Fire and Ice

“Look at this,”Dr. Hopewell said. She used a hemostat to pluck a long strand of blackened material out of the box and held it up to the light.

“Rope, maybe?”I asked.

She nodded. “Restraints. Bag, please, Mr. Craft.”

Her assistant stepped forward with an open evidence bag and she dropped the strand of burned rope into it.

“What about hair?”I asked.

“Some,”she said.

“Enough for DNA testing?”

Dr. Hope well’s eyes met mine. “We don’t do DNA testing,”she said. “And we don’t order it, either. Too expensive. My office can’t afford it.”

“Mine can,”I said with some confidence. It was reassuring to know that I worked for a guy who would spare no expense when it came to doing the job. “Forward what you have to the Washington State Patrol Crime lab. Tell them it’s a Ross Connors case.”

Dr. Hopewell nodded again and returned to her work and her narrative. “The victim was evidently lying on her back when she was set on fire. You’ll notice that the charring is far more pronounced on the top portions of the body than it is on the bottom,”she continued. “I would assume that whoever did this probably expected that the body would burn down to mere ashes, thus erasing all trace evidence. Unfortunately for him, the fire went out prematurely.”

“Due to weather conditions?”I asked. In the Cascades in November, it’s either raining or snowing.

“The weather could be partly responsible in putting the fire out,”Dr. Hopewell conceded. “But remember, most of the people who turn to crime do so because they don’t have many other career options. They aren’t smart and didn’t pay attention in school. The guy who did this—and I’m pretty sure it was a guy—obviously had no idea that the human body is more than fifty percent water. He may have poured on all the gasoline he had, but it wasn’t nearly enough to do the job completely. Unfortunately for us, when the fire was out, there was still enough flesh on the bones to attract carrion eaters. That’s why the bones were scattered around the way they were.”

Suddenly the door to the morgue swung open. A woman who appeared to be in her mid-to-late-thirties strode into the room. She was five-six or -seven and solidly built. She looked tough enough that I wouldn’t have been surprised if she could take me in a fair fight.

“How come you started already?”she demanded of the M.E. “Connie was supposed to call and let me know when you got back. I wanted to be here for this. I was supposed to be here.”Noticing me, the woman stopped short in mid-tirade and stared at me. “Who the hell is this guy?”she added pointedly. “What’s he doing here?”

“His name is J. P. Beaumont,”Dr. Hopewell said. “He’s an investigator with the AG’s office, and this is Detective Lucinda Caldwell, Kittitas County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Homicide,”Detective Caldwell added unnecessarily, since I’d already figured out that much on my own.

It struck me that if Detective Caldwell thought the lady in the outside office was going to lift a hand to help her or anyone else, she was a lot more naive than your run-of-the-mill homicide cop ought to be.

“Glad to meet you,”I said. I wasn’t particularly glad to meet her, but I’m old enough to know that a certain amount of insincerity is necessary to get along in this world. “People call me Beau,”I said. “Or else J.P.”

“I don’t give a damn what people call you,”she said. “I’m going to call you gone. This is my case. What are you doing here?”

Ross Connors had sent in Special Homicide because of the possible connection between this victim and the five other cases we were already working. But the truth was, the body had been found in Kittitas County, and their homicide folks should have been primary. Until Detective Caldwell’s abrupt arrival, the local constabulary had been notable in their absence.

My initial instinct was to take offense at Detective Caldwell’s proprietary approach. I started to object but then thought better of it. I happened to remember how I used to feel back in the old days at Seattle PD when some arrogant piece of brass would deign to come down from on high and venture onto the fifth floor to tell me and the other lowly homicide cops how to do our jobs. Or the time when some twit of an FBI agent ended up being parachuted into the middle of one of my cases and took it upon himself to rub my nose in the concept that he was smart and I was stupid. Given all that, it made sense that Detective Caldwell might be territorial about her case. What I had to do was find a way to work with her.

“My boss, Attorney General Ross Connors, believes this case might be related to several other ones we’ve been working.”

“I don’t care who you are or where you’re from,”Detective Caldwell declared. “You’ve got no business horning in on my—”

“Play nice, you two,”Dr. Hopewell ordered. “I happen to be doing an autopsy here. How about if you cool it, Lucy? You can sort out all the jurisdictional wrangling later on. In the meantime, you need to know that our victim is female. Probably late twenties, early thirties. She’s had at least one child, and she died on or around November eighth.”