Red Mist

16

Colin Dengate has graying red hair he wears in a buzz cut, and a closely clipped mustache smudges his upper lip like rust. He is built like a bullet, with no fat to spare, and, like a lot of MEs I know, has a sense of humor that can border on silliness.

As he leads me deeper into his headquarters I walk past a skeleton dressed for Mardi Gras and beneath hanging mobiles of bones, bats, spiders, and ghouls that shiver and spin slowly in cool air blowing out of vents. A ringtone of spooky music and a witch’s cackle announces Colin’s wife, who can’t find the key to their daughter’s bicycle lock, and he suggests using bolt cutters. The eerie pulsing of a Star TrekTricorder as we head down a hall is a GBI investigator named Sammy Chang letting Colin know he’s clearing the scene of a motor-vehicle fatality on Harry Truman Parkway and the body is en route.

“And when it’s me?” I wonder what ringtone Colin would assign.

“You never call,” he says. “But let me think. Maybe Grateful Dead. ‘Never Trust a Woman’ is a good one. Heard them on tour a couple times in my glory days. They don’t make music like they used to. I’m not sure they make people like they used to.”

I left Marino in the break room, where he was getting coffee and flirting with a toxicologist named Suze who has a tattoo on her biceps depicting a grinning winged skull. Colin wants a word with me alone. He’s been friendly so far, despite the reason I’m here.

“Can I get you a coffee, a Vitaminwater?” We enter his corner office overlooking the loading dock behind his building, where a big truck has just pulled up. “Coconut water’s good in this weather. Replaces potassium, and I keep a stash in my personal fridge. And certain bottled waters have electrolytes, and that’s helpful in this heat. What would you like? Anything?”

His Georgia drawl isn’t as drawn-out as most. For this part of the world, he talks fast and with a great deal of energy. I drink from the bottle of warm water I retrieved from Marino’s ice chest. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I smell dead fish again.

“It’s been a while since I’ve dealt with Florida or Charleston summer weather,” I tell him. “And Marino’s van doesn’t have air-conditioning.”

“I don’t know why you’re dressed that way, unless you’re asking for hyperthermia.” He surveys my black ensemble. “I usually stick with scrubs.” Which is what he has on now, cotton ones the color of crème de menthe. “They’re nice and cool. I don’t wear anything black this time of year unless it’s a bad mood.”

“A long story I doubt you have time for. Actually, a cold water would be good.”

“A surprising thing about air-conditioning in cars?” He opens a small refrigerator behind his ergonomic chair, retrieves two waters, and hands me one. “Not everybody in this part of the world has it. My Land Rover, for example. A 1983 I’ve completely restored since I saw you last.” He settles behind his piled-up desk in an office overwhelmed by memorabilia. “New aluminum flooring, new seats, new Gear Gators and windscreen. Stripped the roof frame and powder-coated it black. You name it, but didn’t bother with air-conditioning. Driving it makes me feel the way I did when I was a young buck fresh out of med school. Windows wide open, and you sweat.”

“Ensuring not everybody wants to ride with you.”

“An additional benefit.”

I move my chair closer, the two of us separated by a big maple desk crowded with Ball jars of cartridge cases, large-caliber tarnished brass shells sitting upright like rockets, a Secret Service ashtray filled with minié balls and Confederate uniform buttons, tiny toy dinosaurs and spaceships, animal bones that I suspect were mistaken for human, a model of the CSS H. L. Hunleysubmarine, which vanished from Charleston’s outer harbor during the Civil War and was discovered and raised about a decade ago. I couldn’t begin to catalog or explain all the eccentric mementos crowding every surface and crammed on bookcases and tightly arranged on his walls except that I have no doubt all of it has stories and meaning, and I suspect some items might be toys from when his children were small.

“That right there is a commendation from the CIA.” He catches me looking around and indicates a handsome shadow box displaying a gold Agency Seal Medal mounted on the wall to the left of me. The elaborate accompanying certificate cites a significant contribution to the CIA’s intelligence efforts but includes no name of the recipient or even a date.

