Honour on Trial Read Online Free Page B

observation made by navy diver John Moore: "Most cases when you have a window wide open, people are trying to get out. In this case, it didn't seem that was even an option."
    The officer, a 24-year veteran with the OPP dive unit, noted that no objects inside the car — including cellphones and a blanket — had gotten outside, an indication that there wasn't much force created by the water entering the cabin of the vehicle. A blue stuffed teddy bear sat in the back window, still and cold and soaked through.
    "It didn't sink at any rate of speed or force that would blow everything out of it," he said.
    Newell estimated the rate at which the vehicle would have sunk. "When a car sinks, the front end is heaviest. It will sink nose first. Once the car hits the bottom, it slows down the speed [at] which the vehicle sinks," he said, estimating a time of about "a couple of minutes" for the Nissan to fully come to rest on the bottom.
    On land, meanwhile, the route the car had followed to its final resting place was becoming even more puzzling for police investigators. They needed to determine right away if the green gate near where the car fell into the water could have been unlocked overnight.
    "If that gate was open, it becomes plausible that [the] car had gone through there into the locks," Scott Chris said in an interview following the trial. If the car had entered through that gate, it would support the family's later claim that the four women had gone for a joyride and accidentally found their way into the water.
    Police were already one step ahead. "That was addressed at the time," said Scott. "The lock staff were emphatic about [the gate] being locked."
    Newell's dive would bring more troubling questions to the surface. For instance, the car was facing the direction from which it appeared to have entered the water. This was odd, said Newell. "The car was in first gear , but to be wedged the way it was, it should have been in reverse." In a Nissan with an automatic transmission, first gear is usually only used on steep or mountainous roads. As well, several times during his court testimony, Newell noted how difficult it was to tell from the positions of the four bodies who would have been driving. None of the women had been wearing seatbelts.
    Ninety percent of the time on dive recoveries, he said, someone is situated "in the proximity of the driver's seat area." In this case, it appeared that 13-year-old Geeti was closest to the wheel.
    Newell began the grim task of removing the bodies from the Nissan. First out was the body in the driver's side rear seat, that of 17-year-old Sahar. She was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a sleeveless top. In her pierced navel was a stud with two stones. Her fingernails were painted with purple nailpolish, her toenails with black. "This was the easiest person to access," said Newell. He gently lifted her body out through the door and brought it to the surface.
    Next to come out was Rona, the "aunt," seated next to Sahar in the middle of the back seat, her feet resting on the floor. Rona was wearing a blue shirt. There were three pairs of earrings in her pierced ears, and six gold bangles hung from her wrists.
    Removing the bodies from the front was more difficult. Geeti was closest to the driver's door but she and Zainab were intertwined, their legs between the bucket seats. Geeti's head was behind the seat headrest, against the doorpost facing into the back seat, and her right arm was around the headrest. Newell brought the little girl's body to the surface next. Underneath her brown shirt, Geeti wore a navel ring, like her older sister Sahar, whom she idolized.
    Zainab came out last. Newell described her body as "kind of floating a little bit, which is unnatural for women." Her feet and hands were down as if preparing to touch bottom. Her fingernails were painted a light shade of blue. She wore her black cardigan backwards, buttons done up the back in the latest teenage chic trend.