Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [54]
He reassured us that for the past thirty-three years he had wanted nothing more than to bring Jeannie’s killer to justice. Apologies tendered and accepted, I asked him about the autopsy report.
“The county has all that, why didn’t you go to them?”
“Because early this morning the county came to us. And ordered us out of Dodge.”
“Nascine?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s an old hardass. When he was young, he was a young hardass.”
“Yeah, well, I thought, I don’t know, if I were Chief Shining Pony, I’d have copies.”
Of course he did, but he was reluctant to show them, probably because to do same, in his mind, would add to Jeannie’s humiliation.
“Quinn is onto something, Chief,” said Odd. “I don’t know what, but, please…let us see what you have.”
He unhooked a ring of keys from his belt, found a small brass one, and opened a file drawer in his desk. He took out a folder and spread the pictures before us without looking at them himself. I could see why. She was naked on a slab, front and back, under bright florescent light. Above the neck, you wouldn’t know she was human.
I glanced at the pictures then looked up at Odd. His expression as he studied them was unnervingly familiar to me. I tried to place it, and then it came to me: television news coverage of families returning to their homes after a vicious hurricane, only to see a pile of trash. A look of benumbed detachment. He, like them, was looking at a former home, now utterly destroyed by a force of evil.
While Odd was transfixed and the chief looked away, I scanned the report.
“There was semen in her,” I said.
“Yes,” said the chief. “They were sexually active.”
“Without protection?”
“It was the sixties.”
“Even in the sixties, high school girls did not want to get pregnant, and high school boys did not want to make them that way.”
I quickly sorted the pictures, putting one atop the other, stacking them, until at the end there was one on top of all the others. It was the one I was looking for. I asked them to look.
She was lying on her stomach. I picked up a pencil from the desk and pointed to the back of Jeannie’s knee. The bruise there was a perfect match to Odd’s port wine birthmark.
For all of his life he had thought it was an inconspicuous flaw of the skin. Now, for the first time, he saw it had a purpose.
“Her head…” said the chief, and he faltered, “…well, you can see that… The bruise on her leg was the only other mark on her. The murder book doesn’t draw any conclusions.”
“I’m gonna draw a conclusion of my own,” I said. “That’s a policeman’s baton, that’s what made that mark.”
The chief looked at it more closely.
“I’ll tell you something else,” I said. “A cop is trained to pick up his spent shells. That’s why there weren’t any at the murder scene.”
“What is Deputy Nascine’s middle name?” Odd asked the chief.
“Bob Nascine? Not sure I know.” He dug another file out of his desk drawer. “Should be here in the county roster…” He ran his finger down a list of names and stopped. “Oschel,” he said. “Must be a family name.”
“Robert Oschel Nascine,” said I. “R.O.N.”
“Ron,” said Odd.
“She was out of the truck,” I said. “She was running away. He hit her on the back of her knee with his baton, swung it hard, brought her down.”
17.
We counted backwards, and as hard as it was for the chief to imagine, Robert Nascine was only twenty-eight at the time of the murders. He had always seemed old to Seth Shining Pony.
Nascine came to the island from Bellingham, where he had been a legendary high school basketball player, having led his team to a state championship, in the days when five-ten was not short on the court. A few college recruiters came to call, but Nascine had already decided on a career, and, in those days, college was not a benefit to his choice: law enforcement. Everyone works for power, through money or position, but with a badge power is bestowed upon you. At least this is how the chief saw Nascine’s motivation, after years of first distant, then close, observation.