Broken Saint, The (3 page)

Even out by the secretaries, I could still hear
him crying. They looked confused and concerned, their eyes locked on me and
Ryan as we walked out of the office suite.

Snow had been falling for a half-hour, enough for
the parking lot to show a thin white layer broken up by crisscrossing black
tread marks. Another half-hour and the tread marks would be white. I got in the
cruiser and turned the engine over as Ryan popped the trunk, grabbed a plastic scraper
with a brush on the other end, and cleaned off the windshield and back window.

“That wasn’t all that much fun, was it?” I said.

“Not that much, no.”

“Ever see someone get that busted up when it isn’t
family?”

Ryan raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “Looked
genuine to me.”

The temperature was getting up near freezing,
fogging up the windshield. I turned on the wipers and the defroster so I could
see. Ten minutes later, we were in the chief’s office.

I said, “The Jane Doe from this morning?”

“Yeah?” The chief looked up from his screen.
Robert Murtaugh was about fifty, dark hair going salty. Strong jaw, strong
shoulders, strong guy all around. He liked us to keep him in the loop. When he
took over less than a year ago, he said to us, if the door is open, walk right
in. And that’s the way he’s been. He doesn’t jerk us around or mess up our
investigations. He’s a real cop, the best I’ve worked for. “She got a name?”

Ryan looked down at his notebook. “Maricel
Salizar,” he said. “A Philippines national, an exchange student living with the
acting provost at the university, a man named Albert Gerson.”

“He’s been informed?”

“He just ID’ed her from the photo,” I said.

“How’d he take it?”

I looked at Ryan, who said, “Really bad. Fell
apart.”

The chief nodded his head. “How much do we know
about Gerson?”

“He’s the head of the foreign-language department,”
I said. “Acting provost till the summer, when they hire his replacement. That’s
all we’ve got so far.”

“I think he’s LDS,” Ryan said.

The chief and I turned to him. “How’d you get
that?” I said.

“I was looking at his bookshelves while we were
interviewing him.”

“He’s got LDS bookshelves?” I said.

“The shelves themselves seemed nondenominational.”
Ryan smiled a little. “A bunch of the books were LDS.”

The chief said, “That say anything?”

“No.” Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “Just thought
I’d tell you.”

“I think we need to learn more about Dr. Gerson,”
the chief said.

“You don’t know him?” I said.

“No, I know his predecessor. Good guy. I’m going
to call the president now, tell him this is Priority One for us.” The chief sat
here, his brow furrowed. After a moment, he said, “This kind of case sends out
ripples all over the place. The university has to publish its own crime data.
If she was killed on campus, it goes in that report. Plus, there’s the
complication of a foreign national.” He looked up at me. “Do you have any
questions?”

“No, Chief,” I said.

“Okay, get to it. Keep me informed at every stage.
This is going to be high profile.”

“Absolutely.”

We left the chief’s office and made our way back
to our desks. I said to Ryan, “You know Gerson from your church?”

“I’ve seen him. He’s the bishop of another ward in
my stake.”

“Him blubbering like that, that surprise you?”

He turned to me, a grin starting. “Karen, are you asking
whether Mormons are a blubbering folk?”

“Don’t break my balls,” I said. “You know what I’m
asking you.”

Ryan enjoys teasing me about my winning
combination of ignorance and inarticulateness. “It doesn’t surprise me that an
LDS academic like that would be big into student-exchange programs. He might
have been a missionary, probably overseas. But his reaction? I don’t know. Obviously,
he felt responsible for her well-being. That could be all we were seeing.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s certainly one possibility.”
But it wasn’t right at the top of my list.

Chapter 3

“Here’s what I have so far.” Harold Breen lumbered over to
the long table that ran the length of the wall in his lab. He picked up a
notebook and flipped a few pages. “She was stabbed three times, single-sided
blade less than an inch across, in the abdomen. The wounds would fit in a
three-inch circle, so I’m guessing the killer and the victim were in close
proximity and he stabbed her in quick succession.”

“Explain,” I said.

“If he stabs her,” Harold said, “then she falls
back and he comes at her again, and then a third time, the three wounds would
be farther apart. Being bunched up like that, it’s consistent with the two of
them being very close to each other. If he pulls the knife out, and the handle
is very close to his body, and he sticks it in again, it’s going to go in very
close to the first wound.”

“So the two of them were struggling before he
stabbed her,” I said.

“That’s my guess,” Harold said. “I might be able
to tell from the internal damage that he didn’t get the blade all the way in,
but he pulled it out and stuck it in again.”

