The Art of Deception

A Drowning Is a Drowning, a Fall, a Fall

The signature combination of antibacterials and preservatives never failed to remind Boldt of death, images of bruised and bloated corpses indelibly stamped in his consciousness from the 134 autopsies he had attended. He never lost count.

This was a place where the soles of feet bore identification codes in black marker, where nakedness reigned and was never attractive. Floor-to-ceiling stainless-steel refrigerated drawers with sliding trays capable of supporting four hundred pounds and six-foot-two frames. He hoped beyond measure that it was a place Susan Hebringer would never visit. But he had his doubts.

Although state law required investigators to attend autopsies of any death of questionable or suspicious causes, it was not any such requirement that brought Boldt here. That requirement had already been fulfilled by Detective Chas Milner. Instead, it was because it was here, at the ME’s, that the dead whispered their last words through their translator, Doc Dixon. He of the large head, wide eyes, and soft smile.

Boldt said, “I hear things got a little western earlier.”

“We all handle grief differently. That kid is wound pretty tight.”

“Daphne’s not convinced she should have let him go.”

“She cooled him off. I think he’ll be all right.”

“It’s the other guy I’m worried about,” Boldt said, “this Langford Neal.”

Dixon nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

None of this was Dixie’s problem. Boldt and Dixon discussed a re-release of a Chet Baker compilation on CD, Boldt describing the man’s singing voice as “cream and honey.” Dixon leaned toward Baker’s horn playing, being a trumpet fan himself.

“Since when are you into vocalists?” Dixon asked.

“Liz is trying to convert me to opera.”

“Sounds like she’s trying to cure your insomnia.”

“Same thing.”

The cadaver in question was that of Mama Lu’s “cousin,”

Billy Chen. Dixon double-checked the address, swung open the square stainless-steel refrigerator door, and slid out the tray containing Chen on silent rollers.

“Let me ask you this,” Dixon said. “Since when do you show interest in what went down in the books as an accidental drowning?”

“It’s a favor to a friend.”

Dixon answered by lowering his head and giving Boldt a look over the top of his reading glasses.

Boldt explained, hoping Dixon would see the connection.

“This guy was found within a block of where Hebringer was last seen.”

“There was a water main break.”

“Caused by what?” Boldt asked.

“In other words, you’re letting Hebringer get to you.”

“Is that from Liz or Matthews?”

“I can understand how a disappearance is harder than a homicide. The lack of closure.”

“Two disappearances.”

“Even harder.”

“Susan Hebringer’s husband calls Liz about every other day.

She’s stopped telling me about it, but I know it’s continuing.

Their daughter and Sarah are in the same ballet class.”

“You’re a lieutenant. What the hell are you doing in the field?”

Boldt answered, “The captain cut me some slack. She smelled a task force coming and wanted to avoid that. She untied my leash on this one. So what?”

“It should be your sergeant’s case, not yours.”

“You’ve never taken an autopsy away from one of your assistants?” Boldt asked. That seemed to sting Dixon, but Boldt wasn’t sorry. He enjoyed the freedom of the past weeks and didn’t want it ending just yet. An exception had been made for him and he wasn’t about to challenge it.

“ ‘You lose perspective, you lose focus.’ Isn’t that a Boldtism?”

“There are no Boldtisms,” Boldt said. “There are two missing women and an experienced street worker who drowned in a couple feet of water. Add to that an area of unexplored Underground.”

“That part of town?”

“That’s what I’m told.”

“So that makes things more interesting.”

“Sure does. But tell me Chen was an accident, and I’m out of here.”

“I wish I could.” Dixon unzipped the body bag to the neck.

Chen’s face was the color of an athletic sock that gets washed with the wrong load of laundry, a faint purplish yellow. His lips were circled in a brown blue.

Boldt’s chest tightened. Oddly, he needed complications, he needed unexplainables, he needed Billy Chen to point him somewhere. And yet he didn’t want it. If Susan Hebringer walked into Sarah’s ballet class tomorrow, Billy Chen went back into cold storage. Boldt was feeding off the dead, using Chen’s death as a possible stepping-stone, and the thought of this repulsed him.

“His lips?”

“Believe me, I’d rather not admit this office made a mistake.”

That word from Dixon’s mouth electrified Boldt. “The source of this mistake?”

“My guess is that it resulted from this coming in as an accidental death. Head trauma. ‘Suffocation due to immersion of the nostrils and mouth in a liquid.’ There are no pathonomic findings for drowning. We put head trauma way up our list.

