by Liliana Hart
The funeral home was Colonial in style—three full stories of red brick with white columns. Two elm trees were planted in front, one on each side of the sidewalk, and they shaded the entire yard. There was a portico attached to the side where we parked the Suburban, and a ramp to the side door that led into a special foyer, the kitchen, and the door of my lab.
It had been my parents who’d put in the state of the art lab in the basement. It had a solid steel door that could only be opened with a numerical passcode. I hadn’t understood the need for such secrecy until I’d discovered what they were doing with the bodies down there. But now that I was coroner for the county, I was glad to have top of the line equipment and plenty of space to work in. Many small county coroners didn’t have that luxury.
I uncoded the door and felt the change in temperature as the door opened. The lights came on automatically and we pushed the gurney onto the lift to the left of the stairs. The lift was big enough for two people and a gurney, so I took the metal stairs and met them at the bottom.
The room was utilitarian and cold in design. The floor was industrial white tile with a couple of drains built in just in case it needed to be hosed down. The shelves against the wall were steel and filled with various tools and microscopes. I had one stainless steel autopsy table and one embalming table. They were built with what I called a moat around the edges so bodily fluids could drain properly. On the autopsy table, the drain led to a biohazard sink with a drain-catch at the bottom, just in case something important got washed down. There were high powered spray hoses mounted on the wall behind each table, and at the opposite end of the autopsy table was a scale so I could weigh the organs. Which was not going to be an issue at all with Mrs. McGowen.
On the wall adjacent to the tables was a curing cabinet where I hung blood soaked evidence to dry. To the right side of my tables was the walk-in refrigeration unit that could store up to six bodies.
We rolled Mrs. McGowen over to the autopsy table.
“On three,” I said. “One, two, three…” And we lifted the black bag onto the table. We got her unzipped and used the towels again to remove the bag from beneath her. Many of the maggots remained in the bag.
“Go ahead and put those in one of the sample jars,” I told Lily.
I’d stripped out of my outer coverall before we’d left Mrs. McGowen’s, and it was shoved into a plastic so I could wash it later. I put my hair in a net and donned a plastic apron, tying it behind my waist. Then I put on a fresh pair of gloves.
“Doctor Graves.” Emmy Lu’s voice came through the intercom. “The cats are in the mudroom. They’re loud. Tyler is in there with them gathering samples. I think he’s going to need a tetanus shot. What do you want to do with them after he’s done?”
Tyler was my other intern, and he was pretty much Lily’s opposite in every way in the looks department. He was a bright kid, but weird. Not Sheldon weird, but another kind of weird altogether. He needed a lot of life experience. And probably a girlfriend and less weed. He was the perfect person to deal with the cats.
“Just give Doc Mooney a call over at the vet and see if he can send someone to get them cleaned up and checked out. Maybe put out some feelers to see if they can be found homes. A diet of human can’t be good for their digestive system.”
“Will do,” Emmy Lu said. “Also, Marilyn Richardson is here for your eleven o’clock appointment about her husband.”
“Damn,” I muttered under my breath.
“Quarter,” Lily and Sheldon both said at the same time.
I’d forgotten I had appointments lined up for the day. That was one of the reasons I’d hired Emmy Lu though. She kept things on track when I couldn’t.
“I’m going to send up Sheldon,” I said. And then I thought about it for a second and broke out in a cold sweat. I needed to keep business and make sure the customers were happy. “And Lily too,” I added.
Lily must have read the panic in my eyes at the thought of Sheldon meeting with Mrs. Richardson by himself, and she nodded in agreement and took off her coveralls and gloves.
“Mrs. Richardson’s husband is on hospice,” I reminded them. “He’s expected to pass in the next couple of days, so be sympathetic to that. A lot of times it’s hard for them to make decisions ahead of time. She might second guess herself. A lot of times they’ve convinced themselves that there’s still hope for recovery. She’s got a mid-range budget, so steer her toward the steel caskets with the satin lining.”
“Did you know that in the Iron Age, throwing spears at corpses was the equivalent of a twenty-one-gun salute?” Sheldon asked. “It was quite an honor.”
“I don’t think that’s in Mrs. Richardson’s budget,” I said, deadpan.
Lily snorted and covered it with a cough, and then followed Sheldon back upstairs to where Mrs. Richardson would be waiting.
I waited until the door closed behind them and then grabbed the remote, turning on my Spotify playlist. I was feeling mellow and chose Billy Joel’s “She’s Always A Woman to Me”. Once I got into my work, I barely noticed that the music was there, but it was nice having a little background noise to keep me company.
I grabbed a clipboard and pen. The first thing I had to do was give an accurate description of the body as I’d received it and catalog everything. Height, weight, what she was wearing, and then any jewelry or distinguishing marks—like tattoos or birthmarks.
The only thing she’d been wearing was a nightgown that snapped down the front and came to mid-calf. It had been blue with tiny white flowers on it. I’d had to look hard to find an area that actually had blue left. I carefully unbuttoned the gown and cut the sleeves so I didn’t have to move her body too much. Then I took the remnants and hung it in the curing cabinet so the wet blood could dry.