“If one of the wounds is much deeper than the
others?”

“That’s right,” he said. “But if they’re all the
same approximate depth, then it might just be a short blade.”

I knew working out these details was probably
going to waste everyone’s time. Harold didn’t have enough information yet—and
there was a good chance he never would—to explain exactly what happened to
Maricel. If she struggled with the guy or didn’t have a chance to, that didn’t
tell me anything. Didn’t tell me whether it was a man or a woman, or if she
knew her killer. Didn’t tell me anything useful. But I owed it to her to get
the whole thing in my head, just in case it turned out to be important.

I hated Harold’s lab. It always smelled bad. If
there had been a recent delivery, the smell was likely to be a funky cocktail
of BO, an eye-watering homeless-guy mold, or the old reliable: the ground-in
piss/shit combo. If there hadn’t been a recent delivery, it was a stomach-clawing
mixture of alcohol and formaldehyde. Today it was just the chemicals. But add
in a temperature in the low sixties, the echoey tiled walls and floors with
drains, the annoying hum and clatter of the HVAC system, the shiny
stainless-steel tables with squishy red and purple body parts blossoming in
trays, the stiffs with their ribs sticking straight up like a raw rack of lamb—the
place just seemed like central receiving for victims of Bad Luck and Trouble.

One thing for sure: even if Harold and Robin gave
me and Ryan all the information we needed to pick up the killer this afternoon,
there wasn’t any undoing what had happened to Maricel Salizar. We’d bag her up,
and the catatonic family would accept her remains and spend the rest of their
lives wishing she’d died old.

But she was very young. I walked over to the table
where she was lying nude. She was a beautiful young woman, still almost a girl.
Her copper skin was now mottled with a sickly gray. Her hair was thick and
straight, black, parted down the middle. Her nose was long and thin. The ears
small, each with a single piercing hole. Shoulders narrow and perfectly
symmetrical. Arms slender, tapering down to tiny wrists and thin fingers with
bright red nail polish, cracked and chipped. I glanced down at her toes, which
she had also painted.

Her breasts were pointing straight up, too small
and light to be pulled down to the sides. She didn’t have an ounce of fat on
her, not above her elbows or in her midsection, which showed the arc of her ribs.

Her belly button was pierced, but there was no metal
in it. Beneath it, the public hair, shaved to a straight line, an inch across,
but with a few days’ growth on either side, led down to the rise of her pubic
bone and her vagina. Her legs were thin, but the thigh and calf muscles were well-defined.

The three stab wounds, now a washed-out pink with
raised edges, were each rounded on one end and pointed on the other. The blade
was facing down as he inserted it. The wounds were small, but apparently big
enough.

“And she was dunked in the river, though we can’t
say yet for how long.” Harold’s words startled me. “So we don’t know whether
she died from the stab wounds or drowning. When I open her up I should be able
to call that by looking at where the knife went and by checking her lungs. But
there were no GSW or ligatures. I don’t see any defensive wounds, no tissue
under her fingernails, but it could have been washed away in the river.” Harold
turned to Robin.

She looked at her clipboard before she started to
speak. “She had some river crud on her skin under her clothes. The sand all
over her back, ass, and the backs of her legs says he stripped her, dragged her
into the water, dragged her back onto land, laid her down, then dressed her. We
did a rape kit on her. She wasn’t raped, didn’t have any fresh semen in her.”

“Any thoughts on how many people we’re talking
about?” I said.

“I think it’s only one,” Robin said, “because
we’ve got the tracks where her ankles dragged in the dirt, like it was one guy
dragging her down and back up. Plus, both of her ankles are kinda beat up, with
sand in the abrasions. If it was two guys, they’d have lifted her up and moved
her faster.”

“Can you tell if it was a male or female did it?”

“Definitely a guy,” Robin said.

“Yeah?”

“Her thong was on backwards.”

Ryan was nodding his head. I looked at him. “What’re
you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything,” he said. “Just that
Robin’s right: that’s a clue.”

“You know a lot about women’s underwear?”

He wore a mocking expression of regret. “Almost
nothing. Except for my mom’s and my sisters’ underwear in the washer and
hanging on the line, I’ve only seen one woman’s underwear, and there’s no way
you can put that on backwards. I’m just agreeing with Robin: only a guy would
have trouble with a thong.”

“Okay, Robin, you said she had a little cash?”

She looked down at her clipboard. “Twenty-three
bucks, folded up in her left front jeans pocket.”

“No ID?”

She shook her head. “No ID. I checked with the
crew out at the scene, after they did the search.”

“No phone?”

“No phone.”

