Playing Dirty

by Liliana Hart

“Brett Jorgenson,” Jack said. “Age thirty-six. He’s got a King George address. 833 Revolutionary Road. That’s probably twenty miles from here.” Jack looked through the wallet and then put it in the bag with the phone. “Credit cards and cash are still inside.”

  “There are no skid marks,” I said, my gaze going to the top of the hill and then following the path down to where the body lay. “Coming off that hill, the driver was probably going at a pretty good clip.”

  “There are no skid marks anywhere,” Chen said. “The driver didn’t even put on his brakes after he hit the poor guy. He just kept going.”

  “The vic got thrown a good ways after impact,” Jack said, his eyes narrowing as he studied the scene. I waited to hear what he had to say before I examined the body. Jack was brilliant when it came to seeing crime scenes. He could visualize himself there, in the moment, and it was fascinating to watch. “You’re sure no one touched the bike or the body? EMTs didn’t move it out of the way?”

  “They said no, but I’ll double-check,” Chen said, walking off toward the EMTs.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “The victim fell to the inside of the road, and the bike looks like it was dragged a few yards down, but it’s still on the shoulder. Something is just weird about it. If he was clipped from behind, the bike and the rider would be off the road, probably down in the ditch. You can see scrapes on the road where the bike was dragged.”

  “I haven’t examined the body yet,” I said. “But first impression is that it wasn’t a direct impact. His clothes and helmet aren’t overly disturbed. No signs of blood on the road or on the body.”

  “Martinez,” Jack called out.

  I hadn’t noticed Martinez when I’d pulled up, but it made sense when I saw him coming toward us from the ditch.

  “Hey, Doc,” Martinez said, the surprise of seeing me evident in his voice. “Good to see you.” He looked between me and Jack, trying to gauge the situation, but we both just stared at him.

  “Find anything?” Jack asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “No tire marks or tracks on or off the road.”

  “I want you and Chen to start taking measurements and reconstructing the scene. Something about the angles is off to me. Send me what you’ve got once you get it into the computer.”

  “Will do, boss,” Martinez said, giving us a two-fingered salute before heading over to find Chen.

  I knelt next to the victim and unclasped his chin strap, carefully removing the helmet and checking for any external wounds. Helmets were good. I liked helmets. Mostly because they held the brains together and kept me from having to hunt all over the highway for them. Not that I would use that for a sales pitch if I was a helmet company. But flesh and heavy machinery weren’t compatible, and flesh always lost the battle.

  I pulled away his facemask and noted the grayish coloring around his mouth, and then I closed his partially open eyes. They were cloudy with death, but there were no broken capillaries or abnormalities.

  “You recognize him?” I asked. Not that I expected Jack to know all of the thirty thousand people who lived in the county, but I figured if Jack had been a cyclist at some point in his life than it had to be a pretty small circle of people. I’d occasionally seen riders out in groups with matching jerseys, but I’d never really given much thought as to how they organized.

  “No,” Jack said. “He doesn’t look familiar. But I’m going to check with the cycling clubs here in King George. There’s a good chance he’s a member if he’s skilled enough for this kind of equipment.”

  “He looks okay at first glance,” I said, running my hands down his arms and legs. “Nothing visibly broken, but I’ll see more once I get some x-rays. All in all, he doesn’t look like a guy who’s been hit by a car.”

  “Head trauma?” Jack asked.

  I lifted the head carefully and felt for any lumps, but there was nothing. “Nothing outward. He’s got to have bleeding on the brain or internal injuries. I need to get him back to the lab and start the autopsy.”

  “Do you think I should pull out of the race?” Jack asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  We were both crouched over the body. I could feel eyes on us, so I kept my head down as I answered. “Because of a gossip column in the paper?” I asked. “Of course not. But if it’s because you don’t want to be sheriff then that choice is yours.”

  “Are you planning on resigning as coroner?” he asked.

  My head jerked up and I met his gaze. “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “Because I know you,” he said. “You’re hurt, and you’re working your way toward mad. You tend to burn things to the ground and make big changes when you’re mad. So I figured somewhere in the back of your mind you’ve considered turning in a resignation letter.”

  I felt the heat in my cheeks. He was right. My anger was starting to replace the hurt. “You’d think for someone who knows me so well you’d know what I would or wouldn’t do when it comes to blabbing your secrets to reporters or anyone else.”

  I stood up abruptly and walked back toward my Suburban. I needed to get out of there. Hurt and angry were never a good combination, and there’d be another front-page story on us if I stayed around too much longer.

  I opened the rear hatch of the Suburban and felt the first fat drop of rain hit my shoulder. I pulled out the stretcher and a fresh body bag, and someone grabbed on to the back end of the stretcher and released the wheels so they touched the ground. It was Officer Wachowski, her face set in stoic lines as she helped me guide the gurney toward the body.

