Murder with a Twist (4 page)

Then puberty came and my hormones kicked in. This had an odd effect on me, ramping up my synesthetic reactions so that they were stronger and more frequent. As a result, my father's intrigue turned to concern. A parade of doctors and tests followed, and the mental illness labels started getting slapped on me. I was saved by a wise and kind neurologist who recognized my disorder for what it was, albeit my own unique variety of the species. He said he'd never seen a case quite as severe as mine, and when my father told him about the little tricks I was able to perform, the doctor theorized that my senses were not only cross-wired but extremely sensitive.

In addition to the normal five senses, I also have a very keen sense of thermoception, making me able to feel subtle changes in temperature. If I walk through a space where someone has recently been standing, I can feel a change in the air temperature. The same thing happens if I walk past a refrigerator whose door has recently been opened, or by a door that someone has recently exited or entered. Most people have experienced something similar at some point in their lives, such as when they sit in a chair someone else just vacated and the body warmth of the first sitter is still palpable.

What I took away from my experiences as a teenager was the knowledge that my disorder was something to be ashamed of, something to hide, something to suppress. And that's what I've done for the past twenty years: suppress, ignore, and hide. My father was aware of it, of course, and while the two of us still occasionally played a game of “What's Different?” up until his death, for the most part, he respected my desire to keep my disorder secret.

That all changed when Duncan Albright came into my life. The discovery of Ginny Rifkin's body had triggered all kinds of confusing reactions . . . reactions that I was then forced to explain to Duncan. But, in a way, those reactions also helped us figure out who killed her. That, and the fact that Duncan didn't automatically assume I was weird or crazy, has made me more open about my disorder. And when Duncan proposed this collaboration, it gave me the chance to turn my synesthesia into something useful as opposed to something shameful that I needed to hide.

Not that I'm ready to go public with my ability. Duncan knows, his partner Jimmy knows, and several of my employees and patrons at the bar know. I swore all of them to secrecy, but it was like shutting the proverbial barn door after the horses have escaped. Word had already spread. Most of the folks in the crime games group know, but there are some who don't. They think I'm playing simply for the fun of it and I'd like to keep it that way for now. For one thing, those adolescent nightmares are never far from my mind and I'm scared that someone, somewhere, will again try to declare me insane. For another, I'm not sure yet if my unique ability will actually prove helpful. Duncan seems to think so and that's why he and I, with the help of Cora, spent the past month or so cataloging the meanings behind as many of my experiences as we could.

All of that was in preparation for my first visit to a real crime scene, which is how I came face to face with a real hanging man. And thanks to last night's game—or perhaps because of it, since it taught me not to jump to conclusions—it's also how I became certain that Dan Thornton was a victim of homicide rather than suicide.

T
he representative from the medical examiner's office arrived and, with the help of Duncan, Jimmy, and two police officers who were there, the body of Dan Thornton was taken down and laid out atop a white sheet on a stretcher that had been wheeled into the room. While this was going on, I spent my time surveying the rest of the apartment, sorting through all the sensations I was getting.

“The chair is wrong,” I said to no one in particular. The others in the room ignored me, but Duncan heard what I said and walked over to me.

“How so?” he asked.

“I don't think the chair was ever upright anywhere near Mr. Thornton's body. Someone carried it over there and laid it down on its side to make it look like Thornton stood on it and then kicked it over. This carpet is new. If Thornton had ever stood on the chair, there should be deep imprints in the carpet from its legs. I can sense other irregularities in the pile but I don't feel any from the chair legs anywhere beneath where the body was.”

“Interesting,” Duncan said, staring at the carpet with a curious expression.

“I don't think he hanged himself.”

“Because of the smell on the laptop and the note?”

“And the chair thing.”

“What else are you picking up?”

I kept hearing the sound of high-pitched flute music, louder in some areas than others. It was something I'd experienced before but once again I didn't know what was triggering it. Like the annoying tag sensation, I kept this one to myself for now, and instead shared the things I could interpret.

“Well, when I look at the carpet I also feel pressure spots along my arms. Most of them feel the same, but in some areas, the pressure is lighter or heavier. I'm not sure what it means, but I think it might be footprints I'm picking up on. For instance, over there by the end of the couch you can see a depression left by someone's foot. I think that's the victim's footprint, because the pressure I feel when I look at the majority of the rest of the room is the same. But over by the dining table, and here by the stairs, I feel lighter and heavier pressures when I look at the carpet. It's as if other people were walking in here—someone with a bigger, heavier footprint and someone with a lighter one.”

