by Jim Cliff
“I checked her pulse, listened for any breathing, but there was nothing. It was clear she was dead.”
“So you got quite close up to her?”
He nodded. “Closer than we are now.”
“Do you recall what she looked like?”
“Uh, yes. She had dark hair, brown I think. She was young, tall - maybe 5’ 8”, 5’ 9”, slim. She had on a blue jacket and skirt. Her blouse was red with blood.”
“OK, thanks,” I said. ”Then what?”
“I hightailed it back to the car. Jane and I spoke about going to the police, but...I’m afraid I was concerned for my marriage, and I felt we didn’t know anything helpful so we agreed to keep it to ourselves unless it became clear we could exonerate somebody by coming forward.”
“Tough decision on both of you, I’d guess.”
“I’ve lived with it for over twenty years now. It hasn’t been easy.”
“Did you and Jane keep seeing each other?”
“No. That was it for us. We kept in touch over the years. When she heard about the divorce she asked once again if we could find out what happened to that poor woman. I hope we can finally put the matter to rest now.”
“I’ll do what I can. How did you feel when you saw the police had called it a suicide?”
“Well, that was a surprise, I don’t mind telling you. Made me rethink everything that had happened. It was like a twist in a movie. I wondered for a while if maybe they were right, maybe the man we heard was shouting to try to stop her shooting herself and then took off when she did it. I just don’t know what to believe.”
I nodded. “I have two more questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Fire away.”
“Were there any other cars in the parking lot?”
“One. Light-colored, maybe white.”
“Great, thanks. And finally, did you have a flashlight?”
“No, why?”
“I just wondered how you found her so quickly, how you saw what she looked like. Jane said it was pretty dark.”
“Well, I got right up close to her. Right down there in the mud. And the moon, I suppose, must have been bright enough for me to find my way.”
“OK, thanks for your time.”
“Hey, it’s no trouble. No trouble at all. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to give my assistant a call.”
Chapter 6
Saturday morning I got into the office at ten and searched the newspaper archives online for Elizabeth Weber. The only article that came up was the one Jane Parker had given to me, a copy of which now adorned the wall behind my desk.
Then I found a website that gave historical weather and astronomical data to see if I could figure out how much moonlight there would have been that night. I love the internet. The moon was almost full, but it didn’t matter, because it didn’t rise until after nine p.m. Then I noticed the rainfall figure. Jane and Grady had both mentioned it was raining that night, but that didn’t begin to cover it. From six p.m. until early afternoon on the third, almost four inches of rain fell. Average rainfall for the whole month of November in Chicago is just under three inches, so I’d call that a lot.
I was about to start a background search on Elizabeth Weber when there was a knock at my door. Scott came in, holding a manilla folder.
“Hey buddy,” he said, smiling.
“You guys deliver now? That’s service!”
“I was passing.” He handed me the file. “Not much detail I’m afraid.”
“You’ve read it?” He nodded. “What’s your take?”
“Hard to say. Like I said, there’s not much to go on. Looks like she owned the gun, she was holding it when they found her, GSR found on her hand. Contact wound consistent with a self-inflicted injury, but not definitive. Take a look for yourself.”
“Thanks for getting it.”
“Sure.” He looked like he was debating whether to say something. He went with “I was you, I’d speak to the lead investigator. He might remember something that didn’t make it into the file.”
“Is he still on the job?”
Scott shook his head. “Retired a few years back, but Al worked with him a couple times. He’s a good guy. Think he’ll talk to you if we vouch for you. Let me know.”
“Al will vouch for me?” I asked, surprised. Scott’s partner and I didn’t always see eye to eye.
“If I ask nicely. He doesn’t hate you. You really came through on the Patterson case. He thought your methods were, I think the phrase he used was ‘stupid and dangerous’, but he couldn’t argue with the results.”
“Well, I’d appreciate it.”
“No problem. I gotta go. You coming over tonight?”
“Poker night? Wouldn’t miss it.”
