The Heights Read online

  “Was that the first time today you came back here?”

  “Yes. I was repainting the gate before that. The black rustproof paint is kept in the office, so I did not come back here because there was no need.”

  “Do you know if any other groundskeepers were back here today?” I push a wayward strand of hair behind my ear.

  He follows my hand then stares at my ear. “No, it is Sunday, and they do not work on Sundays. I am the only one who works on Sundays.”

  “How many are there?”

  “There are fifty-two weeks in a year.” He blinks fast several times and shakes his head. “But you know that already. I apologize for insulting your intelligence. There are four other full-time groundskeepers, two of whom are master gardeners. We are well-known for beautiful horticulture. We also employ six part-time groundskeepers and two volunteers. It is somewhat surprising that there are not more of us, given that we are a major tourist attraction. There are also people who work as tour guides during the busy season. You have unique eyes.” He says all of this in a single breath.

  We’ll need to get someone to talk to all of those employees. I almost catch his gaze, but he looks away too quickly. “Do you remember seeing anyone suspicious, maybe a vehicle?”

  “Today is Sunday. There is a yoga class on Sunday mornings. A lot of people visit their loved ones on Sundays. I remember seeing Mrs. Mannion with her daughter. And Ms. O’Toole. A man named Mr. Andersen, spelled with two e’s. There were also some people whom I do not know.” I notice for the second time, as I write down their names, how mechanical and unemotional his inflection is, how he doesn’t talk like most people do.

  Talk to Mannion, O’Toole, Andersen, I write in my notebook. “Paul, can you tell me if the entrances are locked at night?”

  “Yes. I lock the gates at exactly five p.m. at this time of year, and then I practice piano and eat dinner, and then I go to bed. I get up at six and practice yoga on my own, not in a class, and unlock them at exactly nine a.m. so that people may enter.”

  “Are there other ways to get in? You know, weak areas in the wall, that kind of thing?”

  “Yes. There is an area over there”—he points at a hedge behind a group of trees—“that we must pay a dry-stone mason to fix. He is scheduled to fix the wall next Wednesday. It would be easy for someone to get through there. But if there is a tire track there”— he gestures at the track—“it is more likely that someone entered through the service entrance with his or her vehicle.” He turns his whole body to face south. “The service entrance is off of Mayfield Road. It is protected by a simple chain-link fence and small lock. It would be easy to remove the lock, open the gate, and drive through.”

  I write all of it down.

  “You are writing down everything that I say.” He stares at the pen in my right hand.

  “I am. I need as much information as you can give me. You’re doing great.” I smile, and he watches my mouth.

  “In that case, here is a map.” He pulls a folded map out of his back pocket and opens it. “I will mark these areas for you.” He takes out a green ballpoint pen and shows me where we are on the map. Then he hands it to me. “And I will show you what I found.” He digs in a front pocket. “I found these in the driveway before I went into the shed.” He removes a white handkerchief from the pocket and opens it to reveal something small and dark red, and a slightly larger silver object. “Would you like to look at them?”

  “Yes, please,” I say, sliding latex gloves onto my hands.

  “You are wearing gloves to avoid contaminating evidence.” He watches my movements with rapt attention. “I wear gloves like that when I am painting. They make my hands itch, and I do not like it. They do not make your hands itch, or you would wear a different kind.”

  It strikes me that my instinct is to talk to him like he’s a child, and I’m not sure why it bothers me. “May I look at those?”

  He holds out the handkerchief.

  I lean forward. “Did you touch these with your bare hand?” I inspect the acrylic fingernail, still intact, and the necklace pendant, a simple circle with “E.M.” engraved on it. I flip the pendant over in Greenwade’s hand. On the back is a symbol that looks vaguely familiar, like an ornate number four.

  “No, I am not stupid. Although I found them before I made the discovery in the shed, I retrieved them with the handkerchief. You may have them if they will help with your investigation.”

  “Thanks, Paul.” I pull two small evidence bags out of my pocket and secure each object. He watches me write the date and time on them then sign across the seals. They could be useless in the scheme of things, but one never knows—they could break the case wide open. “Can you show me where you found them?”

  He leads me to the edge of the crime scene tape, along the driveway that leads to the main entrance. “I found the Jupiter symbol, which someone likely wore as a necklace, given the metal loop at the top of it, here.” He points at the ground to our left.

  I mark it with a tent and snap a photo with my phone, noting the lack of other visible evidence in the immediate vicinity.

  “Jupiter represents prosperity and happiness. It is the lucky planet in astrology, which is not really a science, although some people believe that it is.” He makes eye contact with me for the first time but looks away before I can read him. “You have been nice to me, and I appreciate it. You have a soothing voice.”

  I give him a small nod.

  He leads me to the other side of the driveway, near the shed. Micalec sees us and raises an eyebrow. Paul glances back and forth then moves about six inches to his left. “And I found the artificial fingernail here.” He points at the ground.

  I notice that his boots look like a size eight. “Thanks, Paul. Do you mind if we take a couple of pictures of the soles of your boots, get a soil sample?”

  “I imagine that you want to link them to that footprint over there. So yes, you may take photographs. That is my footprint. I know that already.”

