My Sister's Grave (29 page)

O’Leary followed Fitzsimmons with Vern Downie, the man James Crosswhite had specifically enlisted to lead the search for Sarah in the hills above Cedar Grove because Vern knew those hills better than anyone. Tracy and her friends used to joke that Vern, with his thinning hair and five o’clock shadow on a craggy face, would have been a hit in horror movies, especially with a voice that rarely rose above a whisper.

In the intervening twenty years, Vern looked to have forsaken shaving altogether. His gray-and-silver beard started just a few inches below his eyes, obscured his neck, and extended nearly to his chest. He wore fresh blue jeans, a belt with a silver, oval-shaped buckle, boots, and a flannel shirt. For Vern, this was church attire. His wife sat in the first row for moral support, as she had at the trial. Tracy recalled that Vern wasn’t much for public anything, particularly public speaking.

“Mr. Downie, you’re going to have to speak up to be heard,” Meyers cautioned, after Vern whispered his name and address. Perhaps sensing Vern’s anxiety, Dan eased him into his testimony with some background questions before getting to the substance of his examination.

“How many days did you search?” O’Leary asked.

Vern stuck out his lips and pinched them. His face scrunched with thought. “We were out there every day for the week,” he said. “After that we went out couple times a week, usually after work. That was maybe a few more weeks. Until the area flooded.”

“How many people were involved in the search initially?”

Vern looked to the gallery. “How many people in this room?”

Dan let the answer stand. It was the first light moment in two days.

Clark stood and approached the lectern. Again, he was brief. “Vern, how many acres are those foothills?”

“Hell, Vance, I wouldn’t know that.”

“It’s a big area isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s big.”

“Is it rugged?”

“Depends on your perspective, I guess. It can get steep and there’s a lot of trees and shrub. Dense in places, that’s for sure.”

“A lot of places for someone to bury a body and not have it found?”

“I suppose,” he said, and he glanced at Edmund House.

“Did you use dogs?”

“I recall they had dogs in Southern California but we couldn’t get them up here. They wouldn’t fly them.”

“As systematic as your search was, Vern, do you believe you covered every square foot of those foothills?”

“We did our best.”

“Did you cover every square foot?”

“Every square foot? No way to know that for sure. It’s just too big. I guess we didn’t.”

Dan followed Downie with Ryan Hagen, the auto-parts salesman. Hagen took the stand looking like he’d put on thirty pounds since the Saturday morning when Tracy had surprised him at his home. Hagen’s jowls fell over the collar of his shirt. His hairline had further thinned, and he had the ruddy complexion and bulbous nose of a man who liked his daily cocktails.

Hagen chuckled when Dan asked if he had a purchase order or other document to confirm his trip on August 21, 1993.

“Whatever the company, I’m sure it’s long since gone out of business. Most of this is done over the Internet now. The traveling salesman has gone the way of the dinosaur.” As she watched him, Tracy thought that the salesman might have left, but Hagen still had the salesman’s smile and mannered charm.

Hagen also couldn’t say which news broadcast he’d been watching.

“You testified twenty years ago you were watching your Mariners.”

“Still a fan,” Hagen said.

“So you know the Mariners have never been to the World Series.”

“I’m an optimist.” Others in the audience smiled along with Hagen.

“But it didn’t happen in 1993, did it?”

Hagen paused. “Nope.”

“In fact, they finished in fourth place and didn’t make the play-offs that year.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that. My memory isn’t
that
good.”

“Which means their last regular season game was Sunday, October 3, a seven-to-two loss to the Minnesota Twins.”

Hagen’s smile waned. “I’ll take your word for that also.”

“The Mariners weren’t playing in late October, 1993, when you claimed to have seen this broadcast, were they?”

Hagen kept smiling, but now it looked strained. “It might have been a different team,” he said.

Dan let that answer linger before shifting gears. “Mr. Hagen, did you make service calls on any establishments in Cedar Grove?”