Scott wasn’t kidding when he said the report lacked detail. The folder consisted of a four-page typed report about the investigation, a total of two crime scene photos and an autopsy report from the medical examiner’s office.
I started with the case report, the first page of which was a standard form with boxes for the location of the crime scene, the victim’s name and address, her physical appearance (brown hair, mid-thirties, 5’8” - good job Grady!) and a brief synopsis of what the detective found when he visited the scene.
Female Caucasian, ~35 years old, discovered in Thatcher Woods by Officer Davies. Pronounced at scene on 11/04/93 at 07:22. Decedent lying on back, head pointing East, approx. 15 feet from path and partially obscured by foliage. Body appears to be in full rigor. Decedent’s clothes significantly bloodstained around gunshot wound to chest, in location consistent with self-inflicted wound. Colt .38 revolver in decedent’s right hand contains five intact rounds and one spent cartridge. Decedent fits description of one Elizabeth Weber, reported missing by colleagues on 11/03/93. White Toyota Camry registered to Ms. Weber was located in nearby parking lot.
It was signed ‘Detective Caines.’ The other pages were titled Investigator’s Narrative and appeared to have been written at the conclusion of the investigation. I spent the rest of the morning reading and re-reading these pages, taking notes and coming up with questions to ask Detective Caines when I met him.
The narrative covered the same ground as the synopsis, but in much more detail, and added information they gained through forensic tests and interviewing Elizabeth Weber’s colleagues. Apparently, she ran her own real estate agency and didn’t show up to work on Tuesday, November 3, which was unprecedented. Her staff tried to contact her and when she didn’t show up the next day either they called the police to report her missing.
Somebody called the sheriff’s office to report someone trying to break into a car in the parking lot at Thatcher Woods, and when the patrol car went by to check it out they found the plate matched one belonging to a missing real estate agent. The deputies started to search the area and Officer Davies stumbled across Elizabeth Weber’s body.
The crime lab found gunshot residue on her right hand, showing she fired a gun recently, and when the cops interviewed her staff they said she had been more stressed at work lately but wouldn’t talk about it to anyone.
Crime scene pulled a slug out of a nearby tree and matched it to the revolver Weber was holding, and from the angle of the impact they worked out where she was standing when it went through her body and concluded it was consistent with her firing the weapon herself.
The crime scene photos showed Elizabeth Weber’s corpse lying among the leaves on the forest floor. The whole of her blouse front and part of her jacket was brown with dried blood. The rest of her suit was light blue, which matched her high heels, and she wore a light overcoat.
The gun was registered to a guy in Indiana who claimed he’d sold it to a woman at a gun show the previous month. The description he’d given matched the victim and Caines seemed convinced by his story. A lockbox for the gun, covered in Weber’s fingerprints, was found in the trunk of her Toyota.
After lunch, I started on the autopsy report. I struggled through the first four pages with
out making sense of much, but from what I could gather, the entry wound was star shaped and surrounded with powder burn, which meant the gun was pressed up against her chest when she fired. The bullet went right through her heart killing her almost instantly, then headed out her back and into that tree.
The body temperature matched the ambient temperature of thirty-seven degrees indicating she had been dead at least thirty hours. With the level of rigor and putrefaction, the ME estimated the post mortem interval at somewhere between thirty-eight and fifty hours before she was found.
She had no alcohol or other drugs in her system and prior to the appearance of a large hole in her chest it seemed she was in good health.
The report ended with a single paragraph titled ‘Opinion’, which read:
Cause of death is exsanguination following massive trauma due to gunshot wound to chest. Bullet passed through the left aorta, right to left in a downwards trajectory before exiting the decedent’s back. Death was very rapid, within seconds. Loss of consciousness was likely instantaneous. Wound appears to be self-inflicted, indicating suicide.
The report was dated and signed by Charles M. Tutin, MD, Deputy Medical Examiner. I made a note on my pad to see if he would talk to me. I looked out of my window at the L tracks. It was starting to get dark.
