Matanzas River.

***

Joe and Benedict and Overstreet were crouched in the boat, talking and scrutinizing and squinting at the corpse like some kind of biology project. Faye had never liked biology class, because she always felt bad about the frog or earthworm or cat or whatever it was that she was dissecting.

Her feelings about the body they were examining were more complicated. She was deep-down glad that it didn’t belong to Glynis.

Should she feel guilty about that?

She should definitely feel guilty if she believed that it was extra-sad for Glynis to be chewed on by fishes, just because she was young and pretty

She’d known Glynis for a day, but that was enough for her to know that the woman was more than pretty. She was smart and competent and interesting, and Faye had liked the way she supported her employers, particularly gentle and vulnerable Suzanne. Faye had seen that Glynis was also well able to stand up for herself in the face of her obnoxious boyfriend.

This last fact made Faye’s feelings at the moment particularly confusing. Because the corpse rotting on the bottom of the boat
was
Glynis’ obnoxious boyfriend.

***

Faye watched Joe and Overstreet rise to their feet and strip off their rubber gloves. Benedict tossed the other two a bottle of hand sterilizer and a towel. He probably figured that, though the gloves had protected their hands, they were both feeling fairly icky right now. And a medical examiner ought to know.

Joe was gesturing with his hands as he wiped them, making long, powerful stabbing motions. Benedict and Overstreet leaned in close to watch the demonstration.

Faye hauled herself to her feet. If Joe was pantomiming a murder, then she wanted to see how he thought it was done.

Now he was pointing to Overstreet’s throat, tapping at its soft hollow. “Yeah, I think the killer used the pointed end of that broken blade, or something shaped a whole lot like it, and I think it hit Lex hard right there.”

Joe was still pointing his index finger at the detective’s throat. “That scar on his neckbone was deep, but a blade that size could certainly have gouged it out. If I had to guess, I’d say Lex was already down when that blow was struck. You’d have to be damn lucky to strike someone dead center in the throat and drive the blade straight in, if the person was standing and fighting back. That wound looks like it was made by someone straddling somebody who was already pretty helpless.”

Overstreet wiped his hands down and handed the towel back to Benedict. Then he stared at the river for a moment. The slow-moving blue Matanzas seemed to help him think. “So you think the person who stabbed Lex wasn’t necessarily someone who had a lot of experience with a knife?”

This scenario would have made the murder easier for someone less physical than, say, Joe. Someone like Glynis.

Joe nodded slowly, still picturing how the killing might have been choreographed. “Yeah. See that big bruise on his forehead,” he said. “If he got hit hard there, it might’ve immobilized him long enough for someone to finish him off. Would’ve taken something bigger and blunter to make that lump, though. Something like that celt Glynis found. You did find blood on one piece of it.”

All three men and Faye peered over the side of the boat.

Faye’s imagination was a little too good. She concentrated her energies on not picturing what this experience would be like for Lex or for his killer.

“You sure know a lot about deadly weapons,” Overstreet observed.

“Many’s the time I fed myself with ’em. Deer. Squirrels. Rabbits. Duck,” Joe said. “But in case you’re wondering,” Joe said. “I didn’t use any weapons on Lex Tifton. I would’ve just used the sharp edge of that blade to cut the carotid, myself. It’s a lot more certain than striking hard and maybe missing.”

Faye decided to focus her mind on
not
picturing a man bleeding to death from an arterial neck wound.

***

Faye leaned in through the open driver’s window to say good-bye to Detective Overstreet. She’d hardly known him a day, but when that day was punctuated with the discovery of a murdered man’s corpse, the bonds of friendship formed pretty quickly.

His thin gray hair was stuck tight to his sweaty forehead and his fingernails looked freshly gnawed. She opened her mouth to tell him to go home and get some rest, but he beat her to it.

“Tell that husband of yours to take you home and let you put your feet up. Make him get your supper for you. He should also talk to you about something more pleasant than prehistoric murder weapons and how to murder people with them.”

“You mean that we shouldn’t discuss the best way to slice someone’s carotid artery while we’re sipping our after-dinner coffee?”

“Now, you know that man’s not going to let you have any coffee.” He nodded in the general direction of Joe, who was using hand gestures to help an ambulance driver thread his way through the parking lot serving the ramp where the boat and its cargo waited.

“Okay. I promise that we won’t talk about blood and guts while we sip our tea.”

“Caffeine. Joe’s not going to let you have any caffeine till you have that baby. Longer, if you’re nursing. My wife’s in the La Leche League. I think she nursed ours until they got on the school bus.”

“That’s a heckuva long time to go without caffeine.”

Overstreet laughed. “I didn’t think she was going to survive the withdrawal…which lasted maybe three years.” He reached for his cigarettes and stopped short for about the thirtieth time that day. “I hope you survive till you can have your coffee—”

“Coke. I’m dying for a real Coke.”

“—your Coke. I hope you survive till you can have some real Coke again. Tell Joe I said good-bye and that it was a pleasure working with him.”

“I’ll do that—”

Benedict interrupted Faye by politely tapping her on the shoulder, and she stepped away from the car window. “Detective, could you come with me for a second? We were getting ready to move the body, but something just fell out of his pocket.”

“What was it?”

Overstreet was out of the car and had taken three steps in the direction of the boat before Benedict could answer his question.

“I think it could be important. I mean, I can think of two or three ways this thing could get somebody mad enough to do murder.”

Overstreet had pushed his weary body to a jog, but he still had enough wind to say, “Come on, Butch, don’t make me guess. Money’s plenty good enough to trigger a murder, but you’re not going to come grab me out of my car because the man had some Benjamins in his pocket.”

“Well, I might if he had a thousand of ’em.”

The two of them reached the boat, with Faye close behind, pushing her own legs as fast as they’d go. A crime scene photographer was pointing her camera at something protruding from a pocket on the chest of Lex Tifton’s sodden golf shirt. A slender blue-tipped piece of white plastic showed stark against the black fabric. The familiar thing struck at a place in Faye’s heart that, until now, had only been associated with happiness.

Even from this distance, she could see three letters clearly through the window in that little piece of plastic. They said, “YES.”

Why had Lex Tifton been carrying a positive pregnancy test in his shirt pocket when he was killed?