Code 61 - Donald Harstad [17]
FOUR
Saturday, October 7, 2000
08:19
When you first enter a crime scene, it's really a good idea to stop, if you can, and just let the, well, the ambience sort of sink in. It's the only chance you get before things get really disturbed, and even with the best scene recording and evidence preservation, it's a chance that will never come again. Just a few minutes to stand still and look around. If you can do it when you're completely undisturbed, it's even better, because there's nobody to hurry you. If not, it sure as hell helps to be the one in charge.
“Give me a few minutes here,” I said to Borman. “Why don't you go down to my car and get both cameras. The 35mm and the digital. And call the office, and make sure the ME is on his way.” I tossed Borman my keys, and began to try to absorb the room and its contents as well as I could.
The center of attention, of course, was the body in the claw-footed tub.
The white porcelain tub was almost against the far wall, and the drain end was the farthest from the door. What appeared to be a white female, twenty to thirty years old, was in the tub. She was seated, kind of, with her buttocks snug up against the end of the tub. She'd flopped forward and a little to her right, with her back kind of turned away from the door. Naked, like anyone else in a tub. Her head was bowed down toward her chest, with a mass of black hair hanging straight down, hiding her face. She seemed to have spatters of blood on most of her, except her head and her back, although it looked like there was even some blood between her shoulder blades. Both hands were in front of her, almost in her lap, like she had just sort of given up and let them flop down.
There were what appeared to be fresh bruises on her arms and lower legs. The ones on her arms, especially, had a familiar look. They were circumferential, or nearly so, with three lighter-colored, narrow striations. The upper striation on the left side seemed to be a very narrow triangle, while the lower two were more like straight lines. I'd seen very similar marks on women and children a couple of times before. When a person grabs somebody and holds on, there is often a gap between the forefinger and the middle finger, with a much lesser gap between the middle finger and the ring finger, and the ring finger and the little finger. If they grab really hard, when they let go, the gaps appear almost white against the red marks left by the fingers. That's what these looked to be. The ones on her legs weren't that well defined. But they were large, and an angry reddish purple. I thought there might be some elsewhere, but there was too much blood on the skin to be sure.
The tub had been modified into a shower, with an elliptical brass curtain track running around it about five feet above the rim; and a tall brass shower pipe and head rose from above the brass faucets and drain. The cream-colored plastic curtain was about half open and had blood on its lower edge, where it entered the tub.
The tub itself had lots of bloody streaks all around the inside, mostly small spatters and streaks. Some appeared to have been large enough to begin to run toward the tub, before they'd started to thicken. Well, those that I could see, anyway. A little pool of drying blood encircled the brass drain rim. There was little, if any, blood actually filling the tub, and the drain lever seemed to be in the open position. I couldn't tell, at first, where the wounds were. I half suspected the left wrist, which was hidden from my view, and would be until I got closer to the tub. There were signs of a lot of blood, though. More than I'd expect from a wrist. Something related to that caught my attention, but I wasn't able to identify what it was right away. I stared at the blood puddle and the streaks. Then it struck me. Most of the blood didn't appear to have clotted. It was starting to dry, in a normal, evaporative way. But there wasn't much identifiable