“I'm for it,” I said, as brightly as possible. This third visit to the tub had been difficult. “What do you think? Can we move the body out now? I'd like to get her out as soon as practical.”
“No problem. I don't think the victim has any more to tell us until the autopsy.”
“Good.”
She found the pen, and browsed absently through the bag. “You've got just about everything in here, Houseman. Exam gloves, bags, labels, fflm, batteries, pens, scissors, tweezers… ” She unzipped the side pocket, and looked up. “Girl Scout cookies? Are these Girl Scout cookies?”
“Caught me. Want one?”
Hester ate the chocolate mint cookie in two swift bites, and then looked for a place to put her notepad on the vanity.
“Look at the neat stuff.”
“Pardon?”
“Her makeup,” she said. “Lipstick colors. Interesting. Like these: Tar, Bordeaux, Garnet, Pulsing Blood… ”
“Oh.”
“With foundation names like Porcelain. And glitter for the eyelids. Little stick-on holograms. Neat stuff.”
“You betcha, Hester.”
“No, really. This isn't your mother's kind of makeup, chances are. And not the shades and colors that are usually worn around here.” She gave me a smug look. “Sort of a gentle rebel, this Edie. Look more closely. She took very good care of all this stuff. It's orderly. Neat. Her appearance was important.”
“I caught the neat part right away,” I said. “Always makes me feel out of place. Speaking of makeup, you notice her nails? The multicolored thing. Does that mean something?”
“Probably not. Whimsy, I'd think.”
“Whimsy. Like with the frilly clothes?”
“You mean the brocades, the lace, the velvet and satins hanging over there?” She gestured toward the walk-in closet.
“Yeah.”
Hester smiled. “I'd think she enjoyed being a girl.”
“Oh.”
She ate one more cookie, then pulled her walkie talkie out of her pocket and went on to the mobile repeater channel. That was so neat. She was talking to her car radio via a secure channel, which, in turn, transmitted to State Radio repeater towers down to Cedar Falls State Radio, also via secure link, and enabled her to order up the lab team without the media getting wind of it.
Being from the wrong side of the government procurement tracks, I went into the hall, and down the first half flight, where I could see Borman standing in the doorway to the parlor. I caught his attention, and told him to use the residence phone to call our office and get the hearse coming.
I got back to Edie's room, and couldn't see Hester. I looked around the door frame into the bathroom, and saw her checking the contents of the bathroom cabinet.
“Got something?”
She turned. “No, and that's just the problem,” she said slowly. “No open shampoo, no open soap, no razor, just blades.”
Oh. “Yeah. Doesn't sit right, does it?”
“Like you said, Carl. Where's the stuff you'd use in a tub or shower?”
We'd talked about that during her first pass through the bathroom area. Although it was barely possible that someone would run out of everything currently in use at the same time, it was unlikely as hell. The problem was, there wasn't a really good explanation as to why it was gone.
“I don't get it,” said Hester. “Why isn't it here?”
She came toward the door, and I backed out of the doorway to let her pass. “It isn't like somebody would enter her bath and cut her throat in order to gain possession of a used bar of soap and half a bottle of shampoo… ”
“Souvenir?” I just tossed that in.
“Right.” She shook her head. “First things first. I want to know where that knife came from.”
“The kitchen?”
“I'd bet. We couldn't be so lucky as to have it come from anywhere else.”
“Right now,” I said, “if this case were on a balance scale, I'd have just about a quarter of the weight in the suicide dish.”
She sighed, pulling off her latex exam gloves. “Maybe a bit less. We really need that autopsy.”
We moved back into the bedroom.
“So,” said Hester, “what can you tell me about the group who lives here?”
I explained that they were local, or very close. Marched to a bit of a different drummer than some, but were known to us as pretty decent people. Those I knew were bright. They caused no trouble, which in cop parlance meant a lot.
“Some, like the one they call Huck, just strike me as people who would really like things to be different. But who know they can't make it happen.” I considered. “Like, at a party, when some nice person knows that if they join in the conversation, there's going to be an argument. So they sit on the couch, and are pleasant, and pass the dip, and kind of let the flow go around them.”
“Like the hippies used to be?”
“This is going to date me,” I said, “but they remind me more of beatniks.”
“Angry? Intellectually rebellious? Cynical? Depressed?”
“You got it. All the above. Caused by life in general.”
Hester smiled. “You sure this isn't a bunch of retired cops?”
When the hearse arrived, it came complete with two attendants. One of them was about seventy, and the other was a small man in his thirties. This meant that Borman, Hester, and I had to glove up again, and help lift Edie's body from the tub. Messy, if you didn't watch your step. We got the chromed portable stretcher up the stairs, noticing how the bend in the stairway at the first landing was going to make this a tough movement on the way down. Once in the bathroom, we tried to position it near the tub and yet not have it be in our way. Not possible. We were going to have to hold Edie up at about chest height while we slid the stretcher under her. Ugh.
Both attendants were gaping at the body, but neither of them said anything.
Rigor mortis raised its ugly head at that point. Borman had squeezed between the tub and the far wall, and he and I had linked hands under her knees and behind her back near her buttocks. Hester had her feet, and the younger attendant tried to slide his hands under her armpits. No go; a bit too stiff now. So he had to hold her left elbow and her head.
“On three… ” said Hester. “One, two, three.”
We started the lift, and it became obvious that Edie was pretty well stiffened in her sitting position. She also seemed to sort of stick to the bottom of the tub. The cold flesh had flattened at the pressure points, and as she came up, I could see that her right breast and chest bore a large dent from her arm and part of the tub. Some blood, strangely, appeared to have pooled under her buttocks, and that was the cause of the sticking when we started to lift. That should not have been there. Not if the fatal wound had been inflicted when she was in the tub. I caught Hester's eye. She gave an almost imperceptible nod. Evidence like that was not to be discussed in front of noninvestigative personnel, civilian or otherwise.
As we placed Edie on the stretcher, we saw that the knife was stuck to her right thigh by the congealed blood. Congealed, but not yet clotted. We took photos, made another note, and then Hester carefully pulled it free. I got a paper bag out of my camera case, and we placed the knife in that.
“Your camera bag reminds me of my purse,” she said.
I snapped three shots of the interior of the tub. The blood under where her buttocks had been was very apparent. It even showed a slight wrinkle pattern from the flattened flesh.
Edie couldn't have weighed more than 125 pounds alive, and having lost all that blood volume, she was down to about a hundred or less. The blanched and flattened areas of her buttocks were very obvious, the result of her weight pressing her into the tub. Her mouth, which had been hanging open as she sat there, now looked as if she were about to cough. Interestingly, her eyes no longer had that “alive” appearance that had startled me before. Must have been the light, that first time. Whatever it was, it was a relief.