Chapter 7
“I fold,” said Scott, throwing down his hand more dramatically than necessary. I was holding jack-five off-suit, but everyone else had folded around to me, so I raised. Detective Nelson, sitting to my left, looked like he was thinking about calling for a few seconds, but decided against it, and I took the small pot.
The dealer button moved around to me and I picked up the cards and gave them a shuffle. The six of us fitted around Scott’s kitchen table so long as everyone breathed in and nobody minded the odd elbow in the ribs. To my right was Scott; his partner Al Freedman; Dr. Odin, Cook County’s current deputy medical examiner; and then Detectives Howe and Nelson. Howe was new to the game, but the rest of us played most Saturdays. It used to be just cops, but Odin overheard them talking about the game and asked if he could join, and then they took a vote and decided I could join too. I knew it was four to one and I was pretty sure I knew who the one was.
“You going to deal those cards or shuffle all night?” asked Al.
I smiled. “Patience, Three Twos, patience.” Al bristled at the nickname that was starting to catch on, and took a swig of his beer. The others chuckled. Al had never folded a pair of deuces, always hoping for the elusive third two to show up on the board. It was his favorite hand, but it had lost him a lot more money than he’d won when the luck occasionally went his way. I dealt two cards to each player.
“Raise two hundred,” said Dr. Odin, coming out strong. Al shook his head and folded immediately. While Scott was considering his next move, Odin tried to show how uninterested he was in what cards anyone else might have by starting a conversation.
“Working on anything interesting at the moment, Jake?”
It was the question I’d been hoping he would ask all evening. He often did, and this time I was desperate to get some information from him.
“Call,” said Scott. I looked down at my cards again. Still terrible. I folded and Nelson called fast, leaving Howe to deliberate.
“Actually, I’m working a cold case,” I said, “A suicide from 1993.”
Howe looked up from his cards. “A suicide?”
“Well, maybe, maybe not.”
Howe folded, and I dealt three cards face up in the middle of the table. Six, queen, ten. Two diamonds and a heart. Nelson checked. Odin looked at his cards again and raised another two hundred.
“Dr. Odin?” I said.
“Jake, I’ve told you before. When we’re playing cards, it’s Robert.”
“OK, Robert,” I conceded. “Do you know an ME by the name of Charles Tutin?”
“Why, sure. He was a Deputy when I came to Chicago for my fellowship. He was from Miami, I think.”
Scott folded and Nelson pushed his small stack of chips all-in. Odin thought about it for a few seconds and then called. They both turned their cards up. Nelson had a pair of kings, and Odin had ace-jack, both hearts. He was behind, but he had a lot of outs. A king, an ace or two more hearts would save him. The next card was no help - a three of spades, and sure enough, the last card was a nine, leaving Nelson with one pair and Odin with a big fat nothing. I passed the dealer button on to Nelson and as he started gathering the cards I turned to Odin again.
“When was that?” I asked.
“What?”
“When did you come to Chicago?”
“Let’s see, I did my residency in Austin in ‘94, so ‘95 I guess.”
I was surprised. Odin had been in Chicago more than twenty years, but it hadn’t diluted his Texan accent at all. Maybe he watched reruns of Dallas to top it up.
“Charles was the M.E. on this suicide?” Odin asked.
“That’s right. I have a few questions about it. Do you think he would talk to me?”
“I doubt it. He died a few years back. He was pretty old when I met him. Must have been about seventy back then. Can I help answer your questions?”
“Really? That would be great. I have the autopsy report...”
“Fellas. Do you mind?” said Al. “Can we play some cards?”
I hadn’t been paying attention, and the action was on me. I folded without looking at my cards and started to think about the questions I had. Odin, his chip stack crippled by his loss to Howe, only lasted a few more hands and I started playing aggressively to get rid of my chips, raising and re-raising with nothing but rags. I took down a few pots I had no right to win but when I pushed all-in with seven-nine of clubs, Scott, Al, and Nelson all called and I lost everything.
