Joe said, “You can’t sleep, either?”
“Oh, damn. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“I was awake. I can’t turn off my brain.”
Martha rolled onto her back and I mindlessly rubbed her belly.
“I’ve got unsolved murders running through my head,” I said.
“And I’ve got voices talking to me,” said Joe.
He rolled toward me. “The voices are saying, ‘Get it together, you dumb shit.’”
“That’s just mean of your voices.”
Joe sighed and reached for me.
Martha jumped off the bed and I went into Joe’s arms.
We comforted each other, and then we made love, and fell asleep again until the sun came through the bedroom window.
It was Friday morning. I was primary on a sickening case, and I still had no clues. I had to go to work.
CHAPTER 30
By eight thirty that morning Conklin and I were at our facing desks trying to get a lead on Nancy Koebel, the housekeeper who’d come upon the gruesome scene in room 212.
Then she’d vanished.
Her phone number came up as a prepaid phone, a burner. I called Tuohy, and he told me once again that it was the only number he had for her.
“She’s only been here for a coupla months.”
“Thanks,” I barked at him. This guy really pissed me off.
I went back to my computer.
Koebel’s name was absent from the DMV, SFPD, NCIC, and other available criminal databases. Did she get payroll checks from the Big Four—or was she paid off the books? Did she pay taxes? I doubted it. I couldn’t find a trace of her.
“She’s undocumented,” I said to Conklin. I was taking an educated guess.
That’s when Clapper called.
Maybe he’d found evidence on Carly Myers’s body.
“Hold a sec,” I said, “I’m putting you on speaker.”
I stabbed the button on my phone console.
Hellos were exchanged, then Clapper said, “What do you want first? Bad news or good?”
“Bad,” I said. “Don’t cushion it.”
“Inventory of Carly’s handbag: two textbooks, American history, Western civ. Hefty makeup kit. Pair of sneakers and two white socks. Miscellaneous pads and pens. A strip of condoms. Phone and charger. Laptop and charger. We’ve run down the numbers and email; she shops and pays her bills online. Nothing pops.”
“Shit.”
Clapper kept going.
“Meanwhile, here’s something to keep hope alive. We’ve impounded the ATM from the Stop ’n Go facing across Polk toward the back of the motel,” he said. “We’re taking it apart and should know shortly if the camera was working, the disk was usable, the lens was clean. If all that’s a go, we’ll see if it captured anything useful.”
“Good,” I said, crossing my fingers.
Clapper said, “I’m being paged, but we finished processing Carly Myers’s body down at the morgue last night. Claire has my detailed notes. Call me if you have questions.”
I had questions. Lots of them.
I shouted, “Charlie, wait.”
“Can’t,” he said. “Boxer. Go to the morgue. Claire’s waiting for you. And keep the faith.”
He hung up.
I looked at my partner. “Ready?”
“You go. Take notes. I’ll keep working on Koebel.”
Fine.
I jogged down the four flights of stairs to the lobby and out the back door, and then power walked three hundred yards to the ME’s office. I pulled open the heavy glass door.
It was closing in on 9:00 a.m., and the waiting room was filled with several cops and civilians who were likely family members waiting for autopsy results.
I opened my jacket, flashed my badge at the new receptionist, and told her that Dr. Washburn was waiting for me.
The receptionist pressed the intercom button on her phone and said, “Doctor, Sergeant Boxer is here.” Then, to me, “Go ahead.”
She buzzed open the inner door.
Several people who were waiting their turn saw this exchange and gave me hard looks.
Well. I was on the job.
I headed back to the autopsy suite. It was still early in the investigation, but maybe Claire would give me one tidbit or even, God willing, a eureka that would lead us to a killer and maybe from there to the two still-missing women.
Claire, San Francisco’s chief medical examiner and my best bud, was suited up in baby-blue gown, cap, and gloves. She said, “I’ve got you a set of clothes over there, Lindsay. See it?”
There was a pile of blue cotton scrubs folded on a metal stool, necessary attire to prevent contamination of Carly Myers’s body.
When I was properly dressed, I moved in.
Claire and I bumped our gloved fists, what Claire’s little girl, Rosie, calls an elephant kiss. We grinned and then turned our attention to Carly Myers. She was draped with a sheet from her knees to her armpits.
Claire told me, “Obviously, I haven’t begun the internal autopsy yet, but I have a few useful notes and one thing that has me completely stumped.”
“Start there,” I said.
“What? You want to spoil all my fun?”
“God forbid. Start where you like. It’s your party and I’m in your house.”
CHAPTER 31
Claire opened the victim’s mouth and shined her flashlight inside.
She said, “Look here, Lindsay. Call this confirmation of what you suspected. In a death by hanging, you’ll usually find the tongue is cut from biting.”
Carly’s tongue looked intact to me.
I said, “So she was dead when she was hanged.”
“Yes, that’s my opinion. I found petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes and bruising around the neck. The cricoid cartilage in the neck was fractured. This doesn’t happen with ligature strangulation.”
“What then? Manual strangulation?”
“That is correct, my dear sergeant.”
Claire showed me the bruises around Carly’s throat that had been covered by the collar of the white shirt.
Claire said, “And look here. Abrasions on her knees, forearms, and here, the base of her palms. This might have happened if she tried to get away from her attacker and fell when he overpowered her.”
Those abrasions had been hidden by shirttails and pink panties around her wrists when I saw Carly’s body in the shower. If she’d been attacked in the motel room, carpet fibers might be embedded in her scraped knees. If she’d been attacked outside, she should have traces of dirt from a lawn or a road or a parking lot, or even carpet from the inside of a vehicle.
That kind of evidence could be a break for the good guys.
I asked, “What kind of trace did CSI find in the wounds?”
“Linds, I hate to tell you this, but Clapper himself swabbed those abrasions last night, and it’s his opinion that the body is squeaky clean.”
I asked, “How squeaky? You’re not saying she was washed?”
“Clapper thinks so. When the DNA tests come back, he’ll be able to say with certainty, but from the first pass, this is what he got. They combed out her hair and found no foreign particles. No trace under her nails. They swabbed the bite mark on her neck, and that swab has gone off to the lab. The shampoo bottle that was found in the bathroom was empty, and even with decomp, you can smell the soap on her. Chamomile.”