“Anything else?”

“Just this.” She walked over to the table against
the wall and lifted a plastic bag out of the evidence box with Maricel’s
effects. It was a navy blue bandanna with clubs, like you see on playing cards,
in white, around the perimeter.

Ryan was looking at it quizzically. “Let me take a
picture of that.” He took out his phone and shot it.

“You recognize it?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he said, his brows furrowed. “I
think maybe it’s the colors of the Latin Vice Lords.”

Robin said, “The Hispanic gang?”

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

“Let’s ask Hernandez in Anti-Gang,” I said. “He’s
worked with the Latins for years.”

Ryan wrote in his notebook. “You got it.”

I turned back to Robin. “You had a chance yet to
see if there’s any prints on any of this stuff?”

She shook her head. “Not yet, but I wouldn’t be
optimistic. There’s no surfaces here that would take a print. And bobbing
around in the river probably didn’t help. But I’ll see what I can do.”

“Okay, thanks.” I turned to face the ME. “Anything
else, Harold?”

“No, I’ll start the autopsy soon as I can.”

“Today?”

“Today,” he said.

Ryan and I left the lab. I took a deep breath to
see if I’d escaped the horrible smell of the chemicals, but it was still in my
nose. I held my sleeve up to my nose. It was in my blouse, too.

“What kind of guy stabs a girl, hauls her out to
the river, strips her down, then drowns her for good measure?”

“I’m guessing that’s not a rhetorical question,”
he said.

“What?”

“I’m just saying, I think you’d like us to try to
figure that out.”

I stopped and looked at him. He kept walking a
couple more steps, then paused and turned toward me, an innocent-little-boy
expression on his face. “Sorry?” he said.

“That’s right, Poindexter,” I said. “I think we
should try to figure that out.”

“Shouldn’t we get back to our desks, then, and
begin the investigation?”

I shook my head. “Glad I didn’t have any
brothers.”

He smiled. “I’m glad I had a bunch of sisters.”

Chapter 4

“Ryan, did you put in for authorization to grab her phone
records?” In a homicide, our access to the victim’s phone records is automatic.

“I’ll take care of it.” He took a swallow from a
bottle of water.

“Who should I call at the university?”

“There’s probably a dean of students.” He looked
up at me, and I nodded. He turned back to the screen, clicked the mouse a few
times, then picked up a pen, wrote a name and phone number on a slip of paper,
and passed it across his desk to me.

“Mary Dawson,” I said. “I’m guessing that’s Dean
Dawson?” He nodded.

I dialed her number and hit Speaker. “Can I speak
to Dean Dawson, please? This is Detective Karen Seagate, Rawlings Police Department.”

“One moment, please,” the secretary said.

I whispered to Ryan, “Do you know if the chief’s
already called the president?”

He shook his head. “No idea.”

“This is Mary,” she said on the phone. I guess a
dean of students is supposed to be approachable, but using the first name
surprised me.

“Dean Dawson, this is Detective Karen Seagate,
Rawlings Police Department. I’ve got some bad news about a student I need to
tell you.”

She sighed, like we’d arrested another kid for
pissing on a statue. “Go ahead.”

“We recovered the body of one of your students
this morning.”

“Oh, my God.” Then there was silence.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. Her name was Maricel Salizar.
She was an exchange student, living with the provost’s family.”

“Al Gerson?” She paused. “Does he know?” Her voice
was concerned, like she knew him.

“Yes,” I said. “He does know.”

“God,” she said.

I looked over at Ryan, who was studying his
screen. He could listen and paw around the university site at the same time. He
was young enough to multitask. I’m a monotasker, at best.

“We’d like to come on over and talk with you about
this, get some information. Can we stop by now?”

“Yes, of course.” Mary Dawson’s tone was official
now. Cops were coming over. She’d be prepared. “Let me just rearrange some
things. I’ll see you in ten minutes? Admin Building, room 215?”

The skies were a dull gray, not a patch of blue
visible, as Ryan and I got in the cruiser. The snow had stopped, leaving less
than an inch on the ground. If that was it for today, we’d be lucky.
Nasty-looking sky like this, we could get two or three more little episodes
today. Or it could start and just keep going till we had a foot and a half and
people put on their cross-country skis and began sliding across the streets downtown.

We parked near the spot where we’d left the
cruiser on our first trip to the Administration Building earlier this morning.
Now the snow in the lot was covered with white crunchy tire tracks.

We took the stairs, wet with dirty gray footprints,
to the second floor, found room 215, and walked in.

