The Last Dig Read online

  “Yeah, sure,” the man said, nodding.

  “About forty-eight to seventy-two hours ago, did you hear anything unusual, or see anything unusual relating to this apartment?” Rand pointed over to the victim’s apartment.

  “I didn’t see anything, but I did hear something.” The man stood leaning against the door frame of his apartment, his arms crossed. “I heard a man and a woman fighting.”

  “Could you make out what they were fighting about?” Rand asked while Carlson wrote the information in his notebook.

  “Couldn’t make out what they were actually fighting about, but I did hear her say ‘You come to my place again, I’ll kill you!’ and then the door slammed loud and hard. It shook the pictures on my wall,” Harold said.

  Carlson asked, “You didn’t look out the window or through the peephole to see who it was?”

  “No, none of my business, and I didn’t want to know,” the man responded.

  “Did you see any visitors or anyone unusual hanging around here?” Carlson continued.

  “No, I didn’t. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone there except the renter himself. He never seemed to have any friends or company.”

  “Okay. Carlson, why don’t you knock on a few doors and ask around to see if anyone else heard or saw anything.”

  “Okay.”

  Rand went back into the victim’s apartment and walked up to the lead CSI. “You do understand that I need all the information ASAP, right?”

  “Yes, we know.” CSI McLaughlin looked at Rand and gave him a thumbs-up.

  Carlson came back after being gone for about ten minutes checking out the neighbors. “Only one person answered the knock at the door, and he said he wasn’t home at the estimated time of the incident. He works second shift and doesn’t get home until two or three in the morning.”

  “Okay,” Rand said.

  * * * *

  The mysterious stranger with the wide-brimmed hat had turned the vehicle in today and got a black SUV with tinted windows. He could watch all the activities that went on without being seen by anyone. Plus, he needed to get rid of the car so they couldn’t trace the tire impressions to him.

  He parked at the end of the apartment complex parking lot and watched as the sheriff and the US Marshals went into the apartment. Soon two CSI men came out carrying the desk and the computer. He wondered why they would carry out the desk. He didn’t think to open the desk. Was there anything in it?

  The sheriff and the marshals left but some CSI remained. They stayed there for another couple of hours and then eventually packed up and left.

  The stranger left the area after everyone was gone. He needed to plan his next move. He smiled, thinking about his revenge on Caroline and the horror on her face when she was arrested and put in prison for murder.

  Chapter 5

  Rand, Carlson, and the two US Marshals walked to the cruiser and headed back to the station. Carlson compared notes with the Marshals while Rand kept quiet, deep in thought. He wondered how Caroline managed to get herself in this situation. He didn’t like where this investigation was heading.

  The US Marshals gave Rand their business cards and told him to call if he had questions or needed anything, and then they left. Rand sat down at his desk and put his hand up to his temple and rubbed it. Carlson sat across from him and looked over the notes in his notebook.

  “Well, what do we know so far?” Rand asked.

  “We know the victim died between the hours of ten and twelve Monday night. We know his name is Marc Baker, also known as Michael Seprino in his previous life. We know that he lived at Big Sky Apartments. There was a large pool of blood in the small bedroom of his apartment. There was also what looked like blood on the carpet, indicating that the victim was dragged. The victim did not have ID on him nor could we find any in the apartment. A neighbor said he heard fighting and a woman threatening to kill the victim if he came to her place again. We have evidence that a Caroline Priest was either there or has some sort of connection to the victim based on the business card finding.”

  “The victim or the killer could have gotten that business card anywhere. That doesn’t mean that she had anything to do with the victim or the victim’s death,” Rand interjected.

  Carlson nodded and went on. “We know he was part of a sting operation in Florida, and was the head of the drug smuggling operation with the mafia before he turned on them and testified against them in court.”

  “I’m not convinced yet that it wasn’t a hit. They could have found him here, killed him, and made it look like someone local did it,” Rand pointed out irritably.

