quickly once the body is found.
Dennis Coakley, who had been dragging his heels yesterday, had hurried
to a slow crawl. I got his message first thing Tuesday morning: "I
heard the terrible news about Clarissa and wanted you to know I'm still
working away here, the highest possible priority. I'll call you when
I'm done."
We'd see about that.
I also had a message from Susan Kerr, who clearly moved at a much
faster clip. "Hi, this is Susan Kerr. Obviously, I've heard the news,
and I won't even bother trying to tell you how horrible the night was
for everyone. I think the reality is still setting in for all of us.
Anyway, I wanted you to know that I'll be helping Clarissa's family
with arrangements they're obviously not in the best state right now to
pay attention to all the details. Tara's doing OK, definitely a help
to her parents. Townsend, on the other hand well, quite frankly, I'm
worried about him. In any event, I'm doing what I can, so, if you need
anything from anyone, please feel free to call me. Anything at all."
Before she hung up, she left every possible number where she might be
located.
Susan was dealing with death by taking charge. My mother had been the
same way. The few times she'd lost anyone and I mean anyone: a
neighbor, a cousin, her father she went straight to work. Call the
funeral director, the insurance companies, the creditors. Prepare
frozen casseroles and lasagnas to store for the family. It was like
she had a death checklist, full of tasks to keep her busy until the
body was in the ground.
Watching my mother in action, I had never understood her motivation.
Did she need to stay distracted from the death itself? Was it a means
of obtaining control over a world that felt unpredictable? Or was it
just an earnest desire to help those who weren't as strong as she was?
Whatever Susan Kerr's motivation, I was glad someone close to Clarissa
could play that role. Having seen Townsend attempt to deal with the
mere possibility of his wife's death, I couldn't imagine what the
confirmation of his worst fears had done to him.
I replayed the message to scribble down her phone numbers, then went on
to the next voice mail. "Hi, Samantha, Susan Kerr again. Just wanted
to let you know I think I'll go ahead and call Duncan, just to make
sure you've got all the support you feel you need, OK? Thanks,
Samantha. I appreciate having someone devote her personal attention to
my friend."
I wasn't surprised that someone with Susan Kerr's resources already
knew my boss. If she wanted to make sure he was giving me all the
support I deserved, I was all for it.
With the voice mails out of the way, I called Johnson to check in.
"We broke the news to the family last night. The parents and sister
first, then the husband. Nothing unusual. The sister gave us the
official ID while we were working on the search."
"The husband didn't have a problem with it?"
"No. We explained that a search of the vies house is standard and that
we had a warrant. He said he understood that the investigation needed
to proceed."
"Did you find anything?"
"Nothing that means anything yet. We took bank records, credit card
statements the usual stuff that sometimes means something down the
road. But we already knew from the walk through the other night that
we weren't going to find any obvious signs that she'd been done in the
house.
"Chuck and Mike came through on getting records for the recent credit
card charges and cell calls. We're still working on getting the toll
records for the home phone.
"We've got a charge at Nordstrom on Saturday. Adds up to the items we
found in the shopping bag, plus the pants and sweater she was wearing
on Sunday. The only charge after that was on Sunday, right after noon,
at the Pasta Company."
I knew the place. Or places, I should say. The Pasta Company is a
popular local chain.
"Which one?" I asked, since I could think of six or seven locations
off the top of my head.
"Terwilliger and Barbur." Made sense. Only a mile or so from the
Easterbrooks'.
"I sent a patrol officer over there with her picture. A couple of
employees said they recognized her because she's in there a lot, but no
one could place her there for sure on Sunday."
"There's no way to know if she was alone?" I asked.
"No, but she probably was. One order of linguine in browned butter, no
tip. A carry-out order, it turns out. Walker drew short straw and got
trash duty. Duly noted beneath the sink: one empty Styrofoam container
from the Pasta Company."
"So she picked up lunch on Sunday and ate at home by herself. Great.
All that work, and the credit card records don't get us any closer than
we were the other night."
"Did I say I was finished, Kincaid? Damn, girl, anyone ever tell you
you're a glass-half-empty kind of woman? I haven't told you about the
autopsy yet."
"The ME's done already?" It usually took a couple of days.
"It's been a light week so there's no backup. He made the cuts first
thing this morning. Report should be finished tomorrow, but I just got
off the phone with him a minute ago. You want to continue to interrupt
me, or do you want to get to the good stuff?"
"Consider me quiet."
"Yeah, right. I'll get in what I can. Anyway, cause of death is what
we assumed: blunt force trauma to the right side of the head. He was
having some difficulties with time of death, though. He couldn't use
some of the factors that help when the body's fresh. It had clearly
been awhile, because she was cold."
"How long does that take?" I asked.
"That puts us back to yesterday. But things get tricky past that
window. And they were even trickier in this case, because we were
right about her being moved. I'll spare you the details, but the ME's
got a problem interpreting things like bloating and bugs when he
doesn't know what kind of environment the body was in. We couldn't
tell him if she was inside, outside, wet, dry, in a heater,
whatever."
So
"Patience, woman. See, you were about to say, "So he can't tell us the
time of death," right?"
"Maybe." Definitely.
"See, now, that'd be an inaccurate statement. ME calls and tells me he
might have to give us a wide window for time of death unless I know
when she ate last. At the time he called me, I didn't, but, you see,
now I do. And the ME tells me she died within one to three hours of
eating noodles, which he found in the stomach contents. Assuming she
ate the food around twelve-thirty, she died between one-thirty and