  I nod and place another tent. “Paul, where do you live?”

  “I live here. Not right here but at the cemetery. That way I can keep an eye on things. My apartment is in the front, next to the entrance, in the stone house above the office.”

  “Do you have an ID that I can see?” I need to get his DOB, address, height and weight, that kind of thing. Even if Fishner already did, I need it for my records. I’m not getting a guilty vibe from him, but I need all of the info I can get at this point.

  He pulls out a Velcro sports wallet and hands me his driver’s license. I’m surprised that he has a commercial endorsement, and it occurs to me that I’m being judgmental. I nod, photograph the license, and hand it back. “Is there anything else that you can remember right now?”

  “I remember many things but nothing else about the woman who was killed or any strange people lurking around.”

  “Jo”—I gesture to her—“will be right over with the camera. I appreciate your help. Here’s my card.” I write my cell phone number on the back. “Call me if you think of anything, okay?”

  He stares at the card. “Yes, Detective Elizabeth Boyle, Cleveland Division of Police, Major Crimes-slash-Special Homicide, number one-seven-six-one,” he replies, absolutely affectless. “If I think of anything, I will call you. Are we finished with this conversation? I am tired of talking.”

  “Sure, Paul. Thanks again.”

  He shuffles away, and I consider how much information he gave me. He’s an interesting guy.

  Before I pick my way through the grass around the body, I verify with Micalec that she’s processed the area and taken photos, then I ask a uniform named Tisch to go to the front office and ask some questions about visitors and the dry-stone mason. Paul Greenwade watches me from his position behind the crime scene tape then retreats after giving me a little wave and nodding at my return smile.

  Michael Watson, our deputy medical examiner, arrives and unfolds his basketball-player-sized frame from his Li
ncoln.

  “What’s new?” he asks in his deep baritone as we walk over to the body. “Saw you on the news yesterday. Good for you for standing up to that racist prick.”

  Bile bites like acid in my throat. “Yeah, that sucked,” I mutter. “How are you?”

  It’s getting dark. It’s going to be a long night.

  “Doing well, thanks for asking.” He raises the sheet and winces when he sees the body. “Oh my.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I reply.

  “It might be a couple of days”—he turns her onto her back—“until I can open her up. I’ve got two ahead of her. But I’ll go ahead and say homicide.” He looks up at me then back at the body.

  I scan the dark splotches of lividity that are already fading on her right side. “Sooner the better. Let me know?”

  “You got it.” He makes a small incision then slides a digital thermometer into her liver. “How you been? You know, with all that’s going on?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He slides the thermometer out and examines it, and I look away for a beat. “Let’s estimate time of death at roughly four thirty a.m. I’ll keep you posted.”

  I nod, unsurprised that she died roughly when late becomes early. “Any guesses?” I squat next to him, astonished again by the extent of her injuries. “Crime of passion. Anger,” I murmur, not unaware of the cliché.

  He points a long, gloved finger at her smashed skull. “Off the record, I’d say blunt force trauma, and I’d say rage more than anger. But there’s an awful, awful lot going on here. We have an ID?”

  “We think she might be Heather Martin.”

  He purses his lips. “Okay.” He nods. “Okay.” He slides her hands into brown paper bags like the lunch bags I used as a kid. “Did you catch that tattoo on her shoulder?”

  I nod.

  “I’ll keep you posted,” he says. “Ready when you are to get her out of here. Public place, and it feels like rain.”

  I nod and follow him to our vehicles. He gives me a little salute before turning to direct his assistants, who unload a gurney from the medical examiner’s van, and I lean against the Passat. I’m rereading my notes when Goran approaches. “Micalec wants you to meet her in the shed,” he says, grimacing.

  “That bad, huh?”

  He nods. “A barbecue would have been a lot more fun.”

  I glance around. “Where’s the L-T?”

  “She said she was going to talk to Eric Martin, the vic’s husba—”

  “Assuming Heather Martin is the vic.”

  He nods. “She wanted to question him herself.”

  I narrow my eyes. “She’s a weird one.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Micalec works fast, which is a big reason that she’s my favorite crime scene tech. She’s already photographed everything once. Watson takes more pictures of the body before two of his crew wrap her in a clean white sheet then load her into a heavy black body bag, onto the gurney, and into the refrigerated van.

  I take a detour over to a set of uniforms and tell them to get someone out here to set up the tents to protect the scene from the rain. On my way back, I pause at the second footprint outside the largest outbuilding, which looks like a big man’s boot print.

  The smell of sweet, wet, tarnished copper hits me when I approach the entrance to the shed, following the trail from where the victim lay, inert, never moving again under her own volition.

  It’s not lost on me that the timing of this case makes it capital-I Important enough to bring our senior forensic tech out to the field. Jo usually supervises regular shifts at the lab.

  The shed gives me another reason to gag. Blood, at various stages of drying, covers nearly every surface.

  “Oh my god,” I mutter as I swallow several times.

  Micalec nods. “Yeah, don’t barf,” she says from the back corner.

  I take a step back and out of the path of the floodlight. “Okay, so... She was bound to that chair”—I point at a rickety wooden chair in the middle of the space with my flashlight—“and beaten?”