The dean of students’ suite was lower rent than
the president’s, but with an outer office big enough for a secretary, a bunch
of mismatched file cabinets, and a Formica-covered conference table, it was
still a cut above the typical faculty digs.

Mary Dawson stood in the doorway of her private
office in the suite. “Detectives,” she said, with a crimped, pained expression.
She was about fifty, with bright eyes, skin a little dry and blotchy, no makeup
or jewelry, big multi-colored plastic-framed glasses. She wore an outfit she’d
probably dismiss as “these old things”: a unisex tan gabardine blouse, brown
corduroy slacks, feminine but well-worn, and lace-up rubber and leather boots
that came up over her ankles. Except for her unconvincing auburn hair a little
too long for her age, she looked like she was easing comfortably into the post-hot
phase of her life.

“This way, please.” She led us into her office.

There was another woman standing there. “This is
Christine Hardtke,” Mary Dawson said, “our Director of International Programs.
Christine oversees our study-abroad programs, as well as the International
Students Association.”

Christine Hardtke said “Pleased,” as she nodded at
me and Ryan. For some reason, she didn’t extend her hand, which I’m fine with,
especially now, at the height of snot season.

“Good to meet you both,” I said. “Detective Karen Seagate.
My partner, Detective Ryan Miner.”

Mary Dawson waved to the two chairs. Ryan and I
sat down. Christine took a chair that was facing Dawson’s desk, turning it so
we all formed a rough circle, and settled into it.

“I’m just going to slip behind my desk,” Mary
Dawson said, “so I have access to Maricel’s records if Christine doesn’t have
them.”

Christine waved a folder. “I think I have it all
here.”

Ryan said to Christine, “As Detective Seagate said
to Dean Dawson earlier, we’re very sorry this happened.”

I said, “Yes, of course. We’ve met with our chief
of police, and he’s told us this is our highest priority. We’re going to put
whatever resources are necessary into this, and we’re going to solve this case.”

Dean Dawson nodded, apparently taking some comfort
from my words. “Was this an accident?”

No.” I shook my head. “No, this was a homicide.”

Mary Dawson pulled back at the word.

Christine Hardtke was expressionless. “What can
you tell us about the nature of this crime?”

I picked up a very slight German accent, the kind
that suggested English was her third or fourth language, and that, yes, she probably
spoke it better than me. Her glasses had rectangular tortoise-shell frames that
set off her light brown hair, which was cut short. She was medium height,
athletic and comfortable in her body. Her close-cut pantsuit, dark crimson
wool, buttoned just below her significant breasts. An abstract pendant of gold
and silver hung on a thin chain around her neck. The lace border on her bra was
clearly visible through the pale cream boat-neck blouse.

“At this point,” I said, looking at her
inexpressive face, “we don’t know very much. Her body was recovered near the
river, off the Greenpath, a few hundred yards east of campus. We haven’t
performed the autopsy yet. But we know she was attacked by one or more persons.”

“Do you have any suspects?” Mary Dawson leaned in
toward me, her elbows on her desk, shaking her head as if this whole thing was
unbelievable. I guessed she spent most of her time in a gentler world.

“Unfortunately, no,” Ryan said, “it’s too early
for that. Her body was recovered only a few hours ago. What we’d like to do at
this point is collect any information we can. Try to understand who she was, what
was going on in her life.”

“Of course.” Dean Dawson nodded. “Christine, can
you sketch in her background?”

“Certainly.” Christine Hardtke looked down at some
papers in a folder on her lap. “Let me begin with the basics. Maricel Salizar,
age 21. Born in Manila. Father unknown, mother deceased.”

Ryan said, “Do you have a date on the mother’s
death?”

“Sorry, no.” She looked up at Ryan and then me. “She
graduated from the Manila Regional High School almost two years ago.”

I held up a finger. Christine saw it and paused. “Let
me go back a second,” I said. “No father, mother dead? Do you know who took
care of her?”

Christine Hardtke turned a page over. “St. Mary’s
Children’s Home in Manila.” She saw Ryan writing this all down. “No need,
Detective. I’ve made you a copy of this file.”

“Okay,” I said, “how did she get here to CMSU? Are
there other students from the Philippines here?”

“I have been here only three years,” Christine
said, “but I am not aware of any.” She paused. “Just a moment,” she said. “I
have a list of the forty-nine countries that our students come from.” She
shuffled her papers. “Here it is,” she said. “No. Nobody else from the
Philippines.” She looked up at me, pleased. It seemed important to her that she
could answer all my questions efficiently.

“That’s interesting,” I said. “Do you do any
special recruiting—you know, any people on the ground in the Philippines?”

