Pray for Silence

CHAPTER 9

Neither Painters Mill nor Millersburg have a morgue per se, so when an autopsy is required, bodies are transported to Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg, which has morgue facilities and now receives funding from two neighboring counties.

It’s nearly six P.M. when I pull into the lot and park illegally in the emergency parking area. I’m hyperaware of the passage of time as I stride through the glass doors. The day is nearly gone and I’ve accomplished only a fraction of what I’d intended. I’d planned to speak to the manager at the tourist shop where Mary Plank worked, but I got tied up with other things and now it will have to wait until tomorrow.

A young African-American man waves at me from the information desk as I pass. I return the wave and head directly to the elevator that will take me to the basement. I’ve visited this part of the hospital more times than I want to recall in the last year. I keep hoping I’ll get used to the sights and smells of death, but I don’t think I ever will.

The elevator doors whisper open and I step into a hushed tiled hall. I pass a yellow and black biohazard sign and a plaque that reads: Morgue Authorized Personnel. At the end of the hall, I push open dual swinging doors and find myself in yet another hall. A middle-aged woman in a red power suit looks up from her computer when I enter. “Chief Burkholder?”

“Yes.” I extend my hand and we shake.

“Doc Coblentz is expecting you.”

The nameplate on her desk tells me her name is Carmen Anderson. “You must be his new assistant.”

“I’m part of the new budget. Started last Tuesday.”

I glance toward the door that will take me to the morgue foyer. “Hell of a way to start your first week.”

“Doc says it’s the first time he’s had a full house since that semi hit that family out on the highway three years ago.” She grimaces. “You guys know who did it yet?”

“We’re working on it.” I motion toward the door. “Is the tech still here?”

“Oh, yeah.” She smiles. “Cute kid. He ought to be on soaps instead of hanging out with a bunch of dead people.”

I feel a tad more upbeat as I go through the swinging doors. The autopsy room is straight ahead. To my right is a small alcove where the doc stores supplies, including biohazard protection. To my left, I see Doc Coblentz’s glassed-in office. As usual, the mini-blinds are open. He’s sitting at his desk. A young man wearing lavender scrubs sits in the visitor chair jotting notes on a chart. Both men look up as I cross to the office door.

Rising, Doc Coblentz extends his hand. “Chief Burkholder.”

The technician stands. The receptionist is right; he’s cute. And he looks young enough to be in high school. Or maybe I’m just getting older. “I’m Dr. Rohrbacher,” he says.

“You look too young to be a doctor,” I comment.

“I get that a lot.” He offers a Whitestrip smile. “I always tell people I began my residency when I was fourteen.”

“The real Doogie Howser.” I smile back, but it feels stiff on my face. My mind has already strayed to the dead family in the next room and the chore ahead. “You guys have anything for me?”

“We’ve completed two of the autopsies.” Rising, Doc Coblentz motions toward the hall. “You know the drill.”

I go directly to the alcove and don the requisite disposable shoe covers, a blue gown, hair cap, and latex gloves. The men, gowned, gloved and capped, are waiting for me when I emerge.

“You’ll have to excuse the mess,” Doc Coblentz says as we move down the hall. “We finally got budget approved for fresh paint.”

At the end of the hall, I notice the stepladder, drop cloth and institutional blue paint. “I like the blue better than the gray,” I say.

“It’s supposed to be a calming color.” Coblentz pushes open the swinging doors.

I don’t feel very calm as we enter the autopsy room. It’s one place most cops go to great lengths to avoid. When I worked homicide in Columbus, I saw more than one veteran detective ralph his breakfast or break down and cry. Tough guys who would rather shoot themselves in the leg than display any kind of perceived weakness. My own response to death is visceral and more emotional than physical, especially when it comes to murder. I can only describe it as an intense feeling of outrage and a sense of indignation that burrows under my skin like some giant parasite. No matter how hard I try to keep those emotions at bay, they dog me day and night until the case is solved.

Ensconced in gray ceramic tile, the autopsy room is maintained at a cool sixty-two degrees. Though the ventilation and air-conditioning system is state of the art, the smells of formalin and decaying flesh are ever-present. Stark fluorescent light rains down on seven stainless-steel gurneys, all of which are occupied.

“We didn’t have enough gurneys for all the bodies, so we had to borrow from another department,” the doc comments as we enter.

