Even to her own ears, the words didn’t sound reassuring. After all, this kid had just spent five minutes listening to four cops taking down her father. Trying to imagine how Makayla might react, Nicole found her mom-voice, reassuring but no-nonsense.
“Starshine?” The door didn’t have a handle, just a hole. There were no windows. The whole cabin was probably ten by ten. “Starshine—please come out.”
Slowly, the cabin door opened and a girl appeared, moving as lightly and carefully as a deer in hunting season. Skinny, with blonde hair in two crooked braids, eyes so wide that Nic could see the whites on each side. She was clearly frightened, but so brave that it nearly broke Nic’s heart.
After making sure the child’s hands were empty, Nic bent down to look into her face. “Hi, my name’s Nicole. We need to talk to your father about something, but we can’t leave you here alone. That means we need to take you with us.”
The only answer was the sound of Starshine’s too-fast breathing.
Leif radioed ahead. The police would take the man to jail. He could be held for up to forty-eight hours without charge while they determined exactly what he had to do with Katie’s death. Starshine would be put in the custody of Children’s Services until that could be determined.
They left behind one of the cops, and then the five of them made their way back to the main part of the park. Nic, Leif, and the other cop, who were all wearing boots, had difficulty navigating the trail. Chambers and his daughter, wearing only street shoes, were as nimble as mountain goats—even though the father’s hands were handcuffed behind his back.
The first words Nic heard Starshine speak were a protest when they put her father in a cruiser.
“Please, please don’t take my father away! No!” She tried to run to him, but Nic caught her and wrapped her arms around her.
“We just need to check on a few things,” she told the girl, her heart aching for her. “If everything is okay, you can go back to your father.”
It was such a big if it might as well have been a lie.
MULTNOMAH COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE
January 5
Can you hear me okay?” Medical examiner Tony Sardella looked up over the edge of his surgical mask at Nic and Owen Simmons from the Multnomah County sheriff ’s office.
Nic and Owen were seated in the special observation room that over-looked the autopsy suite. Below them were the dead girl, Tony, Leif, and a pathology assistant.
“Coming in loud and clear,” Owen said, combing one hand through his black hair, which Nic was pretty sure was dyed.
“Have you seen an autopsy before?” Tony asked.
Owen nodded, and Nic said, “Lots of dead bodies, but no autopsies.”
“You guys should be glad you’re behind the glass,” Tony said. “It’s a little ripe in here.”
Nic was glad of the window in another way. It gave her the illusion that the girl on the metal table was as artificial as an image on TV or a movie screen. She could pretend that when this was done, the girl would pull the special-effects moulage off her face and sit up with a smile.
Still wearing the clothes she had been found in, Katie lay faceup on the waist-high, stainless steel autopsy table. Slanted, it had raised edges to keep blood and fluids from spilling onto the floor. Nic was grotesquely reminded of the carving platter at her folks’ house, with the channel that ran around the edge to catch the juices.
Tony put his hand on one of Katie’s knees and wiggled it back and forth, then did the same thing with her other knee and then her elbows. “Her joints move freely,” he announced. “There’s no rigor mortis, and the body is cold. That means she’s at least thirty hours dead.”
“Do you think she died the same day she went missing?” Nic asked. “That was December thirteenth.”
“We’ll see. With luck, I’ll be able to narrow it down for you to a day or two.”
Tony pressed a pedal on the floor and began to dictate into the transcribing machine. He reeled off the facts of the husk that had once been Katie Converse: her race, sex, age, hair color.
“Eye color unknown; eyes are missing,” he said before continuing. “A red leash is found looped around her neck. Decedent is wearing a hip-length dark blue Columbia parka, a black V-necked sweater, jeans, and Nike sneakers. No signs of disturbance to her clothing.”
Tony tapped the foot pedal again to turn off the transcription. As his gloved fingers teased the noose away from the puffy discolored flesh, he said, “If we get lucky, you guys might find fingerprints on this.”
Leif snapped pictures as Tony worked.
After the leash was bagged for evidence, Tony leaned down, examining the indentation on Katie’s neck more closely. “What will help is figuring out whether we are looking at a hanging groove or a strangulation groove.”
“What’s the difference?” Nic asked.