Chapter 13

Sunday, June 27, 9:20 p.m.

On the way back to town, Sam used the cellular phone to call Butler Brown at his home, seeking an update on the coroner's findings.

"I'm calling from the car, Butler. What can you tell me? Keep in mind that I don't want this to show up on WENC radio just yet." Sam's distrust of cellular phones was well-known within law enforcement circles.

"Well, several things, Sam. First of all, the camera didn't do it. I've talked to Raleigh, and me 'n them concur that the bump on her head was caused by the camera, but it wasn't a killing blow."

"What was?"

"Drowned."

"In two inches of water?"

"Well, we know she had some help. Why don't you come on by here, Sam? I don't feel comfortable talking to you in riddles. Anyhow, you can get a brain tumor from them damned phones. Where are you?"

"I'm on my way back to town from talking to witnesses near the scene. You sure it's O.K., I come by there?"

"'Course it's O.K. We'll make you up some coffee."

"Butler? 'You mind, heating me up some leftovers? Anything. I just realized I haven't remembered to eat all day, and now I'm feeling it."

"Mary Anne will microwave you some second-day beef stew," Brown replied. "It's better the second day. 'Make a new man out of you."

"Thanks, Butler. 'See you shortly."

Butler Brown lived in Cramer Forest, near the Twin Rivers Country Club. It was a prosperous but unpretentious neighborhood bordering on the smaller of the two rivers. A bank of floodlights lit up the Brown's entire front lawn. Brown and his wife met Sam at the door.

Beef stew and coffee were waiting, and Mary Anne, after briefly fussing over the kitchen table, discreetly disappeared.

Sam asked for everything Brown could tell him about the autopsy and evidence examinations being conducted in Twin Rivers or in Raleigh.

"Well, the state police got the camera to Raleigh quick enough, but nobody up there saw fit to call in a technician on a Sunday to run tests on it. I spoke to an evidence man serving as telephone duty officer up there for the weekend. 'Guy named Greeley. He had the patrolman bring the damned camera to him at his home, for Christ's sake! 'Lazy bastard.

"Anyhow, this Greeley called me this afternoon, I told him what I knew, and he, sitting there at home with the fuckin' camera, allowed as how it certainly did look as if the dents on the camera were consistent with its being used to knock the girl in the head. Ain't forensic science wonderful?"

"What about the autopsy, Butler?"

"Well, she drowned, Sam. Her face was marked up and there were bruises behind her head and on the back of her neck. Her face was pushed down in the water and he held her there until she drowned."

"Was she raped?"

"Nope. But she was orally sodomized. There was semen in her throat and traces in her hair. If you've got a suspect, we'll be able to type the guy's DNA from that, and run a comparison."

"No prints on anything?"

"Greeley told me that the camera looked as if it'd been wiped clean -- not to mention submerged."

"What's the earliest they can complete the DNA check on the semen?"

"'Don't take long anymore. It'll be even quicker, if me 'n the Sheriff raise some hell in Raleigh."

"Raise all the hell you can, then. Butler, I found out tonight that the body had been left face down, and turned over by... a third party who discovered the body."

"Well, I wondered about that, finding her on her back. But I don't see as how it would be significant. We didn't have any decent access to prints -- the killer's or anybody else's -- off that body or off anything she was still wearing. I already knew she had to have been pushed down face-first into that water. She had heavy bruising on the back of her neck, and a big bruise on her back -- probably from a foot or a knee holding her down."

"And the blood you analyzed -- it was all hers?"

"'Afraid so, Sam."