There were no organs left and the remaining maggots clung to the soft tissue, so a true autopsy was impossible, but I went over the body inch by inch with my UV light and magnifier, checking the skin for marks or bruising that was difficult to see with the naked eye. I paused when I reached her left hand and saw the simple gold wedding band, much too big for the bony finger it clung to. I removed it carefully and put it in a plastic baggie. She had no other jewelry and her skin was too damaged for me to see much of anything else.
Before I could really delve into the body, I had to get rid of the remaining maggots. Unfortunately, there was really no easy way to do so except to remove them one by one. I grabbed a jar and forceps and got to work.
By the time I was done, the last chords of Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” were fading and I was holding a jar full of squirming maggots. I put them to the side and then readied the x-ray machine. Once I had the x-rays in hand, I took them to the light board and snapped in the images.
“I’ll be damned,” I said, and then looked around just to make sure no one heard me. “Jack was right.”
Chapter Four
I finished up and left Lily and Sheldon to boil Mrs. McGowen down to the bones. I tried to call Jack but it went straight to voice mail.
The funeral home was fully functional on all floors, but we generally kept the third floor off-limits since it was rare to have multiple viewings happening on the same night. But the space closest to my lab was for employees only.
There was a kitchen next to the lab door, and behind the kitchen was an office with a full bathroom attached. I kept several changes of clothes for all occasions in the closet. I was never quite sure what I smelled like when I came out of the lab, so I usually played it safe and took a quick shower before I had to move amongst the general public.
I dressed in black ankle length slacks, black ballet flats, and a black blouson top with three-quarter sleeves. I wore black out of habit as I’d found it was the most forgiving color when faced with the mess of death. I didn’t expect to come into contact with another body today, but one could never be too sure. Stranger things had happened.
I grabbed a fresh cup of coffee and a granola bar from the kit
chen and headed back to Mrs. McGowen’s house. Jack’s unit was the only vehicle left at the scene when I arrived. The neighbors had gone back to their lives and jobs and the street was empty. At least from the outside. I saw the curtains move from the house to the right when I pulled into the driveway.
Jack was coming around from the back of the house by the time I got out of the Suburban. He’d changed clothes since I’d last left him, and I knew he must’ve been cat-deep in the bowels of that house as they’d gone through everything. He wore a plain black T-shirt and jeans, and he looked worn out. He’d removed his duty belt while he’d been working, but he still carried his revolver in his ankle holster.
“You made good time,” he said. “I thought you’d be at least another hour.”
“There wasn’t much I could do with her. I’ve got her boiling in the pot for now so I can check the bones later.”
Jack’s smile turned to somewhat of a grimace at the mention of the boiling pot. “I take it that means you found something worth checking?”
I grinned, excitement making the hairs on my scalp tingle. “I tried calling, but it went to voice mail. You were right,” I told him and held up the first x-ray. “She’s got a fracture on the parietal. Look at the impact. That’s blunt force trauma. Nothing she fell against would have done that kind of damage. She was hit with something with a sharp edge. And something with weight to it by the depth of the indention. I’ll do a mold of the wound once she’s out of the boiler.”
“We didn’t find anything around the body that would fit that description,” he said. “I’ll call in and have Nash and Cheek start doing a search in a three-block radius. Maybe they’ll find a murder weapon that matches.”
I waited while he made the call and then showed him the next x-ray once he hung up. “Look at the right ulna,” I said. “It’s fractured. Defensive wound.” And then I demonstrated by putting my right arm in front of my face for protection. “The first strike broke her arm. The second struck her in the parietal, left side of the skull.”
“So the assailant was right handed,” Jack said, “Along with most of the population.”
“Hey, you have your homicide. Now we just need motive, a murder weapon, and a suspect.”
“Is that all?” Jack asked wryly. He reached out and touched the bottom of my hair, tugging it just a little before he let it go.
I wanted to lean into him, but I knew there were eyes everywhere. “You finished here?” I put the x-rays back in the car and locked the door.
“Yes, though I’d stay clear of Nash if I were you. He’s got a whole lot of cat poop to deliver to your doorstep.”
“Then it was well worth the twenty,” I said, grinning.
“I’m going to have the team come back and dust for prints around the windows. Maybe we’ll get lucky. There was no sign of forced entry, and it’s impossible to know if anything was taken at this point. She had a pill dispenser in the bathroom. There was no cell phone, but we found a charger for one in her car.”
“Do you think she let in the killer?”
“Hard to say, but I think someone would’ve noticed on this street if she’d had company over. We’ll find out when we do the door-to-doors. But there was a slight disturbance in the flowerbed beneath her bedroom window. One of the plants looked like it had been partially stepped on, but we didn’t find any shoe prints.”
At that moment, Officer Chen and Detective Martinez pulled into the driveway next to Jack in a marked unit. They’d both changed into street clothes since I’d seen them that morning. Chen wore black slacks and a black sleeveless top, her badge worn on a lanyard around her neck so it was visible. Martinez wore jeans and a tan button-down with the King George Sheriff’s Office logo above the breast pocket. His badge was clipped to his belt. Both of their weapons were visible.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Martinez said as they got out of the car. “We unloaded the last of the evidence boxes in the conference room. Then we spent a little time in the decontamination chamber. Just so you know, I’m gonna need a raise after today. This was some sick shit.”
