Code 61

SIX

Saturday, October 7, 2000

09:24

Dr. Henry Zimmer arrived at exactly the same time that the office called and told us that Special Agent Hester Gorse was en route from her residence, and had an ETA of about forty-five minutes. Things were beginning to move, finally.

Doc Zimmer was a large guy, and altogether an exceptional MD. Doctors just don't like being commandeered for medical examiner duty, because it either means that they have to leave their office, or to show up on their day off, or come out in the middle of the night. But Doc Zimmer never, ever complained. He was always cheerful, friendly, and very good at what he did.

We told him who it was, and where. He instantly expressed his condolences to Lamar.

“Lamar, I'm really sorry.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“It seems like just yesterday that I delivered her daughter.”

“Yeah,” said Lamar. He spoke to both of us. “Look, you don't really need me, so I better get over to my sister's for a while.”

“Before anybody else tells her?” I asked.

“Nope,” said Lamar. “She's the one who told me who it was, this morning. That's why I told the office to send you.”

That was a real compliment, coming from Lamar. He was very reluctant to discuss his sister's side of the family with anybody. I felt kind of flattered.

“How's she taking it?” I asked, just to be polite.

“Her? Hell, she's already talking about suing the lady who owns this place. She's just bein' herself.”

When he entered the bathroom, Doc Z. just said, “Oh, boy.” He snapped on a pair of latex gloves, and started to examine the body, moving very slowly and carefully, and not moving her about much at all. At one point he gently lifted her head, and studied the gaping wound.

“More a stab than a cut.” Then, “Seems to be some rigor present in the neck and jaw.”

Rigor mortis is a strange thing. It's the phenomenon that causes the muscles to stiffen after death. It starts when the body gets to about room temperature, half an hour to an hour or so after death. The smaller muscles stiffen completely first, the larger muscles lagging a bit behind. It lasts about twelve hours, and then subsides in another twelve or so. At that point, rigor in the neck told us that she'd likely been dead for more than a half hour. Given that I'd first observed her body about an hour before, it was hardly a revelation. But you have to start somewhere.

Doc Z. reached down and lifted Edie's left hand.

“Not pronounced in the left elbow… ”

Ah. Now we were getting someplace. The fact that she'd not gone rigid in her larger arm muscles suggested that it was probably not more than four or so hours since she'd died. Roughly, of course. “Suggested.” You hang around the courts long enough, you start to think like that. Anyway, call it 05:00, or so.

“Doc, what? About five A.M. or so, you think?”

“Make it four to six.” He didn't even look up. “The fingers are stiff, the legs seem flexible… Assuming she died in here, at about this temperature… ”

“Okay.” Four to six. Assuming a constant, or relatively constant ambient temperature. Close enough. Assume room temperature. We were in a room, after all. Assume we had no other way to estimate the time of death, yet. Just ballpark.

I helped him rock the body to either side, and then forward a little, so he could see all of her. Lividity was just barely apparent in her buttocks, her elbows, and on the backs of her legs. The gluteal muscles were important, because they're the largest in the body. They would be the last to go completely rigid.

“Shouldn't there be a little more lividity?” I asked. Lividity is the purplish mottling of the skin that occurs when blood settles to the lower parts of a dead body.

“Not if she'd experienced great blood loss,” said Doc Z. “And I'd say she has.”

“Right.” Well, there went my little theory that she'd just bled until her heart stopped.

Doc Z. stood up. “Do you feel certain about the suicide aspects of this?” he asked, sotto voce. “I have some suspicions about the bruises.”

I shrugged. “Me, too, but I don't see any real evidence to the contrary. Not unless the bruises were caused at about the same time she died.”

“Those are the sort of pronounced bruises I expect to find in the elderly,” he said.

“Abuse?”

“That might be consistent, but what I meant was, in the elderly who are being prescribed blood thinners to reduce the possibility of stroke.”

“Oh. Well, there's a pillbox out on the vanity. One of those weekly ones. You could check that.”

“Good. I suppose you've already noticed that much of the blood seems to be dried from evaporation, as opposed to being clotted.”

“Yeah.”

“Attaboy,” he said with a grin. “The neck cut bothers me, too.” Henry moved her head a bit to see the wound again. “No hesitation marks.”

“Right.”

“I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we had a good forensics specialist up on this one.”

“Okay… ”

“I'm not comfortable with this one, Carl. No hesitation marks, no sawing motion, just puncture and pull. That's a deep wound. Very deep. I would expect it not only got the jugular, but the carotid as well.”

“Sure. Reasonable.”

“But if it did, there are no indications of arterial spurts. None.”

No, there weren't. A severed jugular would give you a copious flow, to put it mildly. But a flow, nonetheless. If the carotid was cut, you'd get spurts, all right. High-pressure spurts that could splatter on a wall ten feet away. We didn't know, but the cut did look deep, and if the carotid had been cut, there sure as hell should have been spurts at the location of the event. Forensics expert prior to moving her?… You bet. Like they say, err on the side of caution.