Duncan cast a smug look toward Jimmy before telling me, “The person who called nine-one-one was the victim's girlfriend, and she found him pretty much the way you see him now. She told us she didn't go near him, and that the only places she went in the apartment once she let herself inside were the bathroom and the kitchen. Apparently the sight of her boyfriend hanging there made her ill and she ran into the bathroom because she thought she might vomit. She didn't, and she then went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. Then she went out into the hallway and used her cell phone to call nine-one-one.”

“That probably explains the sound I picked up on in those areas,” I said, “though I can't tell if the smell that caused it was something on her body like a perfume, lotion, or shampoo, or if it was her laundry detergent.”

I looked away from the carpet and toward Duncan to assess his reaction. He cocked his head to one side and smiled at me.

“What?”

“I knew your little talent would come in handy.”

“I'm not sure how handy it is telling you stuff you already know,” I said.

“We knew about the girlfriend being in here, but not anyone else.”

“Those other footprints could well be yours, or Jimmy's, or the other cops who've been here.”

Duncan nodded and gave me a grudging look. “You may be right, but it's still useful information. You have to understand, it's rarely just one thing that helps us solve these cases. More often it's a combination of things. We have to take bits of evidence and lay them out so we can see a pattern, and most of the time it's the pattern that provides the solution, not the individual bits.”

“You didn't seem surprised when I mentioned the chair or the smoke smell on the note and laptop. You knew this wasn't a suicide when you brought me here, didn't you?”

Duncan's smile turned apologetic. “Busted! But without you we might not have known that the position of the chair was staged, or that the person who typed the fake suicide note is a smoker.”

“Is his girlfriend a smoker?”

“I don't know,” Duncan said. “We'll ask her, but she may lie. We can search her credit card records, and check at stores near here and ask if she buys cigarettes. But that all takes time and it isn't necessarily proof, because she could say she bought the cigarettes for someone else. We could also search her apartment to see if there are ashtrays filled with butts. However, that requires a warrant if she doesn't give us permission. Or I can simply introduce you to her and you can tell me if the same smell exists on her hands.”

“You want me to sniff her hands?”

“Based on what I've seen so far, I don't think you'll have to do that. I think just standing next to her will suffice. Wouldn't you agree?”

“Probably,” I said grudgingly. “If you didn't know about the chair or the note before I got here, how did you know this wasn't a suicide?”

“Walter Finch, who was the first police officer on the scene, figured it out. Jimmy clued me in during his call. Walter's a sharp cookie and he was able to tell it wasn't a suicide by the marks on the victim's neck. That was lucky for us, because it kept more of the scene preserved. Walter has seen several hanging victims and he knew this one was beyond any medical help, so we were also able to avoid having EMS tromp all over our scene. Thus far we've allowed only two officers to enter the apartment, so up until the arrival of the medical examiner, the only people who have been in here are Walter Finch, his partner, me, and Jimmy . . . and now you, of course. Jimmy got the initial call, and when he told me what we had, I decided to bring you along to see what you could figure out.”

I glanced over at the body, curious about what Duncan had just said.

Duncan called over to the man from the Medical Examiner's Office. “Hey, Martin, can you show Ms. Dalton here the marks on our victim's neck?”

Martin, who was standing alongside the stretcher on the opposite side of the body from us, grabbed a hold of Thornton's shoulder and hip, and rolled him up onto his side, exposing his back to us. The rope, which was still around Thornton's neck, was slack now.

“You can see where the rope came in contact with the victim's neck,” Martin said. “Everywhere it touched the skin is blanched white.”

Even though I could see what he was referring to easily enough, he traced the path of the rope on Thornton's skin with his gloved finger. The white stripe ran along the front and sides of the man's neck, under his jawline, and up behind his ears, where it then disappeared. Martin then took hold of the rope above the knot and pulled it up behind the back of Thornton's head, mimicking the position it had been in when he was still hanging.

“You see how the rope forms an upside-down
V
when the knot is located at the back of the head, as it was in this case?” Martin said. “It doesn't touch the back of the neck, so the blanched area stops just behind the ear. It's a typical finding in a hanging of this nature.”

I must have looked confused because Duncan leaned into me and whispered, “Wait for it.”

“What isn't a typical finding for a hanging like this is the bruising we see here,” Martin said, returning Thornton to his back and tracing a finger along a dark, somewhat linear mark at the base of the man's neck near his collarbone. The bruise appeared to crisscross just under Thornton's chin. “This bruising, along with the color of the man's face, tells me he was strangled and then hanged.”

“How can you tell the difference?” I asked.

