Skeleton Key(61)

“But you were the one who actually examined the body?” Gregor asked.

“Yesterday morning, yeah. I did an autopsy and set up the lab work.”

“And?”

Tom Royce sighed. “And it looks to me like she was strangled and strangulation was how she died. The cord was still around her neck, by the way.”

“What kind of cord?’

“A white nylon shoelace. New. The kind you use for athletic shoes.”

“She had a whole package of them in one of the bags from Sears,” Mark Cashman said. “You know she’d been to Sears?”

“Mr. Spratz told me.”

“Stacey,” Stacey said automatically.

“The problem with the shoelaces is that they’re everywhere,” Mark Cashman said. “We ran across a half dozen of them in Margaret Anson’s kitchen the night of the murder. They were sitting in a kitchen drawer right next to the mudroom. You couldn’t go anywhere in the rich part of Litchfield County without finding them by the dozens. At the Swamp Tree Country Club. At Rumsey Hall and Taft. Everybody’s athletic these days.”

“Rich people have always been athletic,” Tom Royce said.

“What about the strength required to get the job done?” Gregor asked. “Was she a strong young woman? Would she have struggled?’

Tom Royce shifted unconifortably from foot to foot. “Here’s where we get into territory I don’t like. I really couldn’t tell you that unless I’d talked to Dr. Lee. There are things—”

“What things?”

“Well, for one thing, how much strength was required would depend on whether or not she was conscious when she was strangled. She could have been alive and not been conscious.”

“Do you have reason to believe she wasn’t conscious?”

“Sort of. Maybe. But it’s all speculation. Completely speculation. I don’t have any proof of it at all.”

“Would you like to tell me proof of what?” Gregor asked.

Tom Royce started to pace. From the way Mark Cashman was staring at Tom, Gregor knew that this was the first of this Tom had mentioned to anybody. Holding back the information wasn’t going to do him any good, at least with the Washington Police Department. Tom’s pacing was jerky and uneven. He kept taking his hands out of his pockets and putting them back in again.

“Okay,” Tom said. “This isn’t even speculation. This is a guess. A pure and simple guess. I think she was hit on the back of the head.”

“Why?” Gregor asked him.

“If you mean what makes me think so, it’s because she had a bruise. On her forehead. Her left temple just above the eye.”

“And, that makes you think she was hit on the back of the head?’

“And fell forward into the steering wheel and got a bruise. Yes. That’s it exactly.”

“But there was no mark on the back of the head?’

“No obvious mark, no. But there are ways to do that. You can knock somebody out cold without causing any visible damage. And that’s a good place to go for, because it’s effective but it’s covered with hair. Especially in women. Lots of hair. So if you do some damage, it’s not necessarily going to be seen.”

“But what about the autopsy? Didn’t that reveal any evidence of concussion?’

“I don’t know. What I have is inconclusive as hell.”

“I see.”

Tom Royce sat down abruptly. “If Henry responds the way you’re doing, I’m dead in the water. But nothing else makes much sense. She was a young woman in good health and good shape. She played a lot of tennis. She worked out. There should have been—I don’t know. More signs of a struggle. Something. She should have kicked out or hit at things—”

“Maybe she did,” Mark Cashman said. “Maybe she wasn’t killed in the car. I’ve said before—”

“She was killed in the car,” Tom Royce said. “I’ve said before. She was killed sitting in the passenger seat of that car. If she hadn’t been, there would have been other kinds of bruising that came from getting her in there, and there wasn’t anything like that at all. Not a thing.”

“Not a thing,” Gregor repeated.

He was just about to ask them all the most obvious question—what was Kayla Anson doing in the passenger seat of a car she’d been driving when she left Waterbury?—when the door to the little conference room swung open and a harried middle-aged woman came bursting in.

“The governor’s here,” she announced dramatically, “and he’s got about half the state with him, and I don’t know what to do next. You guys had better come on out and take care of him before something goes wrong and I get blamed for it.”