Double Homicide

14

By half past nine, both Pappy and Lover Boy were secured behind bars. Tomorrow, Romeo Fritt would be on his way back to Tennessee, where he could get the needle. And Delveccio would board a bus to jail.

Pappy’s lawyers, upon hearing about the conversation with McCain, had tantrumed, threatened, then realized their boy had gotten a good deal. After three hours of wrangling with Harriet, the charge was involuntary manslaughter. Pappy’s sealed youth record notwithstanding, he was a first offender. He might see playing time within a couple of seasons.

Dorothy and McCain weren’t wild about the conclusion. But Change’s assertion was still death by aneurysm, and it would have been impossible to get a premeditated-murder conviction.

Even attempted murder was a stretch.

“It’s Boston,” McCain said. “You gotta know your audience. I think we did fine.”

Dorothy tightened her coat around her body. A bitter wind was whipping from the bay. The sky was dark and clear. No snow tonight, but that only made it colder. Her teeth chattered as she talked. “It isn’t going to sit right with Ellen Van Beest.”

McCain wrapped his scarf around his neck, mouth, and nose. “Pappy’s still gonna serve time, and we got a worse murderer off the streets.”

“I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

He pulled the scarf off his mouth and repeated himself. “All in all, it’s not too bad, right?”

“Yeah… How about you take Ellen’s phone call?”

McCain was silent for a moment as he retrieved the car keys from his pocket. “Let’s go out to dinner. I’m starved.”

“I want to get home to the boys.”

“Let’s take them out,” McCain said. “My treat. I’m thinking lobster. How about Legal?”

Dorothy couldn’t resist that. “You know, I am hungry. I’ll call up the boys and have them meet up with us.”

“Sounds great.” McCain opened the car door, shivering as he turned on the ignition and the heat. It took several minutes for the interior air to be breathable. “At first, I wasn’t looking forward to Christmas in Florida. You know how I feel about Florida. Now after trudging through this cold spell and not sleeping for the last couple of days, Florida doesn’t sound half bad.”

“Take me with you.”

“You’re welcome to come.”

Dorothy fished her phone from her oversize tote. She looked at the cell’s window and read her text message.

“Forget lobster. Change wants to see us right away.” McCain groaned. “It’s over.”

“Apparently not. Want me to ignore the head ghoul?” “Yeah,” McCain said. “No.” He snatched the phone from her. “Call him back but do it after dinner.”

The basement lab was pitch-dark until Change flicked on the fluorescent lights. The ceiling fixtures blinked in succession until the room was awash in glare. After Dorothy’s eyes adjusted, she took off her coat and hung it on the rack. Then she changed her mind and put it back on. It was an igloo inside.

Change said, “Evening, Detectives.”

“Just don’t tell me Julius died of a gunshot wound. Pappy’s been dealt down.”

“No, he didn’t die of a gunshot wound.” Change switched on the lights to a wall box mount, then searched through a series of large manila envelopes. “Sorry about the temperature. This shouldn’t take long at all.”

“So why couldn’t it wait until the morning?” McCain grumped.

“I thought you might want to see this,” Change said. “It could change your schedule for tomorrow.”

McCain mumbled, “Then show it to us tomorrow.”

Dorothy nudged him in the ribs. “What is it, Doc?”

“Here we go.” Change pulled a large X-ray out of an envelope and placed it on the backlit monitor.

“A chest X-ray,” McCain said.

“Exactly.”

“You found the aneurysm?” said Dorothy.

“No aneurysm. But now more than ever, I believe that Julius died of one.” Change picked up a pointer. “It should have been right around here. See this area of gray, this arch? This is where the aorta splits into the subclavian and the carotid.”

“I don’t see nothing except a bunch of ribs,” McCain groused.

“We’ll get to that in a moment,” Change said. “There’s nothing anatomically suspicious in this radiograph. Everything looks normal- No, let me modify that. Everything looks normal in the vascular department.” He turned to McCain. “So since you’re focused on the ribs, let’s look at the ribs. Twelve ribs in all.”

“Looks to me like a lot more than twelve,” McCain said.

“That’s ‘cause you’re seeing a double image. Ten ribs are attached. They come from the spine, swing around, and attach to the sternum.” He picked up a pointer and traced. “Because the image is two-dimensional, what we’re seeing is the same rib from both front and back projections.”

“Got it,” McCain said. “Go on.”

“Here we have what we call the floating ribs-these projections on either side of the spine that appear to hang.”

“And that’s not normal?” Dorothy asked.

“No, that’s very normal. Stay with me.” Again, Change traced the ribs. “This twelfth rib is easy-nothing in its way. The eleventh rib in this X-ray is a little shorter than normal, meaning the tip is partially obscured by the rib cage, specifically by the tenth rib’s arch. But if you look really carefully at what I’m pointing to, tell me what you see.”

The detectives stared at the X-ray. McCain said, “It’s like split.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dorothy said. “I see it.”

“It isn’t like split,” Change said. “It is split. It’s called a supernumerary rib, in this case a bifid rib, and the condition is somewhat unusual but not really rare-one in twenty.”

He faced them. “I autopsied the boy. I studied him from the inside out. The extra rib has nothing to do with Julius’s death. But it also has nothing to do with Julius. This X-ray isn’t from the body that I autopsied. The body I autopsied did not-I repeat did not-have a supernumerary rib. I would have seen it clearly, and I would have noted it.”

Change’s eyes heated. First time the detectives had seen that.

Dorothy said, “It’s not Julius’s X-ray.”

Change said, “You’re the detectives. You might want to find out what’s going on.”

Silence.

The ME tapped the X-ray with his pointer. “If I were you, I’d go back and look at all of Julius’s medical records, not just those from his most recent year. ”The one that the school gave seemed fine at the time, but now we’ll want to see all of them. What was Julius, a senior?“

Dorothy nodded.

“So Boston Ferris Health Services should have other chest radiographs. Go back and see if you can find different X-rays-at least one that really belongs to Julius.”

He removed the film and placed it back in the manila envelope. “I’ll keep this as part of my files.”

“Oh my God, you know what this means, Dorothy?” McCain exclaimed. “It means we gotta go back to Boston Ferris and deal with Violet Smaltz.”

Dorothy said, “This woman is impossible. She’s just going to stonewall us-not because I think she has something to hide, but she loves drowning people in paperwork.”

“I know the type,” Change said. “Tell you what. I’ll come with you. Maybe that’ll speed things up.”

“It would also speed things up if we enlisted President McCallum again,” Dorothy said.

“He better help us out,” McCain said. “Something’s wrong at his damn school.”