Doctored Death

by P. D. Workman

  While she worked through her emails and reviewing reports as they came in, she kept an ear on the radio and what was happening. She heard Dr. Wiltshire arrive at the scene and begin issuing instructions. “I don’t want anyone in there who doesn’t have to be,” he snapped. “And no one walks in without full gear. There is biological matter all over this place. Techs are on their way?”

  Kenzie had heard this confirmed just a few seconds earlier on the radio and had no doubt that Dr. Wiltshire had heard it too.

  “They’ll be here soon, Doc,” the dispatcher acknowledged. “Are you able to confirm death without damaging any evidence?”

  Dr. Wiltshire grunted. “Looks like half a dozen people have already been traipsing through the blood. One more isn’t going to make much of a difference.”

  Kenzie felt sorry for him. He hated it when people didn’t follow proper protocols. Even though he wasn’t a detective and didn’t “own” the scene, he was still pretty possessive about any location where there were bodies. He was a stickler about every piece of biological matter getting back to the Medical Examiner’s Office for processing. It sounded like that was going to be a challenge.

  But of course, the motel manager or maid who had discovered the body would have walked in without realizing they were trampling through evidence. When they called the police, the officers who initially arrived at the scene would also have to walk through to confirm the victim’s death. That was at least three people in and out. Hopefully, the officers would secure the scene and not let anyone else in until a representative from the Medical Examiner’s Office had arrived. Still, if they were a bit green or not as well-trained as they should be, they might let other law enforcement officers in to look things over. It could end up being a three-ring circus, with half a dozen different shoe prints to be eliminated as well as Dr. Wiltshire’s own.

  There was a lot of routine calling back and forth to confirm orders and arrival times. Kenzie heard Dr. Wiltshire come back on over the radio. “Confirmed death of the subject. As if anyone needed me to confirm that someone with his head beaten in so severely is actually dead.”

  Kenzie heard one of the detectives in the background before Dr. Wiltshire released the button on his radio. “Is that cause of death?”

  “You need a doctor to tell you that?” Dr. Wiltshire growled back.

  Dr. Wiltshire would have to let Kenzie know the details of what had gone on at the crime scene, but she could fill most of it in herself. She set up several bins in the autopsy room for the various bags and samples to be collected when Carlos and Dr. Wiltshire returned. It would be less stressful for them if everything were ready upon their return.

  She tried not to imagine what the inside of the motel room might look like. Or what the subject would look like when his remains were brought to the morgue. She could maintain her medical detachment. Pretend to herself that it was no more than a picture or a movie prop. Or one of the models or cadavers she had dealt with when she was in medical school. People who had died in their sleep. People who had wanted their bodies to be used for education when they were gone.

  Those bodies were a lot easier to deal with than an eight-year-old who had fallen into the rain-swollen river or a teenage dope addict. Or so many more of the tragic things that they saw from one day to another. The nursing home deaths were, by comparison, clean and peaceful, and any lingering questions could be brushed away gently in the end. There was no one responsible for their deaths. No one she needed to help the police to catch so that the streets would be safe again.

  38

  Kenzie had been right to prepare herself for her first view of the dead body. Dr. Wiltshire and Carlos brought the anonymous-looking body bag in through the delivery doors and took it straight to the morgue.

  “I’m going to need bins and labels,” Dr. Wiltshire advised. “And a ton of swabs and tubes. I’m going to want to get started right away—”

  “Already done,” Kenzie advised him briskly. “Let me know if you need something you don’t see.”

  “Thanks, Kenzie. That’s great.”

  “I’m free to help if you need some assistance.”

  Dr. Wiltshire looked at Carlos. Although he was technically available to help out, he preferred to stick to transportation and helping to move bodies when they needed another hand. He could hand Dr. Wiltshire equipment, bag evidence, and put things into the right bins for the right labs, he was already looking pretty green and Kenzie doubted if he would last.

  “Yes, that would be helpful. Carlos, you can help me with the transfer to the table, and then go have a coffee.”

  Carlos helped Dr. Wiltshire to heft the body in its bag from the gurney to the slab, then gave a nod. “Call me if you need me. I’ll be close by.”

  But not too close, Kenzie knew. He wasn’t a full-time employee and would clock in and out as needed. It wasn’t like they had enough bodies rolling in to keep him occupied with transporting them full time. Like Julie, he had contracts with several other departments as well.

  Dr. Wiltshire, eager though he was to get started, waited until Carlos was out of the room before beginning to unzip the body bag. Though undoubtedly Carlos must have helped him to get the body into it in the first place.

  “You heard enough to be forewarned?” Dr. Wiltshire asked, his eyes on the task at hand and not on Kenzie.

  “It sounds like he took quite a beating to the face. And there was a lot of spatter.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Wiltshire confirmed.

  Kenzie waited while he opened up the outer bag and then the inner one. She had prepared herself the best she could, thinking about her job as an observer and investigator. Steeling her stomach. Putting on her “clinical” hat to observe the body dispassionately. It was going to be difficult. He would look bad. But it wasn’t a family member or a friend. It was a stranger. And whatever had happened to him, he was past feeling now.

