“They look alike. Was the bed motor on?”
“Not that I could tell.”
With his gloved hand, Steve inspected the remote. It had a timer setting—a maximum of an hour. “How about the AC?”
“It was on.” He slid a glance toward Neil.
“I turned it off,” Neil said. “It was freezing in here.” He raised the clipboard in his hand. “I got it noted in the report.”
Steve nodded and looked at Abraham. “It’s a pretty nasty sight, especially with the girlfriend and landlady, but I’m wondering if you put the sheet over her.”
“No, sir. I think it was the M.E.’s.”
“M.E. sheets are blue.”
“I sheeted her,” Neil said. In his hand was a photo of the victim posing with another woman in a backyard setting.
“Thank you, Officer. I’ll catch you later.” Abraham nodded and left the room. Steve moved to Neil. “You sheeted her?”
“Yeah. I got it out of her closet.”
“You might have contaminated evidence.”
“Evidence of what? She died of an accident.”
“That doesn’t tell me why you sheeted her.”
“The guys were coming in and out.”
“They’re crime-scene body collectors! They see this all the time.”
“Christ, I knew her. You knew her.” He stood the photograph back up on the table. “I didn’t recognize her until I saw the poster. A fucking waste.”
“I’ll say.” A uniformed officer with a sergeant’s badge entered the room—Rick Malloy from the Jamaica Plain precinct. Behind him were Bobby Mangini and his assistant. “Fucking beautiful piece of work is what she was.”
“Crime scene says they’re done,” Mangini said. “So we’re going to put her in a bag.”
“Not yet,” Steve said. The others looked at him blankly, resenting his rolling in late and stalling the wrap-up. “I’m just wondering if you or your team moved the body when you checked her. Shifted her around or anything?”
Neil rolled his head in exasperation.
“We looked under her to check lividity, but she’s pretty much like we found her.”
“Didn’t alter the position of her head?”
“Just to check the ligature under the towel, but her head position’s unchanged. Why?”
“Because the angle bothers me.” He moved to the bed. “Look at the ligature. All the pressure is on her throat and the veins and carotid arteries along the sides.”
“Yeah, which is how she died.”
With his gloved hand he lifted the plait of hair at the back of her neck to expose the V gap made by the stretched stocking. “There’s enough room to put my fingers through.”
“So?” Neil said.
“How many hangings have you seen?”
Neil was taken aback by the question. “I don’t know. A couple.”
“How many accidentals?”
“What’s your point?”
“Look at the bruising on the back of her neck.”
“That’s the lividity.”
“Lividity works with gravity—where the blood settles. Look at the bottom of her face where it hangs over. It’s purple. This isn’t the same color as settled blood. That’s trauma.”
Mangini flicked on a penlight and inspected the ligature around the woman’s neck. “Could also be an abrasion.”
“Looks like even pressure marks all the way around, which I don’t think would happen with the stocking the way it is. There wouldn’t be any on that V gap, but there is.”
“Only way to know for sure is to have the lab do a cell analysis.”
“We’ll put in for that. Also she was wearing a sexy evening dress and a thong—hardly an outfit if she’s going to lie here and sex herself. Even if she was, why leave the lights on in the other rooms if she was going to bed?”
“So, what are you saying?” Mangini asked.
“I’m saying I want crime scene to do a full-blown processing because I think someone was with her.”
Neil’s face flushed red. “I think maybe you’re taking this a little far, Steve.”
Steve nodded Neil to the other side of the room. In a low voice he said, “I understand how you want to wrap this up, but I’m not convinced this is an accident. Even if it is, nothing’s been dusted in here. The floor’s not been vacced. Nobody’s done a rape kit on the body. This is not department protocol.”
“Because Mangini was convinced. The techs were convinced. And I’m convinced. She was having a sexual fantasy thing but passed out and suffocated.” He removed the mangled stirrer from his mouth. “This isn’t the Portman case.”
“Smooth, Neil.”
Three months before Neil joined the force, Steve had misread a crime scene, incorrectly declaring a suicide. The family had hired a detective who claimed that the investigators had jumped to conclusions and, as a result, the department ended up taking flak from the media. It was shoddy work and the inevitable manifestation of the stress from Steve’s alienation from Dana: heavy drinking, showing up late for work or not at all, use of excessive force with suspects. His superiors had reprimanded him, but when the Portman case hit the headlines six months ago, Captain Reardon suspended him for a week.
“I think you’re going overboard is all,” Neil said. “Another thing, it’s embarrassing for her family.”
“You know the family?”
“No, but you saw the pictures out there—nieces and nephews or whatever. We drag this out and the neighbors outside are gonna want to know what’s going on. Then the fucking media will horn in. So let’s just wrap this up, okay?”
“We’re going to wrap this up, but we’re deferring to policies and procedures when cause of death isn’t immediately apparent.”
“Everything by the rules, huh?”
“Yeah, especially with someone we know.”
“All the more reason to protect her dignity.”
Steve stared at Neil. A large part of him wanted to do what Neil said—send her to the M.E. and let it go. But in some dark recess of his gut he felt a rustling unease. “I don’t know how to say this without saying it, but I’m the lead on this. So, yeah, by the rules.”
Because of their brief partnership, Steve and Neil were still meshing. Reardon had paired them as complements to each other. Steve was the more traditional investigator who used logic, precision, and scientific evidence to reconstruct a crime scene. He was methodical and orderly and took pride in the details and style of his reports. He was also good with people, almost deferential to a fault. Neil, on the other hand, was more gut-intuitive, impulsive, sometimes letting assumptions get ahead of facts. He was also a cunningly effective interrogator, sometimes playacting to manipulate a suspect into spilling his guts. He was good, and they made an effective team. But this was the first time in their partnership that Neil had outright challenged Steve. Maybe because the victim was a mutual acquaintance. Maybe resentment because Neil was older and had been a cop longer, while Steve had rank.
“Look, guys,” Steve said to the others, “we’ve got some inconsistencies here. So, I want to take this from the top: a full forensic on the body—hands bagged, fingernail clipping, DNA, prints, vaginal swab, blood-typing, semen illumination, fibers, hairs—the works.”
Neil started to leave.
“Where you going?”
He gave Steve a sulky look. “To talk to the landlady.”
“We’re going to need some backup for a neighborhood sweep plus an RMV check on all parked cars, the owners talked to.”
The others nodded.
“I also want all phone company records including home and cell and work. Also her laptop settings and e-mail messages preserved and copied. Same with her answering machine and any address books, mail correspondence, and credit card purchases in the last forty-eight hours.” Then Steve added: “And any known boyfriends, past and present.”