“We’re treating this as a suspicious death,” she concluded.
Hummel and Chan began unpacking their equipment. Dr. Anya Feist knelt on the tile, peering down into Nysa’s face. Josie took out her phone again and dialed Noah. It rang eight times and went to voicemail.
“Mett,” she said. “Did you see Noah at the station this morning?”
He shook his head. “No. Try Gretchen.”
As Josie scrolled her contacts for Gretchen’s number, she said, “Was it busy this morning?”
“No,” Mettner said. “Not particularly.”
Noah was working the same shift as Josie. She was wondering where he was when Gretchen’s voice came through the receiver. “Boss?”
Josie put the phone to her ear and quickly explained the situation, as well as her request for Gretchen to go to the Marriott to notify Nysa Somers’ parents and bring them to the morgue. After she hung up, Hillary said, “Gerry is in the back, pulling footage. I checked the women’s locker room to see if she’d left anything in there—perhaps a swim bag or something like that. Didn’t find anything. Also checked her pockets. Nothing. I checked the men’s locker room just to see if there was anything unusual in there. Didn’t find a thing. I know you’ll want to have a look yourself, though.”
Josie nodded. The Evidence Response officers took photographs while Dr. Feist stood back. “I’ll have a look now, if you don’t mind.”
Hillary followed her, first into the women’s locker room, then the men’s, answering Josie’s questions as she asked them. There were no assigned lockers. The rooms were cleaned twice a day by custodial staff. Once mid-morning and once mid-evening. No custodians had yet reported to the building. Finding nothing of interest, Josie returned to the body.
Dr. Feist knelt on the floor beside the body once more, her gloved hands probing Nysa Somers’ limbs. “Bag her hands, would you, Hummel? In case there’s skin under her nails.”
Hummel and Chan went to work as Dr. Feist stood and snapped off her gloves.
Josie asked, “You think there was foul play?”
Dr. Feist shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t see anything that indicates she was trying to defend herself, but what are the odds that such a strong swimmer would drown? Unless she was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, which is the most likely scenario. We’ll run toxicology, but you know that takes almost two months. We could also be looking at a sudden medical event like cardiac arrest or something like that. She could have come for a swim but gone into cardiac arrest and drowned.”
Josie frowned, looking at Nysa Somers’ clothes once more. “She wasn’t dressed for swimming.”
“Right,” said Dr. Feist. “That’s your department, not mine. However, I don’t think a sudden medical event is very likely. We don’t typically see those types of things in young, healthy people. It’s not unheard of, but based on my experience, the most likely scenario is that she was intoxicated, thought it would be a great idea to go for a swim, and drowned accidentally.”
Josie turned to Hillary. “Do you think Gerry’s got that footage ready for us?”
“Come with me,” she answered. She led Josie and Mettner out of the pool area toward the back, to the brown door Gerry had gone through earlier. Up close, Josie could see that it was marked with a large, intimidating red sign with white letters that announced: Emergency Exit Only. Do Not Block. Door Alarm Will Sound. From her belt, Hillary produced a laminated card attached to a retractable lanyard which she held under a silver box beneath the door handle. A swirl of red lights danced over the card and then a beep sounded. Hillary pushed through the door, no alarm sounding. Josie and Mettner followed her into a drab gray hallway. Josie looked right and then left. At the end of each side of the hall were two more doors simply marked Exit.
“This way,” Hillary said, pointing left.
Josie and Mettner walked in single file behind her. Several feet before the exit, on the right, was an unmarked brown door with another scanner on its handle. Hillary scanned her card and they followed her inside. It was a small tile and concrete office with desks lining the walls. Each desk held two laptops, their screens lit up. One set of computers showed three views of the lobby, and the other showed multiple views of the exterior of the building.
Gerry sat at the closest desk, focused on the computer. He waved them over, clicking away until three equal-sized boxes filled up the screen. Each showed a different view of the building’s lobby. As he worked back to find Nysa Somers on the videos, Josie asked, “How difficult would it be for someone to get into the pool area from these back doors?”
Hillary said, “As Gerry said earlier, you’d need a staff ID card to get inside the exterior doors as well as the door at the back of the pool area. That’s exit only, so the alarm would sound if you opened it.”
Mettner said, “If one of those doors was breached without a staff ID card, where would the alarm sound?”
“Inside the building, and an alert would go to our main switchboard as well as to the phones of any staff currently on duty. We’ve got an app.”
“Even in the middle of the night?” Mettner asked. “Before Gerry came in?”
Hillary nodded. “Yes. In that case, the alerts would go to the main switchboard and our night patrols. But I can tell you that no alarms were triggered in this building last night or this morning. I already checked.”
“How about a list of ID cards that were used to access the building?” Josie said. “If someone accessed it using a card last night or this morning, would you have a record of that?”
“Yes,” Hillary said. “I thought of that. I checked, but no one except Gerry used a card to enter this building this morning, and he was here at five forty-five a.m.”
“How about the guard from last night?” Josie continued. “What time did he or she close up the building?”
“Ten p.m.,” answered Hillary.
“We’d like both those logs, if you wouldn’t mind,” Josie said. “The one showing the alarms for the last twenty-four hours and the ones showing key card use as well.”
“Of course.” Hillary walked over to a touchscreen tablet mounted on the wall and started punching and swiping with her fingers. A moment later, a printer beneath one of the desks whirred to life and began to spit out paper.
“Here’s Nysa,” Gerry said, motioning toward the laptop.
Over his shoulders, Josie and Mettner leaned in. On all three views, the timestamp at the bottom right read 6:02 a.m. One view showed a set of exterior lobby doors opening. Nysa Somers stepped inside, wearing her tank top and shorts, carrying nothing. She stopped midway through the lobby. Her head swiveled to the left and she smiled. She waved and said something. One of the other views showed Gerry behind his rounded reception desk, smiling and waving back. He said something to her in return. Then Nysa walked up to the doors to the pool area and pushed through them.
“Gerry,” Josie said. “You said she came most days to swim. Did she usually have some kind of bag with her?”
His brow furrowed. He stopped the footage and met Josie’s eyes. “Well, yeah. All the girls carry some kind of bag even if they come with their suits on under their clothes. Usually she has a duffel bag. Sometimes she has that and her backpack.”