Open season

8

I parked outside my home about ten that night. Gail wanted an early start the next morning. I spent the night with her every once in a while, usually on weekends or days when we didn’t have to tear off to some job at the crack of dawn. We were both old enough now that we wanted our time together rounded out and comfortable, including a good night’s sleep and a casual, stretched out breakfast. That hadn’t stopped us from making love on the couch before dinner tonight, but we hadn’t seen each other in a while.

Happier and whole again, I felt a little silly remembering the tape I’d placed across the apartment door that morning. It was something I’d seen James Bond do some twenty years earlier in a movie-a way for him to detect intruders while he was away. Of course he had used a hair, but I didn’t have enough left to start plastering them across doorways.

Why I had done it was another matter. The Plymouth Duster had definitely unsettled me, and the appearance of the masked avenger-or whatever he was-had hardly helped. Putting tape on the door had been an impulse but one that had made me feel a bit more in control, as if proving to the Plymouth’s driver that he wasn’t the only one taking notes.

But whatever confidence it had gained me quickly vanished. As I reached the top of the stairs, I could clearly see the tape was broken. I stood there for a moment, uncertain of what to do. Outside some stranger’s apartment, a similar setup was easy to deal with. You pulled a gun, organized your troops, knocked politely, and, if necessary, had the door broken down. It was scary but routine-at least on paper. This was not routine.

I stepped out of the way of the door, slipped my key in as quietly as possible, pulled my gun, and turned the lock. The door opened with a loud click. I waited a bit, breathing ha ^quird through my mouth. I felt terribly hot. I pushed the door wide open, still from around the corner, and listened, cataloguing each sound-the clock, the heating pipes, the hum of the refrigerator-until I could hear no more. Only then did I step cautiously across the threshold and into the semidarkness.

It took me fifteen nervous minutes to find out the apartment was empty. I went through it twice, increasingly angry that my own house had become a place of menace on the strength of one half-seen Plymouth Duster and a torn piece of Scotch tape. I was angry that the place had been invaded and all my things picked over, and I was angry that I might be inventing the whole goddamned thing to begin with-torn tape notwithstanding.

Finally, and I suppose fundamentally, what bothered me most was that basic elements in my life were being disturbed, some by the simple pressures of time, like Murphy’s retirement, and others by a more malevolent force. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like how they were all mixing together, forcing everyday events to assume ominous proportions. Having to put tape on the door was bad enough; finding it broken and stalking through my own apartment with a gun was downright disturbing. I wanted to be tightly focused as I began this investigation, but it wasn’t happening. Whether it was Murphy’s timidity or something subliminal I’d gotten from reading those transcripts, I was beginning to feel out of sorts.

The telephone rang and I picked it up in the darkness. I listened without speaking. “Joe?”

The voice was unfamiliar.

“Yes.”

The line went dead, but I paused with the receiver halfway back to the cradle. I remembered that when I’d answered, it had been wrong end around. That, for a man living alone, was a sign of things amiss.

I unscrewed the mouthpiece and poured its contents on the desk. A small silver disc rolled into a corner and shimmied to a stop. It glistened brightly in the glow of the streetlights outside. I turned on my desk lamp and slipped a piece of notepaper under the bug. On television these things were as common as lifesavers-even flat broke private eyes had them. But this was a first for me. The listening devices we used belonged to the state police and were far less fancy, with wires and battery packs. This, I thought as I poured it into an envelope, was in a whole different league.

· · ·

Murphy looked up over his reading glasses. “What’s up?”

“This.” I crossed his office and dropped the bug on the report between his hands.

He didn’t touch it but bent over carefully and peered at it. “That’s pretty neat. Where’d you get it?”

“You can pick it up. It’s been dusted. I got it out of my phone.”

He scowled and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger as if expecting it to sting. “When?”

“Last night. When I got home. I noticed some tape I’d put across the door was broken. That thing was all I found. I searched the rest of the apartment, but I’d need equipment to do a proper job.”

He rolled it in his palm. “I saw something like this at that FBI course I took a few years ago. It had a range of about a city block.” He let a few seconds pass before adding, “Do you always put tape across your door?”

“No.”

He put down the bug and leaned back in his chair. “Why now?”

“I thought I was being followed.”

He rubbed his eyes and refocused on a favorite spot on the wall near the ceiling. “Who by?”

