Читать книгу A Killer's Touch - Michael Benson - Страница 10

CHAPTER 5

THE DISTURBED EARTH

The search continued into the early-morning hours. Tami Treadway and Sekou strode with purpose into a remote swampy section off an unfinished road. The dog was particularly curious around a large pile of sand, the grains of which resembled those found in the Camaro and on the suspect.

There was an unfinished development off Toledo Blade, and the site was part of that. Construction had stopped in the middle when the economy fell; this part of the road had gone undeveloped. The location was just off Cranberry Boulevard.

The search was interrupted briefly when a fire chief on the scene called it a night and ordered the search resumed in the morning. Many searchers, including Pope, left, but Treadway remained on the scene. She and Sekou returned to the area near the large pile of sand.

Sekou wandered into the wooded area and then came back out. He went back in; this time, Treadway followed him.

“Whatcha got, boy?”

There were pine trees and a gully. At one point, both woman and dog had to go under a fence to proceed. Treadway saw a spot where pine needles had fallen, where perhaps there had been standing water, where the ground was darker. It was a sandy area, and it was a spot where the vegetation differed from the surrounding area. There was clay mixed in with the sand at that spot, indicating the surface was recently tilled.

Plus, it was this spot that had Sekou reacting. A barbed-wire fence bordered the scene at its rear. Without touching anything, Treadway set out to call law enforcement to the scene, which was taped off and slowly excavated.

No, it wasn’t that easy. The first police officer she encountered out on the street paid no mind to her. “He wasn’t interested and left,” Treadway later recalled with frustration in her voice.

Luckily, there were other officers in the area, and eventually the area was sealed off. Looking at the ground at that spot carefully, armed with flashlights, police saw what appeared to be blood in the sand. The large sand pile nearby was missing shovelsful of sand on one side. The sand was very light, the kind Floridians called “sugar sand.” On the ground between the pile and the disturbed earth, there was bloody sand in two dinner plate–sized piles. It hadn’t been caused by someone bleeding over a sandy spot. The sand was on top of the blood, placed to hide the blood. The blood had already been there, pooled in spots.

SCSO crime scene technician Lisa Lanham arrived on the scene. First order of business for her was to preserve the evidence. A tent was erected over the site to accomplish that. Because the ground was wet and sloped, sandbags were piled up on one side of the suspicious location, to help prevent water from seeping in.

All of this was starting to paint a picture. The disturbed earth was now being referred to as the “potential grave site.” Lanham bagged blood, sand, and sandy blood. She noticed that there were some blades of grass in the area that were naturally red. Back at the lab, they would determine what was and wasn’t blood. Excavation would begin the following morning, under natural light. Lanham left the site and reported to another emergency; then she returned to the white tent on the morning of January 19.