“No,” Christine said. “We do not recruit outside
the country at all, except in five provinces in Canada. There are no resources
for that. However, our Web site contains ample information, and we are listed
with the various agencies around the world that showcase U.S. universities. She
would have no trouble finding us if she were looking.”

“What can you tell us about her life here at CMSU?”
I said.

“The International Students Association holds a
series of orientation sessions for our new students,” Christine said, this time
without looking at her papers, “but the records indicate that she did not
attend any of them.”

Ryan said, “Is that unusual?”

“Ninety-six percent of the international students
attend at least one of our sessions in the first semester. Most of these students
are excited to be here, but it can be such a stressful experience for them—the
culture, the language, the university system, even the weather—that most of
them are eager to participate in any kind of activities we offer. And they form
peer groups with the other international students.”

I said, “I guess they hang out with other kids
from their own culture?”

“Our experience has been that if they come here as
a group from a very different culture with a significantly different language
system, such as the Asian students, they can have a hard time connecting with our
native students, or even with the other international students. These students
have high intra-group cohesion.”

I glanced at Ryan, who nodded to signal that
Christine Hardtke had just said yes.

“How about friends?”

Christine said, “Part of the program for
international students is Big Brothers and Big Sisters. We pair each of the
students with a same-sex volunteer from the native-born cohort.” She flipped
through the pages in her file. “Maricel’s Big Sister was Amber Cunningham.”

I said, “Do you know if they were friends?”

“We send emails to our students periodically to
ask them about the process of acclimation, but we have no record of Maricel’s
having responded.”

I sighed. “Have either of you received any reports
of conflict between Maricel and other students, either international or regular?”

I looked at Mary Dawson, who was focused on her
screen. She clicked her mouse a couple of times, then shook her head.

Christine Hardtke said, “No, nothing of that sort.”

Ryan said, “Do you know what her English skills
were?”

Christine shifted in her chair, her pendant moving
across her chest. “Yes, all international students, even from Canada, are
required to take the TOEFL test.” She looked down at her folder. “She scored
112 on the Internet version of the test, which is native English fluency. English
is one of the several official languages of the Philippines. Anyone from the
Philippines who is attending post-secondary schooling—there or anywhere else in
the world—would have no problems with English.”

I said, “How was she doing in her courses?”

Christine shook her head. “The university has this
program for all students called Early Warning. In week six of the semester, if
the student is in danger of failing the course, she or he is notified and provided
suggestions on how to contact the instructor, as well as some other resources
on campus to help them improve their academic performance. This program has
been very successful with our international students.”

I smiled at Christine. “Yes, I’m sure it’s a great
program. Do you know if she was notified?”

Christine looked down at her papers. “Yes,” she
said, “in two of her four courses last semester.”

“And did she pull up her grades?”

“She earned a 1.75 last semester. She was placed
on probation by the university.”

“And this semester?”

“It is too early for the Early Warning program
this semester. There is no official record yet.”

“Do you know if she was a weak student in high
school?”

Mary Dawson spoke. “No, she had a 4.1 out of 5.
That’s a high B, low A.”

I paused, then turned to Christine. “How unusual
is it for international students to flunk out here?” I said.

“Their failure rate is lower than that of the
typical student,” Christine said, her chin up. “Most of them work extremely hard,
and they have parents at home who are keeping close track of them. They usually
do quite well.”

“Can you give me a list of the courses and her
professors this semester?”

Christine pointed to the folder and passed it to
Ryan.

“Okay,” I said, standing. “Thank you both very
much. Again, we’re very sorry about this. Let me give each of you my card.” I
passed the cards. “We’ll get back to you if we need any more information, and
please contact us if you think of anything we should know.”

I waved thanks to the secretary as Ryan and I headed
out of the suite and into the hall. We walked down the stairs, passing some
students coming up, stomping their feet to get the snow off and shaking it off
their shoulders.

“I could do without a foot of snow,” I said.

Ryan nodded. Couple of weeks ago we got hit with
over a foot. We’d just started to see the ground again the end of last week.

I got in the cruiser and started it up. Ryan grabbed
the brush and cleared the windshield and rear window, then got inside.

“So what have we got?” I said.

“I looked up the graduation statistics for the
whole university,” Ryan said. He had a sheet of paper in his hand.

“Yeah?”

“Four years, eleven percent. Six years, thirty-two
percent. Eight years, fifty-one percent.”

“That’s quite shitty, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Ryan said, “but typically shitty, not
extraordinarily shitty—I mean, for a low-tuition state university.”

“Shitty is shitty,” I said.