  Not that she would have been able to recognize if it were a family member. The damage done to the face had wiped out any hope of making an identification by either facial recognition or dental records. They would have to employ another method. Kenzie looked down at the hands. She could start on fingerprints once Dr. Wiltshire had swabbed down the hands.

  But when she looked at them, it became apparent that wasn’t going to help them either. The man had been tortured before he was killed. Burns that had destroyed any fingerprints as well.

  “How was he checked into the motel?” Kenzie asked. “Did he have any ID on him?”

  “Police will be following up on that end of it. But... no, I gather any wallet or electronics that he had on him were stolen. It doesn’t look like robbery gone wrong, but... who am I to say? The police will get back to us on anything they think might help to identify him.”

  “It’s going to be hard. Maybe just checking his general description against missing person reports.”

  “That’s a start. Maybe they could hire your Zachary to find out his identity.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  Zachary had a good relationship with Campbell, and, of course, with Mario Bowman, but many of the other law enforcement officers were not on nearly as cordial terms with him. Zachary was careful to communicate to the police whenever he was involved in a case that they had been or were investigating. He always passed on information he found if it were pertinent to the investigation. But still, many cops just didn’t like PI’s around out of general principles, and it didn’t matter how careful he was not to get in their way.

  Dr. Wiltshire began by removing the clothing still on the body. Kenzie helped in silence, removing or cutting away each article of clothing and inspecting them for what trace evidence might need to be processed. Hair, fiber, bloodstains or other biological materials. They laid each item out individually, assigned them evidence numbers, and read the inventory aloud for the autopsy transcription.

  The victim was male, white, with dark hair and brown eyes, and was of medium heig
ht and build. He had a sizable port-wine birthmark on the outer side of one thigh. Wiltshire took all his measurements and carefully logged them.

  “What would be your age estimate?” he drilled Kenzie.

  She looked over the body. Good muscle mass. A bit of a belly, but not enough that it would be noticed when he was dressed. No age spots or wrinkles in the neck or places an older man was likely to get wrinkles—all in all, relatively young.

  “Maybe thirty,” she said, “I don’t think as old as thirty-five.”

  He nodded. They would do other tests to try to determine age, but the visual inspection was important. They inspected the body thoroughly for any trace, then carefully washed the body.

  “Body is unremarkable,” Dr. Wiltshire said. “I don’t see any injuries or signs of disease on the torso or extremities. Everything seems to be confined to the face and hands.”

  Kenzie frowned, thinking about that. Wiltshire raised an eyebrow. “You have a thought?”

  “He wasn’t beaten up?” She touched his ribcage, looking for any perimortem bruising or sign of broken ribs. “It seems to me that if you’re going to burn someone’s fingers and beat their face in with a baseball bat—or whatever he was beaten with— that there would probably be a struggle. He must have been restrained either manually or mechanically. There are no defensive wounds, no sign that he took any blows to the body to subdue him.”

  Wiltshire nodded. “True. He must have been restrained.”

  They both examined his wrists, ignoring the burned flesh of his hands. Kenzie shook her head. “Some faint bruising, but I don’t think there are ligature marks. Maybe it will darken in a few hours and we’ll be able to see how he was held down.”

  “We’ll do a tox screen too. He might have been given something to sedate him.”

  “And then torture him? Wouldn’t you get your information from him before sedating him instead of trying to rouse him enough to get a coherent answer after?” Kenzie shook her head, trying to sort it out. “And if they sedated or restrained him, then why destroy his face like that? That’s rage. Don’t you think?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. You may be jumping to conclusions too quickly.”

  “You have another theory?”

  “I do,” he agreed, but didn’t tell her what it was.

  Kenzie sighed and they continued.

  “Let’s get x-rays,” Dr. Wiltshire said. “I want to see the damage to the skull and to confirm that there are no other broken bones before we start on the head.”

  39

  Kenzie looked at the clock on the wall. She knew it was going to be late. Dr. Wiltshire hadn’t headed out to pick the body up until the afternoon, and they had been processing it for a couple of hours.

  He saw her look at the clock and glanced at the face himself. “Why don’t you head home? I can finish up here.”

  “I should stay until it’s done. And help you to move him to cold storage.”

  Wiltshire shrugged. “You need to take time for yourself and your family when you can get it. I’ve been handling dead bodies for years; this one won’t be hard to wrangle. Go home. Get a good rest. Take Sunday off. We’ll send out samples for processing Monday morning.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure, Kenzie. I won’t be here much longer. We can’t send samples out for testing until Monday. You’re not going to miss anything earth-shattering.”

  “Well... okay. Are you hungry? Do you want me to grab you something from the machine?”

  “No. I’ll hit a restaurant after I’m done. Those sandwiches are atrocious. Somebody should be autopsying them to see what they died of.”

  Kenzie grinned. “They are pretty bad,” she agreed.

  “Get on your way. I’ll see you Monday morning.”

  “Shoot me an email if you have anything particular you want to be done when I get here.”

  “I will.”

