Page 46 of The Girls in the Lake
‘A mess, a huge mess. Mother found her eighteen-year-old daughter collapsed on the bedroom floor around one p.m. Unresponsive, not breathing and rigor has set in, she’s pretty solid.’
‘Are there any underlying illnesses? Eighteen is very young for a sudden death.’
A loud sob caught in the back of his throat, and Beth felt alarm bells begin to ring inside her mind. He knew this girl, it was personal. Instinctively her fingers reached out to him, but he turned away. She realised he was composing himself and gave him a moment. When he turned around the threat of tears was gone, but the pained expression was still there, fixed across his face, making him look so much older than he was.
‘Tamara Smythson. She was onThe Tequila Sunriselast night and was pushed into the water. Me and one of the lake wardens dragged her out. I took her home when she refused all medical attention.’
‘There wasn’t much else you could have done if she refused, and if she’s eighteen you couldn’t have made her go to the hospital.’
He whispered, ‘No, but I wish to Christ that I had. I would have dragged her there in a pair of handcuffs kicking and screaming if I’d have known this was going to happen.’
Beth didn’t speak – what was there to say?
He led her up the stone steps into the spacious entrance of the house. An ornate, sweeping staircase dominated the entrance flanked either side by two huge marble panthers with amber eyes that stared at her. From somewhere inside the house she could hear the loud sobs of a woman and the hushed tones of a man trying to comfort her.
She turned to Josh. ‘Is this a crime scene?’
He shook his head. ‘No, the boat is the primary scene. I’ve asked the parents to stay out of the way until you’ve been and we’ve decided upon a course of action. We should get suited and booted. I only peered in through the bedroom door, I didn’t go in. The first officer on scene did and the paramedics pronounced death. There’s no actual evidence here, apart from her wet clothes.’
Even so, both went outside to dress in protective clothing. Beth looked up as she slipped on a shoe cover.
‘I can manage if you would rather wait out here.’ In all honesty, it would be easier for her if he did; she needed to concentrate on the body. He shook his head and she knew even though he was distressed he wouldn’t be able to wait outside; he would want to be involved.
Fifty-One
Dressed in white paper overalls, shoe covers, and double gloved, Beth stepped back into the house, and Josh led the way to the girl’s room past huge oil portraits of what Beth assumed to be family members. She felt as if every pair of eyes turned to watch her, could almost feel them burning into the back of her neck. As they reached the last door on the left, the only one which was ajar, Beth felt her mind begin to focus. She was in full pathologist mode now as she looked around the huge pink room full of every modern gadget a teenager could wish for, including an enormous television that dominated the whole of one wall. On the bed was a MacBook still open, the screensaver spinning colourful wheels. Tamara’s pyjama-clad body was curled up on the floor, her blonde hair matted and tangled.
‘Shit.’
She heard Josh’s sharp intake of breath behind her.
‘I can manage if you’d rather take ten.’
‘I’m good.’
She didn’t question him further. He knew the drill: if he felt as if he couldn’t cope, he was to get out of the crime scene and fast.
Stepping closer, Beth bent down to examine the girl, who looked as if she’d simply fallen to the floor. There was a small amount of vomit on the front of her pyjama top. Opening up her case, she took the girl’s temperature and the ambient temperature of the room.
‘She’s in full rigor, which usually develops completely around twelve hours after death. I’m going to make an educated guess here, because you know how difficult it is to get this right.’
‘But?’
‘But, personally, I would put her time of death around eleven, no later than twelve last night. When was she discovered?’
He let out a sigh. ‘Around one p.m. this afternoon. But time of death sometime between eleven and twelve, if that’s right, means she’d been home less than an hour. I knew when I left her just after ten last night that I shouldn’t have, but there was nothing else I could do. She refused help and insisted she was fine and just wanted to go home. What do you think happened?’
‘I can’t say for definite right now, but she went into the lake, right?’
‘Was pushed off the boat into the water. She said it tasted like shit.’
Beth used a gloved fingertip to lift open one of the half-closed eyelids. The eyes were beginning to look milky, but there were no tiny red specks of petechiae which would have indicated asphyxiation by strangulation. But the girlhadsuffocated. ‘I think that it’s highly likely she died from secondary drowning.’
‘What? How do you drown in your bedroom?’ He went across the room to the ensuite, opening the door to a bath full of faded green water with specks of gold glitter forming a film on the top of it.
‘She ran a bath.’
Beth joined him, took a cursory look around the room.
