Secrets, Lies, and Crawfish Pies

by Abby L. Vandiver

  He started laughing as he reached down for a tub and heaved it up, his muscles bulging as he lifted the water-filled receptacle brimming full with the little red mudbugs.

  “Thank you,” he said, that familiar smile on his face as he slid by me.

  “No problem,” I said. “I’ll wait for you to get the other two.”

  “Auntie,” I said as I stood at the back door waiting for Catfish. “Where’s that old camera of yours?”

  “Same place it’s always been.” She nodded her head. “Down in the Preparation Room. I still take pictures of all my clients.”

  “Good,” I said as Catfish made his way for the second load. “I’d like to take pictures as part of the autopsy.”

  “If you ever get started.” She turned and looked at me. “And make sure you talk to him,” Auntie said. “It’s important to speak to the dead.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” I said. I walked over from the door and grabbed my phone off the kitchen table. “I have an audio app.” I waved the phone at her then stuck it in my back pocket. “I can use it to record. Then I’ll type up the report for Pogue, so he’ll have the info he needs to get started on his investigation.”

  Catfish came out of the pantry and went back for the third tub. I picked up our breakfast plates and put them in the sink, then went to hold the screen door open. After he got them in the pantry, we went back to the table and started to sit down.

  “Bup, bup, bup, bup,” Auntie said. “Don’t sit down. You’ve got work to do.” She moved her hands up, gesturing for us to stand.

  “Okay. You ready, Catfish?”

  A big grin spread across his face. “Whenever you are,” he said.

  “Well. C’mon. Let’s go do this.”

  Chapter Ten

  I ran upstairs, brushed my teeth, threw some clothes on and got the charger for my phone. Autopsies can take anywhere for two to four hours and I didn’t need my battery running out in the middle of me trying to record my findings. Catfish waited for me, unwearyingly, at the bottom of the steps and smiled as I came back down like I was waltzing down the staircase in a prom gown and he was my date.

  I smiled back.

  Catfish’s patience, even when we were as young as thirteen, had always been unwavering when it came to me. I remember he had to tell me several times while we were out fishing to be careful not to slip on the rocks.

  “I know,” I had said.

  “Let me help you,” he said and reached out to grab me.

  “I got this. I can do it myself,” I told him and eyed him letting him know not to do anything to help.

  He stood patiently by and watched as I splashed about, crawfish slipping through my fingers, not getting a one and finally falling and bashing my knee on the sharp rocks.

  I remember Catfish didn’t say a word, knowing I was too embarrassed to want his help, and him not wanting to ever say, “I told you so.” Instead, he waited until I composed myself and stood up. “I’ll always be here for you, Romie,” he had said. “Just say the word. I’ll be there whenever you need me.” Then he smiled and took me home so Auntie Zanne could bandage my knee.

  As I reached the bottom of the steps, I grabbed his shirt and tugged him along behind me. We swung by Auntie’s office where I picked up an inkpad, then we took the steps downstairs. Ornately carved oak banisters and curved staircase with an old-style tapestry runner was the entryway for grieving families to view their loved ones before the services. It was also the way to the Preparation Room.

  Once there, I glanced around. I hadn’t been down there in years and Auntie Zanne was right, her business was booming. And from the looks of things, she had invested wisely in upgrading her business.

  There were six embalming stations, which I’m sure was overkill. Auntie was all Texas, though, so “go big” was how she did everything. The room was stainless steel, wood and granite. The floor and walls were white and there were bright, square-shaped, flush-mount ceiling lights. It reminded me of being back at the hospital.

  “Which body you doing the autopsy on?” Catfish asked, looking around the room.

  “He’s in the cooler,” I said. I stuck my phone in my capri pants pocket and pushed up my sleeves. “This way.”

  I opened the door to the cooler, and there he was, still dressed in his suit. Out of the casket, he’d been placed on one of the silver embalming tables, which was good for me.

  “Let’s pull him out and put him in station number six.” I stood at the head and positioned myself to give the table on wheels a push.

  “I got him,” Catfish said and moved me out the way. “You get your camera.”

  “Okay,” I said. I opened a few cabinets before I found the camera, and when I turned around, Catfish already had the table in position.

  “Is this good?” he asked.

  “That’s perfect,” I said. I held my phone and camera in my hand and realized I needed somewhere close by to keep them as I worked. I glanced around the room and spotted, next to one of the preparation tables, a metal stand with rollers filled with Auntie’s embalming tools. I walked over and ran my fingers over the shiny instruments. Everything I needed was there. I placed the phone and camera on it and rolled it over to the table that held my John Doe.

  He took a step back. “You need me to do anything else?” Catfish asked.

  “Just one more thing. Can you help me get him undressed?” I asked. “Or are you squeamish about things like that?”

  He vigorously shook his head and stepped forward. “I deal with squeamish all day long. Takes a lot for a fish to calm down after you pull them out of the water.” He smiled at me. “Plus, you know I’d help you do whatever you’d want me to do.”

