Entropy (5 page)

“Get in and get out,” Mull said, folding his arms sternly across his chest, beginning to worry about the integrity of the crime scene. I felt like telling him he was right—that things had gotten worse—but decided to allow his uncertainty and misgiving to remain uninterrupted. Looking into his eyes I knew that he was thinking about his daughter. They were watery and doleful. I wished it could have been as simple as I once thought it would be.

I climbed the ladder slowly to the top of the silo and swinging myself through the missing roof section, descended a series of rusting metal rungs that formed an internal ladder within the silo structure. From around some sixty feet in the air I leaned into the void and maneuvered the flashlight's beam around in a clockwise direction, surveying the scene, and came across what appeared to be the body of a girl floating on her stomach. There appeared to be nothing above the surface securing her body in place; no wires or cords. There was no movement of any kind inside the silo.

I dropped cautiously into the water and was struck instantly by the horrid stench of rotting flesh and animal feces. Some of the fluid splashed across the upper surface of my lips. It was apparent the body had been here for some time, left to waste away in a pool of muck and shit. With my back against the cylinder I moved along the face of the wall, hoping to get as far away from the body as I could. The body rested perfectly in the middle of the silo, rising and falling with the displacement of the water. I placed a mask over my eyes, took a quick breath and plunged underneath the remains towards the bottom of the structure and confirmed what Mull had suggested. The silo was layered on the inside with a dense concrete and steel wall, about eight feet thick, which appeared to be sufficiently intact to have retained the water and debris inside. Someone would have to check and see what the previous owners had stored there. Not that it would really tell them anything. If it indeed had been a dairy farm, it was probably filled with feed or corn. I broke the surface, ripped the mask from my face and gasped for air. There was a body bag already draped over the edge of the crumbled silo wall from where I had come in, looking as ineffectual as a face towel hanging over the thin construction of a bathroom rail. I wasn't going to be able to carry the body out with me.

***

A large crane had been brought to the site to help remove the body. I secured the mask back over my face and pulled down carefully on a line attached to what was basically a submergible gurney, similar to the ones used in rescues by the United States Coast Guard. Giving directions, I told the operator to lower the line. Pulling it towards me, I maneuvered the equipment and secured the body inside. Raising my arm above my head I signaled that crane operator could pull the harness up. Slowly, the body ascended from the water. Motioning to stop, I adjusted one of the straps. For the first time I could see what might have once been a girl's face. The flesh around the construction of her nose had begun to peel away, the bones of her nasal cavity protruding out from underneath. I covered my mouth. What was left of the hair on her scalp resembled algae or kelp floating on the surface of the Dead Sea.

It was a majestic and historical body of water, the Dead Sea, which was rumored to cover the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Because of the overwhelming salinity, life could not exist in its waters. I had visited Jordan once during my failed attempt at an Olympic career. We were in Europe for time trials near the end of my attempts to represent the United States. However, despite being so close to the Dead Sea, I never got a chance to experience the myths and legends of that body of water. I wasn't entirely sure why I thought about it now.

The girl's body was now almost free of the silo. I searched around again quickly before reaching for the safety line. Voices and sounds echoed around me. I wondered if there was any chance that she had been alive when she had been dumped in here. It would be up to the coroner to determine that. I began to imagine the horror of being alone in the darkness; the smell, the isolation and the sick density of the water. Even if I never saw Jordan again during my lifetime, I realized solemnly that I had already touched the waters of the dead.

***

Back out of the silo and at the car, I stepped out of the dry suit and held a moist towel over my mouth and nose. My stomach was churning. A truck headed up the farm's gravel driveway, towing the portable lighting. Mull instructed them to set up around the perimeter of the barn. He was going to search the rear fields again. After packing away my equipment, I started towards the battered farmhouse again.

When I reached the front steps I hesitated for a moment. Suddenly, the rotted floorboards underneath my feet split and gave way and I dropped through the porch. However, it wasn't that far down and it felt like I was standing in mud. One of the portable lights switched on with the intensity of an artificial sun. I shaded my eyes from the glare and crouched down. I searched around for my flashlight and after retrieving it, repositioned myself to see more clearly. Beams of light shot underneath of the wood and I could see several cardboard boxes. I alerted one of the officers on the scene. He dropped through the opening and pulled on the box closest to where he knelt. The outside flaps were sodden and pieces tore away. I watched as he lifted the box into his arms and he carried it through the front door into the house and followed him in.

I could hear footsteps from some of the forensics detail upstairs, searching the rooms. I heard the coroner tell them to see if there was any physical evidence that the girl might have been violated within the house before being dumped in the silo. Sitting on the floor with little visibility, the officer removed the contents from the cardboard box, hoping to find an address, or something that would lead them more quickly to the names of the previous tenants. There were several photographs, long faded into a sepia tint, a blank, leather journal and a couple of greeting cards.

Why were they hidden underneath the house? I felt like a thief, watching him rummage through someone's clandestine mementos. There was a roughed-up pocket watch resting on the bottom of the box. There seemed to be nothing special about it. He replaced it and tossed through some letters. Several of them were unopened. The postmarks were no longer visible. Underneath those letters were several photographs of an extremely beautiful woman. No dates were stamped anywhere on the photo paper. Secured by a rubber band was a large bundle of invoices and receipts. I was familiar with what many of them would have listed. Although some were for goods purchased, almost all of them would have been for items sold. When I was growing up, our garage had been stacked floor to ceiling with identical receipts. It had been difficult trying to get around them.

