Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(2)

Turning to another cop, Officer Pilon, Shanlian asked him to check the trash containers and roadways east of the murder scene. Then he asked Detective Dwayne Cherry to work the death scene as a liaison between the investigating detectives and the Michigan State Police Crime Laboratory out of Bridgeport, Michigan. The latter had been summoned to collect physical evidence at the death scene. It was specifically labeled “death scene,” as opposed to “crime scene,” because while the body had been discovered there, they didn’t know yet where she had been murdered.

He sent a fourth officer back to headquarters to retrieve footwear and a tire impression collection kit. Maybe they’d get lucky and find that the killer or killers had left footprints around the body.

Cops hated body dump jobs. It was like someone just dropped the damn corpse from a plane and then it was the cop’s turn to figure out who it was and how it got there. It was a good thing Shanlian had a sense of humor. Otherwise, the body dumps he’d investigated over his sixteen years as a cop would have gotten to him. There were so many, he couldn’t count them up even if he had four sets of hands and feet.

Trying to deduce how the killer or killers had dumped the body, Shanlian immediately noted its location in a clearing and the two paths that cut through. Shanlian saw a narrow, maybe two-inch path of what appeared to be burned leaves leading from the parking lot, through the woods, stopping at the asphalt footpath. He went over to view the body and immediately smelled the gasoline on her. He looked back at the burned leaves. Shanlian figured they were trying to burn the body by setting a fuse made out of leaves.

If the flames had actually hit the body, they would have consumed it, throwing the identification process into a more difficult mode than it already was in. The problem for the killer or killers was that the flame went out when the fire hit the asphalt path. This left the body intact, along with hopes of a quick identification.

The cop came back to the death scene with the vehicle impression kit. Assisted by his partner, Chuck Melki, Shanlian made plaster impressions of an unknown vehicle tire impression in the parking lot. The two detectives photographed all the witnesses’ and officers’ shoe prints that had entered the crime scene. Shanlian also shot all the vehicle tires that had entered the adjacent parking lot. These photographs would later serve to eliminate police and civilian personnel as offering no significance to the commission of the crime.

Up to that point, the victim had remained where she was, no more than an insignificant part of the landscape. Now she became an active participant in her own murder investigation.

Taking care to pull on rubber gloves, so as not to “infect” the evidence, Shanlian carefully pulled the blanket down to examine her.

Her face was bloody and bruised. Over her left eye in particular, extending back to her ear and down to her cheek, was one reddish and bluish bruise, like a giant discolored birthmark. There were also multiple lacerations. The eye had received so much trauma, it appeared to have swelled shut as a result.

Around her neck was a necklace with a small cocaine spoon attached. Now that was interesting. Maybe this was a drug-related murder. Continuing his examination, Shanlian saw that the victim was wrapped in a bedspread, which was black in color with a green and pink flower design imprinted on it.

The woman wore black Chic brand pants pulled down and around her left ankle. Her socks were black in color. She wore only one left shoe, black Guess brand. The victim’s red underpants had been pulled down, wrapped around her left thigh near the vagina. They had certainly been pulled down for a reason; it was too early in the investigation to tell why.

Her stomach had two small brownish and blackish wounds, about three inches in diameter. Farther down, there was a small bruise on her right thigh, then another circular wound up near the vagina. Finally, on the inner side of the right ankle, Shanlian discovered a fifth wound, again about three inches in diameter, brownish and blackish in color.

The victim was wearing a maroon-colored, short-sleeved polo shirt with SOUTH BOULEVARD STATION emblazoned over the left breast. Neither shirt nor bra appeared to have been disturbed. If she’d been raped, the killer had not touched her breasts.

On her arms, right on top of the right biceps, was what appeared to be a burn mark. Had the woman been tortured before she died? Underneath the arm, in the arm joint, was a second burn mark, though this appeared more like a brownish or blackish wound. There was frayed skin and discoloration around her right wrist consistent with a ligature wound. That is, someone had bound her wrist before she died.

Shanlian picked up her right hand and noticed a gold-colored ring with a large sapphire on her ring finger. Underneath her fingernail was blood and something else. Forensics would take those scrapings; hopefully, they’d lead to something.

Shanlian didn’t see any injuries on her left arm, though her left fingernails had blood underneath them. Her left thumbnail and part of the tip of the thumb had a large cut on it. This was consistent with defensive wounds. But the cut appeared to have teeth marks on it. Had someone bitten her to get her to stop defending herself?

As with the right wrist, the left had a ligature wound, too. Unless forensics could offer another explanation, that meant she had been bound before she died.

“Let’s turn her,” Shanlian said.

He and Melki reached down and turned her onto her stomach.

There was no clue under her, no weapon, no anything except blanket and earth. They pulled up her shirt to examine her back.