  “Well, I guess anything is possible, but we really need the evidence, and we need to let the evidence speak for itself,” Carlson added. “Rand, would you mind if I put in some overtime, go back to the apartment complex, and try to see if any of the others are home and if they heard anything? Something about this is just not ringing true to me.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Also, run the cellphone number over to the CSI lab and ask them to get a list of calls that the victim made and received. And while you’re at it, stop by the River Basin bar and see if anyone can place Caroline and the deceased there together two weeks ago.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  * * * *

  As Rand strolled into his office the next day, he was greeted by Matt Dyson.

  “We are going to be doing the autopsy in a few minutes, Rand, if you want to join us.”

  “Oh great, just what I want to do—see blood, gore, and body organs first thing in the morning before I even have my first cup of coffee,” Rand remarked with a smirk.

  “Well, avoid the coffee until after the autopsy and you won’t get all queasy and barf it up.”

  “Yeah, thanks for the visual, Matt,” Rand said somewhat sarcastically yet smiling thinly as he hung up his coat and walked out of his office to follow Matt to the coroner’s office. As Rand left, he told his secretary, “Tell Carlson to come to the coroner’s office for the autopsy when he arrives.”

  “Okay, Rand, will do,” Betty said.

  Rand and Matt walked through the coroner’s office to the morgue area where the body laid. The sterile, small area with white walls and a disinfectant smell was just as sickening as the actual autopsy where the doctor cut out body organs and weighed them.

  There were two men already in the room, discussing how they were going to proceed.

  Matt told Rand, “I already fingerprinted him and sent the prints to the CSI unit for comparison with the prints the US Marshals forwarded to me.”

  “Did they match?” Rand asked.

  “Haven’t heard back from them yet.” Matt looked up at Rand and then introduced him to the two other men in the room. “Dr. Tomas, Patrick, this is Rand Callahan, Sheriff of Garfield County. He will be witnessing the autopsy. Rand, this is Dr. Tomas, who is conducting the autopsy, and Patrick, his assistant. We need to be careful to tone down the rhetoric because he’s got a queasy stomach,” Matt said as he smiled.

  “Aw shucks, you mean we can’t have any fun in here today?” Dr. Tomas quipped.

  “Nope, strictly business I’m afraid,” Matt replied, still grinning.

  “Okay, are we ready to begin?” Dr. Tomas asked.

  Patrick spoke up. “Ready, sir.”

  “Yes, we’re ready,” Matt confirmed.

  “Are the microphones on?”

  “Yes, Dr. Tomas, the microphones are on and recording,” a voice said from another room where the recording was taking place.

  “Since Matt already fingerprinted the deceased, we don’t have to worry about doing that. The first thing I’m going to do is check his height and weight. We already know his gender is male. He is Caucasian, and we’ll estimate his age to be about thirty to thirty-five years. He has brown hair and blue eyes. His height is five feet ten inches, weight is one hundred and seventy pounds. Looking over the body, I do not see any birthmarks, scars, or tattoos.” Dr. Tomas reached up and pulled down th
e magnifying mirror. “Now, we’re going to look at the body more closely through magnification. We’re looking at the skin and clothing for materials and fibers that seem out of place, drops of blood, organic materials, and any bruises or wound marks. We’ll also check under his fingernails. Okay, I’m finding pieces of what looks like lint or carpet yarn. I will put this in the plastic bag and send to the CSI. The deceased has blood going down the front of him, as if he was in an upright position while bleeding. We’ll get pictures of that when we’re ready to do the camera shots. Patrick, please take the deceased over there and get X-rays, both body and teeth.”

  “Yes, sir,” Patrick answered, with almost military-like precision.

  Rand watched as Patrick moved the cart with the body over to the X-ray machine and started taking X-rays. While they were waiting for Patrick to get done, Carlson walked in with his notebook. “Sorry I’m late. Did I miss anything?”

  “No, not really. Just got started.” Rand looked over at Carlson briefly then back at Patrick as he X-rayed the body.

