Tracy noticed a third chair at the table and recalled Rosa mentioning she might ask for help. “So who is he?”
“Trust me. He’s worth the wait.” She glanced again to the door. “And there he is.” Rosa stood and waved at a ruggedly handsome man scanning the crowd. When he saw Rosa, he returned her wave and flashed a mouthful of white teeth.
Rosa spoke under her breath. “Is it sexual harassment if I just think about grabbing his butt?” She stuck out her hand and gave the man a one-armed hug, then made the introductions. “Tracy, meet Peter Gabriel.”
Tan, lean-muscled, and dressed in a pair of loose-fitting khakis, an open-collared shirt, and a lightweight raincoat, Gabriel looked like he’d just walked off the pages of a J.Crew catalog. His curly brown hair fell nearly to his shoulders. Tracy was guessing he was a rock climber or an extreme skier—definitely something outdoorsy.
“Peter Gabriel, like the singer?” she asked.
“Spelled the same,” he said, offering a firm handshake. His other hand held a single manila file. “Good taste in music.”
He set the file on the table, took off his raincoat, and pulled out a chair.
“About a year back, Peter and I worked another river-drowning case together,” Rosa said. She paused to let the wailing sound of a siren pass before continuing. “I thought he might be of help with this one.”
“Okay,” Tracy said, turning to face him. “What do you do, Peter?”
Gabriel was unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his shirtsleeves. He wore two colorful woven rope bracelets on his left wrist. A hefty sport watch adorned his right. “I work as a consultant for REI, but my passion has always been white-water river rafting and canoeing.”
The waitress returned with Tracy’s beer and offered Gabriel a bright smile. Gabriel surveyed the beer menu for a moment, then said, “Okay, I cannot pass up the opportunity to try a beer called ‘Loser Pale Ale.’”
Tracy liked him already.
“Peter has guided white-water excursions on just about every major river in the state,” Rosa said. “Everything from Class Two to Class Five rapids. Did I get that right?”
“You did,” Gabriel said before turning to Tracy. “My dad owned a white-water rafting company on the Rogue River in Oregon. It was a family business. My brothers and sisters and I could navigate a river about the same time we could walk. I guided my first white-water trip when I was twelve.”
“About a year ago, I needed some help with a body pulled from the Skykomish,” Rosa said, referring to a river about an hour northeast of Seattle. “We were trying to determine whether or not the injuries were inflicted by the river. Peter was recommended to me.”
“I appreciate the help,” Tracy said.
Rosa flipped open her manila folder, and Gabriel mimicked her, opening his. “Let’s start with the coroner’s finding that the deceased was alive when she entered the water,” Rosa said. “First, drowning is one of the most difficult causes of death to get a handle on, because there is no true definitive sign of drowning. A drowning person actually dies from a lack of oxygen. Having said that, I concur with the pathologist who prepared this report that the person was likely alive when she hit the water.”
“You do?” Tracy asked, surprised and disappointed by the conclusion.
“Based on what’s in the coroner’s report, yes. The coroner found water in her air passages, including the lungs and stomach. Now, a person can get water in both locations passively if there is a strong current, but in this instance I believe the intake of water is consistent with a person still breathing upon impact.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to let Peter answer that.”
“The White Salmon in November runs just around forty-two degrees,” Gabriel offered. “A person hitting water that cold, if alive, will have a gasp reflex. I know. I’ve done it. If the victim wasn’t wearing a life jacket or wet suit, she’d go under and take that gasp, ingesting a large volume of water.”
“Which is what we have here,” Rosa said. “The bruising on her body is another indicator she was alive when she went into the water—that is, that her blood was still circulating to those areas,” Rosa said. “When you have antemortem bruising, you expect swelling, damage to the skin, coagulation at the site of impact, and infiltration of the tissues with blood, resulting in color changes, which is what the coroner noted in his report and documented in photographs. You don’t find that in postmortem bruising.”
Tracy sat back from the table, feeling deflated, though she also knew as well as anyone that most cases were exactly what they seemed. The “whodunits” were a lot rarer than the grounders. “So she committed suicide.”
Rosa started to answer, but the waitress had returned with Gabriel’s beer, setting it on a coaster.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“I think we’re good,” Tracy said.
After the waitress departed, Rosa sipped her beer and set the glass back down on the coaster. “Actually,” she said calmly, “I don’t believe she committed suicide.”
“What? Why not?”
“Three things.” Rosa held up a finger as she raised each point. “First, pattern recognition with respect to the bruising. Second, the nature of the recorded injuries. And third, river dynamics. I’m going to let Peter start with the river dynamics.”
Gabriel handed Tracy and Rosa each a document. “Let’s start with terminology. The flow of a river is measured in cubic feet per second. That flow is going to vary based on the particular river, the month, and seasonal factors, such as the depth of the snowpack in the mountains that year, and the number of inches and the severity of spring rains—those sorts of things. What I just gave you is a document from the USGS website, which records water flow on just about every river. NOAA provides similar information—historical data on things like inches of rain, temperature, and river flow. For fishermen and river guides, this is our bible. It’s no different than people commuting to work checking traffic cameras to determine the traffic flow before going to work or driving home. River guides and fishermen check river flow.”