CHAPTER TWO
The wedding dress and veil disturbed Lacey on a deep level. She’d bought some bridal magazines when she and Jack became engaged a few months back, and she’d been overwhelmed at the selection of dresses. Enough that she’d put the whole dress-shopping process out of her mind. This was not the way she’d expected to be reminded of it again.
“Was she getting married?” Lacey asked. To her eyes, the dress on the body was out of date. It had the styling of dresses a decade ago.
“Not that I know of,” said Mathews. He looked ready to vomit. “She and Will have been divorced for about a year now, I’d say. She works at The Anchor. Tends bar. She was a real sweetheart,” he said, his voice cracking as he wiped at his eyes. He appeared to be in his late twenties and could rival Terry for size and bulk. He made the smaller Garcia look like a fifth grader.
Lacey’s heart broke for the man as she glanced at Terry.
Terry shook his head. “I don’t know her. I haven’t been here long enough. When will the medical examiner arrive?” he asked Mathews.
The cop glanced at his watch. “Someone’s supposed to be here any minute.”
“You’re on camera duty,” Terry said to Mathews, who nodded. “Start in close and slowly work your way out, shooting everything.” He turned to the other cop. “Garcia, I want you to canvas the guests. We need to know what anyone heard or saw overnight. Hopefully the ME can give us a better window of time once he gets here.”
“How old is she?” asked Lacey.
“Thirtyish,” answered Mathews. “I think she was in the same high school class as my older sister.”
The same age as Lacey. Jack squeezed her shoulder. He knew her penchant for identifying with victims she worked with. She couldn’t stop herself from looking for things they shared in common.
Footsteps behind Lacey caught her attention. Jessica from the front desk had returned with a man in tow. The short bald man strode with confidence, but also with a heavy weight of concern on his face. He stopped at the group and sized them up with a sweeping glance. Jessica hung back, her eyes still wide from the shock of the morning. “Who’s in charge?” the bald man asked with his gaze clearly on Terry.
“I’m Chief Schoenfeld.” Terry held out his hand. “Are you the owner?”
“Manager. Paul Lott. The hotel owner lives in Seattle.” He looked past Terry to the wet bride. Sorrow crossed his features. “Do you know who she is? Is it one of the guests?”
“Mathews here believes it’s a local woman,” said Terry. “Until I have that confirmed, I’d rather not share her name.”
Lacey hated that the woman was still lying in open view. She’d blocked any hotel guest’s view with sheets and chairs, but the vulnerable woman was still visible to their little group. Mathews was clicking away with a digital camera, slowly backing up from the woman and taking shots of the surrounding area.
“Paul, we’d like to start talking to your guests,” Terry began.
The manager cringed. “Can’t you wait and see if they come forward to say they saw something? Surely if they heard there was a death here, they’d speak up if they noticed something suspicious.” He cracked his knuckles, his attention jumping from the body to Terry and back.
Terry blinked. “No. We’re going to talk to everyone. Now.” He tensed up. “You’ve got a possible murder on your grounds. This isn’t the time to worry about the comfort of your guests.”
“I suppose—”
“No, you don’t suppose anything,” Terry snapped. “We’re going to do this right. You got security cameras on the premises?”
Paul shook his head. “I’ve only got one inside, on the front-desk area.”
“Does it point toward the doors, or a window with a view of the outside?”
“It only shows the immediate desk area. The front entrance is out of view.”
Terry glanced at the balconies. “How many units? And how many were occupied last night?”
“We’ve got twenty suites. Fifteen were full.” Paul glanced at Jessica, a question on his face. She nodded.
A tall, dark, slender man hustled around the pool, heading toward their group. Lacey recognized him. “That’s your medical examiner,” she said to Terry. “Dr. Pillai is from the county office.”
The dark man scanned the group and stopped on Lacey as a grin crossed his face. “Dr. Campbell! I wasn’t expecting you.” He glanced at her yoga pants, tank top, and hand clasped in Jack’s. “You’re not working, I assume.”
“Nice to see you, David. No, we just happened to be staying here.” Her teeth chattered. It wasn’t cold out, but she could have used a light jacket. And some coffee. Jack stepped behind her and rubbed his hands on her upper arms.
Terry scowled. “You two should go warm up. But don’t go far. I want to talk to you as soon as I’m done with Dr. Pillai.” He glanced at the hotel manager. “You got an office or empty room I can use to interview?”
Paul nodded. “Of course.”
“I want you to get me the names and room numbers of your guests. I’ll also need a map of the building and grounds, and a list of employees who worked in the last twenty-four hours.”
“You got it.” Paul gestured at Jessica, and they jogged back to the office.
“Someone will be here in a few minutes to take her back to the morgue,” Dr. Pillai said as he studied the woman. “Before you two go, how was she found?”
Jack brought him up to date.
Dr. Pillai waved Mathews over. “Shoot here while I’m working.” He pointed at the bodice of the woman’s dress. The medical examiner prodded at her rib cage and made a quick slit in the white fabric below her ribs and a second cut in her skin, and deftly slid a thermometer in to check her liver temperature. Lacey saw Mathews’s grip on the camera shake and had a brief pang of sympathy for the young cop who’d never seen a dead body.
Dr. Pillai noticed, too. “First time?”
Mathews silently nodded.
“You got good shots of her neck?” He pointed at the bruising.
The cop nodded again.
The medical examiner shifted her limbs, testing. “Full rigor still.” He pressed against the purpling of her calves. “Lividity is fixed. So she lay somewhere on her back for a good six hours to put the color in her calves. You said she was facedown in the tub?” He stared at the hot tub. “Crap. That complicates things a bit. I’ll need the temperature on that tub. I wonder how long she was in there.”
“That’s the big question,” Lacey said quietly to Jack. “It’ll throw off any readings he gets from her liver temperature. I don’t know how he’s going to get an accurate time of death.”
Dr. Pillai pressed his lips together. “I’ll see what I can come up with. But she’s been dead somewhere around twelve hours with the rigor where it’s at. And less than six in the hot tub since her lividity is fixed.”
“Around twelve hours,” repeated Terry. “I can get started with that. It’s almost seven now, so she was on her back somewhere between roughly seven p.m. and one a.m. and then moved here after that.”
“Keep in mind these are really rough estimates, okay? Help me roll her to her side,” the medical examiner said to Mathews.
The young cop blanched and slowly set down his camera. The two men shifted her to her side as Dr. Pillai scanned her back, his gloved hand running down the back of her dress. “Nothing obvious from the back.”
The two men gently rolled her faceup again.
“Anything on her skull?” Lacey asked.
The medical examiner untangled the veil from the woman’s dark hair and set it aside. He palpated her skull. “Feels solid. No soft areas from a blow of some sort. I’ll know more when I have her on the table.”
“Was she choked to death?” Mathews asked.
“Looks like someone tried,” Dr. Pillai said noncommittally. “But I’m not going to guess at her cause of death until I’ve fully examined her.” He lifted an eyebrow at the cop. “And neither should you.”
Lacey wondered if the young cop got the message. Don’t spread rumors.