Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [12]
Mitch finished putting on his diving gear. Even though he was about to enter murky river water and face a dead man, a rush overcame him.
He met up with Young and they checked and double-checked the equipment, then went out on the boat over the spot where the Explorer rested beneath the surface. Steve and a deputy manned the boat while Young and Mitch fell back into the cold water.
Maddox had been missing since the end of January. Chances were he’d been in the river the entire time. But proving it was homicide instead of an accident would be difficult at best, unless they were lucky enough to find a bullet entry wound or obvious stab marks. The fish and crustaceans would feed on any exposed areas first, which often made it more difficult to determine how a body had been assaulted. But a gaping wound no matter how gnawed by river life would point toward foul play.
The water was icy, having traveled from the Sierra Nevadas where the snow had been melting all spring, filling the creeks and tributaries, merging to make this river. The ninety-degree weather did little to warm the thirty-foot depths where the Explorer rested, its wheels buried deep in the sediment. The wet suit protected Mitch from the worst of the cold, and he took a moment to acclimate himself to the water pressure, diminished light, and temperature.
He approached cautiously, taking the time to inspect and photograph the front of the vehicle—there were no obvious collision marks. They’d need a more detailed inspection, but it appeared that nothing had hit this SUV, front or back. There was some minimal damage on the passenger side, but nothing to indicate a collision so violent it could push a car into the river. One problem with water was that it carried evidence away from the scene. If there had been branches or leaves embedded in the undercarriage of the car, suggesting perhaps where the vic went in, the evidence could easily have been washed away under the constant pressure of the flowing river.
The Explorer was fully submerged and held fast, the front end sinking deeper into the muck because of the weight of the engine. The water wasn’t too murky at first, the sun above cutting through, though as they walked along the bottom of the river and disturbed the sludge, their field of vision deteriorated. The underwater lights he and Young used cast an odd illumination around them, making the shadows darker.
Only the windshield was intact, which suggested the driver hadn’t hit the water with any great speed. Mitch ran his finger along the window edge, felt the top of the retracted driver’s-side window. The smooth edge told him that it had been down when the vehicle went in. Mitch inspected the other windows. They’d all been down on impact; none had broken under the pressure. Who drove with all their windows down in the frigid cold of a Sacramento January? He indicated the evidence to Young, who did his own inspection and nodded.
The victim was strapped into the driver’s seat. Most victims would unbuckle themselves and attempt to escape, unless the accident rendered them unconscious.
It was virtually impossible to tell anything about the victim, though with the constant movement of the fresh, cold mountain water through the car, decomposition wasn’t as advanced as Mitch would have guessed. A recent body would have been dark green, but this body was extremely pale, almost translucent, as the gases in the body had leached out over time. The body was intact for the most part, though Mitch knew if they tried to move it, skin, hair, and potential evidence would be lost. The vic’s eyes were gone, as well as his ears, nose, lips, and a good chunk of his face. The vic’s fingers were also missing. The body could have fed the fish for