“Bordeaux?” I ask. “What’s this got to do with wine?”
“The wood fibers from her car,” he replies.
“You think they’re from wine barrels?” I can’t imagine what that might mean.
“Common oak, white oak used in cooperage to make barrels, and also a secondary source of tannic acid, or the tannins you find in red wine,” he says. “In your case we’re talking American oak stained a red-wine color, with trace elements of burned wood, most likely from what’s known as toasting or charring the inside of the barrel, and sugar crystals and other derivatives such as vanillin, lactones.”
“A woody debris that looks like mulch but isn’t. Wineries or some place that makes use of wine barrels,” I think out loud. “But not where the barrels themselves are made, because new barrels wouldn’t be stained.”
“They wouldn’t be.”
“Then what?”
“It’s frustrating as hell,” he says. “I can tell you the origin of this stuff likely is wine barrels, but I can’t tell you why it’s shredded, absolutely pulverized, or what it was used for.”
He mentions that it is a common practice for people to cut old wine barrels into pieces, char them, and toss them into whiskey they’re aging.
“But this stuff’s way too fine for that, fine like dirt,” he says. “Doesn’t look like it was from planing or sanding, either, but I suppose the debris could be from someplace where old wine barrels are being recycled or reused for something.”
I’m aware that barrels no longer suitable for aging wine can be handcrafted into furniture, and I recall some of the unusual pieces inside Peggy Stanton’s house, the table in the entryway, where her car key was found, the oak table in the kitchen. Everything I saw was antique and certainly not recycled from used barrels, and there was no evidence she collected wines or even drank them.
“What about the woody fibers from the bottom of her feet and under her nails?” I inquire. “Same thing?”
“American oak stained red, some of it charred,” he answers. “Although I didn’t find sugar crystals and some of these same derivatives.”
“They would have dissolved in the water. It’s probably safe to assume what was on her body and tracked into her car came from the same source,” I decide. “Or better put, possibly the origin of the debris likely is the same location.”
“You can assume that,” he agrees. “I was thinking of checking with some wineries around here to see if they know what this wine barrel debris might be—”
“Around here?” I interrupt him. “I wouldn’t.”
thirty-six
IT IS ALMOST FOUR P.M. WHEN I WALK INTO THE WAR room, as it’s called, where experts and investigators, including scientists and doctors from the military, convene face-to-face both in person and remotely. Here behind closed doors we wage battle against the enemy using high-definition video and CD-quality audio, and I recognize who is speaking.
I hear General John Briggs’s deep commanding voice saying something about transport on an Air Force plane in Washington state. A C-130, he says, and he’s talking about someone I know.
“He just took off from McChord, will land in about an hour.” The chief of the Armed Forces Medical Examiners, my boss, fills integrated LCDs around the geometrically shaped computer conference table.
“He won’t supervise, of course. He’ll be there to observe,” Briggs says, and displayed on the deep blue acoustical upholstered walls are scene photographs that are unfamiliar to me, a skull, scattered bones, and human hair.
I take a chair next to Benton and across from Val Hahn, who is in a khaki suit and a serious mood, and she nods at me. Next to her is Douglas Burke, in black, and she doesn’t give me so much as a glance. Turning on the HD display in front of me, I look at Briggs’s rugged face on my monitor as he explains what the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Edmonton, Alberta, is doing as a courtesy because we don’t have jurisdiction.
“We could argue it, but we won’t.” Briggs has a way of assuming authority and making people believe it. “We’re not going to have a pissing match in a case where it’s an ally capable of conducting a competent forensic investigation. This isn’t Jonestown or American missionaries murdered in Sudan. It will be a fully coordinated effort with our Canadian friends.”
I can tell from the military coin and memorial flag displays on the shelves behind him that he’s sitting at his desk inside his port mortuary office at Dover Air Force Base. He’s in scrubs because his work isn’t done, a planeload of flag-draped transfer cases scheduled to arrive by the end of the day, I know from the news. A chopper shot down. Another one.
“His role is to observe, to be a conduit between them and us,” Briggs is saying, about the AFME’s consulting forensic pathologist in Seattle.
“I’m sorry I’m late.” I speak to my monitor, and Briggs is looking at me and he’s looking at everyone.
“Let me fill you in, Kay.” He informs me that Emma Shubert is dead.
Her decomposing remains have been found not even five miles from the Pipestone Creek campground where she was last seen by her colleagues on the night of August 23. Dr. Ramon Lopez is being flown to Edmonton, and the AFME consultant, the retired chief of Seattle, a friend of mine, will be in touch with me as soon as he has information.
“Some kids looking for dinosaur bones.” Briggs describes for me what he’s already explained to everyone else. “Apparently, they were exploring a wooded area off Highway Forty-three and noticed several small bones. They thought at first they’d discovered another bone bed, and they had, in a sense. Only these bones weren’t petrified or old. Small human bones of the hands and feet, most likely scattered by animals. Then a human skull near a pile of rocks accompanied by a foul odor.”
“When was this?” I again apologize for what he has to repeat.
“Yesterday late afternoon. Most of the body was under rocks that someone obviously piled on top. So she’s not completely skeletonized, as you can see.”
Briggs clicks through an array of photos that are large and graphic on the wall-mounted flat screens. Small human bones, carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges, what look like white and gray stones in a dry creek bed overwhelmed by trees, and a skull wedged under a shrub as if it rolled there or perhaps an animal nudged it.
A pelt of matted grayish-brown hair at the edge of piled rocks, and then the shallow grave is exposed, revealing the remains in situ, a body in a blue coat and gray pants curled up on its side. Areas not protected by clothing, the head, the hands, the feet, likely were preyed on and gnawed on by insects and wildlife, and were disarticulated and scattered.
“What about boots or shoes?” I inquire.
“Not on the clothing inventory I’ve received.” Briggs types on a keyboard I can’t see and puts on his glasses. “One blue rain jacket, one pair of gray pants, a bra, a pair of panties, a silver metal watch on a blue Velcro band that believe it or not is still ticking.”
“No shoes or socks,” I comment. “Interesting, because at some point before she died, Peggy Stanton was barefoot.”
“Psychological hobbling,” Benton says, and I wonder how long he’s known. “Rendering the victim submissive and dominated.”
“And also making it harder to run,” Douglas Burke says to him and no one else.
Her wide-eyed stare brings to mind a wild animal, a rabid one.
“It was a cool and rainy summer in northwest Alberta.” The most powerful forensic pathologist in the United States resumes briefing me. “And of course it’s been quite cold during the month of October. So two months out and most of the body is reasonably intact because of temperatures that almost mimic refrigerated conditions, and also clothing and rocks protected it somewhat. If she’s a stabbing, a shooting, blunt force, possibly even strangulation, there may be enough soft tissue for us to tell. ID by dental charts has been confirmed, and we’re awaiting DNA, but there doesn’t seem to be a doubt it’s her.”