Lucky Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  Hurley holds her gaze a bit longer than I like. “No need to apologize. You did some great investigative work here. I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome. And if there’s anything else you need from me, don’t hesitate to ask.” She takes a card out of her pocket and hands it to him. “That’s my personal cell number on there. Call me anytime,” she says with a suggestive tone. Then she gives Hurley a flirtatious wink and adds, “If you’re nice to me, I just might give you a candy cane.”

  I have a few suggestions for what she can do with her candy cane, but I keep them to myself.

  “Ahem,” Izzy says, eyeing me with a worried expression. “I suppose we best get to securing the body so we can get it back to the morgue before all this water destroys our evidence. What do you guys say to doing this autopsy today?”

  “Fine by me,” I say. After years of employment at the hospital, I’m used to working on the holidays. “You’ll be giving me the perfect excuse for avoiding the remainder of the celebration at my sister’s house. My mother was already having a conniption about all the germs that might be lurking in my sister’s live Christmas tree. When I left for this call, she was bleaching the tree ornaments.” My mother has a few mental quirks, not the least of which are her hypochondria and her OCD. I’m pretty certain that by day’s end she’ll be at home consulting her impressive medical library in search of tree-borne diseases, imagining symptoms to fit.

  “I’m fine with it, too,” Hurley says. “I have no plans for the rest of the day and I’d like to get this wrapped up as quickly as possible.”

  “Wrapped up?” I echo. “Interesting choice of words, given the holiday.”

  Izzy rolls his eyes and heads back to the living room. I follow reluctantly, leaving Candy and Hurley alone in the dining room together. I force myself to focus on the immediate tasks at hand, but part of my mind imagines me holding a giant candy cane with the curved end looped around Hurley’s waist, dragging him away from Candy in vaudeville style.

  Chapter 2

  Izzy and I manage to scoop up the remains of Jack Allen’s body and get it back to the morgue some two hours later. We spend most of that time photographing and documenting the scene as the arson investigators collect their evidence.

  Also documenting the scene outside is Alison Miller, Sorenson’s ace reporter and photographer. She is lurking about, snapping shots and talking to anyone who’s willing. I’ve known Alison for years. It was right after our high-school graduation that she went to work for our local paper, which comes out twice a week. I once considered her a friend, but our relationship these days is somewhere between animosity and outright loathing. That’s because she became my chief competition for Hurley’s affections not long ago, until Hurley made it clear he wasn’t interested. Alison didn’t take the rejection well and blamed it on me. I’m probably the only person from whom she won’t try to get a quote.

  Candy, the person who seems to be my new competition, doesn’t stay long. While her absence relieves me a little, I can’t help but notice that Hurley still has her card tucked safely inside his jacket pocket. I remind myself that I have no right to be jealous of what—or whom—Hurley does, because we don’t have that kind of relationship. It’s not from a lack of desire, however. There is a definite attraction between us that became evident early on during cases we worked together. But my lingering ambivalence over my marriage—and the tiny fact that I was still married—put a bit of a kibosh on things.

  The marriage thing has recently been resolved. After I rejected David’s repeated pleadings to give our marriage another chance, he finally got the message that I was done with him . . . right around the time he met up with Patty, the very attractive and single insurance agent who is handling the claim for our house fire. Now the two of them are an item. My divorce became final two days ago; and along with my freedom, I also received a tidy little settlement of nearly three hundred thousand bucks—my portion of the insurance claim on our house, minus the amount David gave me for the car I totaled some time ago that was in his name. The settlement wasn’t as much as I’d hoped, because David, who handled all our financials, apparently neglected to update our homeowner’s policy two years ago when we added on several hundred square feet of house in an addition off the back. While the house was once estimated to be worth close to a million bucks, in the current housing market, which stinks worse than what’s left of Jack’s house, that value has dropped to around seven hundred grand. And the insurance policy was for the original amount of the purchase, which was only five hundred grand, plus another hundred thousand for the contents. David had at one time offered to let me have a larger portion of the settlement in order to make up for the value of the land, which is now in his name only. However, after listening to him bitch about how much it was going to cost to rebuild and refurnish the place, I decided—in the spirit of idiocy—to settle for an even fifty-fifty split.

