From the looks of the slash and puncture wounds on Olivia’s body, the forensics team suspected that a knife had killed her. They found a potential clue in the kitchen. Next to the Viking range was a hand-oiled ebony and rosewood knife block designed to hold eight high-end knives. One slot was an open void, almost winking at everyone who came into the kitchen to notice a knife was missing.
“Big knife,” a tech said, looking at the slot.
“Little girl,” Annie Garnett replied, as she surveyed the huge white room.
A keg on the kitchen counter and more of those obligatory red cups indicated that the party drink of choice had been beer.
No surprise there.
“Seems like beer wasn’t all that they were doing here,” one detective said as he carefully put a clip with the remnant of a marijuana cigarette into a police issued evidence bindle, marking it with the time, place, and location of its collection.
“Yeah. Found a couple of them in the bathroom too,” replied another.
“Jeez. In my day a party was a six-pack of beer, and when we ran out of that we watched TV.”
“You’re dating yourself. Kids today are different. They party hard.”
“Mine don’t,” said a tech dusting a glass-topped coffee table near the fireplace.
The police officers glanced over in his direction but said nothing. It was well known in Kitsap law enforcement that the tech’s eldest daughter did party hard and probably needed to be in rehab.
Despite the mess and garbage, there was one item that caught everyone’s attention. It was the only thing that really looked out of place, the only thing that indicated that something might have been amiss at the party aside from the dead girl upstairs. On the honed travertine floor were several glittery shards of broken glass.
A tech wielding a camera looked down at the sharp splinters of glass against the coffee-with-cream toned floor. “Think a vase fell off the shelf?” she asked, flashing the camera’s strobe. “Maybe a kid bumped into it.”
Another tech standing nearby didn’t think so. “Looky here,” he said, sweeping his arms over the space where the glass sparkled like a Gaga headpiece. “There’s no way someone just knocked a vase over. Someone threw it. And they threw it hard.”
“Glass all the way over there,” said another deputy. “There’s a small dent in the wall too.”
“Yup,” said the tech with the camera. “That’s right. Someone threw it like a bomb. Looks like we’ve got blood on this piece.”
More photographs were taken. Each came with a tiny identifier so that later, when the crime wound its way to court, those images could be used for evidentiary purposes.
If it made it that far. And, of course, if the broken vase had anything to do with the homicide.
UPSTAIRS THREE PEOPLE STOOD next to Brianna’s bed: a Kitsap County detective, a newbie crime-scene investigator, and Dr. Birdy Waterman, the county’s forensic pathologist. Their eyes scanned every inch of the room, better, and with more precision than an Epson set at its finest calibration. No one said much of anything as they went about their work. They simply took it all in, made notes, and snapped photos, recording everything as it was—or at least as it appeared to be.
They couldn’t help bringing their mundane observations to the scene:
I have a bed set like that. It’s Ralph Lauren, Detective Sheila Walton thought. Hated fussing with those pillow shams.
Duane Bonner, the newest forensic tech, focused on the movie poster hanging on Brianna’s wall and snapped a few shots.
Nice! She’s a Hunger Games fan!
But to Birdy, who had seen plenty of bodies during her tenure in the coroner’s office, this scene in particular was harder to take than most. Tangled in the sheets on the hardwood floor, Olivia’s body resembled a bloody and broken doll. The sheets were a deep crimson. The bloom of blood from Olivia’s chest had wicked its way into nearly every fiber of the five-hundred-thread-count fabric. It was the smell that gave it away. A coppery, acrid odor permeated the room. Brianna Connors’s room smelled of fresh blood. Lots of it.
The tech pushed aside what looked like a Star Wars costume and a sparkly white gown and picked up a lacy thong from Brianna’s bedroom floor. He held it up like a frilly white flag of victory.
The detective’s blood simmered. That idiot picked it up with his bare hands.
“You’d better hope that thong has nothing to do with this crime, because you just broke protocol big-time, Bonner,” Detective Walton said.
He looked up with big, dopey eyes. “Right. Sorry,” he said. “You don’t have to get all technical with me.”
Being technical was their job, but Birdy didn’t say anything. So many people had traipsed through the crime scene that it was going to be difficult to sift out what was what. And, more important, who was who.
Everyone there knew that Bonner was the grandson of a former—and beloved—Seattle police chief. Bonner was the worst tech in Washington State, maybe even the whole West Coast, and had the job only as a favor to someone in power. Favor or not, if he screwed up again as he had with a drug case last month, he was out. The justice system will only tolerate a few screw-ups.
Birdy and Bonner continued to document the scene.
Flash.
Flash.
Flash.
And then Olivia’s remains were maneuvered into the dark folds of a neoprene fabric body bag.
“What’s in her mouth?” a husky voice asked.
Birdy looked up to see the concerned face of Port Gamble’s police chief.
“Hi, Annie. I didn’t hear you come in. Did you know the victim?” Birdy asked, now looking more closely at the dead girl’s mouth. “Anything about her?”
Annie kept her cap on but loosened the collar of her heavy winter coat. Perspiration had beaded along her brow. She hated being over-heated, as it caused her hastily applied makeup to run. She’d always applied it with a heavy hand; she simply didn’t have a lot to work with and needed whatever help Maybelline could provide.
“Olivia’s from London. She’s here with See America Studies. Staying with Kim and Beth Lee,” Annie said. “We never really talked, but I heard she was a nice girl.”
“They always are,” Birdy said.
She reached for a small flashlight and pointed the beam of light directly at Olivia’s bloodied lips. There was definitely a foreign object protruding. It looked like fabric.
“It appears she was gagged,” Birdy said.
Annie inched closer. “Do we have a BTK type out here?” she asked, thinking back on the file of a serial killer from Kansas known for his tactics: Bind, Torture, Kill.
“Too soon to say,” Birdy answered, though she highly doubted it. There had not been any obvious indicators that Olivia’s arms or legs had been tied. There were no ligature marks on her wrists and ankles that she could see with the naked eye. UV light would be used back at the morgue when she did her exam.
The police chief bent down to get a better view of Olivia’s mouth just as the bag was zipped closed. “Looks like the tail end of a man’s necktie.” Annie looked up at Birdy, then the cadre of investigators. “No one says a word about this. Understood?”
Her heart raced. In her years as the police chief, she had yet to handle a murder. Tragedy, yes. Deadly accidents, of course. But this was the first time in a long while that deliberate, violent evil had come knocking on a door in Port Gamble. As she pondered the reality of Olivia’s homicide, she could only vaguely recall one other murder in the town’s recent history. Fifteen years prior, a twelve-year-old newspaper boy named Joshua Archer had been abducted and murdered by a TV repairman. His mutilated body was found in an abandoned freezer in the earthen basement of the dreary, slate-gray house number 27.
ANNIE RETURNED DOWNSTAIRS to find Brianna and Drew on a bench in the foyer. The young couple had found refuge there from the chilly night air and the horde of investigators crawling around the house and yard. The two had expressions that were a mix of worry and fear colored by the greenish cast of a seedling hangover. Drew stood as the police chief came into view. Brianna kept her chin cradled in the palm of her hand.