Angie’s heart started to thud in her chest. “But? I can hear thebutin your voice, Doc.”
“But the waders. She’s wearing the Kinabulu waders in which she was seen going over the falls.”
Angie finished the last morsel of pastry on her plate and pushed it aside. She wiped her mouth with her napkin and sat back. “So help me walk through this. Jasmine leaves the camp with her fishing rod. She goes down to the bay. The two guides, Garrison Tollet and Jessie Carmanagh, leave the campsite to gather firewood. Rachel Hart goes up to the ledge to film Jasmine fishing in the late evening light. Eden Hart says she needs to relieve herself and leaves camp. But Eden follows Jasmine down into the bay. Her mother, filming from above, sees her daughter strike Jasmine with a log.” Angie cast her mind back to her own visit to the bay. The cold water rushing by. The shiny, slippery rocks along the bank. Claire’s words.
That’s it. The bay where Jasmine Gulati’s rod was found. My dad told me there were marks in the slime-covered rocks where her studded wading boots looked to have slipped.
That niggle in Angie’s subconscious returned tenfold. Her stomach tightened. “Jesus. Give me that, Barb!” She lunged across the table and snatched away the report. She flipped quickly to the page that documented the belongings returned to Jasmine’s parents. Among them, two pairs of size nine wading boots. One with felt bottoms, another with rubber soles.
Where herstuddedwading boots looked to have slipped.
“Different boots. Shit.” She looked up, excitement racing through her chest. “The couple from Dallas who fished with me and Maddocks had different boots with them for different conditions. A pair each with felt soles and a pair each with studded soles. Jasmine Gulati also took different sets of wading boots with her according to the inventory of her belongings.”
“So?”
“She had to have been wearing stocking-foot waders on that trip. Waders constructed with neoprene booties in their foot sections that slideintothe wading boots of your choice. Garrison Tollet had told his daughter that the marks left by Jasmine’s fall on the slimy rocks indicated they’d been made by studs.” She pointed the report. “But look here.”
Barb pulled the report close and read the text on the page. “The decedent was found in chest-high Kinabulu boot-foot waders with rubber soles. Size nine.”
“Boot-footwaders,” Angie said. “Where an integral boot is constructed right into the wader. And no studs.”
“What?”
Angie grabbed back the file and flipped through it. “It’s mentioned here, in the separate SAR report from twenty-four years ago. Signs of her studded boots sliding through the moss-covered rocks.” She finished her whiskey and sat back, her brain racing. “Size nine,” she whispered, more to herself than the doc. “Jasmine wore size nine boots. She was a tall woman. The boot-foot waders in which she was found accommodated a size nine foot.” She leaned forward. “Male size nine?”
O’Hagan checked the report. “Doesn’t say specifically whether the boot-foot waders were male or female size nine. You’d have to go back and check. You mentioned this was a preliminary report.”
“Yeah, Justice Monaghan got that direct from the coroner. It’s not the official final release.”
“Maybe that’s something that would have been picked up before the final report was issued.”
“There’s an approximate one-and-a-half size difference between men’s and women’s sizing,” Angie said.
“You’re thinking the boot-foot waders in which she was found weren’t hers?”
“How is that possible?”
“Hoi, Palloreeeno and the Death Doc. Fancy seeing yous guys here.”
Both jerked up their heads at the sound of the familiar voice.
“Christ, Holgersen,” Angie snapped. “Give us some warning, will ya. What’re you doing here anyway?”
His gaze fell to the open file on the table. “Just having a drink with a mate. Saw yous over here in the corner and thoughts I’d come say hi and congrats on the big solve with the Gulati case.”
“What’s wrong with the Flying Pig?” Angie said, closing the file on the table to avoid his prying eyes. Last thing she needed was for him to go back to the station and say she’d screwed up and that the case was not actually solved.
A look akin to guilt rippled across his features, and his eyes began darting around the place. “Just talking with a colleague about a case. Needed to get away from the rest of the blokes. Leo and all, you knows?”
Angie shot an eye toward the bar, saw Corporal Rebecca Webb sitting there. Webb raised her beer bottle and nodded. Angie forced a smile and returned the nod. “Don’t let us keep you,” she said to Holgersen. “Your company is waiting.”
“I’m in no rush. Got two whole regular weekend days off.” He grinned. “Boss man took off to the mainland again for a few days on some business thing with the E-division cops.”
Surprise pinged through Angie. “He’s not in town?”
Holgersen and the doc exchanged a quick glance, and Angie immediately regretted her words.
“Right,” she said. “I forgot.” It was a lie. But she didn’t like looking out of the loop.
