“What have we got?” she asked.
The human shield parted, and she saw him. Her training clicked into place, and she found herself thinking, speaking, and taking notes as if this was not something any human heart should turn away from.
Madison saw a white male, early to late fifties—hard to be sure—sitting on a kitchen chair, his hands and feet tied to the chair’s back and legs with coils of what looked like picture-hanging wire. The top half of his body had been covered by a black garbage bag, duct tape wound around the chest also binding him to the chair.
The bag had been slit open by the responding officers, who had checked for signs of life and found none; the victim was leaning forward, the head and neck out of the plastic and the skin raw and streaked with what looked like chemical burns. On his lips, dried-up gray froth. Madison was glad the man’s eyes were closed. He wore pale blue pajamas, and his feet were bare. At the moment of death—or possibly before—his rectum had let go, and the smell was foul.
The first thing Madison knew was that they were looking at a secondary crime scene. This had not happened on the green under the water towers: the victim had been brought here after the attack. Somewhere—maybe not too far from where they were standing—was the primary crime scene. Whatever had happened to the vic looked painful—probably some kind of torture—and inflicting that kind of pain required privacy.
Around Madison, the camera flashes from a CSU officer burst dazzlingly white at regular intervals.
It was Spencer’s case, and he turned to the ME: “What do you say, Doc? Time of death?”
Madison crouched next to the chair, close enough to make her own observations but far enough not to get in Dr. Fellman’s way. He placed the tips of his gloved fingers on the man’s jaw and delicately tested the movement range.
“I’m not going to untie him here, but, judging from the head and neck muscle, I’d say three to four hours ago—rigor is only just starting—but we have to consider outdoor temperatures, as well.” He pushed up the man’s eyelids. “No petechiae.”
The absence of petechial hemorrhaging meant no asphyxia or strangulation, and Madison couldn’t see any marks or bruises on the neck. The victim was wearing pajamas, no shoes. He had been in his home, maybe asleep, and someone had overpowered him and bound him to the chair. His own kitchen chair.
“No drag marks,” she said, her flashlight beam trailing around the chair’s legs.
“Nope,” Dunne said. “It would take at least two people to lift and carry, three if they have a driver.”
Two, maybe three, people. The ground was frosty and hard underfoot; the winter had left the green threadbare, but it had kept no footprints for them to find, no tire tracks on the concrete nearby.
She shone the flashlight on the thin silver wire around the wrists: there was blood there—he had tried to break free—but not so much as to suggest a prolonged captivity. She could not see any wounds on the parts of the body that were exposed, except the streaks on his face. The pajama fabric around the neck was wet, maybe with perspiration. Fear would have done that to him.
“Cause of death?” Dunne asked.
“Painful, I’d say, for starters,” the doctor replied, systematically going through his routine checks while his assistant carefully placed a bag over each of the victim’s hands.
Dr. Fellman held up the man’s face. “I don’t want to say anymore out here, and I don’t want to cut the bag off just yet. Let’s just get him back where we can take a good look without every single piece of trace evidence blowing off in the wind. Wait . . .”
He reached in, held the pajama top slightly away from the man’s chest, and undid one button. An inch below the clavicle, neatly affixed to the man’s chest with more duct tape, a Washington State driver’s license caught the light. Under its laminated surface was a name, a photograph, an address.
Dr. Fellman pushed his glasses back on his nose.
“Meet Mr. Warren Lee,” he said. “He was restrained for some time—look at the swelling in the wrists and the ankles there.” He pointed.
“Woken up in his bed during the night, then strapped to the chair?” Spencer ventured as he knelt and checked the victim’s feet. “His soles are clean. We need to send a car to the address: maybe he wasn’t the only one held hostage.” Spencer stood and walked off, talking quietly into his radio.
The man had been tagged and branded with his own driver’s license, and everybody looking at the picture wire wound tightly around his limbs likely hoped that Warren Lee lived alone.