Killer Instinct

ELEVEN

There were scattered patches of lingering snow on the ground at the graveyard where Janel McDonell had rested since November of the year before below the solid Iowa earth. The snow seemed to cling about the bottoms of the headstones for cold life. Janel's headstone, ornamented with flowers and cherubs, had been removed so as not to be unintentionally hit by the giant, crablike arms of the backhoe that now sank its teeth into the grave, hefted out great mounds of rock and stone, lowered this over a growing mound and then repeated the process.

It was 9 A.M. and there was a bright Iowa sun that sent cascading shadows across the cemetery, and the trees were alive with the music of birds, some darting about the solemn group of people at the grave site. The digging had taken almost two hours, but Jessica knew she was lucky. The girl's family had not spared any expense on her in death, from the headstone to the cement vault which kept water out. Janel's parents, a well-dressed black couple who both insisted on being here, had also purchased a metal casket for her.

A silence of extreme depth blanketed the cemetery when the backhoe had finished its work and the gravediggers then had to climb in over the sealed vault and go to the laborious task of breaking the seal. This was done with hand tools, and the clinking was like that of stonecutters. It echoed about the cemetery.

When the seal was broken and the backhoe put back into 115 operation, to lift aside the enormously heavy lid, the casket was found in excellent condition, looking as it had the day it was lowered: untouched, without a crack, still very much sealed tight.

Cast-iron caskets used in the Civil War that had been opened a century later displayed remarkable preservative powers. The soldiers interred so many years before were in surprisingly good condition. Some had recognizable features, and internal organs were intact. Many of the uniforms were in such a good state of preservation that these were removed to places like the Smithsonian Institution.

Using huge, looping lengths of cloth that they stitched below and around the coffin, Janel McDonell's gravediggers tugged and pulled up her casket, and brought it to the level of the cemetery grounds, depositing it at their feet. Mrs. McDonell had long since begun an uncontrollable crying. Her husband gave her support. Old wounds ripped open wide, Jessica thought.

Jessica looked past Kaseem and asked Dr. Kevin Lewis, a pathologist at the local hospital, “Will you please direct these men to the decomposed room at the hospital?” She had been delighted to learn that Iowa City's largest university hospital had provisions for the necessary work.

The McDonells were accompanied by their lawyer, a man who kept whispering in Mr. McDonell's ear. She sensed that the lawyer was keeping close scrutiny for a future lawsuit for his clients, for the mental anguish they had been put through, despite the fact they need not be on hand. There were two policemen in uniform standing at the periphery. Along with Dr. Lewis there were two other medical men from the hospital, and there was Kaseem.

Everything now depended on Janel inside her coffin. Would the specimen she must take be in a state of preservation which might tell them what they needed? Or would decay and time have destroyed the evidence? She had been told by the local mortician that Janel had been embalmed, so there was a good chance that Jessica and Janel had something to share about her killer. Was it the same man who had killed Copeland?

It was another half hour before the casket was transported to the University of Iowa General Hospital, the coffin coming to rest in the hospital's decomposed room, which was very like room C back at Quantico, if not quite as large or up-to-date. She knew how very fortunate she was to have such facilities, and she wondered again about J.T.'s chances of finding such niceties in Paris, Illinois. She rather doubted his chances.

The only problem with the room was that it was overcrowded-unreasonably so.

There was a toxicologist to take specimens, a stenographer, two mortuary assistants who did such work as lifting and transporting and sewing up the body after the autopsy was finished, a photographer, the county D.A., Lewis, the hospital's chief pathologist and his assistant, and of course Kaseem.

Just as the two mortuary assistants began to uncrank the lid of the coffin and slowly lift it up, a collective gasp going up with it, a last-minute arrival pushed through the door. It was the state medical examiner, an ancient fellow, who was as amazed as Jessica at the interest in the case. He blustered about the room, elbowing his way closer to the table where the men had placed Janel's body now. The old M.E. repeatedly said, “Stand back, stand back,” to the others whom he deemed unnecessary. His ice-blue eyes could cut glass, she thought, if they weren't smoldering with some old venomous resentment.

In fact, Jessica felt the room was thick with old resentments. Everyone was on hand to either prove or disprove something. Young Janel's death had, apparently, been a case that had harmed some reputations, embarrassed some people and agencies, and even now she had a lot of important men scrambling and jockeying for position around her. The case was one of the biggest in Iowa City history, and it still stood on the books as an unsolved homicide. Police and the D.A.'s office had been crucified in the press.

There'd been allegations made by the black community of Iowa City that said in essence that if the murdered girl had been white instead of black, the city authorities would have acted more quickly to apprehend the killer. State law enforcement officials also came under some pretty heavy fire. And so had some of the medical men who had done the original autopsy. Now enters a woman from out of state, an FBI coroner, disinterring the almost forgotten embarrassment to the system, about to quite possibly embarrass that system and the people in it again.

The old M.E. said harshly but slowly into the stenographer's face, so that she could get every word, “Why in the fuck do we need an army in here?” His eyes surveyed Kaseem's uniform as he frowned.

“ Dr. Balsam,” said the D.A., “I think you know everyone here, except Captain Kaseem with the AFIP and Dr. Coran with the FBI.”

“ Ahh, yes, the young lady who has stirred up the hornet's nest.”

She was sterile, so they did not shake hands. She thought his remark a little like President Lincoln's to Harriet Beecher Stowe, blaming the outbreak of civil war on her book.

“ I am going to get on with what I came for, Doctors,” said Jessica. “I intend to be out of your town by noon.” She hadn't meant it to sound like the script for a bad western, but it had.