Stainless-steel counters line three walls. I see white plastic buckets, trays filled with instruments I don’t want to think about, and two deep sinks with tall, arcing faucets. A scale, similar to the kind you see at the grocery store for weighing produce, hangs above the counter to my left. It seems obscenely out of place here.

I’m not exactly sure why I do this to myself, this revisiting of the dead. There is some information a cop gleans from seeing a body up close and personal, but most truly useful information comes from the autopsy report. Still, I come here. I pay final homage. Maybe I do it because seeing the victims reminds me that there are real people behind every crime. I work for them now.

Two of the gurneys stand separate from the other five. I see a dark stain on the sheet cover, and I know those are the two autopsies that have been completed. “Which vics are finished?” I ask.

The technician looks at his clipboard. “Bonnie Plank. And Mary Plank.”

“Did you get slugs?” I ask.

Rohrbacher nods. “Dug one out of the mother. It was pretty wrecked, but I sent it to the lab.”

“You check for gunshot residue on the adult male?”

“We sent the clothing and skin surface residue to the lab. Should know something in a few days.”

Doc Coblentz crosses to the nearest gurney and pulls down the sheet. Mary Plank’s body looms into view. She’s lying supine. A slender-limbed girl who had once been pretty. Her face is gray now. My gaze drifts to her mouth. It’s slack and partially open, exposing straight, white teeth. Her left hand hangs limp over the side of the gurney.

I force my gaze to the rest of her body. The Y-incision is ghastly beneath the bright lights, the dark stitches running like tiny railroad tracks over pale flesh.

I move closer to the gurney. “Cause of death?”

“She bled to death.” Using a long, cotton-tipped swab, Doc Coblenz indicates the wound on her lower abdomen. “Her uterus was removed.”

Shock tears through me, like fabric being torn violently in half. “He cut it out?”

“Hacked is a better term. Cutting was extremely primitive. There was severe internal bleeding. She went into shock and ultimately expired from cardiac arrest.”

“Why would he do that?”

Doc Coblentz looks at me over the tops of his glasses, and I sense he’s about to fling something terrible my way. “Upon internal examination, we noticed what was left of the cervix was bluish in color, which is a sign of pregnancy, so we ran a few routine blood tests,” he says. “This girl was pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” Shock rattles through me, a punch that hits close to home and sinks in deep. Mary Plank was fifteen years old. She was Amish and unmarried. Premarital sex is rare among Amish teens, but it happens. They’re human beings; they make mistakes. They keep secrets. I know this secret would have borne a terrible weight.

My own past sweeps unbidden through my mind, a rogue wave churning with murky silt and debris. I know intimately what it’s like to be young and Amish and different. I remember the isolation and loneliness and the crushing weight of shame secrets can bring down on young shoulders. And I know that in the weeks before Mary’s death, she would have suffered great emotional stress.

For a moment I’m so profoundly stricken, I can’t speak. All I can think is poor, poor child.

“Kate?”

Giving myself a mental shake, I force my mind back to the matter at hand. I recall Bishop Troyer telling me that Bonnie Plank had wanted to speak to him about Mary. Had Bonnie known about her daughter’s pregnancy? No one I spoke to remembered a boyfriend. Who fathered the child? Did Mary have a lover? Was she raped and never reported it? Even to her family or bishop?

“How far along was she?” I ask.

“Without the fetus, there’s no way to tell.”

“Did anyone find the missing uterus?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” He looks at me over the tops of his glasses. “Once we realized she was pregnant, we took vaginal swabs, cervical swabs and did what’s called a vaginal wash. On the outside chance she’d had recent sexual intercourse, Jason prepared a wet-mount slide.”

“I don’t know what that is,” I say.

“The wet-mount slide revealed that she had live sperm in her vagina.”

All I can think is that we now have DNA. “So she was raped and he didn’t use a condom?”

“I don’t think so. Most of these sperm were immobile. I would guess they were over forty-eight hours old.”

Surprise lands another hard blow. “I didn’t realize sperm could live that long.”

“They can survive up to about seventy-two hours.”

I blink at him, confused. “So she had sex or was raped well before the murders?”

“Correct.”

I look from man to man. “Was she raped?”

Doc Coblentz shrugs. “There was no vaginal tearing or bruising of the pubis. Of course, that’s not definitive proof it wasn’t forcible rape. But there were no visible signs.”

