“I don’t buy the coincidence. Her stolen glasses just happen to turn up at the scene.”
“Now wait a minute. The glasses were found near, not at, the scene, down the hill and quite some way from where the car was located.”
“Right where someone who was running from the scene in a panic might drop it.”
Marcus shook his head.
“I’m afraid I’m not with you on this one, Roy. If you want to follow up on Esther Freemont, you do it on your own.”
The radio crackled and Shindler lifted the mike and gave their call letters. The radio dispatcher told them that they had found Elaine Murray.
They had been looking in the wrong places. The girl had never been in Portsmouth. There was an offshoot of the main highway that led to the coast. It was not heavily traveled, especially this time of year. Walter Haas and his wife, Susan, had been headed for their folks’ house in Sandy Cove when their car got a flat. Walter had pulled onto a shoulder and had gone out into a torrential downpour to change the tire. The ground was muddy and slippery and he had lost his balance, sending the jack handle over the embankment. He could see the body when he looked over the side. It looked to Shindler as if it had been tossed over the edge of the grassy downslope from the road like a sack of wheat.
The rain was making it difficult for everyone. There was no possibility of finding any tracks. The roadway would leave none and the shoulder was a miniature swamp.
Shindler half slid, half scrambled down the embankment. A small group of officers were beating the tall grass for evidence. Marcus had gone over to a large man dressed in a rain slicker and wide-brimmed hat. Shindler looked down at the body. Someone had had the decency to cover it with a blanket. He raised the corner and looked.
He almost retched. The head was almost denuded of tissue and the scalp had practically rotted away. He moved his eyes away from the face. She was wearing tan toreador slacks, but the zipper was undone, as if someone had put them on her. Her only other piece of clothing was a white blouse. It was unbuttoned and the left side had flapped over, revealing her left breast.
Shindler was churning inside. He could feel the adrenaline conquering the initial effects of the nausea. Then he saw her feet and he started to shake. He did not know why the fact that she was barefoot should affect him so. What could it matter? She was dead. But then the whole thing was illogical. How could two young people such as these be struck down at the beginning of their lives.
Shindler covered Elaine Murray and walked up the hill with the rain stinging him. He stood by his car and breathed deeply until he was in control. Then he joined Marcus.
“Roy, this is Larry Tenneck, Meridian County Sheriff’s Office.”
They shook hands.
“It’s a pity, ain’t it?” Tenneck said. “A young girl like that.”
“Any idea how long she’s been down there?”
“Not a one. This stretch of road isn’t heavily traveled in the winter. I don’t think she was killed here. Course with the rain and all you couldn’t really tell, but I figure she was just left here, because whoever killed her figured she wouldn’t be found for a while.”
“You’re probably right,” Marcus agreed. “The autopsy should tell us a few things.”
“Speaking of autopsies, can we move her now? I told the boys to leave her till you got here, but I think it would be better to have her taken out of the rain.”
“Of course. You took pictures?”
Tenneck nodded and signaled to two men who were smoking in the front seat of an ambulance that was parked alongside the road. One man nodded and flicked a cigarette out of the ambulance window. Tenneck shook his head.
“I wish they wouldn’t do that. We have enough trouble as it is with littering. You boys’ll want to see the clothes, I guess.”
“Clothes?” Shindler asked.
“Oh, yeah. We found the rest of her clothes. Deputy found them over in that grass about a hundred yards from the body. I guess they dumped her, then threw the rest of her stuff over the side.”
Tenneck reached into the back seat of his car and pulled out a plastic sack. Harvey opened the rear door and sat inside. Shindler sat next to him and Tenneck leaned in through the window, oblivious to the rain. There was a red and black ski sweater, a torn brassiere and a pair of panties in the bag. The panties were torn in several places and Roy realized that they had actually been torn in two at one point near the right hip.
“We better have Beauchamp check for signs of rape,” Marcus said in a low, hard voice.
“That’s the first thing I thought of when I seen them,” Tenneck said. For the first time since they had talked with him, Shindler noticed that he had lost his country calm.
“You do me a favor, will ya. You get these boys and get them good.”
Dr. Francis R. Beauchamp, like Roy Shindler, was a man of odd proportions. There, however, the similarities ceased. Where Shindler was tall and thin, with a small head and bulbous nose and overlong arms connected to oversize hands, Beauchamp was short and squat and possessed of a large melon-sized head that overbalanced his entire body, giving the impression that a quick, downward nod would pitch him forward. His tiny hands were heavily veined and his imperfect eyesight was aided by tortoiseshell glasses that perched on a thin, delicately shaped nose.
Shindler and Marcus were seated in the waiting room of the Heavenly Rest Funeral Parlor in Perryville, Meridian County’s county seat. Shindler had smoked all the cigarettes in his pack and was debating with himself the pros and cons of braving the elements in search of pie and coffee when the door opened and Beauchamp flopped onto a couch upholstered in a peach-colored material upon which fluttered flocks of smiling cherubim.
“Strangulation,” he said. He looked tired. They had called him from the Sheriff’s office and made him drive out in the night. “Probably done with the cord that was found stuffed into the waistband of her slacks.”
“How long has she been dead?”
Beauchamp pursed his lips.
“I’ll say four to six weeks.”
“The body didn’t look that bad, except for the head,” Marcus said.
“It’s the weather. Gets cold out here. Cold retards the deterioration. Say, can I get a cup of coffee and some food? I’m really beat.”
He looked tired, Shindler thought. We’re all tired.
“On me. Grab your coat and I’ll stake you at the first hamburger joint we find.”
“Last of the big spenders. You bastards owe me more than hamburger for this job.”
“Was there anything else?” Shindler asked. They all knew what he meant.
“Yes. Poor thing.”
Beauchamp sighed and removed his glasses. He closed his eyes and rubbed the eyelids with his thumb and the knuckle of his index finger.
“There were hemorrhages on the front and back surfaces of the uterus. In my opinion they could have been caused by a blow to the lower abdomen or by vigorous intercourse. If it was intercourse, she would have had to have been unusually active.
“I also found morphologically identifiable sperm in the vagina.”
“What is that? Morphologically identifiable.”
“It means that I could tell it was sperm. It was dead, but it was there.”
“And what does all that mean?” Shindler wanted to know.
“It means that I think that more than one man had her shortly before she died and it means that I think they had her over and over again. Then they killed her. That’s an unscientific opinion, so don’t hold me to it. But, then, I’m not feeling too scientific tonight. Dr. Harold Murray is a good friend of mine and I have been thinking of how lucky I am that I don’t have to be the one who tells him what happened to his daughter.”
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