  Still, my portion of the settlement has made for a nice early Christmas present; and for the first time in months, my bank account is flush while I try to decide how to invest the funds. David is using his half to rebuild the house, albeit a smaller, scaled-down version of the original.

  Unfortunately, my newfound freedom doesn’t help my situation with Hurley. Thanks to cuts in the Wisconsin state budget, and a few shady dealings by some cops and evidence techs in Milwaukee, a lot of job titles and duties were eliminated, merged, and otherwise shuffled recently, mine included. Instead of being a deputy coroner, I now bear the hefty title of medicolegal death investigator. Though it sounds fancier, it’s basically the same job I was doing before, except now our office works more closely with the police department: both with the collection and processing of evidence, and with the overall investigation. We each provide oversight to the other. In a way, this is a good thing for me because it means I get to spend more time with Hurley and I can legitimately do what I’ve always done—be nosy and get into everyone else’s business. But because we’re basically serving as watchdogs for one another, it also means there can’t be any hints of fraternization or situations that might cause conflicts of interest. Bottom line, in order to keep my job, I can’t date Hurley. And despite my recent windfall, I want to keep my job. I enjoy it; I’m good at it; and the majority of my money from the divorce settlement needs to be earmarked for retirement.

  While I can’t date Hurley, there’s nothing that says I can’t continue to place myself in strategic positions for observation whenever he has to bend over. And I do so as often as I can during our scene processing, admiring the long, lean lines of his back and a pair of buns that look like they could crack open an oyster.

  I know these musings aren’t healthy and I’ll have to pick myself up, dust myself off, and get back into the dating scene at some point. It’s not something I look forward to. The one date I’ve had so far turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, and the man is now living and sleeping with my mother.

  Speaking of dusting off, I feel and look like a chimneysweep by the time we get Jack’s body back to the morgue. I opt to take a quick shower before heading into the autopsy suite. Stripping down in the shower room, I make the mistake of glancing in the full-length mirror to check out my new tan lines.

  In a few days, Hurley and I will be traveling to Daytona Beach to attend a two-day educational seminar on advances in forensics, one of the requirements of my new job description. Though I failed to inherit my mother’s tiny, trim figure, I did get her fair coloring, blue eyes, and blond hair. My normal skin tone is quite pale. Along with my height and my size-12 feet, it earned me the nickname of “Yeti” in high school. Given the warm weather and the sunny beach where we’ll be staying for the seminar, I thought it might be prudent to spend a little time in a tanning bed getting some base color. I know the sun can be dangerous, but the idea of worshipping it a little is irresistible—especially since I’m in the midst of one of Wisconsin’s infamously long, dark, snowy winters. Thanks to daylight saving time, I go to work in t
he dark and come home in the dark. Every day I check my canine teeth in the mirror, expecting to see that they’ve grown.

  So an artificial sun is my only choice and I’ve had two sessions at the tanning bed so far. I got a bit impatient yesterday and set the timer for longer than I should have. As a result, I burned a little, leaving me cherry red instead of tanned. Fortunately, I kept my panties on and draped a small towel over my boobs so my more delicate parts didn’t get hit. I’m not too worried about the red parts, because I know from past experience that they’ll fade to tan in a few days, giving me an approximate two-week window of looking sun-kissed and healthy before giant sheets of my skin start peeling off like a sloughing leper’s.

  I planned it all out so that I’d look my best when we hit Florida. However, as I glance into the mirror and examine my backside, I realize I’ve made a fatal miscalculation. The curved tanning bed cradles me pretty tightly. As a result, I have a series of red-and-white stripes down both of my sides—red, where my skin was exposed to the tanning bed; white, where rolls of back fat kept certain areas tucked away and hidden. The end result is laughably hideous. I look like a mutant albino zebra.

