Angie chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking. Justice Monaghan had said she was Jasmine’s only remaining next of kin. If Jasmine had had a child, where was it? Angie reached for her notepad and jotted a note down:
Had Jasmine given birth? If so, what happened to the baby?
She returned her attention to the report. The anthropologist had documented another skeletal anomaly—scarring at the left shoulder joint that was reportedly consistent with a chronic dislocation of the shoulder. Angie frowned. A dislocated shoulder that had not been properly slotted back into place would have been extremely painful, surely? Or at the least, it would have been uncomfortable. It seemed strange that someone of Jasmine Gulati’s socioeconomic demographic would not have received immediate and effective medical treatment.
Angie wrote in her notebook:
Had Jasmine ever dislocated a shoulder for which she was not properly treated? Possibly as a child?
She turned the page and studied the images of the fractured skull.
The blunt-force trauma was clearly evident—a hole the size of a golf ball with concentric and starburst cracks radiating out from it. According to the report, although the outer table of the skull was broken, a portion of the inner table was bent inward in a greenstick effect. Angie had seen something similar in a homicide case where the victim had been struck and killed with a hammer.
According to the anthropologist, this skull trauma was perimortem and a possible cause of death. Unless the victim drowned first, thought Angie. Or simultaneously, as might happen if the decedent was thrust headfirst over a waterfall and the force of the water had smashed her skull into a sharp rock.
She reached for her glass, leaned back, and sipped absently as she ran a hypothetical scenario through her mind: Jasmine casting her line as she stands in her waders too close against the water’s edge. Jasmine overreaching perhaps, the imbalance causing her boots to slip on those rocks. She drops her rod, her boots scraping through the slimy moss as she goes down. Once she falls into the river, her waders fill quickly with cold water and drag her down, where the current snatches her and carries her faster and faster toward the booming falls. She perhaps goes over headfirst, smashing her skull into rocks on the way down, her body twisting through rocks and her arm wrenching. She’s then submerged by the sheer volume of water powering over the falls, possibly trapping her in an underwater cavity for years until water volume and pressure and currents suddenly change enough to release her back to the river and she washes into the flat delta area.
But again, how had her body ended up two hundred meters from the shore?
Flipping through the rest of the coroner’s preliminary report, Angie found the answer. There had been two significant flooding events over the past quarter century that had caused the Nahamish to break its banks in the flat delta area below the falls. The water had spread over a distance of more than two hundred meters through the forest along the south shore. That could explain it. A flooding event could have switched up currents and flow pressure enough to release Jasmine Gulati’s remains from where she’d been trapped underwater. The flood surge could have floated her into the trees. When the water receded, she’d have been deposited there, possibly in a layer of muck over which moss and other vegetation had grown over the years.
Angie picked up a photo of Jasmine, the diamond cluster clearly visible on her left hand. Had no one on the river trip asked her about it? What about those two friends in bikinis? If so, what had she told them? Angie reached for the photo of Jasmine with Mia Smith and Sophie Sinovich on Hornby Island. She studied it closely. Jasmine was not wearing the ring in this photo, which had been taken the previous summer. How recently had she acquired it?
Angie finished the last of her wine and got up from the sofa, chastising herself. Because here she was already trying to answer Justice Monaghan’s questions. But she couldnottake this case.
Not legally, not if she ever wanted to reach her big dream of getting a full license and opening her own boutique investigations agency.
She rinsed her glass, set it in the rack to dry, and then went back to the table and picked up the retainer check. Twenty-five thousand dollars, nonrefundable, simply for agreeing to investigate. On top of that, the judge was offering three hundred dollars per hour plus expenses and a bonus bigger than the advance upon satisfactory completion. It was ridiculous. Just for finding out where that ring came from? Whether a man gave it to her? What Jasmine Gulati’s life was like in the months prior to her death? Simply because a retired justice who was going senile had afeelingsomething was wrong?
She flicked the check back onto the table. Justice Monaghan was in denial. Angie had seen this kind of behavior among relatives of crime victims. They wanted todosomething, to feel they were taking control. They wanted to apportion blame. They wanted revenge. If they were wealthy, they always thought they could throw money at the problem.
Her cell rang, and Angie started. She grabbed it off the table and felt a clutch in her chest as she saw it was Maddocks calling. She hesitated, thinking of their last stilted conversation, then engaged the call.
“Hey,” she said.
“You all right?” His voice was cool, distant, as if he was making an obligatory call to check in on her mental well-being.
Angie inhaled. “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks. You all done with Flint? You guys have a good evening?”
“Yeah. Was good. Caught up on some iMIT stuff. How’d it go with your appointment—that woman with the PI job you mentioned?”
He was fishing. “I don’t think it’s anything that will pan out,” Angie said, purposefully remaining vague. She wasn’t ready for a lecture over having brought Jilly Monaghan’s box of files and photos home.
“You busy now?”
“Now? Why?”
“I thought it might be too late to come over and see you, but then I drove past, saw your lights on.”
“Where are you?”
“Outside. In my car.”
She hurried to the window, moved the blinds aside. She couldn’t make out his vehicle in the parking lot below. It was dark. Rain smeared the lights. Black water glinted in the adjacent Gorge.
“Can I come up?” he said.
Her stomach fisted with sudden tension, and her heart started to beat fast. She shot a glance at the files and photos littering her tables. She didn’t want him to see them—didn’t want to have to explain, hear his questions, listen to his admonishments, which she knew would come, albeit cloaked in well-meaning advice. She checked her watch. Itwaslate—11:45 p.m. She’d lost track of time. Blissfully so. In immersing herself in the Jasmine Gulati files, she’d had some respite from her own screwed-up life. It struck her suddenly—a bolt from the blue—an idea.
