Chapter 6
SIX
“I knew her,” Turner clarified. “I thought the name sounded familiar outside but wasn’t sure.”
Anya paused, camera in both hands, poised over Maxine’s sternum. “Knew her how?”
Over the din of blowflies and the air conditioner, Josie heard his fingers drum against his thigh.
“It was last year. A domestic call,” Turner answered.
His gaze flickered over to Haven. “The daughter called 911. Parents were fighting. She was afraid her dad was going to hit her mom. Brennan and his partner responded. Initially, Maxine was going to press charges so I did the follow-up, but when I interviewed her, she didn’t want to pursue it. ”
Anya tensed and Josie’s heart sank a little. Anya’s ex-husband had abused her for years before she was able to leave. He’d left scars, both physically and emotionally. “Had he hit her or…” She trailed off.
Turner studied her for a long moment, his penetrating blue eyes filled with compassion.
It was exceedingly odd. Softly, he said, “I don’t think so.
From the reports and from talking with her, I’m pretty sure he hadn’t progressed beyond pushing and hair-pulling.
Not that those are better, just that that’s where things were when I met her. That was a year ago.”
Anya nodded slowly and looked back at her camera. A bead of sweat slid down to the end of her nose and dripped onto the LCD screen. She made a haphazard attempt to clean it with one gloved finger.
Turner added, “I spoke with her a few times. Followed up when I was sure her husband wasn’t around. I tried to convince her to press charges or at least make a plan to leave. Gave her the information for the women’s center.”
Without looking up, Anya said, “Good. That’s good.”
Heavy silence descended over them. For a moment, the only noise was the buzz of flies and rustling from outside where the ERT were packing up their equipment.
The air-conditioning unit burbled and belched, working extra hard with the three of them inside giving off their own body heat.
Josie took a step deeper into the tent, wincing as her damp pants chafed against her thighs.
She tried not to think about the fact that she’d have to wring her clothes out when this was done.
Anya went back to photographing Maxine’s body.
In the picture from Haven’s Instagram, Maxine’s face had been alight with the kind of surprised happiness Josie often saw on the faces of mothers whose teenage children had decided to willingly spend time with them.
Beneath that was evidence of exhaustion—worry lines on her forehead, the corners of her mouth pinched a little too tightly.
It was as though her face was trying to smile and frown at the same time.
Likely a result of her tumultuous home life.
From where Josie stood, it was clear that death had slackened her features entirely.
Maybe she should have looked at peace but despite the lack of evidence otherwise, Josie had a feeling that Maxine Barnes’s death was anything but peaceful.
Josie studied the interior. The fairy lights above their heads were lit, though any glow they gave off was impossible to see given the blinding halogen lights the ERT had set up in the corners of the tent.
Just as Jonathan and her other colleagues had said, there was no sign of a struggle.
Everything was neatly in its place. The cubbyholes of the shelving unit were filled with clothes, shoes, toiletries, and two purses.
A small, solar-powered lantern sat on top of it.
Next to that was a charging station. Two phones and a Kindle were plugged into it.
They’d need warrants for the phone records, to determine the last time they were used, and the last people they’d contacted.
Anya moved toward the foot of the bed, kneeling to take a photo of Maxine’s bare foot where it dangled slightly over the side of the bed. Josie tried to back up to give her some space and bumped against Turner’s chest.
He was so tall. Lean as he was, he took up what felt like an unreasonable amount of space in the tent.
Josie inched away from him but seconds later, felt his breath tickle her ear.
“You’re standing too close,” he stage-whispered.
The man who had gone above and beyond to try to help a woman in an abusive marriage had been replaced by the douchebag Josie knew and detested.
He was mocking her. She’d given him crap for standing too close to her on dozens of occasions. Sometimes she did it solely to irritate him. Slowly, she lifted her hand so he could see it over her shoulder and flipped him her middle finger.
“Now, Quinn, that’s not appropriate workplace behavior.”
“Why don’t you help canvass the other tents? I’m sure Anya and I can handle this part ourselves.”
“Nah,” he said. Josie could already hear the drumming of his fingers against his leg again. “Why would I pass up an opportunity to watch the doc at work?”
“You can stay,” Anya said without looking away from her camera. “If you promise not to ask any icebreaker questions.”
“Why would I?” he replied, sounding almost petulant. “You didn’t answer the last five.”
Turner had long had a strange fascination with their medical examiner.
From what Anya had told Josie and Gretchen, he left his sexist, inappropriate commentary at the morgue doors whenever he had cause to visit her and instead peppered her with bizarre questions.
Getting-to-know-you questions, he’d told Anya.