“Frontal strangulation will typically cut off the flow of the jugular vein before it cuts off the flow from the carotid arteries, thereby blocking the return of blood flow from the head to the heart, but not the flow from the heart to the head,” Martin said, continuing my education. “Hence the congestion and the purple coloring that we see here. He also has what we call petechiae—tiny burst capillaries—on his face and in his eyes. These are also classic signs of strangulation that typically aren't seen in a hanging. In general, hanging causes a much quicker loss of consciousness because the flow from the carotid arteries is interrupted. A lot of people think the cause of death in hanging is suffocation, assuming the neck isn't broken, but it's actually the obstruction of the carotid arteries and a lack of oxygen to the brain that causes death most of the time. The trachea is a fairly rigid structure and it's more difficult than most people realize to compress it hard enough or long enough to cause death.”

Martin picked up the hand closest to him. “Also, his fingernails are too clean,” he said. “If someone was on top of him, or in front of him strangling him, I would expect him to have clawed at his attacker. Even if this was a suicide, I would expect to see something under the nails or, at the very least, some broken nails. It's common to see scratch marks at the neck and fragments of the rope or whatever else was used under the victim's nails. It's an instinctive reaction to the hanging process if there isn't a broken neck. This guy's neck doesn't appear to be broken and yet he has nothing under his nails and none of them are broken.”

Duncan said, “He didn't struggle?”

“It doesn't appear so,” Martin said.

“Can you give me an approximate time of death?” Duncan asked.

Martin probed the man's face, arms, and torso with his fingers. “There are some indications of rigor mortis in his upper body. Based on that and room temperature, I would say he died around six hours ago, give or take an hour.”

Duncan glanced at his watch and said, “So between two and four this morning.”

I approached the man's body, trying to inure myself to the sight and smell of it. As I drew closer, I heard a rhythmic grating sound, as if a stick was being scraped over a cheese grater. It was a sound I knew well, one I heard all the time, except this time it was off. In addition to the grating sound, I heard a high-pitched whine.

When I reached Thornton's body, I bent down close over his face and sniffed, making Martin back up a step and mutter, “What the hell?”

I turned around and looked at Duncan. “You're right; he didn't struggle. I suspect he was sedated with something and I think it was probably in his drink,” I said.

“Why do you think that?” Duncan asked.

“I know the smell of Johnnie Walker Black. I know the smell of all the liquors and the sounds that go with them. This Thornton guy drank Johnnie Walker Black, all right, but it had something else mixed in it. The sound of it over there by the table where the glass and the bottle are sitting is the way it should be, but the sound of it over here by his mouth is off. The smell is off.”

“Could it be off because he imbibed it, and he's dead?” Duncan asked.

It was a good question, and I wasn't sure of the answer.

“And if the glass on the table didn't seem off to you, how could it be the source of whatever was given to him?” Duncan added.

It was another good question and another answer I wasn't sure of. As I thought about it, I walked past Duncan and went back into the kitchen. On the counter beside the sink was a small dish rack with a bowl, a spoon, a coffee mug, and a drinking glass in it. I bent down close to the drinking glass and took a big sniff. Then I whirled back toward Duncan.

“This is the glass he drank the bad whisky out of,” I said, pointing to the culprit. “It may have been rinsed, but I can still smell it or, rather, I can still hear it. It makes a rhythmic grating sound. I know this glass had the Johnnie Walker in it, but it also had something else mixed in, something one wouldn't normally expect to find, something that makes me hear an odd undulating high-pitched whine that I've never heard before.” I felt pretty confident of this last claim. After working in a bar virtually my entire life, I know the smells and attached sounds associated with every possible mix of drink.

“That glass is the one his girlfriend said she used,” Jimmy said. “Maybe that's the reason it seems off to you.”

Despite his questioning of my claim, this comment from Jimmy was definite progress. Normally he would have dismissed my take outright with a sneer of skepticism.

“Not unless she rinsed her mouth out with the Johnnie Walker,” I countered. “There was whisky in this glass.”

“She said she used water,” Jimmy said.

At this point, Martin was staring at me like I was someone who had just escaped from the insane asylum.

Duncan jumped in to shift the focus onto something else. “The crime scene techs should be here anytime. Make sure they bag all those dishes in the rack,” he said to Karl Jensen, a uniformed officer who was guarding the doorway. “And ask them to limit their efforts to the kitchen area until I get back here.” Then he turned to Martin and said, “Let me know what you find when you finish his autopsy. Call me on my cell.”

Martin, who had been staring at me agape for the past minute or so, managed to shake off the trance he appeared to be in and refocused his efforts on securing Thornton's body to the stretcher.

“You, come with me,” Duncan said, and he cupped my elbow and steered me out of the apartment and into the hallway. “I've got a special project for you.”