“I don’t recall,” Hagen said. “I had a big territory.”

“Natural salesman,” Dan said.

“I guess I am,” he said, though he no longer looked the part.

“Let me see if I can help.” Dan picked up a Bekins box and set it on the table. He made a production of pulling out the files and documents. Hagen looked perplexed by this turn of events and Tracy noticed his gaze shift to where Roy Calloway sat in the gallery. Dan pulled out a file Tracy had recovered from the file cabinets in Harley Holt’s garage and moved to a position beside the lectern, blocking Hagen from making eye contact with Calloway. The records in that file documented regular orders of parts by Harley Holt from Hagen’s company.

Dan asked, “Did you not call upon Harley Holt, the owner of Cedar Grove Service and Repair?”

“That was a long time ago.”

Dan made a production of flipping through the documents. “In fact, you called on Mr. Holt fairly regularly, once every couple months or so.”

Hagen smiled again, but he’d flushed and his brow glistened with perspiration. “If that’s what the records show, I won’t quibble with you.”

“So you did spend some time in Cedar Grove, including during the summer and fall of 1993, didn’t you?”

“I’d have to check my calendar,” Hagen said.

“I did that for you,” Dan said. “And I have copies here of purchase orders that contain both your and Harley’s signatures on them, dated the same day that your calendar indicates you called upon the Cedar Grove Service and Repair.”

“Well, then I guess I did,” Hagen said, sounding less and less sure.

“So I’m wondering, Mr. Hagen, during those visits with Harley Holt, did the subject of Sarah Crosswhite’s disappearance come up?”

Hagen reached for a glass of water next to the chair, took a sip, and returned the glass to the stand. “Could you repeat the question?”

“During your visits with Harley Holt, did the subject of Sarah Crosswhite’s disappearance come up?”

“You know, I’m not really sure.”

“It was big news in Cedar Grove, wasn’t it?”

“I, I don’t know. I suppose it was.”

“They had a billboard right there on the highway offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward, didn’t they?”

“I didn’t receive any reward.”

“I didn’t say you did.” Dan pulled out another document and acted as though he was reading it as he asked his question. “What I asked was, even though Sarah Crosswhite’s disappearance was big news all over Cascade County, one of your geographic sales areas, are you saying you can’t recall you and Mr. Holt
ever
discussing it?”

Hagen cleared his throat. “I believe we probably did, you know, in general. Not in any detail. That’s the best I can recall anyway.”

“So you knew about Sarah’s disappearance before you ever saw a news program, didn’t you?”

“The news program may have jogged my memory. Or I could have spoken to Harley about it after the fact. That’s probably what it was. I’m not too sure anymore.”

Dan held up more sheets of paper as he spoke. “It didn’t come up in August or September or October.”

“I don’t recall specifically, is what I’m saying. I suppose it could have. Like I said, twenty years is a long time.”

“During your visits to Cedar Grove, did you ever discuss Edmund House with anyone?”

“Edmund House? No, I’m pretty sure his name did not come up.”

“Pretty sure?”

“I don’t recall his name coming up.”

Dan took another document from the file and held it up. “Did Harley ever tell you his service and repair shop had ordered parts for Parker House’s vehicles and had done the maintenance on a red, Chevy stepside truck?”

Clark rose. “Your Honor, if Mr. O’Leary is going to ask questions from documents, I would ask that they be entered into evidence rather than continuing with this exercise to test Mr. Hagen’s memory about discreet meetings that may or may not have occurred twenty years ago.”

“Overruled,” Meyers said.

Tracy knew Dan was acting. She had tried unsuccessfully to find a record that confirmed Harley had ordered a car part from Hagen for the Chevy Parker House had been restoring. Hagen, however, did not dare call Dan’s bluff at this point. The salesman had turned a beet red and looked as though someone had put a hot plate beneath his seat.