Slightly dissatisfied and defeated, the officer pushed the box aside and stood up. I went through the living room and into the kitchen, stopping when I reached the back door. Outside men and women were still searching the grounds. I stepped out onto the small porch and looked around. A rusted grill sought refuge in the shadows cast by a huge tree that overlooked an abnormally large patch of dead grass. There was nothing else around besides blackness. All of the farming equipment must have been in or behind the barn, or maybe stolen and salvaged for scrap.

I noticed a pronounced slope in the ground as I walked. There might have been a pool there once, or possibly a pond. I kneeled and moved my hands across the area and pushed aside a piece of rotted fruit. I dropped it back onto the ground and inhaled to the point where I could no longer compress air within my lungs. I couldn't swim on land, much as I wanted to. Leaning forward, I noticed an insect cocoon. I picked it up. It was still unbroken after all this time. I stood up and looked at the circles from the flashlights passing across the landscape. The coroner's van pulled away from the house.

I walked towards a neglected cornfield, kicking several petrified cobs as circles of light continued to dance in the gloom. I looked around. There were hundreds of rotted cobs that were spread, like brave and fallen infantry soldiers of an unrecorded military campaign. When my father's body had been found in our pond, he was surrounded by peaches; burning spheres of boldness and authenticity resting on the surface. His lungs were satiated with water. No one had reported him missing for three days. I should have been there. The chrysalis broke apart between my fingers. There were still the remains of an insect inside.

Body Number Four (April): Molly Janikowski, 14 years old. Her body was found inside a scrap metal storage facility that was under construction. Construction had been suspended at the site. Molly was discovered floating in the basement foundation. The 5,000 square foot area was filled with little more than forty-two inches of water and mud, washed down from the hillside at the rear of the site. The land of the building site used to be a small golf course.

An 8:00 p.m. curfew was instituted for anyone under the age of sixteen.
The Governor of the state was beginning to apply pressure because of the complete absence of any real physical evidence; nothing that could guarantee a conviction in a court of law. It would all be circumstantial without conclusive DNA evidence. The District Attorney wouldn't prosecute without the confidence that he could secure a conviction. After so many months of investigation, there were still no reported suspects, just a few “persons of interest”, and no substantial evidence that could be used to determine a clear motive, or link an individual to each of the crimes. All registered sex offenders were accounted for and had been cleared by the department with help from officials in surrounding counties. The radius of the search now covered almost 100 miles.

Mull, the coroner and the lead forensic investigator had been called into several meetings over the last few weeks to provide updates to local politicians and news stations. There were several leads phoned into local and national tip lines that had been set up by volunteers, but nothing materialized from any of them. Pressure mounted on State and Federal agencies to come up with a fresh lead and a suspect. Some parents and local community leaders had scheduled a town meeting, to address the situation and possible upcoming changes in the investigation. They felt that they weren't being kept appraised of what was happening. It was rumored that an undercover agent, who specialized in cases involving the sexual assault of children, had been assigned to the case, but no one in the department knew for sure, not even Detective Mull.

The soil around the foundation of the structure looked like spilled paint; a bright, rusted color spread out across the ground, a unique hue reserved for antique light fixtures and Southern-styled patio furniture. It came from the color of the clay unearthed during the construction. Detective Mull paced the edge of the scene slowly, wearing a pair of latex gloves and a tortured artist's countenance and perplexity, carefully detailing specific measurements and observations in his notebook. It was overcast and dreary. The power had been shut off to the project site, but a quick call to the utility office had seen it turned back on. The glare from the portable floodlights highlighted the haphazard stubble that had formed along the detective's sharp jaw line. There was dried mud on his coat and blood on the underside of his chin. It looked as if he had started to shave his neck before becoming lost in thought in front of the mirror, fogged by his inability to solve what was happening.

Mull tried to light a cigarette, but gave up after three matches refused to ignite in the delicate, misty rain. Frustrated, he threw the cigarette onto the ground in front of him. The wind blew it across the muddy ground and into the basement into the water. Following the trail of the cigarette caused me to glance down at the body. The petite fourteen year old was resting face up, fully clothed, her hair swirling gently in the water. The construction site had been sealed off completely, and a barrier had been set up around the perimeter that extended to close to a mile and a half. Instead of getting narrower, the crime scenes were become more expansive. And yet they still remained suffocating.

“Did you get any prints?” Mull asked.

“No usable prints as yet. Do you want us to identify all the footprints around the body?” a forensics team member answered. “But, it's been raining for over twenty-four hours, detective. I doubt we're going to find anything there.”

“That would be a waste of time I know. Almost sixty people used to come through here on a daily basis according to the project foreman that we tracked down. It's a fucking mess out here. I'd be surprised if you even get a partial heel print. All in all, it's a damn smart place to dump the body. Have any of the workers been questioned?” Mull asked.

“Not yet. There were over seventy people employed on this project, and that doesn't include anyone from the financing company or the architect. Everyone who entered the site during operating hours was required to log in. The company is sending us the logs. We'll have to wait for the coroner to determine an approximate time of death though,” he began, “because apart from occasional security checks, no one has been on site for almost a month since construction shut down.”

“I'd be surprised if she hadn't been murdered in the last couple of days,” Mull began. “It would have given him more privacy, less exposure to wait to dump the body. Has the photographer finished yet?”

“Almost,” the forensics officer replied.

Mull looked over the man's right shoulder towards the entrance to the worksite. “Are any of the security systems up and running?”

“No. The cameras you saw on the way in by the main gate aren't functional. They were still in the process of being installed when the project was halted.”

“How did he get in?” Mull asked.

“When we arrived the gate was closed, but when we looked closer it appeared that large bolt cutters had been used to sever the lock and chain. We have tagged the broken lock as evidence. It's not a very sturdy lock, not more than half an inch thick. He would have cut through it in a matter of seconds.”