Twenty Years Later(63)

“Okay,” Walt said. “Just a warning. The crime scene photos are disturbing.”

Avery nodded. She’d seen many crime scenes in the last few years. “I’m good.”

Walt reached into the box and pulled out a folder of photos. Avery imagined her camera guys and production team laying out the contents of this box and taking stills of the documents, highlighting in yellow the areas of transcript interviews and police reports that pertained to the story she wanted to tell. She imagined startling images of crime scene photos flashing onto television screens across America as Victoria Ford’s story unfolded.

“Here’s the body, the balcony, and the master bedroom of the Youngs’ Catskills home,” Walt said. “This is what I found when I arrived on the scene.”

Avery pulled the photo of Cameron Young hanging from the balcony so that it was in front of her. It was, indeed, disturbing. The lifeless body was suspended in broad daylight as morning fog drifted from the grass beneath him. His head torqued by the rope into a grotesque angle. As she paged through the other photos, they took her from the back lawn of the Catskills mansion, through the house, up the stairs, and into the master bedroom. She saw the rope stretched tight and running taut through the room, from the open balcony doors to the walk-in closet. She paged through the photos until she found the ones taken inside the closet, where the end of the rope was tethered to the leg of a sturdy-looking safe.

“Take me through your findings in the bedroom,” she said.

Walt leaned closer, so that he could point at each of the pictures. She noticed the scent of aftershave.

“The rope used to hang Cameron Young was determined to be from an original bundle that was seventy-five feet long when purchased. It had been cut a number of times with a serrated blade.” Walt pointed to the photo where an ominous-looking kitchen knife lay on the carpeting next to the safe. A yellow evidence placard stood next to it. “The knife came from a butcher’s block in the kitchen and had Victoria Ford’s fingerprints on it. Her blood was discovered on the carpet.”

Avery felt him lean a bit closer to shuffle through the pictures and find the image of the bloodied carpet next to the safe.

“The blood here was matched to Victoria Ford through DNA. The theory was that in her rush to set up the scene as a suicide, she cut herself while using the knife to sever the rope.”

“So this blood,” Avery said. “It was the main evidence that put Victoria at the scene?”

“The blood, and urine found in the toilet. Both matched Victoria’s DNA.”

Avery remembered Victoria Ford’s voice from the answering machine recording.

They said they found my blood and urine at the scene. But that can’t be true. None of it can be true. Please believe me.

“The knife, as well as a wineglass on the nightstand, held her fingerprints,” Walt said, turning his head to look at Avery as they were huddled over the desk. “All of it put her at the scene.”

Avery looked back to the photos. “So, at this point in the crime, when Victoria cuts herself, it was suspected that Cameron Young was already dead?”

“Yes. The theory was that Cameron Young was strangled during some sort of S and M practice. He had whip marks all over his body, so we know whatever was going on that night was quite violent. After he was dead, Victoria Ford attempted to set up the scene to look like a suicide.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?”

“The wounds on Cameron Young’s neck, according to the medical examiner, suggested that he had been strangled with the length of rope initially. Autopsy findings showed that he had suffered what’s called short-drop asphyxiation—congestion in his lungs, petechiae in the eyelids and cheeks, and a host of other findings. We can go over the autopsy results and I can walk you through it. But it was clear that the cause of death was ligature strangulation, possibly the result of erotic asphyxiation. Then, after he was dead, his body was thrown over the balcony. That resulted in what’s called long-drop trauma to his neck—deep ligature gouges and a severed spinal cord. But those wounds were determined to have occurred after he was already dead.”

Avery ran her hands over the photos to organize her thoughts.

“So Victoria kills Cameron Young because he won’t leave his wife.”

“And because he got his wife pregnant after he made Victoria have an abortion.”

Avery slowly nodded. “And how did you learn about the abortion?”

“We subpoenaed her medical records, and then she admitted during an interview that she had had an abortion.”

“And during the abortion there was a complication?”

“Correct,” Walt said. “The procedure left her unable to have children in the future.”

“And this was the DA’s argument for why she killed him?”

“It was.”

“Okay,” Avery said. “So Victoria kills him. Then she comes up with the idea of making it look like a suicide. She ties a second, longer rope around his neck and runs to the closet to secure the rope to the safe, the heaviest thing in the room.”

“Correct.”

“As she is rushing to set the stage of suicide and slice the rope so she can tie it to the safe, she cuts herself with the knife.”

“Correct.”

Avery studied the photo of the bloodied carpeting. “Then she ties the rope and dumps the body over the balcony?”