Green blanket

The Green blanket is both a means of concealing and moving Nancy Cleghorn’s body and one of the few physical traces connecting the killers’ route to Dead Stick Pond. Its ordinary retail history gives investigators a limited point of reference, while green threads snagged on a fence offer V. I. Warshawski a clue in the landscape where the rain has erased much else.

Identification and Use

Bobby Mallory tells V. I. Warshawski that the investigators believe Nancy was dragged in a green blanket to the south end of Dead Stick Pond. The blanket was used to transport her and then left behind when her body was dumped near the water. The account establishes its function in the crime without identifying who owned it or who carried it.

The investigators narrow the blanket’s possible retail history to a Sears product sold somewhere in the United States between 1978, when the brand began production, and 1984, when it was discontinued. This dates the blanket’s market availability, but does not establish where or when this particular one was purchased.

Traces at Dead Stick Pond

When V. I. Warshawski visits the south end of Dead Stick Pond, rain has washed away signs of the body and any evidence the police team did not collect. The police have marked the place where Nancy was found with stones. The blanket’s role is therefore reconstructed from the reported forensic findings rather than from an intact scene.

Warshawski searches the fence near the road, about twenty feet from where she left her car, and finds a few green threads caught on its wire. Broken grass beneath the fence suggests that the people carrying Nancy crossed there. The threads are consistent with the reported green blanket, but the evidence does not state that investigators formally matched them to it.

Evidentiary and Narrative Significance

The blanket turns an everyday object into a link between the killers’ movements and the place where Nancy was left. Its color makes it recognizable in the police account and leaves a small remnant for Warshawski to find, even after rain has diminished the usefulness of the scene. That remnant does not identify the perpetrators; it gives the investigator a concrete trace along a route that might otherwise have disappeared into the surrounding litter and marsh.