“ You will have to work fast, then,” said Lewis, a slim man of perhaps thirty-five.

“ From the look of her, Lewis,” began Balsam, “I'd say Dr. Coran's usual style is fast.”

She accepted a smile from the devilish old man.

He said conspiratorially, “I was an admirer of your father's, you know.”

She looked more closely at Balsam, the most seasoned veteran of the autopsy room here. “If you know my father's reputation, then, sir, you have my admiration. But I think you know that.”

“ If my autopsy is to be questioned, I'd rather it was your father's assessment, or Dr. Holecraft's.”

“ I worked under Holecraft,” she said.

“ So I've heard.”

“ Heard?” She wondered about the source. Like Kaseem, he'd done his homework. Was there a dossier?

He quickly cleared up her confusion. “I inquired, and I have a few friends in Washington. Otto Boutine is one of them.”

“ Dr. Balsam, I have not come here to disprove anything.”

“ But an exhumation-you don't exhume a body if you trust the forensics report, and I, and some of these men in this room, we signed that report.”

“ Your report said that Janel died of blood loss from a severe wound to the throat, Dr. Balsam. I am here to either confirm that or introduce a new possibility.”

“ A new possibility. Hmmmmmmph! Do you hear that, Lewis? The girl's head was barely attached, the wound was so large, and this one's going to find another cause of death? Proceed, Dr. Coran.”

She breathed deeply, the odor of the body filling her nostrils, despite the specially designed air-conditioned room. She said, “Thank you, one and all. Now, if you will give me some space, I accept your challenge, Dr. Balsam.”

When the mortuary assistants had opened the coffin, they had found Janel McDonell remarkably well preserved. The black skin had a pink cast to it against the pink crinoline dress she had been buried in. The dress was still crisp, still clean. Over her breast lay a large silver cross and a withered rose, gifts from her grieving parents, the only people other than the doctors who had seen the gash in her throat that had ended her life. These items were now laid at the bottom of the coffin. The dryness within the coffin had preserved everything. The organs and tissues could be analyzed. Jessica felt a great wave of relief rush over her.

Earlier, the doctors had all agreed that, despite, or because of, all the factions in the room, the tissues would be divided among the pathologists and the M.E. s to do all the toxicology tests they wished for the city, for the county, for the state. Kaseem even wanted in on the divvying up of the tissues.

The dry, metal coffin had also preserved the girl's eyes. The eyes were particularly important in looking for poisons, and some of the others wanted to take some of the eye fluid for such tests. She knew that this would appease the others, that the eye contained about a tablespoon of fluid, like a little bag of water, and that since the eye itself was a hollow organ, the fluid decomposed slowly.

She allowed the others in to collect their samples, but not before she had the photographer snap close-ups of the eyes. Only Dr. Balsam seemed curious about her attention to the eyes.

“ You suspect strangulation, Doctor?” he asked her.

“ Perhaps.”

“ Why, then, slash her throat, if he has strangled her to death?”

“ She was not strangled to death,” Jessica assured him.

“ The day I can't see a strangulation murder, I will retire,” he replied.

She smiled and carried on. The two mortuary men had had enough and were gone for a smoke. Over her shoulder was Kaseem, who was being pushed out by the D.A. There was no one in the room, including Jessica, who did not feel slighted. Some had been feeling slighted since Janel McDonell had died. It was an Iowa City city case; it was the jurisdiction of the county; no, the state. And here come the federals and the military. Kaseem's uniform lent an air of respectability about him, and it helped to keep peace, perhaps, but it was just one more symbol of the numbers of jurisdictional levels at play in the crowded room where Janel McDonell's empty shell mocked their petty concerns.

Jessica hated such ridiculous jockeying, but she was also practical and realistic. Lewis had warned her about the situation, and he had been right. It was an election year in Iowa, and the D.A. might be running for governor. Distrust, along with the fetid corpse, turned the air in the room thick. Perhaps the only way to dispel all the distrust was to have the autopsy done in the open, in full view of everyone connected with the case, and yet she had orders not to divulge information about the condition of Janel McDonell's throat to anyone but Otto.

She wasn't likely to get out of this room with that secret fully intact, she realized.

Dr. Lewis did the honors of opening up the mortician's stitches. All of the internal organs were still intact and the toxicologist and the others were anxious to get at them in order to reaffirm their original findings and put this case back to rest, back into the grave.

While they took their samples, pairing off over organs they felt particularly important, Jessica felt into the throat through the deep well of the chest for any damage done in the area of the larynx.

Dr. Balsam stared at her in deep consternation and curiosity. He said in a near whisper, “You came looking for something very specific, I see. What is that?”

She removed her hand from the location and quickly cut away that part of Janel's throat that might tell them if her killer was the same man as the Wekosha blood-taker.

“ What're you doing?” asked Balsam.

“ I have to take a section of the jugular back to Quantico with me,” she told him.

He stared into her eyes. “Yes, I see that you do.”

She realized that Balsam had accepted her among a special company of doctors-as his equal. He said nothing more, and the others knew to follow his lead.

“ You can put her back away now,” she told Balsam. “I'll see to it. I'll also report what you've taken from the body in my report, send it on to Boutine. Meanwhile, you've got a plane to catch-”

“ Thank you, sir.”

“- and a killer,” he added.

She'd made arrangements for a military transport back to Quantico, if she could be at the airfield by noon. She told Kaseem of her plans, but he had gotten carried away with slicing samples from the liver, stomach and other organs to pay her much mind. He definitely had not learned much either about exhumations or the FBI case she was building. He had especially not learned about the case.

On her way to the airfield in a police car, she wondered if J.T. had had any of the various problems she had faced today.?