“I'll see who we can get for a pathologist. We may have to wait until the DCI agent gets here, to order up the forensics and crime scene analysis people, though.”

“Fine,” said Doc Z. in a matter-of-fact tone. “I'll be a lot happier. Do you have plenty of photos?”

I told him what I'd taken. He had me take several more as he held her head back, and then as he moved her joints to show the progress of the rigor mortis. I noticed that he had to push a bit harder to move her head up and expose the cut. After he released it, it took several seconds for it to drop back into place. Spooky.

“Unless the lab dictates otherwise,” said Doc Z., “she can be removed anytime now.”

“Okay.” We'd call the local funeral home, and have her taken there. That's where the autopsy would be done.

“Uh, Henry, before we get out among 'em, I think you might want to talk to the local ME over in Conception County.”

“Alice? Sure. Why?”

“They had a body yesterday. Young fellow, with a really ugly neck wound. Not cause of death, possibly post mortem. Not quite like this… but, enough to make me wonder.”

Back in the bedroom, Dr. Z. looked at the contents of the pillbox. He pointed to one, a little green pill with a numeral six impressed in it. “Six-milligram Coumadin,” he said. “A warfarin sodium pill. This is a really powerful blood thinner,” he said. “It requires a course of treatment, but I see that she has dosages in her noon box on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The rest of the week is already consumed.”

“What for? Stroke?”

“That, and some post-heart attack treatment. Not likely here. I'll double-check, but I can't imagine why Edie would have needed these.”

“But, since she was taking them, that means, well, the bruises?”

“It doesn't take much pressure to bruise someone who is on Coumadin,” he said.

“And?… Help me out, Doc.” I grinned.

“Well, the bruises tell us less. The autopsy will look into the muscle tissues, to see how deep they are.”

Nothing, it seems, is ever black or white.

“Certainly would explain the absence of clotting, though,” he said.

After we finished up, I really needed a break. I also could have used a cigarette. Nothing like a dead body to make you want to smoke again. There's just something about hanging around a violent death scene like that that really starts to get to you.

Before I could leave the room unattended, I had to seal it. To preserve the evidence. Pretty simple, really, as all you have to do is put sticky vinyl seals on every entry point.

I did the windows, and sealed the door behind me, and did the same with the bedroom door. Before I left, I opened the door to what I'd assumed to be the bedroom closet, just to make sure it wasn't a staircase. It wasn't. I did notice several dresses that I mentally classified as “formal.” Really nice fabric. Two caught my eye in particular; one green velvet, one black with beadwork. The first thing that entered my mind was that she had a job as a hostess at a classy restaurant. Would have been a good guess, too, if there had actually been any classy restaurants within a hundred miles.

The rooms sealed, I decided to relax by seeing how Borman was coming with the interviews. I pulled off my latex gloves, put them in an evidence bag, and went downstairs. I should have stayed in the bedroom.

As I got to the bottom of the stairs, I could hear Borman say, “Just fill out the form there, Jack, and don't give me any shit.” He sounded exasperated. Swell.

I stuck my head around the corner, into what was a really period-looking “parlor,” the kind you'd see in an old movie where Clifton Webb would be chatting with Jane Wyman. Except here it was Borman arguing with good old Toby.

“Problem?” I asked.

They both spoke at once, the gist being that Toby didn't think Borman had the right to ask him to identify himself. Borman disagreed. I think the tone was set when Toby said, “You ever hear of the Constitution, Mr. Cop?”

I sighed, and reached into my hip pocket, removing my badge and ID case. I opened it, careful to avoid any sort of flourish. “Toby Gottschalk,” I said, showing him my credentials, “I'm Carl Houseman, Deputy Sheriff here in Nation County. Since you've already told me who you are, I can't see the problem with you identifying yourself to this officer.”

“He wants my date of birth, my address, and my middle name,” said Toby. “I don't have to give that. I know a little something about the Constitution.”

The problem was, of course, that they were nearly the same age. From my lofty distance of almost thirty-five years their senior, I thought I'd have a bit more luck.

I smiled at Toby. “Never say you know a 'little' about the Constitution. There's always somebody waiting to show you how right you are.” I put my badge case back in my pocket. “What you gotta understand, Toby, is that we have to treat any questioned death as a murder unless and until we can prove it's, oh, like a suicide or an accident. Okay?”

He at least had the sense to just nod.

“Cool. Now, since we're sort of constrained by procedure to assume we're dealing with a murder at this point, we have the right to ask you for a variety of personal identifiers.”

“I'm sure that's true,” said Toby. “Not to piss you off or anything, but I do have the right to refuse.”

“Yep,” I said. “You do. But then, we may have to do things that are not to your liking, to discover that infor mation.”

“Such as?” Toby looked completely self-possessed.

I was beginning to like Toby as a potential witness. Guts, fairly smart, and didn't have the sense to concede a point. “Such as,” I said, moving a little closer, and smiling, “determining your age by cutting off one of your legs, and counting the rings.”

