Sanctuary in the Stream, page 2
“Have you checked for missing person reports?”
“Not yet. That sounds like a detective job.”
“So it is,” Margie agreed. She pulled out her phone and tried a few numbers before she managed to get someone at a computer who could do a search for her. There was no guarantee that the man would have been reported missing yet. He was recently deceased, or his body wouldn’t look so good. It could be that no one had missed him yet. She described him the best she could, based on the quick look she’d gotten of him by the light of O’Leary’s flashlight. She wasn’t walking back over there alone to get a better description.
“There is a recent missing who matches your description,” the Officer of the Day told Margie. “A Tristan Elliott. Missing from… your area of the city.”
“Where, exactly?”
“Inglewood.” The woman gave Margie an address, which she jotted down in her notepad while squeezing the phone to her ear with her shoulder.
“Great, is there a phone number? And the name of the person who reported him?”
“Reporter was… Pete Ramsey.” She gave Margie the phone number.
“Any details there? Their relationship? Where Tristan was seen last?”
“Looks like they are housemates. Same address. Last seen at the residence, but Tristan went for a walk and never returned.”
“And that’s not like him.”
“Apparently not. Nothing on file for him. No previous missing report, no convictions, no alerts.”
“Okay. We may have him, but I’ll wait for some kind of verification before we notify Ramsey. Medical examiner hasn’t been here yet. Do you have a picture of Tristan?”
“I do. Can I text it to this number?”
“Yes, that would be great. Appreciate it.”
She disconnected and filled in the officers standing around, leaning toward her to catch as much as possible from the phone conversation.
“There’s a recent missing who matches the description. Went for a walk in Inglewood and didn’t return.”
“That’s gotta be him,” O’Leary said with assurance.
Margie nodded. “Most likely. But we’ll wait for verification. I’ve seen what can happen when someone spills the beans too soon and it’s a misidentification. It’s not pretty.”
Heads shook as they pictured it or imagined it happening to them. How would they feel if someone told them their loved one was dead and it turned out not to be true? Even though grief and anger eventually turned into relief, it was not pleasant to be on the receiving end before it worked itself out. And did people trust the police after something like that? They would probably never believe anything a law enforcement officer said again.
CHAPTER THREE
Margie’s phone rang and she looked at the face to see who it was before answering. It was seven o’clock and the medical examiner hadn’t yet arrived. The name on the phone was Christina. She was up and had apparently read Margie’s note.
“Hi, sweetie.”
“Hey, Mom. Got a call, huh?”
“Yes. I’m actually not far away. Just in Inglewood.”
“The Bird Sanctuary? Tracy said he wanted to take me there.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait until we finish our bit. It’s closed for now.”
“Well, we weren’t going to come over right now anyway. He said it’s really nice. His parents like to go there and have recorded all kinds of interesting bird sightings.”
Birders were another group of people who sometimes came across human remains as they tromped through the woods and used their binoculars to zoom in on anything of interest. And those who recognized carrion or scavenging birds showing a sudden interest in an area knew they were likely to find a fresh kill. And it wasn’t always a kill by a natural predator or licensed hunter.
“Sounds like they’d be a really good choice to show you around out here,” Margie said. “But I’d recommend waiting until after dawn. It’s pretty dark when you hit it this early.”
Christina giggled. “How long have you been waiting? You’re getting pretty punchy.”
Margie had to laugh herself. It was true. She was bored and tired of standing around and had already exhausted most of the polite subjects of conversation with the other officers waiting there. She wanted something to happen. She wanted the sun to come up. She wanted someone to come and retrieve the body and any other evidence so she could go home.
It wasn’t even a homicide.
“Too long. Yeah. Hopefully, they’ll get out here pretty soon. You’re getting ready for school?”
“Not yet. Having a cup of coffee. Taking Stella out for a quick walk.”
“Don’t take too long—” Margie started, automatically going into mom-reminder mode. “Sorry. You know when school starts and have been getting yourself there on time every day. I slipped.”
“You’re tired. It’s okay. What time did they get you up?”
“Five-thirty.”
“Well, that’s not as bad as it could be.”
“Who walks their dog at five-thirty?” Margie complained. “People should put off finding bodies until sunrise. At least. Maybe even after breakfast.”
“Definitely after breakfast,” Christina agreed. “And they shouldn’t be allowed to eat breakfast before eight.”
Margie chuckled. She could see headlights coming slowly up the pathway toward them. “Well, this might be them. I’ll talk to you later. Call or text if you need anything.”
“Bye, Mom.”
Margie disconnected and put the phone in her pocket. She and the others stood to the side until the medical examiner’s van stopped as close to the yellow tape as possible. The techs got out, but Margie didn’t recognize any of the death investigators. She had been hoping to see Dr. Galt or one of the other employees that she was familiar with, but there were always new people coming in as junior staff members, who tended to leave again within a few months. Apparently, being the bottom man on the totem pole at the medical examiner’s office was not all roses.