Jack grinned. “But all worth it to see Nash go ass over elbows in kitty litter.”
“Chen got pictures of it,” Martinez said. “It’s the most beautiful artwork I’ve ever seen. She even blew them up real big so you can see them clearly.”
“I thought the bullpen needed a little decoration,” Chen said straight-faced. “I’d like to request traffic duty tomorrow, to put a little distance between myself and Nash.”
“She means he’s going to be pissed,” Martinez said. “I can’t wait to see it.”
“We’re all going to be neck deep in cat guts tomorrow, but maybe we can get Betsy to record it for us.” He caught what he was saying and then amended it to, “Or someone else.”
Betsy Clement had been the secretary for the sheriff’s office for forty years. I was doubtful she’d be able to record anything. She still used an electric typewriter and did payroll by hand because she was afraid of the computer that had been sitting on her desk for two years and never been turned on.
“I hope you’re kidding about cat guts,” Martinez said. “I’d hate to have to resign. Nothing I saw in the army compared to what those cats did to that lady.”
“The cats are done. The murder investigation isn’t.”
“Murder investigation?” Chen asked, eyes narrowed.
“Someone bashed Rosalyn McGowen over the head with a heavy object. I’ve got Nash and Cheek canvassing the area to see if the murder weapon was dumped.”
“It was something with a sharp corner,” I added. “I’ll make a mold once her bones are ready.”
“We think TOD was sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning. We need a timeline. You guys take the houses across the street and start doing door to doors. This is the kind of neighborhood where everyone knows everything. I want to know it all. Get the dirt and let’s see if we can put a solid board together. Jaye and I will do this side and the cul-de-sac. You can head home after, but send me the report once you’ve got it written up. We’ll meet in the morning at nine in the conference room. There’s something unusual about this case. Once word gets out she was murdered we’re going to be under close scrutiny. Everything stays close to the vest.”
“People are going to start to panic,” Martinez said. “Another one of our own murdered. It’s the most we’ve had in the last several years.”
“We’ll find whoever did this. There are bad people in the world. That’s just the truth of it. They want to cause harm. All we can do is try to stop them before they start or hunt them after. This time we’re hunting.”
Chen and Martinez headed across the street to the house at the end of the block, and I turned to Jack.
“Are people really going to panic?”
“Some might. Citizens don’t like it when their crime rate goes up. And the only person to blame is me. We’ll find out how much they blame me come election time.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said defensively. “You’re the best sheriff this county has ever had. The world is just changing. It’s more dangerous everywhere. And people are nuts.”
Jack smiled, but it was distant. “Let’s talk to the neighbors and see what they have to say.”
“It’s after noon,” I said. “Do you think anyone is going to be home?”
Jack snorted out a laugh. “All the curtains on this street have been flapping back and forth so much I can feel the draft. I don’t think anyone went to work today.”
“Just an FYI…I left Sheldon and Lily to deal with my appointments today, so we might have to sell the funeral home to pay our bills. And we’ll probably have to move to Canada.”
“Why Canada? That seems drastic,” Jack said. “And we can pay our bills for twenty lifetimes even if you have to sell the funeral home. We’re rich. Problem solved. Stop worrying.”
“Did you know they used to throw spears at a corpse in the Iron Age? Like a twenty-one-gun salute. It was a great ho
nor.”
“Is this a new service you’re providing?”
“Sheldon’s going to include it on our option sheet,” I said, pretty much resigned to whatever outcome he led us to.
“I’m sure Lily will have things well under control. And if not, she’s a black belt so maybe she’ll knock him unconscious.”
We walked to the house to the right of Mrs. McGowen’s and a young woman in her mid-twenties answered the door before we’d walked onto her porch. She was a pretty girl, blonde and blue-eyed, with her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She was heavily pregnant and had a little girl on her hip who couldn’t have been more than two. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.
“Hey, Katie,” Jack said and then winked at the little girl. “Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure, y’all come on in,” she said. “I just made a pitcher of tea if you’d like some.”
“Sounds great,” Jack said. “I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to meet Doctor Graves.” And then Jack turned to me. “Katie is Stewart’s daughter,” he explained.
Now I realized why I recognized her. Captain Stewart Smith had been a cop for a lot of years, and his family was practically an institution in Bloody Mary. His mother was Martha Smith, who owned Martha’s diner. Half the people in Bloody Mary were related to the Smith’s in one way or the other.
“Oh, nice to meet you,” I said.
“You too. I saw your wedding announcement in the paper. Congratulations. My dad said it was about time.”
Jack laughed and we sat on a little couch next to the front with that looked out over the street. One Life to Live was playing on the television, but it was on mute.
“And don’t worry about that mean old Madame Scandal,” she said. “I didn’t believe a word of her story. I’ll get your tea and be back in a second.”
Her smile was sweet and she put the little girl in a play area that looked like a big cage with a baby gate on it. There were toys inside of it and a bowl of Cheerio’s that had partially spilled on the floor. As far as containment went, it seemed to do the job.