“A green Plymouth Duster. No plate and no ID on the driver.”

“And you’re sure about this?”

“Nope.”

That brought his eyes off the wall. “Nope?”

I shrugged and pointed my chin at the bug.

“What other case are you working on?”

“Small stuff. A burglary, a vandalism-nothing that would tie in. Do you have any friends at the FBI that could take a look at that thing? J.P. says it’s way over his head.”

“Yeah, I think I might. You sure it’s worth it?”

“So far, we’ve got one killing, one sexual assault, one policeman mugged, and one maniac running around with a ski mask. You decide.” He allowed a half smile. “All right, I’ll Express Mail the little bastard.” He stopped and squinted at it again. “I wonder if it’s still working?”

I raised my eyebrows and turned to go. He stopped me. “Hold it.” He dropped the bug into his drawer and slammed it shut. “Where are you off to?”

“Woodstock. I thought I’d go have a chat with Davis.”

“That’s a hell of a distance for a chat.”

“I’m hoping for a hell of a chat.”

Bill Davis had changed a lot in three years. At the jail, he’d been a study in restrained frustration-a man whose consistent claims of innocence had been, in the public’s eyes, undermined by icy self-control. At his sentencing, standing straight and silent, he had merely shaken his head, incredulous at the stupidity of all those around him.

Now, in the low-ceilinged visitor’s room at Woodstock, the silence was still there, but it floated on bitterness and defeat. He sat opposite me, his arms crossed, staring at the table between us, as far away from this room as his mind could possibly take him. I imagined his years of isolation had made him an expert.

“My name is Gunther. I’m with the Brattleboro Police Department.”

He continued staring at the table.

“I wanted to ask you some questions.”

Still nothing.

“I’ve been spending the last couple of days reading over your case, but I haven’t been able to come up with much.”

A small crease appeared between his eyes. He glanced up at me. “About what?”

“About why you are where you are.”

He smiled gently and gave that familiar shake of the head-a glimpse from long ago. “You people.”

“I’m thinking of reopening the case.”

“You killing time?”

I wondered if I should tell him about Ski Mask but decided against it. “How much of the evidence found against you was planted?”

One eyebrow lifted. “What’s your problem?”

“Like I said, I’ve been going over the case. It feels wrong. I thought you might help me.”

“What for?”

“Right now? To kill time.”

The smile again. “I know how to do that.”

“I thought you might. So how much was planted?”

“All of it.”

“What really happened?”

“Sweet Jesus. If you don’t know that by now, you do need help.”

“So you’ve got nothing to add? Nothing you’ve thought of since the trial?”

He shook his head.

“You were about to go into your apartment, heard someone call your name from around the corner, went to investigate, and got knocked on the back of the head, and that’s all?”

“That’s it.”

“What had you been doing before coming home? It was late, wasn’t it?”

“You know it was. I was out drinking.”

“At Mort’s B amp; G? Like every night?”

“Uh-huh.”

“A couple of beers, a few hours of the bar TV, then home?”

“Right.”

“No dope?”

“No dope.”

“But you woke up with heroin in your veins.”

“That’s right.”

“How did you know that?”

“I didn’t. They told me. I just knew I was high.”

“Had you ever taken heroin before?”

“Don’t ct"›t"› all us niggers?”

“Had you?”

“No.”

“What about Kimberly Harris? Were you two friendly?”

This time he positively grinned. “That’s the biggie, isn’t it? Did you ever see a black chick you wanted to lay?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ve never seen a white chick that interested me neither. Believe it or not, a black man’s idea of dying and going to heaven has nothing to do with any white piece of ass.”

“I just asked if you were friendly.”

“Bullshit.”

“Maybe. Did you talk at all?”

“Sure we talked. She spent damn near every day lying around that pool. Said she wanted a tan like mine. Real funny.”

“No job?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“Did she have any friends?”

“We talked, man. That means the weather, ball games, stuff like that-not her love life.”

“I didn’t mean that. Any comings or goings at all?”

“I barely knew her. Ask Boyers-he’s the man with the eye for detail.”

“Boyers?”

“The manager.”

“He really watched the door, did he?”

Again Davis laughed. “Doors aren’t his thing-more like windows. He is white, though; I guess he’s allowed.”

“You saw him doing that?”

“Sure. I tend to blend in at night.”

“Did he do anything else?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Could he have killed Harris?”