My gaze darts to Rohrbacher. “At least now we have DNA.” I can’t keep the optimism from my voice. This development could break the case wide open. “I’ll have BCI check CODIS.” CODIS is the acronym for the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. Beginning in 1994, DNA samples of offenders were taken and entered into a database. If the semen retrieved from Mary Plank’s body is from an identified past offender, the FBI analyst may be able to match it with a name.

“How long will it take?” the doc asks.

“I’m not sure. A few days maybe. But if this guy’s in the system, we’ll have a name.”

The possibility bolsters me. But I know if the DNA is not in the system we’ll be back at square one. I look again at the girl’s body. So young and with so many secrets. I wish I didn’t know what that was like, but I do. And I feel a hell of a lot more than I should. I know what it’s like to be part of a close-knit group, to desperately want to belong, only to be held apart by secrets.

“Any hair or fibers on any of the bodies?” I ask.

He nods. “Both. We sent everything to BCI.”

If any of the hairs found are from the offender and include an intact root, we could have a second source of DNA. One more nail in the bastard’s coffin. “What about Bonnie Plank?” I ask.

Rohrbacher replaces the sheet. Doc Coblentz shuffles to the second gurney. “She died from a single penetrating gunshot wound to the mid-back area. The bullet transected the lower cervical and upper thoracic spinal cord.”

“She died instantly?”

“Correct.” He pulls down the sheet. For a moment the only sound comes from the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and the hard thump of my heart. Bonnie Plank is a plump woman with ample body fat and breasts that sag to the left and right of her ribcage. The Y-incision has been stitched, but she hasn’t yet been cleaned up. Her head is turned slightly to one side, and I see a blood smear on her neck. Several red droplets stain the sheet.

When I close my eyes, I can still see the image of her lying in the grass, clutching the baby. She’d been running away. They shot her in the back. Who were you running from?

“Any sign of sexual assault?” I ask.

“No.”

At least she hadn’t had to endure the final insult of a rape. “What about the baby, Doc?”

He grimaces. “The baby was killed by the same bullet that killed his mother. I won’t have COD on the child until I complete the autopsy.”

“Do you have anything preliminary on the adult male and two boys?”

“It appears all three suffered gunshot wounds to the head. They appear to be fatal wounds.” He replaces the sheet, covering Bonnie Plank’s body. “Dr. Rohrbacher and I are going to work through the night, Kate. We’ll finish late tonight. I should have a full report late tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

I’m ready to leave. The smell of death and the things I’ve seen and heard have torn down what little optimism I’ve been able to muster. But I have one more question that must be answered before I can go. “The killer made a halfhearted effort to make these killings look like a murder-suicide. Can you tell me definitively that Amos Plank’s gunshot was not self-inflicted?”

He crosses to another gurney and lowers the sheet. Amos Plank’s face is colorless. His lips are stretched taut over broken teeth. His tongue looks like a cut of meat that’s been dropped into a blender.

Coblentz indicates the mouth area with the swab, then defers to his counterpart. “Dr. Rohrbacher?”

The young doctor looks at the body the way a bright student might look at some fascinating science project. “The bullet entered the skull through the mouth.”

“That’s consistent with suicide, isn’t it?” I ask.

“That’s correct,” he concedes. “But the trajectory path of the bullet is not consistent with a self-inflicted wound.” As if handling a piece of fragile porcelain, the doctor places his hands on either side of the head and turns it slightly so that the back of Amos Plank’s head is visible. “The bullet exited here.”

The exit wound is jagged and large and is located just a few inches above the neck. The flesh has begun to deteriorate, the edges turning red-brown. I can see white chips of bone inside the wound. “The bullet shattered the C1 vertebra as it left the body.”

“Can you clarify that for me?”

“The trajectory is at a slightly downward angle. With a suicide, the trajectory is usually upward. The bullet would pass through either the parietal or occipital lobe and exit the rear of the skull. Autopsy will be more definitive, but I would say whoever shot this man was above him. This victim was probably kneeling, the shooter standing, therefore the bullet angled down, shattered the spinal cord at C1 and exited high on the neck.”

“I concur.” Doc Coblentz takes off his glasses. “Combined with the bruising on the wrists, we’re going to rule the manner of death a homicide.”

Though I had anticipated this, I’m still shocked by the images running through my mind. Amos Plank kneeling. A killer standing over him, holding a gun in the Amish man’s mouth. An execution-style murder is unfathomable. But for someone to be cold enough to look into another human being’s eyes and pull the trigger is pure, unadulterated evil.