Mortal Danger

Acid phosphotase turns bright reddish-purple when it comes in contact with semen, and this test on Traia was positive for semen and for sperm (now dead).
    The most bizarre and shocking discovery at autopsy, however, was that her killer had packed her vagina with leaves. There was no other way for leaves to have entered her vaginal vault so deeply unless someone had deliberately shoved them there.
    But why? Was it a kind of symbolic rape? That wasn’t likely because the killer hadn’t been impotent—he had left semen behind. It could only have been a gesture of contempt.
    The three investigators looked harder at the occupants of the house Gabrielle Berrios rented next door to Traia. They were closing in on an arrest for the theft of Tom Scott’s belongings and checks, and Jarl Gunderson needed to obtain a search warrant to find possible evidence in that case.
    They didn’t believe that a teenager would have kidnapped Traia Carr and killed her in this grotesque fashion. They would find the answers to check theft first—if they could—and bide their time on the homicide probe. The very proximity of the two houses was a factor that couldn’t be discounted. Nor could the juvenile records of many of the residents in the sprawling Berrios home.
    They got their search warrant, and the items it listed were Tom Scott’s tools, fishing gear, and blank checks. They entered the Berrios residence and found it cluttered and messy, not unusual for a place where numerous teenagers lived.
    Bruce Whitman searched upstairs. He observed a number of knives in the small bedroom of one of the boarders, but none of them matched the description of the murder weapon.
    Jarl Gunderson’s search area was a washhouse located on the back of the property. He was looking for the blank checks that hadn’t yet turned up. When he reached into a cardboard box, he came up with a small jewelry chest. Heshowed it to Taylor, who pulled a list out of his pocket; it was an itemized tally of Traia’s missing jewelry that her daughter had given him that morning.
    “Gold ladder used to hold earrings,” he read.
    “It’s here.”
    “Ring made of birthstones—”
    “That’s here, too,” Gunderson said. “And there’s a payroll stub from the bakery, from a check made out to Traia Carr.”
    Both investigators were stunned.
    “Until that moment,” Rick Taylor recalled, “we weren’t sure at all that anyone in that house was connected to Traia Carr’s murder. We were leaning the other way—we really felt it was probably someone else entirely, probably an older man who was fixated on her.”
    They wanted very much to continue their search, but search warrants are strictly defined to protect the rights of citizens. Their current warrant didn’t list any of Traia’s belongings. If they continued to search now, any evidence discovered that was linked to her murder might well be deemed “fruit of the poisoned tree”—evidence found without a search warrant—and be thrown out of court.
    Frustrated, but knowing it was the only legal way, they immediately stopped their search of the Berrios property and set about getting a search warrant seeking evidence in Traia Carr’s homicide. They certainly had probable cause now to believe that someone living in Gabrielle Berrios’s house might be the killer.
    While they awaited word that a new search warrant had been granted, the three investigators talked to possible witnesses in the house about the theft of Tom Scott’s property.
    As the detectives were pulling scorched and partially burned checks out of a burn barrel, Luis Berrios Jr. came strolling up the alley behind his home. He had a wary expression on his face as Dick Taylor looked up and said, “Hi.”
    Luis didn’t say anything.
    “You’re under arrest for possession of stolen property,” Taylor said and advised him of his Miranda rights.
    He didn’t mention Traia Carr’s murder, and Luis visibly relaxed, taking a deep breath. The detectives had seen that same relieved look on the afternoon of July 5—after they’d told Luis they were investigating the juvenile fight at the party in Everett. When they came out to question him the day after Traia vanished, Bruce Whitman and Dick Taylor had been completely unaware of Traia’s disappearance.
    Several young men in their late teens had been living next door to Traia Carr, and Luis Jr. was known to Jarl Gunderson as, at most, a penny-ante crook. He wasn’t very big at five foot eight,