William Heffernan: The Dead Detective

Next he moved on to check the pubic area for any stains of a stiff, starchy texture indicating dried semen. There was some in the blond pubic hair, as Vicky had noted earlier, and some on the inner thigh. He jotted those locations in his notebook. At the morgue the M.E. would use ultraviolet light to do a more extensive check. He would also take vaginal, anal, and oral swabs to collect any semen still in the body, and send it off for DNA testing. Although in and of itself, it would not prove murder, it would place a suspect in intimate contact with the victim.

Harry turned to the sound of his name and saw Mort Janlow, an assistant county medical examiner, standing on the trail next to the pond. Janlow, a short, pudgy, balding man closing in on fifty, asked how Harry wanted him to enter the scene.

“I’ll come and get you,” Harry called back.

Janlow glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Never mind that,” he shouted back. “Just tell me. There’s a goddamn alligator in this pond, looking at me like I’m his lunch.”

Harry pointed to the area he had used with the chief, making a circular gesture with his arm. “You’ll see a set of tracks over there. They’re ours. Try to follow them in.”

When the M.E. arrived a few minutes later, he set his own case next to Harry’s and squatted beside the body.

“Christ, it is her,” he said. He stared at the mutilation of her forehead. “ Evil.” Janlow nodded his head, but Harry couldn’t tell if it was in agreement with the sentiment, or just an acknowledgment of the killer’s opinion. “We’ll fingerprint her at the morgue to make sure it’s her. But I sure as hell don’t have any doubts. If I remember correctly her ex-husband lives in Clearwater and her parents are up in Port Richey. We’ll have to get one of them for a positive.” He glanced up at Harry, his round, cherubic, normally smiling face now filled with concern. “Deep down I was hoping you guys were wrong.” He looked back at the body and shook his head. “This circus is going to be a three-ring Lollapalooza, my lad. I hope you know that.”

“It’s why we wanted you here as soon as possible,” Harry said. “One other thing. I’d like to keep the mask and the mutilation under wraps.”

“I know. I know. I already listened to Rourke snap and growl about all of it,” Janlow said. “But I’m here, and understand the situation, and I know we can’t afford to screw this one up. So don’t rush me. Just tell me what you already found.”

At eight o’clock the body of Darlene Beckett was being carried down the hiking trail on its way to the morgue wagon, and crime scene techs were in the last stages of their investigation. The sheriff, under arrangements made by Chief Kyle Rothman and Jim Mabrey, the public information officer, had held a press conference at seven to insure getting plenty of face time on the eleven o’clock news. The first news helicopter appeared over the crime scene thirty minutes later, creating a downdraft that dislodged any remaining evidence and diminishing its value in any future prosecution.

Harry walked down the trail, a look of resigned disgust on his face. He let out a long breath and willed himself to get past the self-serving stupidity that seemed to emerge in every major investigation. You just work past it, he told himself. And you hope for the best. You’ve done it before; you’ll do it again now.

When he reached the bottom of the trail he found Jim Morgan, the deputy he had met when he arrived, still guarding the way in. He had been joined by three others.

“Still at it, I see,” Harry said. “Where are the reporters?”

“They’re being held at the main gate.” Morgan grinned. “We’ve had a dozen or so try to sneak in through the brush, but it’s so thick we could hear ’em coming a hundred yards off. Then one of them stepped on a rattler and we ended up calling in the rescue squad. Didn’t stop the others from trying, though.”

“How’s the snake?” Harry asked.

Morgan laughed. “Probably died.”

Harry made his way to the car and headed up to the education center to reconnect with Vicky. He found her in an office with the elderly bird watcher who had discovered the body and the park ranger who had been first on the scene. He introduced himself, thanked them for their help, and then took Vicky out into the hall.

“Anything worthwhile?” he asked.

“I interviewed everybody who was working here today and no one remembers seeing anything unusual,” Vicky began. “The woman who found the body isn’t much help either. All she can remember is seeing the leg sticking out from behind the cypress stump. She may remember something later when she calms down, though right now she’s so shaken she can hardly remember her own name. But the park ranger remembered something interesting.”

“How so?”

“Three or four days ago he noticed that somebody else had driven into the same area, and went all the way back to where the body was found. It’s rained a lot since then, so those tracks are probably gone. But he said it’s really unusual to have somebody drive in on one of the trails. There are signs letting people know they are off limits to vehicles, and getting caught on one gets you a citation. It’s also pretty easy to go too far and get stuck. He checked it out when he saw those earlier tracks, but whoever had driven in there had already left.”

“So it could have been the perp scouting the area,” Harry said.

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

Harry paused to consider what Vicky had said. “We need a list of everyone who’s worked here in the past year,” he said at length. “Paid employees, volunteers, everybody. It could have been somebody who knew the patrol routine, knew when he could drive in with the least chance of being seen.”

“And then did a test run to be sure,” Vicky said.

Harry nodded, then paused again. “Damn, I wish we had that second set of tracks to compare to the ones there now.”

“It would be nice,” Vicky said.

“We better tell the CSI techs to look for old tracks, just in case there are traces still there,” Harry said. “Even a partial would help. Then we could be reasonably sure our perp was here earlier getting the lay of the land. And that would increase the chances that somebody saw him.”

“We can stop and talk to them on the way out of here,” Vicky said. “Speaking of which, where do we go from here? Darlene’s home?”

“You got it. We search her place, and we talk to her neighbors; start putting together a list of her friends, relatives, lovers, anybody we can find out about. Then I want to check out that empty book of matches we found on the trail.”

You mean the bar in Tampa?”

Harry nodded.

“The topless bar in Tampa?”

Harry gave a small shrug and fought to hold a deadpan expression. “Sorry, but a good detective has to go where the evidence leads him.”

“Yeah,” Vicky said, her voice turning mildly sarcastic. “And sometimes it’s even fun.” She gave him a long look. “This time it will be more fun for you than for me.”

Harry knew from newspaper accounts of her trial that Darlene Beckett lived in Tampa, but since no ID was found on her body he called in and asked for a computer check of the sex offender’s registry to get a current home address. A computer technician radioed back five minutes later, and as the information came through the radio’s speaker, Vicky noticed Harry’s hands visibly tighten on the steering wheel. She resisted her natural curiosity and just stored the information away.

The place that Darlene Beckett had called home turned out to be a slightly rundown garden apartment complex in northern Tampa, a mixed neighborhood both racially and economically with a smattering of college students thrown in from the nearby University of South Florida.