  “After the autopsy is done I’d like to talk to you about what I found out last night,” Carlson said, and Rand nodded.

  When the X-rays were done, Dr. Tomas looked them over and surmised, “Everything looks normal here, no fractures or medical devices.” Dr. Tomas turned off the X-ray lights and Patrick took the body cart back to the examining area. “The next thing we are going to do is take pictures of the body. Patrick, I really want a close-up of the gunshot wound and the blood dripping down his body.”

  “Okay, sir.” Patrick stood on a stool so he could take the pictures looking down on the body.

  With the pictures done, Dr. Tomas pulled a large syringe out. “I’m now going to take blood samples to send to toxicology in Billings. This will tell us if the victim had any drugs, alcohol, or poisoning in his system.” He stuck the needle in the body and drew out the blood, capped several vials of it, and pulled labels from the papers near the body to label them.

  “How long before we get the toxicology report?” Rand asked.

  “It’ll be four to six weeks,” Dr. Tomas responded.

  “That long, huh?” Rand asked.

  “Now comes the fun part,” Dr. Tomas crooned with a smile on his face.

  “You mean the gory part,” Rand sneered.

  “You guys would never make it as forensic pathologists,” Matt retorted smugly as he looked at Carlson’s white face. He did not look up from his notebook.

  “Thankfully, that was not my calling,” Rand said.

  Dr. Tomas took a scalpel and made an incision from the right shoulder to the center, and then from the left shoulder to the center. The left side was the hardest to do because of the gunshot wound. From the center of the chest, Dr. Tomas made a long incision down to the belly button. He spread the skin open to check and see if any ribs were broken, and then he used the rib cutters to split the ribcage. From there, he dissected the right lung, which was filled with fluid that had backed up from the left lung.

  “The left lung was where the bullet first entered into the chest area,” Dr. Tomas stated. “This lung is totally disintegrated by the bullet. Look at it, it’s in tatters.” He showed everyone the lung. He put it on the scale and weighed it as he did with the right lung. Next he took another syringe and extracted blood from the heart. “This will also go to toxicology for analysis.” He then dissected the heart. “Here is the cause of death.” He lifted the heart up so that everyone could see it. The aorta had a hole in it where the bullet was lodged.

  He pulled the bullet out of the heart and dropped it on the tray so that it could be sent to CSI for a bullet match.

  “The cause of death is bullet to the aorta. Incompatible with life. The trajectory of the bullet indicates the victim did not commit suicide. I declare it to be a homicide,” Dr. Tomas confirmed as he dropped the heart on the scale. He then took out all the other organs and carefully weighed them. Before removing the bladder, he took another syringe and drew fluid from it for toxicology. “This will also help to determine if there were drugs or poisons in the body.”

  He checked the victim’s eyes, nose, and mouth, not finding anything unusual. He examined the victim’s head and did not find any bumps or bruises. He cut the back of the skull and then had Patrick use a circulating saw to cut through the cranium to the brain.

  Dr. Tomas removed the brain from the skull and looked at it for any bruising, bleeding, or internal injury. “The brain looks good, no bruising, no bleeding, or any signs of internal injury. This concludes the autopsy of this victim.”

  “Okay, thank you, Doctor,” Rand mumbled as he and Carlson made a beeline to the door to get out.

  Chapter 6

  “We were in there four hours!” Rand sputtered, shaking off the effects of standing in the morgue watching Dr. Tomas take body organs out to weigh them. “Carlson, I’ll meet you back at my office in about twenty minutes, I want to go to CSI and see if they found anything yet.”

  “Okay.”

  Rand turned and walked from the sheriff’s office, north through the heavy metal doors, and into the CSI area.

  One of the girls looked up when he walked in. “Hello, Rand. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Diana. You?”

  “Doing great. What can I help you with today?”

  “Need to talk to Dane if he’s available.”

  “Okay, let me check.” Diana went back to Dane’s office and returned a few minutes later. “He says he knows why you’re here, so go on back.”