  “Same old Catfish,” I said and smiled. “But before we do that, I want to get pictures of him.”

  “Like this?” he asked. “Fully dressed?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Might be evidence of something.”

  “What?” He seemed amused.

  “You never know,” I said. “Something the investigators might need to see to link clues together. Better to have it then not.”

  “Investigators?” he said. “You mean, Pogue?”

  “One and the same.”

  I snapped a few shots. Clothes. Hands. Head.

  I’d already visually examined parts of the squatter for any trauma the first day we’d found him. But today was different. No one standing over me, and the answers to the mystery of this man were left for me to find.

  I was excited to get to see the rest of him. “Okay, that should do it for now,” I said and set the camera aside. “We’ve gotta get him undressed, but first,” I pointed to the linen rack, “we’ll need to dress for it.”

  I donned a poly laminated protection gown, with elastic cuffs, neck and waist tie, and handed one to Catfish. It had a repellent surface to keep us dry and stain-free. I slipped boot covers on and grabbed two full-face splash shields and showed Catfish how to fasten the adjustable Velcro strap.

  “Too much rigor to sit him up. We need to roll him from side to side,” I said. “Take his things off one side at a time.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll follow your lead.”

  I pulled one arm out of the sleeve of the loosely fitted suit jacket. Catfish pulled him over and I tucked it under him and walked over to stand next to Catfish. “Now push him the other way.”

  I grabbed the jacket from underneath where I had tucked it and pulled it toward me. Then eased his other arm out. I folded it over and laid it on the counter.

  Catfish swiped his hand across his nose. “What’s that smell?”

  “Yeah, it did just get stronger didn’t it?” I said. “That’s formaldehyde.”

  “Ain’t that what they use in embalming fluid?”

  “Sure is.”

  “I’ve been down here plenty of t
imes when Babet still used formaldehyde,” he said. “Never smelled this strong before.”

  “I guess it’s just concentrated,” I said. “That’s one thing I need to find out about.”

  “Where would someone get formaldehyde from?” Catfish asked.

  “If that isn’t the million-dollar question,” I said.

  “So,” he said licking his lips, a confused look on his face, “he was already done up to be buried?”

  “Yeah. Looks that way.”

  “By who?”

  “By the killer is my guess,” I said. “Not by a funeral home.”

  “Unless someone at a funeral home is the killer,” he said.

  That was just what my auntie had been thinking. And she claimed she knew exactly which funeral home it was, too. But I didn’t dare say that out loud.

  “Now let’s get this shirt off of him. We’ll do it the same way we did the jacket,” I said and walked back around the table. We repeated our actions, but as soon as I pulled his shirtsleeve out and Catfish pulled the body toward him, I saw what had killed him.

  “Oh. Look at that,” Catfish said looking over from the other side.

  There was a slew of entry wounds across the Dead Guy’s back.

  “I’m going to need pictures of that,” I said.

  “That was a buckshot that hit him,” Catfish said.

  Buckshots were shotgun ammunition that housed large metal pellets in the shell. When a shotgun loaded with a buckshot is fired, the encased pellets spread out as they move toward their target.

  “And look at this,” Catfish said, holding the shirt we’d just taken off of Dead Guy in the air. “That looks like sap.” Catfish pointed to a spot on the shirt, his nose so close it was almost inside the wound.

  “Don’t get so close,” I said.

  Geesh! I thought. Everyone around here wants to get their noses into everything.

  He pulled back. “I wouldn’t have,” he said. “I know better.”

  I picked up a cotton-tipped stick from the stand with the instruments and walked around to where he stood. I swabbed the amber liquid he’d identified.

  “It does look like the sap from the pines trees in Piney Woods, doesn’t it?” I said and twirled the stick around in my hand.

  “I’d bet my farm on it,” he said.

  I took the swab and put it in a plastic baggie I’d gotten from the counter. “What else do you see?” I asked, staring at the shirt. I had been hasty with him before. I knew better than to be like that with Catfish.

  He smiled, knowing I was trying to make up. “I think I see some woodchips.”

  “Yeah. I think I see a few.” I picked up tweezers and pulled the sliver of wood from the fibers of the shirt.

  “Why would tree sap and wood be all over the back of this shirt?” he asked.

  “Don’t know, but I told you it was good to take pictures of the clothes.” I grabbed the camera and took a few shots.

  “You were right,” he said.

  I took the shirt and placed it in a brown paper bag. “Pogue can send this to the lab to be analyzed.”

  “Okay,” Catfish said.

  “How far back do you think the shooter was?” I asked Catfish’s opinion, still trying to make up for being short with him.

  “From the spread of the pellets, I’d say ’bout twenty feet or more.” He walked over to the sink and washed his hands, shaking his head. “I think that meant this poor guy didn’t see it coming.”

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “That’s sad.”

  “It is,” he said, flinging the water off of his hands before grabbing a paper towel. “But at least it didn’t take much to find out what killed him.”

  “True,” I said.

  “So now you’re done?” Catfish asked.

  “No.” I chuckled. “I still have more to do.”