“About five years back,” he explains, “I worked a case involving an airplane crash in a swamp around here. Some intelligence folks, although I had no idea until suddenly the CIA and some of your Armed Forces ME’s showed up. Had to do with the nuclear sub base at Kings Bay, and that’s all I’m at liberty to say, and if you know about it, I’m sure you’re not at liberty to say anything, either. Anyway, it was a big ordeal, spy stuff, and at some point afterward I got summoned to Langley for an awards ceremony. Now, let me tell you, that was squirrelly. Didn’t know who the hell anybody was, and they never said who the medal was for or what the hell I did to earn it except to stay out of the way and keep my mouth shut.”

His greenish-hazel eyes read me carefully as I take another swallow of cold water.

“I’m not sure why you’ve involved yourself in the Jordan murders, Kay.” He finally gets around to why I’m sitting across from him. “I got a call just the other day from your friend Berger to inform me you were coming in to review the cases. Now, my first thought”—he opens a desk drawer—“is why you wouldn’t call me yourself.” He offers me a small box of slippery-elm throat lozenges. “You ever had these?”

I take one because my mouth and throat are parched.

“Best thing since sliced bread if you’ve got to give a talk or testify. Popular with professional singers, which is how I know about them.” He takes the box back from me and pops a lozenge into his mouth.

“I didn’t call you, Colin, because I wasn’t aware I was scheduled to see you until last night.” I talk around the lozenge, which has a slightly rough texture and pleasant maple flavor.

He frowns as if what I just said is impossible, and his chair creaks as he leans back in it, not taking his eyes off me, the throat lozenge a small lump in the side of his cheek.

“I came to Savannah because I had an appointment at the Georgia Prison for Women to talk to an inmate named Kathleen Lawler,” I start to explain, as I wonder where to begin.

Already, he’s nodding. “Berger told me,” he says. “She said you were coming down here to meet with an inmate at the GPFW, which is all the more reason I didn’t understand why you didn’t call me yourself to at least say hi and maybe let’s have lunch.”

“Jaime told you I was coming,” I repeat, as I wonder what she has said to him and others, and how much of it was tailored to suit her purposes. “I’m sorry I didn’t call and suggest lunch. But I really thought I would be in and out.”

“She’s called here enough,” he says, about Jaime. “Everybody in the front office knows who the hell she is.” The lozenge slips from one cheek to the other as if there is a small animal moving around inside his mouth. “Good stuff, huh? Also a demulcent. Tried ones before, more than I can shake a stick at, that purport to be a demulcent but aren’t. These work, really soothe the mucous membrane. Sodium- and gluten-free. No preservatives and importantly, no menthol. That’s the misnomer out there. That menthol is the cure-all for the throat, when in fact what it does is cause temporary loss of the vocal cords.” He savors the lozenge, looking up at the ceiling as if he’s a sommelier tasting a complex grand cru. “I’ve started singing in a barbershop quartet,” he adds, as if that explains everything.

“In summary, I was to be here in Savannah very briefly for another reason and was informed last night that an appointment was made for me to come to your office. I gather you aren’t being cooperative in a way that suits her,” I say to him. “I told her you’re slightly stubborn and not a redneck.”

“Well, I am a redneck,” he says. “But I think I’m understanding why you didn’t call me yourself, and that makes me feel better, because I did feel a little dissed. Maybe that’s stupid, but I did, it was so out of the blue hearing from her and not you. Regardless of anything personal, I think I get what’s going on more than you might imagine. Jaime Berger is somewhat histrionic, and it fits her script if I’m the redneck bigoted medical examiner in Savannah who stone-walls her because I’m intent on Lola Daggette getting the needle. You know, kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. That’s the way everybody thinks south of the Mason-Dixon Line. And west of it.”

“Jaime says you didn’t come out to greet her when she was here. That you ignored her.”

“I sure as hell didn’t greet her, because I was talking on the phone to a poor woman who didn’t want to be told that her husband’s death was a suicide.” His eyes narrow, and he gets louder and more indignant. “That his gun didn’t accidentally go off while he was outside drinking beer and mending his crab pots. And just because he hugged her and seemed to be in an unusually good mood and said he loved her before he went outside that night didn’t mean he didn’t have suicidal thoughts, and I deeply regretted that what I filled in on the autopsy report and his death certificate means she won’t get his life insurance. I’m right in the middle of having to tell someone shit like that when Berger shows up here dressed like Wall Street. Then she’s hovering in my damn doorway while the woman is crying uncontrollably on the other end and I sure as hell wasn’t going to hang up on her and offer some pushy New York attorney coffee.”