“You thought I did.”

Good point. “Do you know where he was when you were knocked out?”

“No. His lights were on, but that might have been anything.”

“What about someone who might have had it in for you? Had you crossed anyone?”

He leaned forward, his face transformed by anger. “I was fresh off the goddamned bus, man… the only black face in that whole honky town. I came up here to get away from all that shit-the ghetto, the Vietnam stuff. I swallowed all that Vermont, home of the Underground Railroad crap-hook, line, and sinker. But a cracker here’s like a cracker anywhere else. You dudes know what a nigger is just like they do in Georgia or Alabama or anywhere else. Hell yes, I cr celler ossed someone. As soon as I hit town, I crossed every man, woman, and child what saw me.”

He stood up, overturning his chair, and walked away.

I returned through the gates and locked doors, past the listless guards, and slowly traded the jail’s gray embrace for the gentle blur of falling snow. I knew he’d overstated his case-he had good reason. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that his basic argument was probably right on the mark.

The chief medical examiner’s office for the state of Vermont is located in Burlington on the second floor of a renovated residential building on Colchester Avenue. The first floor is occupied by a local dentist. I arrived at the unmarked side door-a concession, no doubt, to the more pessimistic of the dentist’s clients-near the middle of the afternoon, having spent the previous three hours on the interstate from Woodstock. The snow had continued to fall all day, and what little traffic there was had been gradually reduced to using the right lane only. The sole plow truck I’d seen was going in the other direction.

The ME was not in. This was her week on duty, and she pretty much hung her hat at the Medical Center all day. Her secretary suggested I speak with the assistant, who was also not in, having had an emergency call from home, but who might be back later. When I asked whether I could see the ME anyway, wherever she might be, I was informed that was impossible-her schedule indicated she was in the middle of an autopsy at the very moment. I thanked the secretary and left the building.

The drive to the Medical Center took five minutes; locating the morgue took fifteen. I finally found it in the basement, behind several signs warning against unauthorized personnel, on the other side of a door pasted with an oversized dancing Snoopy. I wondered who was responsible for the curious mix of messages.

The room I entered had two large gleaming steel tables surrounded by arcane and expensive-looking equipment on wheels, all lit by a single globe mounted in the center of the ceiling. A scene to warm Dr. Frankenstein’s heart. A small man dressed in green and wearing a transparent rubber apron appeared at another door. I checked in vain for a hump.

“Looking for someone?”

“Dr. Hillstrom.”

“She’s in there. I’ll be right back.” Igor crossed the room and disappeared down a hallway, leaving me to pick my way carefully through a tangle of dimly lit cables and stray chairs to the door he had indicated. I pushed it open and walked in.

It was a smaller version of what I’d just left: one table, half the equipment. It was also well lit and occupied by one tall, angular blonde woman dressed in green and one enormously fat dead woman lying naked face up on the table.

“Are you from the police?”

“Yes,” I answered, surprised. I hadn’t realized her secretary was that efficient.

“I’m Dr. Hillstrom.” She reached over to a counter behind her and picked up a clipboard. “Could I have your name? State law requires I note everyone attending an autopsy.”‹ c auind/p›

“Joe Gunther.”

“Rank?”

“Lieutenant.”

“Rutland Police Department.”

“No, Brattleboro.”

She stopped writing and looked up. “What?”

“Brattleboro.” She glanced at the clipboard and then back to me. “Are you on some kind of exchange program or something?”

There was a sound behind me. A nervous young man with a wispy, struggling mustache slid into the room.

“Who are you?” Hillstrom demanded.

“Sorry I’m late. I’m John Evans. I’m supposed to collect some stuff on the autopsy…” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a notebook. “A Mrs. Ricci?”

“Then you’re from Rutland.”

Evans nodded and repeated. “Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t find a parking space.”

Hillstrom stared at me. “Perhaps this gentleman took it.”

I let out a small sigh and smiled. “I think we’ve started out on the wrong foot.”

“If you leave right now, we haven’t started out at all.”

“I was hoping I could talk with you.”

“About what?”

“The autopsy on Kimberly Harris. It was a case you handled…”

“I remember it-three years ago. Did we have a meeting scheduled that I’ve forgotten or something? This doesn’t ring the slightest bell.”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t; I drove into town unannounced. Your secretary mentioned you were here and your assistant wasn’t at the office, so I took a chance.”

