Murder at Ford's Theatre - Margaret Truman [98]
As Rachel sat in a reception area reading a paperback book, Klayman entered Dr. Eric Ong’s office, where the ME sat at his desk writing a report. “Sit down, Detective,” Ong said, motioning toward a chair. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Klayman passed the time questioning his decision to leave the barbecue. It wasn’t very polite, he knew, and certainly wasn’t necessary. The Marshall case was two years old. The fact that her remains had been found was good; at least it might bring her family some measure of closure. Funny, how important it is to families to have someone to bury, he thought. It didn’t bring them back to life. In a sense, it was an exclamation point to their grief. He sometimes wondered how he would react if a loved one disappeared, and murder was the suspected cause. As long as there wasn’t a body, there was hope, as unreasonable as it might be as time dragged on, that the person would one day surface healthy and happy, and hopefully embarrassed at having caused so much consternation and worry.
He’d interviewed Connie Marshall’s parents on a few occasions when the crime was fresh, and saw in them the same expression of confusion, sadness, and anger as Nadia’s parents had exhibited. Constance Marshall’s disappearance had been big news for months, fueled by rumors that she’d been involved in a sexual relationship with the married House majority leader, Willard Tomlinson. But media attention eventually and predictably drifted to other stories, and only an occasional call to Klayman from one of the parents to ask whether anything was new had kept him in direct touch with the case. The C. Marshall folders had been placed in the unsolved homicide files—this was when homicides in D.C. were called homicides, not “crimes against persons”—and the active investigation ceased.
The Marshall case had become borderline obsessive for Klayman; he’d volunteered on weekends and days off to follow up on leads that became less frequent as the months went by. And his interest had waned, too, as leads dried up and his only link to the case was the computer file he kept at home. Accessing it gave him a feeling of still being connected, a poor substitute for the real thing.
“So, Detective Klayman, the missing person is no longer missing,” Ong said in his shrill voice.
“The ID is definite?”
Ong laughed. “With reasonable medical certainty, as the lawyers like to say in court. Yes, it’s Ms. Marshall. The dental records confirm it. And there are the general physical characteristics of the skeleton, length, approximate weight and age—a female, of course. There are also the facial characteristics as shown in photographs provided by the family when she disappeared. There are three basic facial types, you know, square, tapering, and ovoid. She’s an ovoid.”
So was Nadia Zarinski, Klayman thought. And she was approximately the same height and weight as Constance Marshall, same color hair and eyes. Not that that was especially significant. Lots of young women in Washington fit that description.
“Any evidence of how she died?” Klayman asked.
“Oh, yes,” Ong replied. “There’s a nasty crack on the left side of her skull.”
“Could it have happened when she went into the water, hit a rock or the side of a boat?” Rick asked.
“Anything is possible, Detective, but I would say not. I need to do further examination, but my opinion at this moment—”
“With reasonable medical certainty,” Klayman said with a smile.
“Yes, with reasonable medical certainty. She died from the blow to the head and was placed in the water sometime thereafter.”
Klayman stood and extended his arms into the air against a backache. “Well,” he said, “this opens the case again. Anything else?”
“Whoever did it wasn’t interested in robbing her.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The jewelry she was wearing. We’re fortunate that it didn’t disintegrate over time, or get ripped off by the crabs.”
“What sort of jewelry, Eric?”
“An expensive wristwatch,