  Disgusted, I get into the shower and try to block the image from my mind, vowing to get back to the gym. A hugely overweight, semiretired detective by the name of Bob Richmond conned me into doing workouts with him a few weeks ago, but I’ve slacked off a bit as of late while he’s been at home recuperating from a bullet wound. My idea of exercise is walking to the bakery rather than driving, and I’m convinced that the exercise machines at the gym were purloined from a medieval torture chamber.

  Fifteen minutes later, I am cleaned of ash and my stripes are safely hidden beneath a set of scrubs. When I arrive in the autopsy room, Izzy informs me that he and Arnie, our lab tech, have already X-rayed the body—including a set of dental films—drawn vitreous samples, and obtained blood from the carotid artery. Hurley and another local cop, by the name of Junior Feller, are standing against the wall by the door. As I approach the table, the song “Bad Boys” from the TV show Cops starts to play. Looking a bit embarrassed, Junior takes out his cell phone and answers it, stopping the music.

  “Are you kidding me?” Hurley mutters, with a roll of his eyes.

  Junior says into the phone, “Not now, Monica. I’ll call you later.” He pauses and then says, “Yes, I can pick up some eggs on the way home. But it may be a while.” He snaps the phone shut and drops it back into his pocket.

  “Seriously, dude?” Hurley says, shaking his head. “You have the theme song for Cops as your ring tone?”

  Junior looks sheepish and shrugs. “Monica likes it.”

  Monica is his new girlfriend and a committed badge chaser. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she and Junior do it in the back of his cruiser while Junior keeps on his uniform and gun belt.

  Izzy and I smile at one another, but say nothing. We turn our attention back to the task at hand. Jack’s body is already laid out on the table and fully exposed. It’s a bizarre sight. His limbs look like giant, burnt chicken wings; his torso is like a charcoal briquette. Yet, his face looks relatively normal.

  Izzy starts his superficial exam at Jack’s face, while I take a comb to what’s left of his hair, searching for trace evidence. All I find are chunks of the asbestos insulation, ash, and some bits of ceiling tile. I collect it all on clean white paper and then bag and seal it as evidence.

  Izzy steps up on the footstool he has to use in order to reach everything and opens Jack’s mouth to look inside. “There’s no sign of soot in his nostrils or in his mouth,” he says. “That tells me he was likely dead before the fire started. I’ll be able to tell better once I get a look at his lungs, and after Arnie runs the lab tests on the blood he sampled. But I’m guessing Jack’s carbon monoxide level will be zero.”

  “Maybe not zero,” I say. “He was a smoker.”

  “Good point.” Izzy then explains the situation to the cops. “Smokers tend to maintain a carbon monoxide level anywhere from zero to ten, depending on what they smoke, how long ago they smoked it, and how often they smoke. But if he inhaled smoke from the fire, his level will be much higher than that.”

  Izzy peels back Jack’s upper lip, then the lower one. “Hmm, this is interesting,” he says, and both Junior and Hurley step up to the table to take a look. “He has some bruising here on the inside of his lips—something we often see when someone’s been smothered.”

  Hurley asks, “Can it be caused by something else?”

  Izzy thinks a moment before answering. “Yes, I suppose it could. The weight of the ceiling debris falling on his face might have caused it. But considering the amount of the bruising, I suspect he was still alive, with his heart pumping, when it occurred, and if that was the case, he’d have soot in his mouth. So I can only assume the bruising occurred perimortem, before the fire started and the ceiling came down. It’s also possible he hit his face against the floor or some other object when he fell out of his wheelchair.”

  After Izzy snaps some photos, we examine the remainder of Jack’s body surface, both in the room’s normal light and again using our ultraviolet light. Aside from more ceiling debris, we don’t find anything of interest, but we bag and tag what we do find, just in case.

  Next Izzy hoses the body down and the resultant gray water runs along channels on the sides of the autopsy table into a special filter and drain. The filter will be examined later for any additional trace evidence.