Chen suffered head trauma, ergo, the drowning fit. We sometimes look for what we’re told to see. It happens. Someone has a lunch date, he goes through the motions and lets his expectations determine his findings. We see a fine white froth or foam in the air passage, evidence of vomiting-a drowning is a drowning. A fall, a fall.”

“His lips,” Boldt repeated, wanting Dixon to translate the purple bruise that surrounded Chen’s mouth.

“Michael, one of my best assistants, overlooked two items.

The lividity is inconsistent with the suspected cause of death.”

Dixon drew Boldt’s attention to the clown’s face of discoloration around the man’s mouth. Then he unzipped the rest of the body bag, snapped on a pair of disposable gloves, and lifted the corpse at the waist. “Notice the buttocks?”

Boldt observed a purplish, orange-black doughnut of discoloration on the dead man’s left buttock. “Lividity.”

“Exactly.”

“Buttocks and lips?” Boldt asked.

“That’s the point. One is either sunny-side up or over easy when one dies. We can’t be both. This lividity,” he said, returning Boldt’s attention to the dead man’s buttocks, “probably occurred while he lay waiting to be found. Not after he was bagged. Not while he awaited his turn on the slab. Long before all that.”

Boldt remained confused, and said so.

Dixon explained, “A head trauma drowning means that Chen took a blunt object to the head-an I-beam, a slab of cement-probably as a result of the huge volume of water down there.

He’s either dulled or unconscious. The lungs fill with water. He coughs and vomits. At this point he’s unconscious for sure. The heart stops pumping, the blood settles to the lowest spots and coagulates. In this case, his heels and buttocks.” He hoisted the cadaver’s stiff left leg. The bottom of the man’s heel showed a similar discolored circle.

Boldt prompted him, “Which brings us to the lips.”

“The discoloring around the mouth is not lividity, but more likely a hematoma.”

“Asphyxiated?”

“His lungs contained only a few cc’s of water. Enough to kill him, to be sure, but not the lungfuls we’d associate with accidental drowning.”

“Resuscitation?”

“The EMT report doesn’t indicate resuscitation, no. Chen was flat-lined when they found him down that hole. No vital signs. They never got far enough along with him to attempt ventilation. The patient was unresponsive to their initial attempts at CPR.”

“Maybe they left something out of the report,” Boldt said.

“Any of the various procedures would have showed up indirectly with inventoried equipment charges. We’re not seeing that on Mr. Chen. Check, if you want to check.”

“I’ll check,” Boldt agreed.

“Ask them about oxygen at the same time.”

“Oxygen?”

“Michael missed this as well. He read the accident report, the EMT report, and he saw what he expected to see. What he missed was an elevated oxygen level in Mr. Chen’s venous blood gases. We expect to see levels at right around seventy-five percent. Mr. Chen’s venous oxygen level was eighty-eight.”

“He’s in shape? A runner?”

“No way. Supplemental oxygen is the only explanation for levels like that.”

“We’re going around in circles. So you’re saying it was the EMTs. They did attempt resuscitation.”

“No, not according to their report they didn’t. What I’m telling you is we’ve got inconclusive evidence to support a clear-cut method of death. It’s entirely possible that Mr. Chen was caught from behind,” Dixon said. “Whoever it is, he’s pretty strong. Chen struggles, winning the hematoma surrounding the lips. His assailant manages to drop him. Chen encounters the blunt object. He’s unconscious and he’s about to drown, and don’t ask me how, but the air around him is spiked with O. I’d check to see if anyone was welding down there. Oxyacetylene.

Something that might explain it.”

“A sloppy EMT report explains it.”

“We work closely with these people. I’m not going to mud-sling.”

“Help me out here, Dixie. I’ve got a pair of missing women.”

“With that sinkhole raining down around them, the EMTs could have hurried him out of there, and then later covered it up when it came report time, because they realized the guy died in their care. Improper care. You never know.”

Boldt wasn’t sure that helped him. He had no desire to prosecute a couple EMTs.

Dixon suggested, “A fireman would have supplemental oxygen. Who responded to that cave-in?”

“A fireman killed Chen,” Boldt said in total disbelief.

“I know it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not unless it was someone who didn’t want to be found.”

“Then why apply the oxygen?” Dixon asked, as frustrated as Boldt.

“That’s what we need to answer.”

“We?”

“You’d better write it up, Dixie. I may have to stick it to those EMTs.”