A Death in Canaan by Joan; Barthel Read Free Book Online Page B

Chief Medical Examiner, who had also been notified, but when the chief didn’t arrive, Dr. Izumi decided he ought to go in.
    In the bedroom, he stepped carefully. He took off the blanket that was covering Barbara and knelt down. There was no room between her right arm and the bunk bed, so he took her left pulse. He put his hands on Barbara’s stomach to feel for body heat. Her stomach was still slightly warm. Her arm was not stiff; rigor mortis had not set in. But the wrist was cold. At 11:45 P.M. , Dr. Ernest Izumi pronounced Barbara Gibbons DOS—dead on the scene.
    Dr. Izumi didn’t want to examine Barbara any further, or move her, until pictures had been taken. So he walked back and forth through the house, looking around. He noticed the light shining by the top bunk. He noticed that there was a sleeping bag on each bunk. The sleeping bag on the top bunk had the flap open; on the bottom bunk, that flap was closed.
    The room was so cluttered that when Sgt. Richard Chapman, the photographer, arrived, he had a hard time taking pictures from all angles. He was an experienced man, twenty-three years on the force, but it still wasn’t easy. The bunk bed was only seven feet from the opposite wall, and Barbara sprawled in most of that space. Sergeant Chapman took pictures of all the dirty laundry strewn around the room, too.
    Trooper Walter Anderson, the artist, sketched the rooms quickly, marking what Lieutenant Shay said was a bloody footprint on the bedroom carpet, near Barbara’s left foot. Sgt. Gerald Pennington, the fingerprint man from the crime lab at Bethany, dusted for prints with a gray powder. He found a print on the back door, the door that was standing open, and he took a picture of it.
    Trooper Don Moran took the old wallet from a drawer in the living room. There was no money in it, or anywhere else in the house, except for sixteen cents that Lieutenant Shay found scattered on the floor. The wallet that Barbara had bought at Bob’s Clothing Store that day was not found, and neither was the money from the check she’d cashed.
    When Trooper Marius Venclauscas arrived, he began searching the house. He found the pouch of knives in the kitchen, including the knife with the broken tip. He was especially interested in that one, and he carved his initials on the brass part of the knife, in case he needed to identify it later. He found others—throwing knives and hunting knives, and an all-purpose knife that Barbara had seen advertised at the A&P. He found a knife for cutting tar paper and a kitchen knife that Peter used for working with model cars. He found several pairs of scissors and a large pair of clipping shears. Behind the living-room door, on the coat rack, he found a machete and an ice pick.
    But it wasn’t until much later, long after Peter was gone and Barbara had been taken away, that the police found the razor. It was a straight razor with a black plastic handle and a six-inch blade, the razor that Barbara got at Mario’s Barber Shop for Peter to use when he worked with balsa wood. The razor was closed when the police found it. It was lying on the shelf in the living room, where it was always kept, in its usual place.
    Mickey was just wandering around, waiting for Peter, when he saw Geoff being taken into a cruiser by Sergeant Salley. Mickey hurried over to the cruiser and got in, too. Salley said he was going to take a statement from Geoff, and Geoff looked at his dad. “They just searched me,” he said.
    â€œWhat do you mean, searched you?” Mickey demanded.
    â€œThey took me into the van and stripped me and searched me,” Geoff said.
    â€œWell, why didn’t you call me?” Mickey said angrily, though he wasn’t really angry at Geoff.
    â€œWell, I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Geoff said.
    Mickey got out of the car and went looking for Lieutenant Shay. “What the hell is going on here?” Mickey asked