Code 61 - Donald Harstad [80]
We all pitched in and did the contents of the rest of the garbage bags. We found one bloody bath towel, a bloody washcloth, a bloody bottle of shampoo and one of conditioner, a bloodstained bar of soap and a hanging soap dish, a bottle of bath oil with a blood-encrusted rim, a brass rack with a curved section to enable it to be hung over the edge of an old-fashioned tub, and a bloodstained pink lady's razor. All in a white plastic sack, in a brass wastebasket. Even the wastebasket had matched, apparently.
“I'll bet they knocked the stuff into the tub when they put her in,” said Hester, her voice distant with thought. “Maybe snagged it with the bag, then grabbed for some of it before they thought, and then pitched it to make sure they hadn't left prints. Wiped some of the mess up with the towel.”
“No wipe marks on the tub,” I said.
“They could have wiped their hands on it,” said Barnes, not looking up from his itemization of the evidence. “Hard to say just how it got there.”
“They had the presence of mind to put the knife in the tub, to keep us from looking for the real weapon.” I shook my head. “Pretty cool, whoever it is.”
“Yeah,” said Hester, disgusted.
“Well,” I said, “I guess we could start with who sells 500 VSA body bags, and see if there's any chance they might have a limited sales area…. ” It was pretty weak, but we had to begin somewhere.
Another thing we found was a bunch of old e-mails that had been tossed out. They appeared to be from several people, and addressed to the following: OnceLost@gottadance.arts,WailingSoul@gottadance.arts, MagikBoi@gottadance.arts,DealerofDarkness@gottadance.arts,Clutch@gottadance.arts,EtherialWaifGurrl@gottadance.arts, Choreographer@gottadance.arts.
They were addressed to a wide variety of people and places, from bookstores to eBay, from names similar to their own, to simple ones like DarcyB2@UIU.grp.edu. Some were long, some very brief, and they appeared to be pretty innocuous. Nonetheless, I saved them all, to read for content, and to check names and addresses.
“I wish,” I said to Hester, “that that search warrant had included computers and information thereon.”
“Well, we didn't have any evidence pointing to computer involvement then. We still don't,” she said.
“Give me a little time.”
We went through the rest of the bags, snagging about a half dozen more e-mails, and about a thousand items of generic debris that could have come from just about anywhere. We relooked, hoping for anything else. Nothing. Not one more item that even appeared to have bloodstains or marks on it. No phone bills, no notes other than common, everyday grocery receipts. Lots of political pamphlets from a bumper crop of politicians, from Bush and Gore to Nader and Buchanan. Not to mention the local and state candidates. It looked like the residents of the Mansion had been deluged just like the rest of us. The political pamphlets probably accounted for half the paper in the bags. I did notice, though, that all the political mail was addressed to “Occupant.”
“Doesn't look like anybody living at the Mansion was registered to vote,” I said.
“Huh?” That had taken Hester by surprise.
I explained.
She went back to sifting through garbage. “The things some people consider important…. ”
“Hey! I'm a trained observer, that's all.”
“Focus, Houseman,” she muttered. “You just got to focus.”
Finishing the garbage survey didn't take as long as I'd expected. I looked over at Hester as we were both taking off our latex gloves. “Not much, was there?”
“Good Lord, Houseman. You got a body bag out of this! What more do you want?”
“Well, yeah.” What more, indeed? “Something identifying the suspect, though, would sure have been good.”
Chris and the rest of the lab team headed for the Iowa Criminalistics Laboratory in Des Moines, body bag in hand, so to speak. That left Hester and me to begin our scheduled business.
Hester phoned the Mansion while I sorted