“What have we got?” a tall man with a short black beard inquired.
“Apparent beaver attack,” Margie offered.
He looked at her. “Beaver attack?” he repeated.
“Apparent beaver attack.”
“Okay. Who decided that?”
Margie looked around at the others. “That’s just what I was told when I got here. The body is pinned down by a beaver tree.”
“Huh. Well, let’s have a look.” The investigator was already suited up and snapped on a pair of gloves. Margie watched him approach the body. The sky was definitely getting lighter. By the time she got out of there, it would probably be past sunrise, somewhere around eight o’clock this time of the year.
She looked back at the investigator as he looked at the body, going through a few routine checks for pulse, temperature, and rigor before straightening up.
“Definitely dead,” he said wryly.
Margie snorted. “Any idea of time of death?”
She knew that he would tell her it was too early to be sure, and they would do their best to estimate a time of death after they’d had some time to review their findings and compare them to temperature charts or whatever they had to do.
“A few hours. Rigor is not full. No bloating. No signs of putrefaction. I assume there were people walking through here until it got dark, so sometime after six last night.”
“Missing person report was made last night. Assuming this is Tristan Elliott.”
The investigator motioned to his partner, and they worked together to free the body from the tree and get it out of the water and onto a body bag. He took another look at the body there, closely examining the facial lacerations and checking for any obvious injuries or tears in the clothing. He removed a wallet from the man’s back pocket and flipped it open. “And the verdict is… yes, it is Tristan Elliott.”
Margie already figured this out after viewing the picture that had been submitted with the missing person report. It matched the face in her memory well enough, but she wasn’t getting close enough to confirm it herself as long as there were possibly rabid beavers around who might attack her just for sport.
“Great, thanks for the confirmation.”
“We’ll get him to the office. Not sure if the doctor will get to the postmortem today or not. We had another call ahead of you, and I assume that one will hit the table first, plus whatever other routine reviews we have to do.”
“This isn’t homicide,” Margie said, “so I guess it doesn’t take precedent over anything else.”
“But it’s an interesting case. And that might get it in ahead of anything else just because novelty is always more fun than the routine.”
“You’re saying that rabid beavers outrank died-in-her-home-unattended-two-weeks-ago?”
He made a face at the thought of a corpse left in a warm place for two weeks. “Rabid beavers?” he repeated, looking around.
“Well, I’m just speculating. No one has actually said that they are rabid. But why else would they attack a person?”
“Last one I heard of, the guy tried to pick up a beaver to get a good social media share.”
“Tried to pick one up?” Margie repeated. “A wild animal?”
“Apparently, the word hasn’t gotten around that beavers have sharp teeth.”
“Yikes.”
He nodded. They zipped the body into the body bags and loaded it into the van. “Office of the Chief Medical Examiner releases the scene. Let the forensic geeks have at it.”
The forensic geeks, who had been waiting for more than an hour, were happy to oblige. They worked over the scene with a fine-toothed comb and, once the sun was up and they didn’t need flashlights or headlamps, they went over it a second time. There wasn’t much to find. They checked the log that had pinned Tristan Elliott for blood and didn’t find any. They took swabs of the chewed wood at the sharpened point of the log to collect any beaver saliva samples. There was a little bit of litter stuck in the grass and trees, which they carefully gathered and bagged, but Margie was sure it wasn’t anything to do with Elliott’s death. He had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Had gone out for an evening constitutional when the beavers were out and had somehow gotten on the wrong side of one of them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Margie was wrapping things up and getting ready to go when Detective Kaitlyn Jones arrived. A few tendrils of her wavy blond hair had already escaped her pulled-back hair, and her cheeks were pink from the chilly air. She handed Margie a cup of Tim’s coffee.
“How’s it going?”
“You’re a little late getting here. We’re just getting ready to go.”
“I know. There wasn’t much point in me being here any earlier. We didn’t need someone else waiting around babysitting the scene until OCME released it.”
Margie admitted that was true. She sniffed the rich smell of the coffee appreciatively before taking a sip. “This is perfect. Just what I needed.”
“I figured you’d be ready for one.” Jones looked at the travel mug in Margie’s other hand. “Or another one,” she amended.
“I haven’t had that much. That was my first.”
Jones grinned. “Well, that’s not so bad, then.”
They walked back through the grassy field. Margie could see the dry stream bed under the bridge now, and she already knew there was no water there, so she didn’t hesitate before stepping onto the bridge. It was still too early for the visitor’s center to be open yet, so they would have to ask whoever worked there for information on the beaver population in the park later, when they had finally opened. That was still a couple of hours away.
“Did you hear that we identified him?” Margie asked. “Tristan Elliott, a recent missing.”
“Disappeared from Inglewood,” Jones filled in. “Yeah, I got the word. You want to go by and see if Pete Ramsey is still waiting for him to get home?”
Margie nodded. “Easier than coming back later.”