  Kenzie cleared away her files and got ready to go. She would pick up food on the away home so she didn’t have to make anything. But then she remembered that Zachary hadn’t eaten what she bought the last time she had done that. She hadn’t checked with him first, which was the sensible thing to do. She didn’t like to call him when she was late getting home, because it just emphasized the fact that she was away from him rather than being home. If she just went straight home without talking to him, then his first contact with her was when she was home, which was what they both wanted. It just felt kinder for some reason. No extra anxiety as he waited, wondering if something had happened to her on the way.

  But that wouldn’t solve the supper problem. Kenzie picked up her phone and hit the icon with Zachary’s picture on it as she walked to her car.

  “Kenzie.”

  “Hi. I know I’m late. I’m on my way now. I was going to stop to pick up some takeout on the way home. What do you feel like?”

  “Uh... whatever you want to get is fine.”

  “But what do you feel like? Chinese? Burgers?”

  “Either one.”

  “Pizza?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re not being helpful. So you’re going to eat whatever I bring home?”

  He didn’t answer at first, then finally agreed. “Yeah. A bit.”

  “You need to eat more than a bit. You should talk to your doctor about your lack of appetite. Maybe there’s something else he can—”

  “I’ve already tried everything else, Kenz.”

  She knew that he had been through a lot of different protocols, from the time that he’d been just ten years old. He probably had tried pretty much everything on the market. And switching meds was not just a simple change from taking pill A each day to taking pill B. Many of the drugs, he would have to wean off. Get a baseline. Maybe have to have hospital supervision because of the danger of suicide. Then start on the new medication. Wait for weeks for it to reach full efficacy. Then determine whether the benefits outweighed the adverse side effects. Adjust, wait, adjust again, wait some more. It could take months to get him stabilized again. If they could.

  “Yeah, I know,” she sighed. “Well, I’ll grab something, then, and I’ll be home soon.”

  “Do you want me to order in, so you don’t have to stop somewhere? You can just come straight home.”

  “Faster if I stop for something. And then we don’t have to pay delivery fees. Unless... you need me home sooner. It should only take ten minutes.”

  “I’m fine. Ten minutes isn’t going to make any difference.”

  “Okay. See you soon, then.”

  Kenzie felt like Chinese, and Zachary usually ate a good amount of that, so she picked up their favorite dishes. That took more than ten minutes like getting a burger or pizza would, but she thought the benefits were worth it. She texted Zachary while she was waiting so that he wouldn’t be worried.

  They had a nice meal. Things seemed to be mostly back to normal, though there were a few times when the conversation became stilted and she wondered whether it was because he was distracted or that he was thinking about her failure to show up for their couples therapy and whether he could trust her. Which wasn’t really fair, since there were plenty of times when he had forgotten about things she had asked him to do. And she had always forgiven him. Eventually.

  Zachary put on an old movie, but Kenzie had a feeling that neither of them was paying close attention to it. Zachary had his computer in his lap, and it looked like work, rather than checking his personal email or social networks, which was what Kenzie was doing on her phone. She just needed to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, and then she would turn her phone screen off and put it away so she could focus on the movie and Zachary. He was busy anyway.

  Skimming through her unread email messages, Kenzie saw that there was one from her father. She clicked it and checked the time. It had been sent after she had talked to him. Probably this was the hit, the real reason he had called her. She read through the message and snorted.

  Zachary looked at
her, eyebrows up, mouth quirked into a half-smile. “What was that?”

  “Is everybody in Vermont going to this masquerade ball?”

  He looked blank. “Uh... my guess would be no. What masquerade ball?”

  “There’s a fundraiser thing. I guess all the bigwigs are going to be at it. The one my mom called to ask about?”

  “Oh yeah. You’re not going to go?”

  “Not if I can help it. I don’t like these things. They’re just a lot of posturing and hot air. I’d rather write a check than to have to shake everyone’s hands and listen to them prattling on about their concerns.”

  “And who else?”

  “What?”

  “You said everyone in Vermont. So I assume there’s at least one other person you know who is going and wants you to go too.”

  “Yeah. My dad.”

  “Also because it is for kidney research?”

  Kenzie considered that. Her dad was, of course, interested in raising money for kidney research. But he was more interested in changing the political landscape, making changes to transplant legislation, and making high-power political contacts. If he wanted her to be at the ball, he wanted to show her off or make introductions for some reason.

  “He doesn’t say,” she told Zachary.

  “Maybe he’s just going to support your mom.”

  “I don’t think so. They are still good friends, but he doesn’t do things just to support other people. Not since Amanda died, anyway.”

  Zachary slowly closed the lid of his laptop. “Things changed after that?”

  “I don’t know if things changed, or if the way I saw him did. Or maybe he was so shattered when she died that he decided he wasn’t getting emotionally involved again. But after that... he was a lot more distant. It’s not surprising that he was more distant from me, because of the difference in our foundational beliefs... he and I had a falling out. But I’ve seen it with others too. He doesn’t get together with my mom like he used to, and when he does, it’s more like a chore. He’s not... open to her like he used to be. Even when they first got divorced, it wasn’t because they fought or didn’t love each other anymore. They were just on different trajectories. Interested in pursuing different things. At least, that’s what they told me. But maybe it was all a bunch of crap.”