Igor walked into the room with two shiny steel slats and stood by the table. Hillstrom nodded to him. “I’ll be right with you, Harry. A chance at what, Mr. Gunther? That we could have a little chat over a lukewarm corpse? I don’t just carve these people up like Thanksgiving turkeys.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but she lifted her gloved hand to silence me. There was a moment of quiet in the room as she briefly closed her eyes. When she spoke again, eyes open, the edge was gone from her voice. “I apologize; that was short-tempered. I take it you are in a bit of a rush to have this conversation, is that right?”

Assuming that if Ski Mask didn’t sense some action on our part soon, he’d feel obliged to stimulate us once again, and perhaps as fatally as he had with Jamie Phillips, I was hard put to argue. “I’m afraid time is a little tight. I didn’t mean to be this much of a nuisance.”

“You’re not-so far. It’s been a long day.” She turned an icy gaze onto the young cop from Rutland. “Filled with delays.”

“I’m sorry,” he said for the third time. She took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s start over. I’m Hillstrom; this is Evans, Gunther, and this is Harry Bergen. Let’s all hope I’m about to open up Mrs. Emma Ricci, sixty-three, the victim of a pedestrian-auto mishap having occurred in Rutland at 6:30 P.M. yesterday. Is that right, Mr. Evans? What’s your rank, by the way?”

“Corporal, ma’am.”

“All right, Corporal; now, you’re here for a blood sample, some photographs, and cause of death, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“ ‘Doctor’ will do fine. Good. Well then, as I determine potential causes of death-and there will be several judging from her appearance-I’ll let you know and you can take your photos. Harry will be doing some of that himself for our files. Lieutenant Gunther, I’ll be happy to talk with you after this is over. If you’d like to attend, be my guest. Have either one of you attended an autopsy before?”

“No ma’am-Doctor.”

I nodded. We didn’t have to do it often, and when we did, it was usually a case just like this one, involving a car.

“Well, if you get dizzy or worse, let us know so we can help you out. There’s nothing disgraceful about having normal human reactions to all this. Ready, everyone?”

We both nodded like schoolchildren and watched her and Harry Bergen get to work. Harry had the gentle touch of a caring mother-more than Dr. Hillstrom-smoothing Mrs. Ricci’s hair and occasionally resting his hand on her lightly as if to lend some little comfort. I felt that if any of Mrs. Ricci’s relatives had been here, their horror might have been blunted by his touch.

I had stood over quite a few dead bodies in my time, considering it covered both the Korean War and some thirty years as a cop. Most of them had been in context, from shell holes and blasted trees to twisted auto wrecks and smashed living rooms. Autopsies were different. The bodies were stripped, both of clothes and environment. They were laid out, cold, white, and flat on their backs, and they were dissected, just like frogs in a classroom. In many ways, an autopsy for me was the careful disassembling of a complex machine, piece by piece. I will admit, though, that I kept this side of me private. People tended to get twitchy around other people who enjoy autopsies.

Hillstrom and Bergen struggled to roll Mrs. Ricci onto her side so they could fit the two slats beneath her. That done, she lay somewhat suspended above the surface of the table, allowing a gentle stream of water to course under her, carrying away whatever fluid she might give up.

She was an enormous woman, gray-haired, lightly mustached, with heavy, unpleasant features. She reminded me of those discontented travelers I’d seen on buses or trains, their sleeping faces reflecting all the inert unhappiness of their lives. I also noticed, for no reason whatever, that she had incredibly unattractive toenails, yellow and gnarled in contrast to her pasty-white rubberlike skin.

Hillstrom picked up a scalpel and quickly made a long curved incision from shoulder to shoulder. She then intersected the slit just below the throat and cut a cat cklstraight line between the breasts down to the groin, creating a slightly rounded T.

“Were you the officer at the scene, Corporal?” Hillstrom asked without looking up.

Evans, his eyes glued to the scalpel, swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“Could you give us the circumstances?” She buried her hand into the cut near the breast and pulled the thick outer layer of skin away from the body, cutting the few small pieces of tissue that still connected the two as she went and revealing the lungs underneath. The large flap in her hand consisted of two to three solid inches of bright yellow, glistening fat. A cloying, nauseous odor filled the room.

