Beverly Connor - Dust to Dust

Dance was nodding his head as Ross spoke. “You do that. I want everybody to know that Stacy was a good girl.”

“Mr. Dance,” said Diane, “I would like to take a look at her room. Dr. Kingsley here said you left it as it was?”

He nodded. “I haven’t touched it.”

“I need to take a look,” Diane said.

Harmon Dance nodded his head. “Do what you have to do.”

“Examining her room can be a little destructive,” said Diane. “I have fingerprint powders and-”

“Do whatever you have to do,” he said again. “Whatever it takes.” His chair creaked as he rocked in it.

Diane opened the door to the garage apartment with the key Mr. Dance had given them. She reached around to the light switch on the inside wall and turned on the lights without stepping inside.

“Wow,” said Kingsley softly. “The crime scene photo doesn’t do this room justice.”

“No,” said Diane, “it doesn’t.”

Stacy’s apartment was charming. There was an efficiency kitchenette in one corner with a small round oak table and four chairs. The living room held a love seat sofa, two stuffed chairs, and a coffee table. Her bedroom area was half hidden by curtains. The small bathroom was across from the bed. The walls were painted a light dusty rose. One wall was covered in matching shades of striped wallpaper. The curtains were a complementary pink, as were the pillows on the cream-colored sofa and chairs. She had découpaged her chest of drawers with prints from a book of rococo art. A vase of flowers in the middle of the dining table had dried out, the water evaporated.

Stacy had enj oyed her life. Diane saw it in the room. Everything was carefully chosen, pretty, much of it handmade.

Kingsley started to walk in, but Diane stopped him.

“Wait until I examine the floor,” she said. Diane slipped covers over her shoes. “I’m closing the door. I’m afraid you’ll have to stand out here until I clear you a place to stand. It’ll take a while.”

Kingsley nodded. “As Mr. Dance said, whatever it takes. I’ll make some phone calls.”

Diane left most of the crime scene kit outside and stepped in, closed the door, and turned off the light. The room smelled like death. She set her crime lamp on the floor, turned it on, and squatted so she could see what it illuminated. She began systematically looking for shoe prints the low-angle light would show up. There were many. She began the painstaking process of lifting the prints from the floor with electrostatic film. Most of the prints would be from the police and the coroner’s people who carried Stacy out, and most would be overlapping. But she might get lucky.

She cleared the floor around the door and let Kingsley come in out of the chilly air to stand inside in the dark.

“You’ll get used to the smell,” she said.

He made light conversation as she went from print to print, placing the Mylar-coated silver foil over each print, lifting it using static electricity, rolling up the film, and putting it in a tube.

Most of the shoe prints were on the hardwood floor around the bed where Stacy was found. But there were a few in other locations on the floor.

“I didn’t realize this is such time-consuming work,” said Kingsley.

“And we’re still on the floor,” said Diane. “We’ve got the furniture and ceiling to do.”

“Ceiling? You expect to find something on the ceiling?” asked Kingsley.

“Expect it? No, but it’s standard protocol to look. Could find some kind of spatter, for instance, that might give us critical information.”

When Diane finished, she took the tubes of rolled-up film and put them in a carrying case beside the door. There was a gentle knock from outside.

“It’s me, Boss. Can I come in?”

“Come on in, Jin,” said Diane. “Carefully.”

The door opened slowly and Jin stepped inside. He was holding his digital SLR camera, his newest toy.

“Hey, Boss, I finished outside. How’s it going here?” he said.

“I’m starting with the black light,” she told him.

“The ultraviolet light detects organic stains from body fluids such as blood, saliva, semen, and urine,” Jin said to Kingsley.

They watched as Diane again systematically examined the floor.

“I can do that, Boss, and you can…,” Jin began.

Just as he started to speak Diane stopped. On the floor near the dining table, a large area luminesced.

“What is it?” asked Kingsley.

“Perhaps where she was killed,” said Diane.

“What do you mean?” Kingsley said. “How do you know? She was strangled, wasn’t she? Is that blood someone tried to clean up?”

“More likely urine and maybe feces that someone tried to clean up,” said Diane. “Often during a death like Stacy’s, the bladder and colon relax and evacuate. Murderers usually don’t count on that.”

“You want me to take the samples?” said Jin.

Diane nodded. “Get some shots of this first, and let me go over the rest of the room.”

Jin took multiple photos of the luminesced image in rapid succession from several angles.

“Nice camera,” said Kingsley.

“Yeah, you bet,” said Jin, a big grin on his face. “Don’t know what I ever did without it.”

Diane worked her way around the small apartment and finished with the bed.

“There’s very little on the bed. You would expect urine to be here if she died here,” said Diane. “Particularly if she was left in an upright position for an extended period after death. Jin, go ahead and collect samples, photograph everything, and do the bathroom.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” he said.

Armed with evidence bags, Diane began a search of the apartment. She used the same systematic procedure she had used with the floor to make sure she covered every spot. Just under the bed she found the towel that was around Stacy’s neck in the photo, along with the knotted rope that had been around her neck and anchored her to the bedpost. Evidently the coroner’s people had cut it off and dropped it on the floor and it got kicked under the bed. She put the items in evidence bags.

Diane went around the room and searched the tops of dressers, tables, and door frames for prints. She lifted several. She enlisted Kingsley’s help in searching all the drawers in the apartment for any items that might shed light on Stacy’s life up until the time she died.

In a small desk Kingsley found a tablet of yellow legal-sized paper. It was about half used up. Perhaps Stacy used it for notes. Diane bagged it. They could bring out the indented impressions in the paper using the electrostatic detection apparatus at the lab and see at least what had been written on the page before it.

Diane and Kingsley searched the pockets of the clothes hanging in Stacy’s closet and came up only with movie ticket stubs from several months before. They searched all the trash cans, the clothes hamper, and the kitchen cabinets. Diane felt under the drawers and tables for anything that might be taped under them. She looked behind the pictures on the walls. She slid photographs out of their frames and looked for anything Stacy might have stashed behind them.

It was almost dark when they finished. Kingsley gave the key back to Mr. Dance and they left for Rosewood.

“So you think she was murdered,” said Ross Kingsley.

“A good possibility,” said Diane. “I’ll analyze the evidence when we get back to the lab.”

“So, then, to find out who did it, you’ll have to find out who framed the brother,” said Jin. “Unless it was her boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or a member of her band, or a neighbor, or someone from her job. What was her job?”

“She was a student,” said Diane, “and the next big thing we need to do is get the body exhumed and have a new autopsy.”