If it was his version of flirting, then it was a miracle he had a daughter at all.
“Full rigor,” Anya noted, probing Maxine’s foot. There was no give.
Rigor mortis set in anywhere between two to six hours postmortem. It usually started in the fingers, neck, eyelids and jaw before spreading through the entire body. The six- to twelve-hour range was when full rigor usually set in.
“Whatcha doing there, Doc?” Turner shuffled closer to where Anya was now contorting her body to get a look at the sole of Maxine’s foot.
She snapped a few photos and then pressed her thumb into the center of the sole. “Lividity is fixed,” she said as she got to her feet.
Lividity was when all the blood no longer circulating pooled at the lowest points in the body, turning the skin a deep purple.
It usually began about two hours after death.
Between four to six hours postmortem, it became fixed, meaning that the area of discoloration was permanent.
A simple way to tell was to apply pressure to the discolored skin.
If it didn’t blanch, lividity was fixed.
“All right,” Turner said. “Kid found these two around one thirty, one forty-five-ish. Since the girl didn’t show up at noon when they were supposed to meet, we know they were already dead then.
Full rigor, fixed lividity, these two have probably been dead at least twelve hours, give or take an hour or two.
Ambient temperature, heat accelerating the decomp and all that. What do you say, Doc?”
“I can give you a narrower and more accurate timetable after you’ve let me do my job.”
“Testy,” he remarked.
Officers were canvassing the other glampers to see if anyone saw the Barnes women the night before or this morning and when. Conlen was having the surveillance footage from the festival grounds pulled to see if they could catch Maxine and Haven leaving to walk back to their tent.
“Make yourself useful, Turner,” Anya said, holding out her camera.
He edged past Josie and took the camera, holding it while Anya knelt on the edge of the bed and used her gloved fingers to examine Maxine Barnes’s face more closely.
Flies scattered, forming a small cloud over the bed before diving back down, seeking warm, moist orifices in which to lay their eggs.
Anya tried to pull Maxine’s eyelids back but, in full rigor, they had no give.
Next, she tried to peel back Maxine’s lips. Still no luck.
She held her palm out for the camera and Turner handed it back to her. She snapped more photos of Maxine’s face, zooming in on her lips. “Come here. See the bluish tinge around her mouth?”
Josie and Turner shuffled closer.
“Cyanosis,” Josie said. Not enough oxygen in the blood. “What would cause that?”
“Could be a lot of things,” Anya said. “I’ll have a better idea when I get her on the table.”
Maxine’s white T-shirt featured a faded drawing of a hedgehog holding a puffy dandelion.
Anya pulled the collar down, folded the sleeves up, and, finding nothing, pushed the shirt up to expose the abdomen.
She lifted the waistband of Maxine’s black sleep pants but all she found were faint stretch marks.
Maxine’s right arm was flush against her side, palm turned up, a large bruise on the inside of her forearm.
It was red and angry. In the photos Haven had posted of her mother axe-throwing less than twenty-four hours earlier, she hadn’t had any bruises on her arms. Anya grimaced as she bagged Maxine’s hands.
If someone had killed her, hopefully she’d had a chance to get his DNA beneath her fingernails.
Anya took one last lingering look at Maxine Barnes’s face and then moved toward Haven, who had the same blue tinge around her mouth. Like her mother, the girl wore black sleep pants and a T-shirt that said, “Good Vibes.”
“Jesus,” Turner muttered from behind Josie as Anya began taking up-close photos of Haven’s injuries—and there was no mistaking they were injuries. Her body had been almost entirely covered when Jonathan Alvarado arrived but now that the sheet had been removed, the damage was obvious and gruesome.
Josie watched with increasing unease as Anya documented each injury.
A round bruise on her right bicep, then her left.
Her forearms. After snapping several photos, Anya handed Turner her camera again and began her inspection of Haven’s body.
Beneath the collar of her shirt was another large, circular bruise where her collarbone met her shoulder on the right side.
Tugging at the waistband of Haven’s pants, Anya revealed more bruising on her left hip and the top of her right thigh.
“She fought back,” Anya murmured, leaning over Haven’s body to get a better look at her left hand. She took the camera back, snapping several more photos before moving aside so that Josie and Turner could get a better look.
Josie stared in horror at Haven’s index finger. Bone poked through the skin where the finger had been fractured. Dried blood stained the sheet beneath it. Next to her, Turner was stock-still.
Anya sighed, gazing down at Haven with uncharacteristic emotion on her face. Reverence and sadness in equal measure. “I’m so sorry, brave girl,” she whispered.
Wordlessly, Turner spun on his heel and walked out of the tent.