“I can see you have no feelings about her,” I say wryly.

“I’ve got the Jordan cases for you, including photographs of the crime scene, which I think you’ll find helpful. I’ll let you look and get your own impressions, and then I’m happy to discuss anything you want.”

“There’s a perception you are convinced that Lola Daggette committed the murders and did so alone. As I recall from your presentation of this case during the NAME meeting in Los Angeles, you seem pretty firm in your opinion.”

“I’m on the side of truth, Kay. Just like you.”

“I must admit I find it unusual that DNA supposedly from blood and skin under Brenda Jordan’s fingernails wasn’t a match for Lola Daggette. And it didn’t match a family member. An unknown DNA profile, in other words.”

“ Supposedlybeing the operative word.”

“I might conclude from the DNA that it’s possible more than one assailant or intruder was involved,” I add.

“I don’t interpret the lab reports or decide what they mean.”

“I’m just curious if you have an opinion about it, Colin.”

“Brenda Jordan’s hands were incredibly bloody,” he says. “Yes, an unknown DNA profile was related to my swabbing under her nails when I did the autopsies, but I don’t know what that means. It could have been from an unrelated source. Her own blood was under her nails. Her brother’s DNA was under her nails.”

“Her brother’s?”

“He was in the bed next to hers, and I’m guessing his blood was transferred to Brenda’s body, to her hands, when the killer attacked her, probably after murdering Josh first. Or maybe the killer stabbed Brenda first. Maybe the killer thought she was dead and started on the brother, and Brenda wasn’t dead and tried to run. I don’t know exactly what happened and probably never will. Like I said, I don’t interpret lab reports or decide what they mean.”

“I feel compelled to emphasize that an unknown donor of DNA at that scene should have caused the police to consider more than one assailant might have been involved.”

“In the first place, the scene wasn’t contained all that well, and a lot of people ended up in the house who shouldn’t have been there.”

“And these people who shouldn’t have been there touched the bodies?”

“Well, not that, thank God. The cops know better than to let anyone near my bodies or they’ll have hell to pay from me. But more to the point, at the time it just wasn’t accepted as a possibility that someone other than Lola Daggette was involved.”

“Why?”

“She was in a halfway house to deal with anger management and her problems with drugs. Within hours after the murders, she was discovered washing clothing that was stained with the Jordans’ blood. And she was local. I remember there was some talk at the time that she might have read or heard about Dr. Jordan in the news and realized he had a lot of money, was a successful doctor from an old Savannah family that had made a fortune from cotton. His mansion was an easy walk from the halfway house, where she’d been for more than a month when the murders occurred. She’d had plenty of time to gather intelligence, including figuring out that the family didn’t always bother with the alarm system.”

“Because they’d had a number of false alarms.”

“Kids,” he says. “A big problem with alarm systems is kids accidentally setting them off.”

“What seems to be nothing more than conjecture,” I point out. “It’s also conjectured that burglary wasn’t the motive.”

“No evidence of it, but who knows? An entire family dead. If something was missing, who’s going to say?”

“Was the house ransacked?”

“It wasn’t. But again, if everyone is dead, who’s to say if something was looked through or moved?”

“So the DNA results didn’t concern you at the time. I don’t mean to keep pushing you on this. But the results bother me.”

“Push all you want. Just doing my job. I’ve got no dog in the fight,” he says. “The DNA was commingled. As you well know, it’s not always simple to decide what sample the result is from. Was the unknown DNA from blood or skin cells or from something else, and when was it left? It could have been from a source that has nothing to do with the case. A recent guest in the house. Someone Brenda had been in contact with earlier in the day. You know what they say. Don’t put your case in a lab-coat pocket. DNA doesn’t mean crap if you don’t know how it got there and when. In fact, it’s my theory that the more sensitive the testing gets, the less it’s going to mean. Just because someone breathed in a room doesn’t mean that person killed anyone. Well, don’t get me started. You didn’t come all this way to hear my philosophizing and sounding like a Luddite.”

“But no DNA profile at the crime scene or associated with the bodies was Lola Daggette’s.”