I could hear Evans’s breath coming in short and rapid gulps. “She was, ah, crossing the street… legally. You know, a crosswalk. Car should have stopped…”

“Why don’t you have a seat? No point standing around getting sore feet.”

“Okay.” Evans gratefully took a seat and leaned forward, his elbows propped on his knees, the perfect image of studied casualness.

“You might also want to get your camera gear ready.” She motioned to Harry, who picked up Evans’s camera bag and placed it on the floor between his feet. Evans bent further forward to unzip it and rummaged among its contents.

“Was the driver intoxicated?”

“Yes, ma’am.” His voice was distinctly clearer. “She became hysterical at the time of the accident, so we haven’t been able to question her yet.”

Having folded both breasts back under the body’s arms, Hillstrom started examining and removing the organs, as carefully as she might have unpacked a duffel bag filled with china. The odor was absorbed by the ventilating system.

“You might want a shot of this.” Evans, steady once more, slowly approached the table, camera in hand.

“She’s suffered a punctured aorta, in itself enough to cause death, although possibly not the primary cause here; and right behind you can see where her spine is broken. I can get you a clearer view of that later.” Hillstrom placed her pale hand behind the aorta to give the picture more contrast. Evans focused and shot.

“You might want to add, by the way, that so far we also have a punctured lung, several broken ribs, a ripped diaphragm, and an entire pelvic area that looks shattered beyond belief. Also a perforated bowel. Did she go under the car, do you know?”

“I don’t know. We found her with her head resting on the curb in front of the car.”

“Yes, I noticed that.” She moved to the body’s right side and slipped her finger deep into a hole hidden in the hair above the ear. “Your primary cause may be lurking under here.”

Evans sat down.

The autopsy continued for another hour and a half, during which Harry retrieved vitreous fluid from the body’s eyeballs with a syringe, and Hillstrom cut around the back of Mrs. Ricci’s head, peeled her forehead down over her nose like a rubber mask, and re c mand vealed the naked skull. She used a hand-held vibrator saw to remove the top half of the cranium and established that a broken brain stem had been the elusive primary cause of death. Both events sent Evans back to his chair.

Hillstrom’s prowess at this was impressive. She cut, sawed, and sliced with absolute grace, never nicking a wrong part, never hesitating once she’d started. It made me realize that, had Mrs. Ricci been alive, she could have done a lot worse than to pull this doctor for an operation.

We ended up, the two of us, off by a side counter where Hillstrom did her organ dissections. She was cutting thin slices of lung and studying them under the bright light. She held up a large piece of tissue. “See how the furrows are ingrained with black? That’s pollution. You don’t find it in country people; you get a ton of it in New Yorkers and the like. I’d guess she lived around Rutland, or a similar-sized city, all her life.” She looked up from her work at the others in the room, now out of earshot. “So, what about Kimberly Harris?”

“I just have some questions about your findings.”

“Think I messed up, huh?” The question was put with perfect neutrality, but I decided I wouldn’t run the risk. Things had started out badly enough.

“No, I think I came here at the wrong time, without an appointment, and said all the wrong things. Will you let me get my foot out of my mouth?”

She looked at me for a moment and smiled slightly, as if letting me halfway off the hook. “What would you like to know?”

“At the trial, you testified to the presence of sperm on the body…”

“Semen.”

“Right. Is there anything else you can tell from that?”

“Like blood type? I did.”

“No, I mean anything else-like race or if the man was taking medicine or had a cold.”

“Are you asking if I did or if I could?”

“Both, I guess.”

“I didn’t and I might. I couldn’t tell if he had a cold.” She stood up and took off her gloves. Harry began gathering up the organs and placing them into a large plastic bag, which he packed in the body’s empty cavity before sewing it up.

“But you didn’t do any of that?” I followed her across the room where she filled out some forms stuck to her clipboard.

“No. It’s usually not required in those cases, especially the quote-unquote open-and-shut ones like Harris, which I gather from your presence has undergone a change of status.”

“No, no. It’s still officially closed. I’m a bit of a Lone Ranger on this.” She stopped writing and genuinely smiled at me for the first time

“Really? You trying to reopen the case on your own?”

“Sort of. Things have happened that have made me curious.”

She nodded. “I’m glad.”

Tha t got me. “You are?”

“Yes. You want to follow me back to my office? My records are there, and I’m finished for the day. I also have some very good hot cocoa on hand.”

“That would be hard to turn down.”

“Then don’t.”