A real breakfast would have to wait. The coffee would hold her over until then.
Jones already had the address and had checked her maps app, so she volunteered to lead the way. “It’s not far. Just down the street from here.”
That would make sense. Elliott was someone who apparently enjoyed going for walks in the park, so he had bought a house close enough that he could go there whenever he wanted to.
Margie followed her to the house and looked at her notes again for a minute before getting out of the car. It was important to know what she was doing and not have to refer to her notes during the contact with the man who had reported his roommate missing. She climbed out of her car. Jones let Margie take the lead. Which was appropriate, since Margie was the one who had waited the whole time at the scene. It was her case, even though it wasn’t a homicide and would be cleared off her desk quickly enough.
It was an attractive little house. Like many in the area, an older house with a front stoop that had been restored. Small gardens filled with autumn leaves and flowers that had gone to seed or produced autumn berries. The lawns neatly trimmed and maintained.
A man opened the door almost immediately when they rang and knocked. He was shorter than Margie had expected, stocky, wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt. He had a short beard, similar to Tristan Elliott, the victim. He had apparently been on his phone, and now slid it into his pocket, looking anxious.
“Hello?” He looked them over, eyes wide. “Are you police?”
Margie nodded. “Mr. Ramsey, I assume? Could we come in and talk to you for a few minutes?”
“Did you find something? Did you find Trist?”
Margie said nothing. Doing a notification on the doorstep was not a good idea. And she was already getting a vibe from this guy. Panicky. Hyped up. Like he’d had too much caffeine. But Margie suspected it wasn’t a substance that was making him so wired, but his worry over his friend. He was just the type who might get hysterical or faint on her.
Not on the doorstep.
“Could we sit down?”
Ramsey considered this and eventually backed up, opening the door wide for them to enter. “Yeah, yeah, of course.”
He led them into the living room. Fairly neat, lots of bookshelves, a pile of crumpled tissues on the side table beside the easy chair that Ramsey had apparently spent the night in. Margie and Jones took seats on the couch, letting Ramsey reclaim the chair.
“Tell me you have a lead,” Ramsey urged. “Has someone seen him somewhere? He talked with his family or his ex or something? I’m so worried. He’s never done anything like this before. He’s usually very reliable.”
“Just slow down and take a breath, Mr. Ramsey,” Margie urged. She waited, watching him take a few deep breaths. “Good. I’m afraid that we did not come with good news. There was a body discovered in the bird sanctuary early this morning. Our preliminary identification is that it is Tristan Elliott.”
“What?” Ramsey’s mouth worked. He opened and closed it several times.
There were no tears, not yet. The first stage was always disbelief. You made a mistake. It can’t be him. He can’t be dead. The brain always looked for a way out, a way to explain something too horrible to consider. As frail humans, their brains should have been set up to accept the loss of life, which would happen periodically throughout every person’s lifetime. But, in Margie’s experience, that was not the case. Everyone doubted it, to begin with, even if it were only a brief flash. Expected or unexpected, it was always a blow. It was worse in a situation like this where Ramsey had not been expecting to lose his friend. He would continue to feel doubt that it could really be true for some time.
“I’m very sorry, sir. It looks like an accident. We will have more information after the medical examiner does a postmortem. At the moment, I can only confirm his death.”
“He went for a walk,” Ramsey said, his voice raised. “That can’t be right. It can’t be. What could happen to him on a walk?”
“Did he like walking through the bird sanctuary?” Margie asked. “You live quite close to it.”
“Yes. He was over there all the time… sometimes several walks in a day. He would go to think and relax and figure things out. Relax in nature. How could this have happened? What kind of accident are you talking about? I don’t see how anything could have happened to him. He knew every inch of that park.”
“Things happen. We can’t predict every bad thing that could go wrong. We do everything we can to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe but, in the end… sometimes fate has a hand. Something bizarre just happens.”
“Something bizarre?”
Margie glanced aside at Jones, who she hoped could smooth things over and say the right thing. But Katelyn Jones didn’t seem to have anything to offer.
“We don’t know yet, sir. We’ll be able to tell you more after the medical examiner’s report is issued.”
“What happened to him?”
“We’re not sure. From the scene, it looks as if wild animals might have been involved. But we can’t confirm that for sure. It will take some time to investigate.”
“Wild animals? Like a cougar? I always worry that a bear might be there, eating the fall berries. I guess a bear attack is more likely in the spring, when they come out of hibernation or have cubs around. Was it a bear?”
“No, not a bear. We don’t really know yet. As much as I would like to make this make sense to you, I really can’t. It was a tragic, unusual accident, and Tristan could not have foreseen it.”
“And you’re sure it was an accident.”
Margie wondered briefly about the query. Did Ramsey have any reason to believe that it might have been something other than an accident? But she didn’t want to get into the kinds of questions that might make him think that it had been a homicide. Did he have any enemies? Had he received any threatening or unusual mail or phone calls?