“That’s right. And it’s not up to me to decide who’s guilty and who’s not, or even to care. I just report my findings, and the rest is up to the judge and jury,” he says. “Why don’t you take a look at what I’ve left for you, and then we’ll chat.”

“I understand Jaime discussed Barrie Lou Rivers with you, too. I’m wondering if I might take a look at her case while I’m at it.”

“Jaime Berger’s got copies. She put in her requests for records, I don’t know, at least two months ago.”

“If it’s not too much trouble, I always prefer originals when I can get them.”

“That record’s not paper because it’s more recent. You know, GBI’s gone all paperless. I can have it printed, or you can look on a computer.”

“Electronic is fine. Whatever’s easiest.”

“A strange one, I’ll give you that,” he says. “But don’t ask me to be going down the road of cruel and unusual. I know what Berger’s spin on that one is, too, and how it’s all a nice neat puzzle she’s piecing together. Not nice,what am I saying? Meant to shock and repulse. It’s like she’s already rehearsing for the press conference, thinking of the inflammatory points she might make about how the condemned are tortured to death in Georgia.”

“It’s uncommon for someone awaiting execution to die suddenly in the holding cell outside the death chamber,” I remind him. “Especially since the person is supposed to be under surveillance every second.”

“And let’s be honest, Kay, she probably wasn’t watched every second,” he says. “I’m guessing she started feeling bad after eating. Maybe it was assumed to be indigestion at first, when in fact she was suffering the classic symptoms of a heart attack. And by the time the guards were sufficiently alarmed to call for medical assistance, it was too late.”

“This occurred very close to the time when she was supposed to be brought into the death chamber and prepped,” I reply. “Seems there would have been medical personnel on hand, including the physician who was to assist in the execution. One might expect that a doctor or at least someone from the death squad trained in CPR would have been nearby and able to respond quickly.”

“That might very well have been the irony of the century. A member of the death squad or the executioner himself resuscitates her long enough to kill her.” Colin gets up from his desk and hands me the box of lozenges. “In case you want more. I buy them by the truckload.”

“I assume it’s all right if Marino looks.”

“He works with you and you trust him, I got no problem. You’ll have one of my path techs with you at all times.”

Colin has to have someone in the room with me, not only for his protection but also for mine. He must be able to swear under oath that I couldn’t have planted a document in a file or taken something away with me.

“I’m also interested in clothing that you and the GBI might still have,” I add, as he walks me back down the hall, past offices of other forensic pathologists, the forensic anthropology and histology labs, past the break room, restrooms, and then the conference room is to our right.

“I assume you’re referring to the clothing Lola Daggette was washing in her bathroom at her halfway house? Or what the victims had on when they were murdered?”

“All of it,” I answer.

“Including what was submitted as evidence in the trial.”

“Everything.”

“I suppose I could take you to the house if you wanted.”

“I’ve seen it from the outside.”

“Possibly it could be arranged for you to go through it. I don’t know who lives there, and I doubt they’d be thrilled.”

“Not necessary at the moment, but I’ll let you know after I go through the cases.”

“I can set up a scope if you want to look at the original slides. Actually, Mandy can take care of that, Mandy O’Toole, who will be in there with you. Or we can do recuts, create a second set of slides, because, of course, I still have the tissue sections. If we do recuts, however, we’re creating new evidence. But whatever answers any questions you have.”

“Let me see what they are first.”

“The clothing is stored in various places. But most is in our labs. I don’t let anything get very far from my sight.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“Don’t know if the two of you have met,” he says, as I notice a woman in blue scrubs and a lab coat just inside the conference-room doorway.

Mandy O’Toole steps out and shakes my hand. Around forty, I estimate, she’s tall and all legs like a colt and has long black hair tied back. She is attractive in an unusual way, her features asymmetrical, her eyes cobalt blue, giving her an appearance that is off-putting but compelling. Colin salutes me with his index finger and leaves me alone with her inside a modest-size room with a cherry-finish table surrounded by eight black leather chairs with tufted cushions. Abnormally thick windows set in sturdy aluminum frames overlook a parking lot enclosed by a tall chain-link fence, and beyond, a dark green pine forest stretches endlessly into the pale sky.