Chapter 35 Sara Batcher
Sara Batcher
“To be honest, finding the body gave us a victim, but not much else. We knew it was David Batcher, and we knew someone dumped his body. Hopefully when he was already dead, because we found weights at the bottom of the lake, so it looks like his body was weighted down. If they’d dumped him while he was alive, well . . . that’d be a rough way to go.”
The detective pushed a photo toward Sara. “This is a photo of the remains. Please note the clothing.”
It was a cruel introduction to David’s dead body, delivered without warning or cushion. She leaned forward and tried to look at the image under the lens of a product review. Here is a thing. Study and find what is right or wrong about it.
Bones. Held together by what looked like string. No, not string. Body matter. Dried and decaying body matter. Sara’s stomach, which revolted at something as simple as rotten watermelon, flipped with unease.
The backdrop, a black surface. The skeleton had been assembled in the shape of a body, with bits of disintegrated clothing like patches around the bones.
The head was turned to one side, as if it—David—were looking to the left.
The position disturbed Sara, and she tried not to obsess over it, but her gaze kept twitching toward it, sticking to it.
David’s skull was an item she had never expected to see, his eyeholes large and gaping, the indents on the side disproportionate to how big his ears had been.
She blinked, her vision blurring. She had loved his ears. Mostly because he was so self-conscious of them. David had had so few moments of vanity that this one area had been like a giant target, so easy to touch that it was almost impossible not to poke it on a regular basis.
And she had. She had cultivated that insecurity for no good reason other than the fact that her own shortcomings needed company.
Now she wished she could take back every moment she had grimaced when he tried on a hat, or suggested a different haircut, or told him to turn his head a little to the left so his ears wouldn’t stick out so much in a photo.
Ian cleared his throat. “Sara?”
She looked up to find them all staring at her. Joel’s face, at least, had some compassion. The detective’s look was more of a glare. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”
“We’re trying to create a timeline. Do you know if these were the clothes from the day that David disappeared?”
She leaned forward, studying the photo. It looked like he was wearing a pair of charcoal slacks. The leather belt was one he’d worn often. The shirt was mostly gone, but it looked like one of his casual knit-blend shirts that he’d liked to pair with dress pants for dinner or drinks.
“It could be,” she said. “I can’t remember what he wore to the office that day. If I saw him that morning, it was just briefly. His secretary would probably know.”
His secretary, Keely. Sitting naked on his desk, her legs open, his tie loosely knotted, hanging between her small, perky breasts.
He’d been on his knees in front of her, his attention where his mouth was, and hadn’t even heard her come in.
Keely had. Keely had gasped—a sound David likely mistook for pleasure—and frozen in place, her eyes locked on Sara.
Sara pushed the image away and tried to focus on her answer.
“If he went out for drinks afterward, he might have changed at the condo. Especially if his car was there.” The condo had had several suits in the hamper, waiting to be dry-cleaned.
When she’d packed up everything, it was hard to know how long they’d been there or if they were from the day he disappeared.
She’d originally put them all in trash bags and held on to them, in case the police wanted to do any tests or analyses on them.
After a year of no interest, she’d donated them, along with the rest of his clothes.
“Is this definitely him?” she asked, her voice cracking on the question.
“The dental records match. There’s also evidence of a healed broken collarbone.”
She swallowed. So it was him. Her gut had known it since yesterday, but it was still a lot to take in.
She closed her eyes, the room spinning, and held on to the edge of the table, willing her anxiety to leave.
She thought of the last summer stationery collection she’d designed.
Sun-bleached, acid-free cotton stock with a generous 500 gsm weight.
They’d dip-dyed the edges in hibiscus pink and pressed delicate gold-foil palm fronds into the corners.
The envelopes were lined with banana-leaf artwork, printed on translucent—
“Where was this found?” Ian asked. This. It seemed a crude way to refer to David’s remains, but Sara held back from saying anything. She opened her eyes, and Joel was watching her, his brow knitted with concern.
“About a half mile from the Batcher residence. We’re trying to do what we can with reconstructing the scene, but we believe the body was dumped and weighed down to prevent being found,” Detective Palentick said.
Sara looked up. “So there’s no chance this was an accident? He drank a lot. Maybe he got drunk and got lost. He could have tripped and maybe—” She stopped talking when Ian’s hand closed on her knee.
“It’s highly unlikely,” Joel said. “But of course, we’re exploring all possibilities.”
“Including me,” Sara said, looking to the detective. It was dangerous for Joel to even be there, but she wouldn’t be the one to give away their history.
“Spouses are always a suspect, especially when large life insurance payouts are involved. I hope you don’t take it personally.” Palentick gave her an apologetic grimace.
Sara didn’t say anything, even though she could have given a twenty-four-point presentation on why she wouldn’t have dumped David’s body in the neighborhood.
For one, she wasn’t strong enough. He had weighed a hundred and eighty pounds.
He’d once passed out in the car on the way home from dinner, and she had to leave him in the passenger seat, out in the garage, all night.
There was no conceivable way that a jury would believe she’d managed to hide his body in that manner. Not by herself—which would mean they’d have to find a possible accomplice.
She didn’t need them to look for accomplices. She needed to nip this in the bud as quickly as possible. If she had to solve this murder for them, she would.
The good thing was, she wasn’t the only one who had wanted David dead.