  “Seems like an open and shut case to me,” he said. “You’ve just found out what happened.” He looked at me and winked. “But I know you know what’s best, Romie.”

  “I know what’s necessary,” I said. “There’s more to do if I want to be of any help figuring out whodunit. The murderer was trying to outsmart the police. There’s no ID and he was put in a place where dead bodies are all over the place.”

  “Outsmart you? Impossible.”

  “Let’s hope whoever it was isn’t smarter than us,” I said. “I just want Pogue to figure out who did it.”

  “I don’t think there’s anyone smarter than you, Romie.”

  “I think you’re a little biased, Catfish.”

  “I am,” he said and blushed. “Not ashamed for anyone to know it.”

  I stood up straight and took a moment before I spoke. “You gotta girl?” I asked. “Someone special you’re seeing?”

  “Nope. Gave my heart away a long time ago.” He looked at me with a spark in his eye.

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good thing to do, Catfish. Others are not always as careful with it.”

  I made my notes about the wound on the back of the body, finished getting the body undressed, and told Catfish I could get the rest on my own. He left reluctantly, afraid I might need more help once he’d gone. But I knew I was fine.

  I stretched the knot out of my back, adjusted the light and blinked hard a couple of times to clear my eyes.

  This was familiar territory. I picked up Auntie’s thirty-five-millimeter camera and took pictures while the body was in a prone position. I rolled his fingers over the inkpad I had grabbed from the office to use for identification purposes. The clothes might yield the decedent’s DNA, but mostly it would be used to identify the culprit’s. I’d use blood collected from the heart to do a profile on the victim.

  A body on the table. Scalpel in hand, poised and ready. This was where I was used to being. Where I belonged. I ran my hand over his chest, cleared my throat and spoke into the mic on my phone: “Male. Caucasian. One hundred and seventy pounds. All tattoos, scars, and identifying marks will be documented photographically.”

  I bent over the body and instinctively began to cut in a thoracoabdominal Y-shaped incision...

  Chapter Eleven

  “I’ve got a report for you,” I said to Pogue. He answered on the first ring. His anxiety was so obvious it seeped through the phone. “Seems like you were there waiting for it.”

  “Is it ready for me to pick up?” he said, not acknowledging my observation.

  “Not yet,” I said. I laid the phone on the desk and put it on speaker. “Thought I’d call you with preliminaries. Then I’ll type it up for you.”

  “Preliminaries? What’s that?”

  I twirled the pen on the desk and breathed evenly, hoping to transfer my sense of calm to him. “Cause of death. Manner of death,” I said.

  I sat behind Auntie’s expansive mahogany desk. Set in the middle of her office, there were two tufted brown leather chairs in front of it. I pushed the thick folder she’d left for me out of the way. I had festival business to take care of for her, but first I had to get the autopsy report together for Pogue. He was right–the murder investigation trumped Auntie’s crawfish boil festival.

  “Cause and manner.” he repeated.

  “Yep. Two different things.”

  “Okay,” he said. I could hear the shakiness in his voice. His first murder and my auntie were a lot to deal with all at once.

  “Gunshot wound to his back from a distance. One pellet entered his heart. That was the cause.”

  I could hear him suck in a breath and hold it.

  “Manner of death was murder,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He let the breath out with a chuckle. “Of course it is. Can’t shoot yourself in the back,” he said. “Anything else you wanna tell me before you type it up?”

  I shrugged. “It was kind of hard to place the t
ime of death. I put in an estimation, but you’ll have to couple that with your investigation to get a definite.”

  “Okay,” he said. “A lot to do.”

  “Does your deputy have any experience with murder?”

  “No. My deputy is just as green as I am. And he’s on loan,” he said.

  “On loan?”

  “Yeah. Just here to help for the week.”

  I didn’t know what that was about, but I didn’t ask.

  “Doc Westin is the one with the know-how in stuff like this. Being a medical examiner for the tri-county, he’s done dozens more murders than we’ve seen in Roble.”

  “We’ve never seen a murder in Roble,” I said.

  “I know. Just my luck he’s sick.” Pogue let out a nervous chuckle.

  “I’m going to type up your report now, so you can get to it.”

  “That’s the other thing, Romie. I didn’t say anything before,” he said, hesitating. “I had almost forgotten about it sparring and all with Babet.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I’ve got this conference.”

  “What kind of conference?”

  “National Sheriff’s Association Conference,” he said.

  “Well, that’s good,” I said. “They may have break-out sessions on forensics or something that could help you learn about how to do this. And you’ll meet other sheriffs. You could ask them questions.”

  “But what about that forty-eight-hour rule thing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The conference is in Reno.”

  “Nevada?” I said and chuckled.

  “Yeah.”

  “For how long?”

  “Four days,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well you heard what Auntie Zanne said. That forty-eight-hour stuff is just on television.”

  “Yeah, I know she thinks she knows everything, but the show that’s called The First 48 is about real police officers and real crimes.”

  I didn’t say anything. Maybe that really was a thing.

  “Romie? You there?”