“I believe we did discuss that,” Hagen said, shifting to cross his legs and then parting them again. “It’s kind of coming back now. I remember saying to Harley that I saw a red Chevy on the road that night, or something like that. That must have been how I remembered it.”

“I thought you remembered it because you heard about it on a news program as you were watching a Mariners game and the Chevy stepside was your favorite truck?”

“Well, it was probably a little bit of both. It was my favorite truck, so when Harley mentioned that, you know, Edmund House drove one, then it clicked.”

Dan paused. Judge Meyers looked down at Hagen with a furrowed brow.

Then Dan stepped directly beside the witness chair. “So you and Harley Holt did discuss Edmund House by name,” he said.

Hagen’s eyes widened. This time he could not muster a smile, not even a pained one. “Did I say Edmund? I meant Parker. Right. Parker House. It was his truck, wasn’t it?”

Dan turned to Clark without providing an answer. “Your witness.”

CHAPTER 44

W
hen Judge Meyers returned to the bench for the afternoon session, he looked troubled, and considered the daunting blanket of snow continuing to fall outside his courtroom windows. “While I believe it is important to proceed expeditiously, I also do not want to be foolhardy,” he said. “The weathermen indicate the snow is supposed to let up this afternoon. Having lived in the Pacific Northwest much of my life, I prefer my own method of meteorology; I stick my head out the front door.” The audience chuckled. “That is precisely what I did during the break, and I didn’t see any blue sky on the horizon. This will be our last witness of the day so as to avoid many of you driving home in the dark.”

Dan displayed a series of charts and photographs on the flat-screen television as he walked Kelly Rosa, the King County forensic anthropologist, through her testimony. He started with Finlay Armstrong’s phone call and the photograph of the bone.

“And how long does it take before body fat deteriorates and turns to adipocere?”

“It depends on a number of different factors: the location of the body, the depth of burial, soil and climate conditions. Generally, though, it happens over years, not days or months.”

“So you concluded the remains had been buried for years. Why then were you puzzled?”

Rosa sat forward. “Normally a body buried in a shallow grave in the wilderness does not remain buried long. Coyotes and other animals will get to it.”

“Were you able to resolve this mystery?”

“I was advised that the grave site, up until recently, had been covered by a body of water, making it inaccessible to animals.”

“Did you conclude from the fact that animals had not desecrated the site—that is, scattered the bones—that the body had to have been buried shortly before the area was flooded?”

Clark stood. “Calls for speculation, Your Honor.”

Meyers considered the objection. “As Dr. Rosa is an expert, she can answer as to her opinions and conclusions.”

Rosa said, “I can only say that normally it would not have taken long for animals to get to a body buried in that shallow of a grave.”

O’Leary paced. “I also noted in your report a wholly separate reason for your opinion that these remains were not buried immediately upon death. Can you explain why?”

“It has to do with the position of the body in the grave.” Dan displayed a photograph of Sarah’s remains on the flat-screen. The dirt had been whisked away to reveal a skeleton curled in what looked very much like a fetal position. The gallery fidgeted and emitted soft rumblings. Tracy lowered her gaze and covered her mouth, nauseated and light-headed. Her mouth watered. She closed her eyes and took short, quick breaths.

“It was clear the person tried unsuccessfully to bend the body to fit in the hole,” Rosa continued.

“How long before burial did rigor mortis set in?” Dan asked.

“I can’t say with any reasonable certainty.”

“Were you able to determine the cause of death?”

“No.”

“Did you note any injuries, broken bones?”

“I noted skull fractures at the back of the cranium.” She used a diagram to show the location of the fractures.

“Could you determine what caused the skull fractures?”

“A blunt-force trauma, but from what . . .” She shrugged. “It’s not possible to tell.”

Rosa then explained how her team accounted for everything, from bone fragments to the rivets from Sarah’s Levi’s and the silver-and-black snaps of her Scully shirt. She also said she had unearthed pieces of black plastic of the same material as common lawn and leaf bags, as well as carpet fibers.