Twenty Years Later
Charlie Donlea
From invention is born progress
From reinvention is born freedom
—Anonymous
Catskill Mountains July 15, 2001 Two Months Before 9/11
DEATH WAS IN THE AIR.
He smelled it as soon as he ducked under the crime scene tape and stepped onto the front lawn of the palatial estate. The Catskill Mountains rose above the roofline as the early morning sun stretched shadows of trees across the yard. The breeze rolled down from the foothills and carried the smell of decay, causing his upper lip to twitch when it reached his nostrils. The smell of death filled him with excitement. He hoped it was because this was his first case as a newly minted homicide detective, and not from some perverse fetish he had never known he possessed.
A uniformed police officer led him across the lawn and around to the back of the property. There, he found the source of the foul odor. The victim was hanging naked from a second-story balcony, his feet suspended at eye level, and the white rope around his neck angling his head like a broken-stemmed lollipop. The detective looked up to the terrace. The rope stretched over the railing, tight and challenged by the weight of the body. The twine disappeared through French doors that led, he presumed, into the bedroom.
The victim had likely twirled for much of the night, the detective imagined, and now had unfortunately come to rest facing the house. Unfortunate because, as the detective walked across the back lawn, the first thing he saw was the man’s naked buttocks. When he reached the body he noticed welt marks covering the man’s right butt cheek and upper thigh. The contusions flared a faint lilac against the livor mortis blue of the dead man’s skin.
The detective reached into his breast pocket and removed a pair of latex gloves that he slipped onto his hands. Rigor mortis had bloated the man’s body to the point of explosion. His limbs looked like they were stuffed with dough. A bundle of rope bound the victim’s hands behind his back, preventing his swollen and stiffened arms from extending out from his torso. Cut this rope, the detective imagined, and this guy would unfold like a scarecrow.
He gestured for the crime scene photographer, who waited at the periphery of the lawn.
“Go ahead.”
“Yes, sir,” the photographer said.
The crime scene unit had already been through the property, taking photos and video to log everything at the crime scene as the before evidence. This second time through would be after the detective had his initial look. The photographer raised his camera and peered through the viewfinder.
“So what’s the initial thought here?” the photographer asked as the camera’s shutter clicked redundantly as he snapped a series of photos. “Someone tied this guy up and threw him over the balcony?”
The detective looked up to the second story. “Maybe. Or he tied himself up and jumped.”
The photographer stopped shooting and slowly took his face away from the camera.
“Happens more than you’d think,” the detective said. “That way, if they have second thoughts, they can’t save themselves.” The detective pointed at the dead man’s face. “Get some clicks of that gag in his mouth.”
The photographer squinted as he walked around to the front of the body and looked at the dead man’s mouth. “Is that a ball gag? Like, S and M stuff?”
“It would certainly go hand in hand with the whip marks on his ass. I’m heading upstairs to see what’s holding this guy in place.”
*
In addition to the latex gloves covering the detective’s hands, plastic wraps now enclosed his shoes as he walked into the bedroom. The balcony doors opened inward and allowed the same breeze that had earlier filled his nostrils with the smell of death to gust through the bedroom. The pungent odor was less noticeable here, one story higher than where death hung in the morning air. He stood in the door frame and moved his gaze around. This was clearly the master suite. Vaulted ceilings were twenty feet high. A king-sized four-poster bed stood in the middle of the room with a night table on either side. A dresser sat against the far wall, its mirror reflecting his image back at him. Through the open balcony doors, the white rope curved up and over the railing to run at waist height across the room and into the closet.
He stepped into the room and followed the rope. The closet had no door, just an arched entryway. When he reached it, he saw a spacious walk-in filled with neatly organized clothes hanging from scores of identical hangers. Shoes filled the thick pine cubbyholes that covered the back wall. Amid the cubbies was a black safe about five feet tall, likely weighing close to a ton. With an ornate knot, the end of the rope was tied to one of the legs of the safe. The other end, the detective knew, was attached to the man’s neck, and whether he jumped off the balcony or was pushed, the safe had done its job. The four legs indented the carpeting with no adjacent depression marks to suggest the weight of the man’s body had moved it even an inch.
A large kitchen knife lay on the floor next to the safe. Morning sunlight spilled through the balcony doors and into the walk-in closet, painting his shadow across the floor and up the far wall. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shined it at the carpeting, highlighting the small fibers next to the knife. He crouched down and examined them in the bright glow of his flashlight. They appeared to be bits of frayed nylon from when the rope had been cut. Within the carpet fibers was a small puddle of blood. A couple of droplets had also landed on the handle of the knife. He placed a triangle-shaped yellow evidence placard over the blood and fibers, and another next to the knife.
He turned and walked out of the closet, noticing a nearly empty wineglass on the night table. He was careful not to disturb it as he placed another yellow evidence marker next to it. Lipstick smeared the rim. High-stepping over the taut rope, he walked past the mirrored dresser and into the bathroom. He slowly looked around and saw nothing out of place. Soon, the forensics team would be in here with luminol and black lights. At the moment, the detective was interested in his first impression of the place. The toilet lid was open but the seat was down and dry. The toilet water held a yellow color, and the pungent smell of urine registered now as his nose caught up with his eyes. Someone had used the toilet but failed to flush. A lone segment of toilet paper floated in the bowl. Another evidence placard found the toilet.
He walked from the bathroom and into the main area, once again surveying the room. He followed the rope out to the balcony and looked down at the dead man hanging from the other end. In the distance, the Catskill Mountains were cloaked by early morning fog. This was the house of a very wealthy man, and the detective had been handpicked to figure out what happened to him. In just a few minutes he had identified blood evidence, fingerprints on a wineglass, and a urine sample that likely belonged to the killer.
He had no idea at the time that all of it would be matched to a woman named Victoria Ford. And the detective could not have predicted that in two short months, just as he had every bit of evidence organized and a conviction all but certain, commercial airliners—American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175—would fly into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. On a sun-filled, blue-sky morning, three thousand men and women would die, and the detective’s case would go up in smoke.