  She nods and gestures at the ceiling. “Spatter up there too.”

  I train the flashlight beam up to where she points.

  “But yeah, look at this.” She points at the shiny black rope on the ground near her feet.

  I follow it with the light.

  “Bound with that, you think?” I lean in and squint at the chair legs. “Nylon?”

  “Roger that,” she says. “There are marks here where she clawed her way out of the bindings, at the wrists. You saw the bruises, right?” She takes another photo from a different angle. “She’d already lost a lot of blood by then—spatter makes me guess that she was hog-tied, beaten, then bound to the chair and beaten some more.” She points around the shed as she talks. “Two pints, maybe a little more. Did you get a good look at her? Looks like she knocked the chair over, maybe hit her head on this.” She points at the corner of a workbench. I take a couple of photographs with my phone, duplicates of shots I’m certain she already has, just to capture how I’m seeing this.

  When I finally step all the way inside, the thick smell hangs around us like a palpable force, a hard, sharp reminder of life and death and the precarious balance between the two. The tang of blood is stronger than the smell of the gasoline from the overturned can in the corner. The can itself is covered in spatter, along with almost every surface in here.

  “I’m not getting many prints,” Jo says as she dusts the chair. “And I’d guess most of them are hers.”

  I nod and remove the necklace from my pocket. “There might be a print on this necklace. Greenwade found it outside.”

  She squints at it, safe in its evidence bag, then nods and goes back to photographing the spatter.

  It’s been a long time since I saw a scene like this. Usually people just strangle or shoot or stab each other, and it’s, comparatively speaking, clean. Everything here is a complete mess, knocked over, pulled down from the walls, and spattered with blood. It’s like a scene in a bad horror movie, and I wish it was. I can’t imagine having to fight for my life hard enough to cause such disarray, especially during or after that kind of beating and whatever happened before that beating. But a part of my job is to imagine exactly that.

  It looks like she thrashed around quite a bit before he started hitting her. I’d bet that he had her in a choke hold and she kicked with her legs, knocking over these clay pots and tearing that bag of soil so that it spilled on the dirt floor. He somehow got her subdued and tied, but it didn’t stop there. Another red fingernail is lodged in the workbench to my right.

  “That hers?” I point at a clump of hair on the floor.

  “Looks like it. Dyed blond, looks like with the good stuff. Salon color.” She takes a picture then bags some wood splinters. “Gray-brown roots. I’m thinking this could be our murder weapon, at least one of them.” She holds up what looks like the leg of another chair. She points into the other corner at an overturned three-legged stool, probably from someone’s basement.

  “Why the hell are there seats in here?” I murmur, more to myself than anyone.

  “Tape too. Bondage tape. Only sticks to itself.” She picks up a section of what looks like red duct tape and holds it out at a distance for me to inspect before she drops it into an evidence bag. It’s red and shiny and looped around itself. It looks like he must have used it as a gag and then cut it off her.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “Hey, I know how to do my job,” she says with a chuckle, and I follow suit.

  We have to laugh. We will find any reason to laugh under circumstances such as these, and maybe now I understand what Morrison was doing in the car the other day. Nothing is funny, not one damn thing, but we’re human, and we need to get through the day somehow, and laughing beats alcoholism or abusing our loved ones or firing our service weapons into our brains.

  “Pretty common brand,” Jo says, squi
nting at the texture of the tape. “You can get this online, if you want.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. How about that rope?”

  She flicks an eyebrow at me. “Looks like nylon, the kind of rope you can buy anywhere. But see how it’s thinner than that regular yellow rope, like the kind you’d tie something to your car with?”

  I nod and make a note of it. Maybe that’ll give us something.

  “I’ll run some tests. There are a couple of interesting knots too.”

  I move slowly through the space, adjusting to the smell and the low light, taking everything in so that I can make a sketch when I leave, just to cement the details in my mind. A collection of tools, including the gas weed whacker, sits in one corner, covered with a bloody tarp. I raise the tarp to reveal a push lawn mower, a backpack blower that looks much too large and heavy for Greenwade, and a selection of hand tools. The tools are clean and seemingly well-maintained; they must have been covered with the tarp when the victim was bludgeoned.

  “Did you see this broken vodka bottle over here?” I ask.

  She nods. “This is a forensic dream,” Jo says as she bags some bloody gravel from under the chair. She levels her gaze at me. “I know you know what I mean.”

  I glove up then push an orange extension cord out of the way to reveal a stack of metal easels that people use to hold wreaths onto graves.

  “I’d be surprised if we don’t get DNA off of something.” She narrows her eyes. “And given the struggle, maybe we’ll get some of his blood here. He’s got to be injured.”

  I nod. “Big guy, based on that footprint out there.”

  “Yeah, I’d say so,” she replies.

  She follows my gaze to the metal closure on the door.

  “Padlock on the door is an old-style lock,” she says. “They don’t make those anymore. She must’ve broken those boards and crawled through, after she bled into that pool right there.” She points at the floor near my feet.

  “So he wanted her to die in here, alone,” I say.

  “Yes,” she replies. “And slowly.”