Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(54)
But Hemming’s shade was going away: the most resonant aspect of a woman’s sudden death was often her perfume. Perfume was so personal, and so enduring, that it often lingered like a ghost at a murder scene. Then, after a while, it began to fade, like memories of the murdered person.
Virgil was walking back downstairs when he heard Beatrice Sawyer’s truck pull into the driveway. He walked out the back door to meet the crime scene crew.
—
Sawyer was wrapped in a heavy blue North Face parka. A cheerful, middle-aged woman, she’d worked with Virgil on several cases, and didn’t miss much. Her regular partner, Don Baldwin, looked like the farmer in Grant Wood’s American Gothic painting, tall, thin, with watery blue eyes. His major non–Grant Wood aspect was his signature pair of black plastic fashion glasses, bought for the vibe they gave him in the punk revival band he led on his nights off.
Virgil had seen Bill Jensen around the BCA technical area but didn’t know him well. A short, thin man with a goatee, he carried a leather portfolio with him, and he said that unless Hemming had done something unusual with her computer, he should be able to get by her password.
“Main thing we want to look at is emails,” Virgil told him.
“I’ll call you when I get them,” Jensen said.
—
How much have you messed up my crime scene?” Sawyer asked.
“Not so much, but the sheriff’s office has a half-trained crime scene substitute who went through the place,” Virgil said. “Found some blood in the carpet, but that’s about it. I found some B and D paraphernalia in a dressing table up in the main bedroom, which took me to the guy who used it on her. He’s my number one guy, at this point.”
“All right, we’ll handle it despite the mess you guys probably made. Whatever happened to Alewort?”
Alewort was the sheriff’s office regular crime scene man, and Sawyer had met him during the investigation of the school board murders. “He’s up at St. Mary’s, drying out,” Virgil said.
“He did like a drink—most any time of day,” Sawyer said. “Ask me how I knew that.”
“I know how. You’re a highly trained crime scene technician.”
“That’s correct,” Sawyer said.
“Call me the instant—the instant!—that you find anything,” Virgil said. “Progress here has been sorta slow.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sawyer said. “Take off, hoser.”
—
Virgil was sitting in his truck when the divers called and he directed them to the marina, where they could drive down the boat ramp to the river. They said they’d meet him there, and Virgil called Johnson and asked him if he could come along to the dive site. He could. “I wouldn’t miss this for all the canaries in the islands,” Johnson said.
They met at the cabin, got the heavy-weather gear on, cranked up the sleds, ran out to the main river and turned south to the marina. When they got there, they found a Ford F-350 Super Duty sitting on the ramp, a large camper top on the back, fat snow tires at the corners, and three large men hanging around it. Virgil and Johnson pulled up and introduced themselves, and Clay Danson said, “Lead the way. Got about four hours. We don’t dive when it gets full dark.”
Virgil and Johnson got back on the sleds and led the way out onto the river. Johnson had worried that a snowstorm would cover the hole, but with Virgil’s triangulation from the first trip out, they found it in ten minutes, in a patch of wind-scrubbed ice.
Danson, a bulky man with a gold mustache, brought a depth finder from the truck, scraped off a piece of ice and put the transducer on it, and turned it on. A moment later, he said, “Nine meters. Thirty feet, more or less.” He turned to the other two men and said, “All right. Let’s get it going.”
Danson and a man named Blue got in the camper and shut the back door, while the third man, Ralph, brought out an ice auger, a chain saw, and a pair of ice tongs. Virgil and Johnson stood around, being useless, as Ralph drilled a hole through the ice and used the chain saw to cut out a square five feet on a side, with cuts spaced roughly a foot apart. He used the ice tongs to pull the blocks of ice out. It was heavy work, and Johnson volunteered to help, but Ralph said, “Naw.”
He stacked the blocks of ice to one side, and Johnson said, “You could build a pretty good igloo with those.”
Ralph said, “Go ahead.”
That ended the conversation until Danson and Blue climbed out of the back of the camper wearing dry suits, which covered them from head to toe in heavy black neoprene, with the exception of a small oval around the face.
Ralph got a thick yellow nylon rope out of the truck, lashed one end of it to the truck’s bumper, as Danson and Blue pulled on single-tank scuba outfits and rounded up lights and swim fins. Before Virgil felt quite ready for it, they were dangling their feet through the ice into the freezing river water and sealing up their face masks.
Danson grunted, “Ready?” and Blue said, “Yup,” and Danson dropped the end of the rope, which was tied to a rusty, fifteen-pound dumbbell, into the river and followed it down. Blue was ten seconds behind him and immediately out of sight. Ralph got a heavy-duty, sealed plastic bubble out of the truck, with its own lead weight. It turned out to be a battery-powered LED light, and he clipped it to the rope and dropped it in the water and it slid down the rope and out of sight.