She slid him a look out of the corner of her eye. “I’ll wait and see before I start calling people killers.”
Lonergan grinned. “One of those cautious types bent on takin’ the long way home, huh?”
She moved carefully around the body, taking another look from all angles. “It’s often the safest route.”
“Great. Griffin puts me with an i dotter.”
“I also cross every t,” she shot back. “Lucky you.”
It took more than two hours before Rosales was ready with preliminary findings. “Based on body temp and conditions, I’d put time of death somewhere between midnight and three a.m. Can’t be more exact until I take her in,” he said. “White, female, twenty or so, as you can see. Some of the knife strikes are very deep. I’d say that’s a lot of meanness.” He glanced over at Foster. “Want to step closer? Get a better look at what I’m talking about?” He slid Lonergan a look. “You too. You might want to brace for it. She’s pretty sliced up.”
Lonergan moved forward while Foster took another moment or two to prepare. “I’ve seen dead bodies before,” he said. “What kind of greenhorn do you . . . holy shit!”
Foster eased forward again, standing far more calmly than Lonergan had. The woman’s chest and abdominal cavities had been torn open, her organs and intestines spilled out, the guts tumbling off onto the grass beside her like a string of sausages cascading off a butcher’s counter.
“Told you,” Rosales said. “Once I got all the leaves off, I could see what I was dealing with. Massive blood loss. Won’t know which cut was the fatal one until Grant has her on her table.”
Lonergan rolled his eyes at the mention of the ME. “Of course not.”
For a moment, Foster’s mind sputtered as she willed herself to take it all in and not turn away. She had no idea how many seconds passed before her brain reset and her mind cleared. It was then that she noticed the red lines drawn around the young woman’s ankles, similar to the red ring around her left wrist she’d discovered earlier. She squatted down beside Rosales, recognizing now a familiar waxy smell.
“Lipstick.” She looked around for the photographer to make sure she’d gotten close-ups of the rings. She had.
Lonergan stood over her shoulder. “Lipstick? What’s that about?”
She turned to look for Giannis. “Nobody’s found her clothes, a bag?”
Giannis shook his head. “Nothing like that. We’re still looking, though.”
She stood and moved back, sweeping her eyes along the pedestrian path the cops had closed off from foot passage east and west, then across to the north side of the river, where restaurants and bars faced the south bank where they stood. Foster wondered if their victim had come out of one of the bars there.
“We’ll wrap up now, transport her,” Rosales said. “We’ll know more later.”
“Thanks,” Foster said. “Appreciate it.”
She took a small flashlight out of her bag and shone it along the grass where the body lay. “No defensive wounds. No drag marks, so she fell here or was placed.” She turned to Lonergan. “The leaves have to be from someplace else.”
“Yeah,” Lonergan said. “These are some puny trees. For show, nothin’ else. No way they account for the pile used to cover her up. So where’d he get ’em?”
Foster looked up, remembering that all crime scenes were three dimensional. Above her the bridge loomed, the hecklers still around. She turned and checked the sidewalk along Upper Wacker, but there were only uniforms up there now, keeping foot traffic moving.
She stepped onto the path, her heels slightly muddy from the spongy grass and dirt. She noticed the shoes of the others—Rosales, Lonergan, the POs—were all in the same condition. Foster found Giannis. “Did you notice if there were cuts to Ainsley’s hands?” she asked him. “Blood anywhere else besides the spot on his jacket? Bruises to his face, maybe?”
Giannis consulted his notes. “Ah, he looked fine.” She watched as he flipped through pages, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t find a notation there. In the rush to wake Ainsley up and ID him, they’d likely failed to notice anything but him lying there and the blood on him. “No,” he said, definitively.
She thanked him and turned back to the body, Rosales, and the techs.
“We sent a tech to the hospital for all that,” Rosales said. “You two good for now? We need to finish up.”
Foster and Lonergan moved back, and Lonergan snapped his fingers at the closest officer. “Clear that friggin’ bridge? If they want to heckle, let ’em do it down at the superintendent’s office.” He turned to Foster. “My money’s on the drunk guy. Something sets him off, and she’s the first person he comes across. Wrong place, wrong time for her.”
“Interesting theory. You mind if we work the case, though? Take statements, canvass, at least ID our victim? Maybe we can wait until the ME has actually had a chance to look at her?”
He scowled. “Never said we weren’t gonna do all that, but we’re ahead of the game here. Sometimes killers are stupid, Foster. It’s okay to take the win. Stop trying to work so hard.”
Lonergan walked away, heading for their witness, Pratt, leaving Foster to bring up the rear. There were things she could have said in the heat of the moment but didn’t. Right now, there were more important things, like identifying their victim. She just wished they didn’t have to do it in a fishbowl. The bridge was packed. News cameras and on-the-street reporters now clogged the rail, their cameras pointed right at their crime scene tape.
“We’ll probably find her clothes and ID in the river too,” Lonergan said when she caught up to him. He snapped his fingers again, getting the attention of the nearest officer, which made Foster cringe. “Hey, you. Take a couple of your buddies and check along the edge there, will ya? See if you see anything floating that could be hers. And do not come back here and tell me you’ve found another body.”
Foster stopped. “Are you always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Condescending. Disrespectful.”
The blank look on his face answered her question. “A by-the-book cop and a bleeding heart? Boy, did I hit the jackpot. Look, Foster, I can take one but not both, all right?”
An officer ran up holding a pink backpack that was dripping wet. “Found this floating a few yards east. It was caught up on debris. Could be hers.”
He handed the bag to Foster, who unzipped it and peered inside, picking through the contents. Lonergan was suddenly interested. “A wallet,” Foster said. “Thank God.” She opened it, finding a driver’s license stuck inside the clear plastic slot, the photograph matching the face under the leaves. “Margaret Ann Birch. Nineteen.” Foster checked everywhere before pulling out a campus ID. “A student at DePaul.” She handed the wallet to Lonergan. “That’s a start.”
She kept looking, rifling through the pack and plucking out a compact paisley umbrella, a handmade accessories pouch with the name Peggy stitched on the outside, and a small handmade sign with the words JUSTICE NOW. The black marker was still legible, though the laminated cardboard it was written on was soaked through and near pulp. Foster also slid out a waterlogged paperback copy of Paradise Lost. “Milton. English major, maybe? And Peggy instead of the formal Margaret.” She gingerly held up the sign. “Looks like she was at yesterday’s march.”