  Izzy steps down from his stool and looks over at Junior and Hurley. “This next part is going to be a bit grim,” he warns. “I need to straighten out his arms and legs.” Izzy instructs me to hold Jack’s shoulder and torso down while he takes hold of the lower part of the arm and pulls. He throws most of his weight into it—a considerable effort despite his height, since Izzy is nearly as wide as he is tall. His face flushes red and his bushy, dark eyebrows draw together and form a V over his nose as he pulls. Finally the arm gives way with a distinct crack. After a short breather, we repeat the procedure on the other side and then move to the hips and legs. By the time we have the body as straight as we’re going to get it, bits of charred flesh have flaked off onto the table.

  Izzy takes his scalpel and starts his Y cut. He has to work at it; burnt flesh doesn’t cut as easily as normal tissue. Once he has the torso exposed, he goes to work cutting the ribs and removing the breastplate. The underlying organs are in better shape than I expected. They appear shrunken to some degree, but they are still identifiable and those in the upper part of the torso appear almost normal. The stench, however, is anything but. It smells like roasted, rancid meat and at this point, everyone in the room is mouth-breathing. The stinky aspects of this job do take some getting used to. Even Izzy, who I’d begun to think can’t smell at all, since nothing ever seems to bother him, is wrinkling his nose.

  “The organs are often protected to some degree by the outer layers of the body,” Izzy explains, reading my mind and once again slipping into teaching mode. “But if the fire burns hot enough, long enough, they’ll eventually get thoroughly cooked and might even become charred.”

  When he dissects the lungs and trachea, the lack of soot verifies his theory that Jack died before the fire. Jack’s stomach contents include some type of bread, bits of tomato, some soft, gooey white stuff, a thin, half-moon–shaped piece of what looks to be some type of meat, and a couple small chunks of something hard and white. I’m pretty sure I know what Jack’s last meal was, and my suspicion is confirmed when Izzy crushes one of the small white chunks and the aroma of garlic wafts into the air.

  Izzy and I exchange a look across the table and both say, “Pesto Change-o.”

  “Huh?” Hurley says.

  “It looks like Jack’s last meal was a pepperoni pizza from Pesto Change-o,” I say.

  “How can you be that specific?” Junior asks.

  “Pesto is the only place in town that puts big chunks of garlic like this on their pizzas,” I say. />
  I hold up the beaker with the stomach contents in it and point to one of the white chunks, which nearly makes Junior blow chunks. He clamps a hand over his mouth, prompting a muttered “Wuss ass” from Hurley. Izzy and I share a smile and then turn our attention back to the autopsy.

  The fire burned much hotter near Jack’s pelvis; and the lower down in the body cavity we go, the more distorted and damaged the organs are. Despite being shrunken and discolored from the heat of the fire, his liver appears otherwise healthy and non-cirrhotic. Apparently, his alcohol consumption hadn’t been enough to destroy it yet.

  By the time we’re done removing and dissecting the organs, Arnie pops in with the results of the lab tests he’s run. It’s the first time I’ve seen him today, and I have to do a double take.

  “You cut off your ponytail.”

  He looks back at me through his thick glasses and rubs the top of his head, where his skin is visible beneath the thinning brown strands. “It seemed a little too compensatory and pathetic,” he says. “My hair is falling out, and it’s about time I manned up and faced the fact.”

  Izzy, who has a superb bullshit detector, says, “Uh-huh.” He stares at Arnie for a beat and then adds, “When are you going to tell us the real reason?”

  “What do you mean?” Arnie asks.

  Izzy stares back at him over the top of his specs; his left eyebrow arches in skepticism.

  “Fine,” Arnie concedes after several more beats of silence. “I lost a bet and had to cut the ponytail off as payment.”

  “Ouch,” Junior says. “That’s a pretty stiff penalty.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Arnie says, shrugging. “I bet a friend of mine who works for a certain government agency that the new big-screen TV he won in a company raffle had a hidden camera in it that allowed interested parties to spy on him.”