He looked a little startled, but finally started to get the point.

“To tell the truth, Toby,” I said, as I went by him toward the window, “we'd just have to arrest you as a material witness. Take you to jail. Keep you until we either cleared the case by determining it wasn't a murder, or until you told us the basic things we have to know in order to positively identify you.” I looked back at him over my shoulder. “The food in jail sucks, Toby. And there are only three channels on the TV.”

“That sounds avoidable,” said Toby, more to get back at Borman than to agree with me.

“And while we're talking,” I said, “do you know who that is in the yard?” I looked out the window.

He moved toward the window with me. “The girl raking the leaves?”

There was only one person in the huge, manicured yard.

I nodded. “Yep. That's the one.” It was difficult to tell what gender, really, as she was wearing navy blue sweatpants, a long-sleeved dark blue hooded sweatshirt, fawn-yellow work gloves, red tennis shoes, and a purple baseball cap. A riot of color, as they say.

“Melissa Corey,” he said. “I call her Doom Girl.”

I looked down and to my right, into his unwavering gaze. “You do? Why's that?”

“Oh, she's probably the most depressed of any of us here. One of the really convinced 'life sucks' people. You know? One of those.”

I chuckled. I couldn't help it. “Yeah, I think I do.” I turned back to Borman. “You haven't managed to get her in for the basic questions?”

Of course he hadn't. He'd been distracted by his little tiff with Toby. Under other circumstances, the laboring Doom Girl could have made a clean getaway. My tone told him that, and a little more.

“I was just about to-”

I cut him off before he could reward Toby by saying that he'd been successfully distracted. “I'll talk with her for a sec. Why don't you just finish up with Toby, here.” Besides, it looked so nice out in that yard.

It was. I went out the front door, and around to the south side of the house, to my left. The majority of the leaves that had fallen onto the bright green lawn were intense yellow, translucent when the bright sunlight was behind them. The largest tree was in the middle of a grassy expanse that had to be at least a hundred feet wide, forming a green rectangle around the house. Melissa's wooden rake was making diligent scraping sounds as she methodically herded the leaves into one of a series of yellow piles that showed her progress around the yard. The sunlight was filtering through the leaves, picking up the faint swirls of dust she was stirring up as she worked.

“You're Melissa?” I asked as I approached.

She looked up at me, continuing to rake. She had a pale face, big dark eyes, with purplishred hair sticking out from under her ball cap, and a piercing with a small cube in her left eyebrow. “And you'd be?” A soft voice.

“Deputy Houseman, Sheriff's Department.” I fished out my badge again. She stopped raking, and examined it and the ID card I was displaying. She looked up. Eyes red-rimmed, I noticed. Whether from crying, or from the dust, I couldn't tell.

“So?” She was trying to be blase, but there was a little hesitation in her tone. She looked to be about twenty-three or twenty-four, I'd guess. I didn't remember seeing her around before.

“What can you tell me about what's happened to Edie?”

“I hear she's dead.” She started to rake again.

“You hear right.”

“Well, it happens to all of us, now, doesn't it?” Her voice was soft, and my hearing is a little old. Throw in the sounds of her rake, and the crinkling noise of the leaves…

“Pardon? I didn't quite get that?”

“It happens to all of us,” she said, louder. “All right?” When she got louder, she enunciated harder, as it were. I could see a little, blue metallic stud in her tongue.

She started raking more rapidly, the only real effect being more dust. The leaves were starting to swirl away from her rake as her speed increased.

“Well,” I said, “we all do die, all right. But most of us don't bleed to death.”

She slapped the rake into the grass. “Fuck!” She took a deep breath, and looked up at me again. “Fuck.”

“You got that right.”

“So what do you want me to say?” She looked like she could hit me with the rake at any second.

“You could tell what you know.”

“You want me to tell you she was my friend? All right, she was my friend. But it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean fuck.” Her voice was quite calm. But she started to cry. “It just doesn't mean fuck at all. It just doesn't,” and she turned her back, shoulders shaking a little.

I just hate that.

I gave her a few seconds, wishing I had something like a Kleenex to offer her, and then said, “Mind coming into the house for a few minutes? I'm afraid I have some routine questions.”

She took a deep breath, wiped her eyes and nose with her sweatshirt sleeve, and straightened up. She must have been all of five-one, and didn't make it to my shoulder level.

We both stood there for a few seconds, and I suspect she didn't know just exactly what to say. I know I sure didn't. Finally, she took a deep breath, and let out “Fine.”

We walked back to the house together, and I could see Toby watching us from the parlor window. “You live here?” I asked, more to avoid a prolonged silence than anything else.

“Yes. If you can call it that.”

“Great place,” I said. “What's the rent like?”

“It's free,” she said, nearly monotone. “We're serfs. We just have to take care of the place.”

Serfs? We'd reached the front steps. “Don't hear that term much anymore,” I said, trying to lighten things up a little. “Not since the unions came in.” Melissa didn't say a word.