After Labor Day, the cops only patrolled the beaches part-time, and it took a while for Westport PD marine officers to arrive at Seymour Rock, even though it sat just off Compo Beach. The department’s ten-meter Naiad Marine Patrol Vessel was docked less than a quarter mile away, but it was a half hour before the boat pulled up next to Ernie Sosa’s. He had stayed, as the dispatcher asked, letting his boat drift a bit so he didn’t have to look at the canoe. When the police boat arrived, he was met by a petite detective with short black hair. She instructed him to meet another detective at the Compo dock to take his statement and he slowly motored off.
Detective Demitria “Demi” Kofatos had seen a lot of dead bodies in her fifteen years with the Westport PD. But through all the car crashes, strokes, suicides, and overdoses, there had never been a body that looked like the woman in the canoe, her head nearly cut off and resting on a gelatinous pillow of blood. After photographing the scene carefully, she and the other officers used gloved hands to lift the canoe—with the body still inside—into the police boat and headed for the dock. There, they waited another half hour for an Associate Medical Examiner to arrive from the chief coroner’s offices in Farmington, just outside Hartford. There was no phone or other personal possession visible in the canoe but they didn’t search the pockets of the dead woman’s slacks or look beneath her. Crime scene protocol dictated that the Associate ME should be the one to first touch the victim. So they put the time to good use, taking more photographs, including of the twelve-digit Hull Identification Number on the bow of the canoe, from which Demi learned it was a Westport-registered canoe, assigned to a slot on the storage racks fifty yards from where she was standing.
She walked over to the sprawling wooden skeleton of the kayak and canoe racks, mostly empty as the October 31 town deadline approached for residents to remove their boats for the winter. It felt strange to be here on a case. This wasn’t where people died; it was where she brought her dog to play in off-season months. There were no signs of unusual activity in the sandy grass by the racks, but she photographed the ground anyway. A chain and open four-digit padlock dangled from the assigned slot. She photographed them and, using rubber gloves, removed and bagged the chain and lock as evidence.
When she got back to the dock, the Associate ME had arrived and was supervising the removal of the body from the canoe. The vessel would be wrapped in plastic and taken to the state police lab for processing. She recognized Martin Mortenson, who was assigned to cover southern Fairfield County, from other unattended-death scenes in Westport. She knew him well enough to know he had a good sense of humor, like most people in the death business, but hated the nickname “Morty the Mortician” that gave so many cops the chuckles. She called him Martin.
There was no identification on the body, which Martin processed for transportation to the Chief Medical Examiner’s office on the campus of the University of Connecticut Medical School. He bagged her hands, but there was no apparent sign of trauma on her hands or fingers. Her clothing, including the bra and underwear, appeared undisturbed, although detailed examination would come later. There was no sign of a weapon. In fact, the only thing inconsistent with being a well-dressed woman napping in the bottom of a canoe was the smoothly cut opening just above her thyroid cartilage, slicing her from one ear to the other.
On her cell phone, Demi made calls to nearby police departments, checking for any missing persons reports. She used her laptop to query the LInX system, looking for reports that might match their victim. The Law Enforcement Information Exchange was the cop version of Google, knitting together the many local departments of Connecticut and the other states. But nobody in Connecticut or neighboring states had a missing middle-aged, five-foot-three-inch White woman with short brown hair.
“Really strange, Martin,” she said, tapping the laptop screen with one of her black-painted fingernails.
“What is?”
Demi couldn’t shake the feeling that she should know the woman. Westport cops didn’t belong to the clubs or attend the cocktail parties of the residents they served and protected—in fact, it was a miracle they could afford to live here—but she still knew the look.
“This lady looks Westport-fancy. Nice pants, silk blouse, expensive shoes, salon-looking haircut. But nothing on LInX. Maybe too fresh for something to be there, but I also called all the adjoining departments. Nothing. Could it be that only the killer knows she’s missing?”
“That is odd,” Martin replied. “Rich people usually don’t go missing without ripples.”
“Yup, and we got lots of them around here—rich people, I mean. I’m gonna start with the canoe’s owner. Maybe it’ll end there. Safe drive to Farmington.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as we have anything. You do the same, Demi?”
“Will do.”