Leif took photographs and then told Karl to cast the prints. Someone had stood here and looked at her. Why? When? The footprints would never give that away. But who—that they might be able to figure out.
As Leif returned to the body, Karl set about making a cast, kneading water and casting material in a plastic bag until the texture was like pan-cake batter. The dental stone would pull up not only the footprint but an additional inch of dirt. And in that dirt there could be trace evidence that had been carried in on the wearer’s shoes: hairs, fibers, maybe a different type of soil. Leif sent up a prayer for carpet fiber. After the casts had set, Karl would carefully lift them free and put them in paper bags to take them back to the lab.
Thinking of trace evidence that might have been carried here made Leif think of evidence that might have been carried away. Blowing on his hands in a vain attempt to warm them, he walked over to one of the Portland police officers stationed at the perimeter.
“Can you get someone to find out where all the trash cans in the park are and when they were last emptied? Someone could have dumped something.”
The cop nodded. Leif was turning to go back to the body when Tony Sardella, the medical examiner, said, “Aren’t you guys done yet? How long until I can take custody?”
Leif had done this difficult dance before. Before releasing the body, the ERT had to be sure that they had gotten all necessary information from it. But MEs typically got impatient with the painstaking process.
“I should be done in about twenty minutes,” he said, pretending not to hear Tony’s sigh.
He had to be sure he wasn’t missing anything. People thought they could remove all traces of a crime scene, but it couldn’t be done, not really. With the help of luminol, Leif had seen blood fluoresce on a kitchen floor even after it had been scrubbed with bleach, observed bloody handprints glow under fresh paint. Killers missed the blood spatter on the ceiling as they pulled the knife back to stab again, or the super-fine blood mist left by a shotgun. But with this body, if you didn’t count the chewed face and hand, there were no signs of blood.
Finally, he got to his feet and signaled to Tony that he was ready. His heart lifted when he saw Nic standing behind Tony. He raised his eyebrows to ask how it had gone, and she gave him a twist of the lips to let him know the answer was about as well—or as badly—as could be expected.
He waited while Tony bagged the hands and feet, tying them securely at wrist and ankle. Given the glove, Leif thought it was probably a wasted effort, but you never knew. Then Tony spread out a clean sheet for the body. Next, they would wrap it around her to catch any trace evidence, and then Katie’s body—still facedown—would be placed in a body bag and then on a stretcher. Leif didn’t envy the two guys who would carry the stretcher. It was going to be a long, rough walk.
As they lifted the girl, Leif looked for any wounds on the front of the body, or any evidence underneath it. He saw nothing and was about to tell Tony to wrap her up when Nic said, “Wait.”
She knelt beside the body, focusing on a long smear of mud on the front of Katie’s coat. With her gloved hand, Nic lifted the edge of a horizontal crease almost obscured by the mud. Inside the fold, the fabric was clean.
“Somebody dragged her,” Leif said, embarrassed that he hadn’t noticed it himself.
“Before or after she was dead?” Nic asked, although he thought she probably knew the answer as well as he did. Maybe she was just trying to help him save face.
“It’s too regular. Whenever it happened, she wasn’t struggling.”
Leif took a photograph, then pinned the fold in place. Then he and Tony finished transferring Katie to the stretcher so that the girl could begin her long journey out of the forest.
“Do you think it’s suicide?” Nic asked.
“It’s hard to say. No note, but no signs of a struggle. The problem is there’s no sign of where the leash was fastened. There’s nothing on this tree to show that she hung herself—no snapped branches, no moss or bark that looks disturbed.”
“Hey!” Karl called. “Look at this!”
Leif and Nic turned, as did the rest of the ERT. Karl’s flashlight was pointed up into the tree he was standing under. It lit up the white, splintered end of a broken branch about six feet off the ground.
Six feet off the ground—and thirty feet from where they had found Katie’s body.
FOREST PARK
January 4