I left the table, took another beer from the fridge and got the autopsy report from my jacket pocket. Odin read it in a couple of minutes, his brow getting more and more furrowed as he read.
“Something jump out at you?” I asked when he was done.
“Not exactly. There’s nothing wrong with the report as such; it’s just not very thorough. Like it was done in a rush.”
“Any idea why that might be? Might he have been getting pressure from his boss to finish it, or from the cops?”
“I doubt it. Much as the police like to think they can hurry us up, the fact is an autopsy takes as long as it takes until we’re content with the verdict. The Chief ME knows that, too; he wouldn’t have been pressuring.”
“Was Tutin the kind to rush a verdict? Was his work sloppy?”
Odin smiled. “I was just a Fellow. He was Deputy ME I didn’t exactly get to audit his work. But no, that wasn’t his reputation.”
“What then?”
“There are two ways to approach a death investigation, Jake. Well, there are lots of ways, but two good ones. The first is to keep a completely open mind about time, cause and manner of death, and let the evidence speak to you. The trouble is, we’re humans, with built-in biases, history and a brain that likes to see patterns, so an open mind is a tricky thing to achieve if we’re honest with ourselves.”
“And the second?”
“To treat every death as a homicide until proven wrong. It means you do more work than necessary on a lot of accidents and suicides, but it also means fewer homicides slip through the cracks.”
“You think this might have been one that slipped through?”
“It’s impossible to say based on this,” he said, indicating the report. “All I can say is it looks like Charles expected it to be a suicide verdict from the beginning. I suspect it was presented as such by the officers on the scene.”
“What about the manner of death? Isn’t it unusual?”
“Suicide by gun?”
“Not just that, although I thought women preferred poison or overdoses. But wouldn’t most people just shoot themselves in the head? And I read when a suicide does shoot themselves in the body they’ll usually open a shirt or whatever so
they don’t shoot through their clothes.”
“Women prefer poison as a murder weapon, but for suicide, a little less than half choose a gun. It’s by far the most common method. Yes, most do aim for the head - the mouth and the right temple are the most frequent targets - but around one in seven shoots themselves in the chest. And of those who do, this is textbook. Contact wound, left-hand side, downwards trajectory from right to left.”
“And the clothing?”
“Total myth. People used to think that, but it was mostly anecdotes and confirmation bias. It’s true that when we do find clothing removed or loosened around the site of the shot it’s almost always a suicide, but around ninety-five percent of all deliberately self-inflicted chest shots are through clothing.”
“Wow. So none of that goes against it being a suicide?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“I’m curious about a couple of things.”
“Naturally. What are they?”
“Tutin estimated it was between thirty-eight and fifty hours between death and discovery. My witness puts the interval at thirty-five hours.”
Odin interrupted. “That’s not unusual. Estimation of time since death is an inexact science. We’ve got better at it since then.”
“No, I get that. The range was just an educated guess.” Maybe not the best choice of words, and I could see Odin formulating a rebuttal, but I continued. “What I was curious about was the fact it had been so long, but the police report said she was in full rigor. Shouldn’t she be way past that stage? And the autopsy report doesn’t mention any insect activity. Did Tutin miss it or ignore it?”
“Says here the ambient temp was thirty-seven degrees. That makes a huge difference to the onset and the progression of rigor mortis. The body could have been there a full day before the jaw started to stiffen up. It may not have been fully advanced until around thirty-six hours, but people vary.”
“OK, what about the insects?”
“First of all, not every medical examiner’s office in the country has entomological expertise, even now. Some hire experts in on a case-by-case basis, but some just don’t process that evidence. In this case, though, it wouldn’t have mattered, assuming that day didn’t follow a warmer spell. Blow flies are essentially inactive below forty-five degrees, so I wouldn’t have expected to see any maggots or larvae. Personally, I would have noted their absence in the report, but I guess Charles felt it was unnecessary.”