  Rand walked back to Dane’s office. When he saw Dane, he chuckled. “So you know what I’m here for, huh?”

  “I always know. You want your information yesterday.” Dane smiled at Rand.

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  “Well, I have some preliminary information for you. The dirt found at the victim’s apartment is the same kind of dirt that CSI scooped up near where they found the victim’s body. The fingerprints taken by Matt matches the fingerprints we got from the US Marshals. We were able to pop open the desk and we found two hundred bags of cocaine, each weighing about a gram.”

  “Hmm, so we know how the victim survived and lived,” Rand remarked. “Two hundred bags? Did you find anything else in the desk?”

  “Paper, pencils, and a drug kit. We haven’t gotten into the computer yet to see if there is anything in there. The other thing we found is Caroline Priest’s fingerprints on the pick that we found in the apartment.”

  “No one else’s prints on it?” Rand asked.

  “Nope. The only prints found on the business card were from Caroline Priest and the victim.”

  “The pathologist completed the autopsy, so we’ll find out soon, I hope, if he was using drugs. Thanks for the preliminary report. Is it okay for Caroline and her team to go back to the dig site and start working?”

  “Yes, we’re done collecting evidence and I don’t think we need anything else. I should get the report back from the cellphone company tomorrow, and I’ll bring it to you.”

  “Great. Thanks, Dane.” As Rand went back to his office, he tried to call Caroline, but the call went to voice mail so he hung up. He walked into his office, and Carlson walked in behind him.

  “Okay, what news have you got for me?” Rand asked as he sat down in his chair.

  “I talked to almost all the residents in the building where the victim lived. Most don’t recall anything of that night, except the neighbor that lives upstairs claims she heard a ‘pop’ noise about ten. But she said she has never heard a gun go off before and doesn’t know if it was a gun or not. She then said that she heard a couple arguing downstairs and then she heard the door slamming about midnight. So, I stopped by the resident who lives across from the victim and asked him what time he heard the argument and the door slam. He said it was about eleven-fifty that night. He remembers because he was waiting to watch a movie that started at midnight. I asked him if he heard any popping noise or a gun going off about ten, and he said no. S
o, the argument seems consistent, but the gun going off doesn’t. We aren’t able to confirm that the gun did or did not go off, but really, it must have gone off in that apartment because of all the blood we found there. I did ask all the tenants if they saw anyone unusual coming and going from the apartment, and everyone said no. A few said they wouldn’t even be able to identify the resident because they’ve never seen him. Next, I stopped at the River Basin bar and talked to the bartender who was on duty the night Caroline was supposed to have met the deceased. I showed him a picture of the victim. He recalled Caroline being there, and the guy did say a few words to her, but she left soon after he arrived. So he pretty much confirmed what she said. I asked if the victim had spoken to anyone else, and he couldn’t recall seeing him talking to anyone.”

  “As soon as we get the ballistics results, we’ll be able to determine what kind of a gun was used, and we’ll know if the shooter used a silencer or not.” Rand reflected thoughtfully, then continued on. “Okay, the dirt found at the apartment is the same dirt that we found with the victim. They also opened the desk and found two hundred bags of cocaine weighing about a gram each.”

  “So, the victim sold drugs. The US Marshals indicated that he was doing that when he got busted, and he turned state’s evidence against the bosses. Maybe we need to turn our investigation into looking at the possibility of a mob hit.” Carlson wrote the information into his notebook.

  “I agree. I think we may have to if we don’t start to find some evidence that someone locally killed him. Also, we will get his phone records tomorrow. I hope that maybe he received or made some calls that could give us some new leads.”

  “Yeah, I’m anxious for that report,” Carlson said.

  “Two other things—Caroline’s prints were the only ones on the pick and bone fragments, and only her prints and the victim’s prints were on the business card we found at the apartment.”

  “I would really like to know how she plays in this,” Carlson mused.

  “So would I, Carlson.”