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And, having collected his small mirror and his bag of goodies, he swung open the stall door to behold true artistry at work.
He slipped out the printout of the Intelligencer’s Web page from his pocket, took one last look at it, memorizing both the face and the name, and crumpled it up. He disposed of it immediately in front of him. She had a royal, almost equestrian look about her—a high princess, a lady-in-waiting. He looked like a corn-fed Midwesterner with a graying buzz cut.
If they wanted to make comments about him to the press, then they deserved the opportunity to meet him. They’d earned it.
When a uniformed woman entered the restroom, Rastus startled, his heart racing.
“Hello,” she said.
Reconsidering his location, he heaved a sigh of relief as the woman slipped into a stall and immediately was heard unzipping her pants—all without waiting for any kind of reply from him.
Rastus moved along the sinks, pleased as punch she’d never given him a second glance.
The piece of paper he’d tossed into the trash uncurled slightly, like the dancers at the begi
oldt and Lieutenant D. Matthews, seen here at a DARE fund-raiser in 2006.
The first body surfaced at sunrise, bobbing up out of murky depths of Bowman’s Bay like a decomposing mermaid. Phen Shiffman was who spotted her as he motored out for his morning work of checking the hatchery. He’d been enjoying a smoke and a fresh cup of strong coffee when her breasts arched out of the water, followed by the dark trim between her legs. It was like one of those synchronized swimming moves he’d seen on the Olympics—“only she was naked as a jaybird, not wearing any kind of bathing suit or undies or nothing,” as he would later tell Mike Rickert, the prosecuting attorney whose desk the case landed on. Though he hadn’t seen it, he supposed her head had surfaced first, led by her arms, maybe. Whatever the case, she’d continued in a graceful, back arch, like a dancer: head, shoulders, chest, groin, knees, feet, and she was under again. If he’d been drinking the night before, or he’d been smoking some rope on the way out, as he sometimes did, he might have considered saying nothing about her because once she was gone she was gone. But on the other hand, he knew this was serious—she was as dead as a salmon, bruised and fed-on some, as pale as the silver flash of a trout. This, he had to call in.
Boldt read about it on a briefing page that arrived on one’s computer screen at the start of every shift. The victim’s toenails had been elaborately painted in a way that suggested city life, not Skagit County. Rickert, for his part, had done his homework; he knew of the missing Seattle women. He posted the information and made a few calls suggesting SPD might want to visit the county morgue, or might want some dental records sent down—the crabs had gotten half her face. By midafternoon, Boldt and Daphne had made the ninety-minute drive north together, arriving at the county hospital. Dental records had confirmed the deceased’s identity: the second of the two women who’d gone missing.
Dressed in surgical kits, and wearing paper masks over their faces, having smeared Mentholatum liberally beneath their noses—because floaters were the worst of the worst—they studied the rotting corpse. At one point Boldt looked over at Daphne and wondered if the stains on the mask beneath her eyes were tears of emotion or from the Mentholatum vapors getting in her eyes.
They worked with a young pathologist who seemed to know his stuff. Boldt longed for his longtime friend, Dr. Ray, but the man had retired and would likely never stand under the lights again.
“Her spine is broken,” the pathologist explained in a toneless voice. “Cracked clean in half, which might explain the dance the fisherman saw in the water when she surfaced. There are severe ligature marks, here and here. Two more on both shoulders. Her vaginal and rectal area are torn, though from the same ligature, I’m suggesting.”
“She was trussed,” Boldt said.
This won a sharp snap of Daphne’s neck as she looked up at Boldt.
“Couldn’t have said it better,” the pathologist said. “Bound and trussed…and…well, maybe not.”
“Please,” Boldt said.
Daphne’s eyes said, “Please don’t.”
“It’s just…if I had to guess…and this is only wild speculation with only a small amount of science to support it…Nah…I shouldn’t.”
Boldt encouraged him yet again.
“Conjecture is all. There is at least some circumstantial evidence to suggest the binding was a flexible material. In several weight-bearing places it appears to have pinched the skin.”
“Weight-bearing,” Boldt repeated, for the term caught his ear.
“Yes. That’s the conjecture part,” the man answered. “If I had to guess I would say she was trussed facedown. The ligature was jerked or tugged severely, and was improperly arranged so that maximum stress came here—” he pointed to her shoulders “—and here.” He pointed to her crotch. “It was excessive force, enough to shatter L7 and L8 and to sever the cord.”
“Could she have been dropped?” Daphne asked.
“Dropped? Yes, I suppose that would account for it, but it would have had to have been from a very great height.”
“The elastic cord,” Boldt said. “Could it have been bungee cord?” He leaned in for a close look at the rope burns on her side.
“Indeed,” the doctor said. “Are you telling me she was bungee jumping? The clothes came off during her time in the water?”
“Is it possible?” Boldt asked.
“She was naked,” Daphne said with authority. “He threw her off…I don’t know…a bridge?”
“Threw her?” the doctor asked, “or was it accidental? Too much alcohol, a stupid idea gone wrong.”
“Was alcohol found in her system?” Boldt asked.
“Blood workup will be a day or two, minimum.”
“He threw her,” Daphne repeated, her voice softer. “We’re going to find that the position is important to him. The angel pose. Flying like that. He’s Roman Catholic, or was raised Roman Catholic. Single. Lives or lived with a single parent. He’s under thirty, over eighteen. Uses mass transit, but has a driver’s license. Probably cross-dresses, though not in public.”
“We’re going to need every hair and fiber, every X-ray, every detail of this corpse before it degrades any further.”
“Threw her?” The doctor could barely get out the words. “You’re sure?” This, meant for Daphne.
“He wanted the angel to fly,” she said, having not taken her eyes off the dead woman for the past few minutes. “But he got it wrong, tied it wrong, from what you tell us, and he broke her back instead. Who knows how long he might have kept her alive if she’d have only flown for him?”
The doctor stepped back, as if a few feet might separate him from the truth.
“And the first one?” Boldt asked, also staring at the cadaver.
“I imagine that one went wrong, as well, or he wouldn’t have failed so miserably with her. Poor her,” she whispered. “If she’d only known how to fly.”
The drive back began in silence. Traumatic death had a way of making anything else seem inconsequential and of no importance, even if the discussion was to be the solution of that death. A black hood pulled down over all existence. The road ran before them, people racing to pass, to maintain a position, and to both of them it seemed so insignificant, though neither spoke of it directly. Life’s uglies revealed themselves at such times, man’s clambering for space and position.
“Maybe you should have quit,” she said.
“Then I wouldn’t be in a car with you.”
“Don’t start.”
“Way too late for that,” he said.
“What is it with us?”
He gri
“Do you think we’ll ever—”
“No!” he said, cutting her off. “I try to not think about it.”