the stem of the shower head and the curtain rod for added support. The cord was cut from a standing lamp in the other room. Scissors are on the floor.”
Clapper went on.
“She’s wearing an extra-large men’s shirt. Looks new.”
“What do you make of that?” I asked.
“Nothing yet. We’ll test it. I saw no defensive wounds on the victim’s arms, but I haven’t checked her hands. Her wrists were bound in front with a pair of panties. The ME will take her liver temps, but I can tell you she’s just coming out of rigor. So I’m estimating that she died twenty-four to thirty-six hours ago.”
Bodies were different. Environments were different. But it was safe to use Clapper’s guesstimate for now.
Carly was last seen on Monday night. So she’d died probably late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.
Clapper said, “We’re just beginning to process the bathroom, but you can have a look. Are you ready, my friends?”
He knocked on the doorframe. The techs came out with their kits, and Clapper toed the door wide open.
Conklin and I went inside.
CHAPTER 20
I entered the small tiled room knowing that I was about to see something that I would never forget.
Clapper moved the shower curtain aside with the back of his gloved hand, revealing the body of a woman wearing a men’s white shirt large enough that the tails hung to her midthigh.
As Clapper had said, the ligature was an electric cord wrapped around the stem of pipe between the shower head and the wall, and knotted under the victim’s jaw. Her wrists were secured in front of her with pink ladies’ underwear. A few twists of stretch lace could not withstand even Carly’s feeblest thrashing to get her hands free. Her feet hung over the drain, just below the spigots.
There’d been no sign of a struggle in the main room, and I didn’t see signs of disturbance here, either. The curtain hadn’t been pulled down, the bath mat was flat to the floor, lined up with the tub.
I tried to picture Carly Myers, a woman who was well liked, attractive, successful, and athletic, getting undressed, putting on a men’s white dress shirt, making a noose with an electric cord, and slipping that noose over her head and pulling it tight. She would have had to secure the other end to the shower head and then loop her panties around her wrists in a couple of figure eights.
And then what? She’d stood on the lip of the tub and jumped a couple of feet toward the drain?
No way. She would have reflexively kicked at the tub rim and the wall, pulled at the cord, and the shower apparatus would have pulled out of the wall—no, no, no. She’d been murdered first, and very likely after that, her killer had strung her up. This was a staged suicide. The panties were a flourish. I’d bet my badge on it.
Conklin edged in for a better look.
“There’s a bite mark on her neck,” he said.
“Good catch. And it looks like two bath towels are missing,” I said.
Conklin said, “He used the towels to clean up and took them with him.”
My partner took snapshots of the body and the rest of the small room. When he was done, Clapper asked us to back out, and he summoned Hallows, his number two, to help him cut the body down.
Hallows laid a clean white sheet on the floor between the tub and the wall. Clapper supported the body while Hallows leaned in and cut the electric cord at the midpoint to protect possible DNA on either end.
I was guessing Myers weighed 115 pounds. She fell heavily when the cord was cut, but Clapper took the weight, Hallows grabbed her legs, and the two of them laid her down on the sheeted floor.
Hallows bagged Myers’s bound hands to preserve evidence that might be under her nails, and Conklin and I stepped outside to the walkway for some air.
I said to Conklin, “You okay?”
“Not really. You?”
We leaned on the railing and watched squad cars slow and pull up to the curb. Cappy McNeil and Paul Chi, two of the best homicide investigators in the state, got out of a gray Chevy and ID’d themselves to the uniform at the tape. Bystanders and looky-loos crowded the Ellis Street side of the line.
I wanted to talk with the manager, Jake Tuohy. Now. I had questions.
Who had checked into room 212? I wanted to see the register and run the names of the guests. I