  Jack had moved away, getting reports from some of the other officers and giving me some space. The thing about marriage was that I knew deep down we were going to be okay. That things would eventually work out. But there were a lot of emotions to wade through between now and then, and you couldn’t rush the process of reconciliation. All in all, I felt like I was entitled to be mad for a little while.

  We positioned the stretcher and then moved the body carefully into the bag as the droplets plinked against black plastic. Rigor had started to set in his face and fingers. There’d been a small amount of lividity on part of his face and neck where he’d landed on the ground, but it wasn’t the deep purple of someone who’d been lying there an extended amount of time. But he’d been there for a while before someone found him. I looked down at my watch and calculated the time. He’d probably been dead three to four hours.

  I zipped the bag, and Wachowski and I raised the stretcher together, and then we rolled it back under the crime scene tape and toward the Suburban.

  “Thanks, Wachowski,” I said once we had him loaded.

  “Any time, Doc,” she said. “We’ve got yours and the sheriff’s backs. It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”

  I nodded mutely and felt the rushing in my ears. There was nothing left for me to do, so I tossed my things in the back and got in the Suburban just as the drops started to fall a little faster. I caught Jack’s gaze as I turned on the ignition and the heater to full blast, and we stared at each other for several seconds before I put the car in drive and weaved my way through the labyrinth of patrol cars and back toward Bloody Mary and the funeral home.

  It seemed Emmy Lu had opened the dam. I hadn’t been able to cry for the last two days, and now it seemed like I could do nothing but. I wiped the tears from my face angrily and drove past Officer Plank without waving goodbye. And then I pressed down the accelerator on the open road and fled as fast as I could.

  3

  Thunder rumbled overhead and the rain came in sheets that made it difficult to see. I called to let Emmy Lu know I was heading in with the body. Sheldon and Lucy were at the church overseeing the funeral and burial, so it would just be me and Emmy Lu to get the body inside.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief and gave thanks for the rain when I saw there were no reporters camped out anywhere. I’d gotten used to them over the last couple of days, watching the c
omings and goings of the funeral home and sticking a mic in my face every time I ventured outside. Maybe they figured the story was over and the election was a done deal.

  I parked under the carport and Emmy Lu came down the ramp. She was dressed Friday casual in jeans and a navy Graves Funeral Home polo, but she had a fleece jacket wrapped around her.

  “I have to admit this is my least favorite part of this job,” she said, coming around to the back of the Suburban. “I don’t mind dealing with the grieving, but the bodies give me the heebie-jeebies.”

  Rain spatter bounced off the concrete and dampened the back of my jeans. “Which is ironic considering you work at a funeral home,” I said. “Maybe it’s because you watch all those horror movies.”

  She shrugged and we pulled out the gurney with Brett Jorgenson strapped on board.

  “I like watching them,” she said. “They make me feel good about myself. I can’t imagine ever being in the kind of situation where I run from an axe-wielding maniac in high heels, or have sex in a haunted house for the thrill, or leave all my blinds open at night while a killer is on the loose. Compared to those morons I should be in Mensa.”

  I snorted a laugh and we rolled the body up the ramp and through the mudroom. I hung my bag and camera on the hook and then we rolled him into the kitchen. I typed the code on the keypad that was on the panel next to the door of my lab and immediately heard the snick that signaled it was open.

  Cold air whooshed out as I opened the door wide and we rolled the gurney onto the elevator.

  “I’m going to get started on him,” I said. “Anything I need to know?”

  “Nothing worthwhile,” Emmy Lu said. “A couple of reporters tried to nose their way in by pretending to need services for a loved one, but I can sniff out a reporter from twenty paces. I squirted them with the water bottle I use to water the plants and they ran off. I’ll make sure you’re undisturbed for the next couple of hours.”

  “Let me know if anyone from the sheriff’s office calls,” I said.

  “You got it,” she said, understanding in her eyes. She closed the outer door and it snicked as the lock slid into place.

  I hit the red button and the elevator moved slowly to the bottom. I started to shiver as we touched down. I kept the temperature cold for obvious reasons, and it normally didn’t bother me. But my body was in a state of shock, which was not conducive to making a good Y-cut.

  I rolled the gurney to the far autopsy table, and then I moved to the Keurig to make a cup of coffee to help warm me up. I turned the thermostat up a few degrees and then grabbed my white lab coat off the back of my desk chair.

  It was all routine, and routine was always comforting. I didn’t mind the sterility of the lab—the white floors and walls, and the harsh lights that tinged everything in a slight greenish hue. I had three stainless-steel tables with drains for autopsies and embalmings. Thanks to my parents and the profits from their criminal activity, I had better equipment than most of the state labs.

  I turned on the vents for air circulation and grabbed a pair of gloves from the box. I had an electronic pulley system to lift the victims from the gurney to the table, and I slid the strap beneath him, body bag and all, and secured him before hitting the switch and guiding him to the table.

  From there I worked quickly, unzipping the bag and removing it carefully. I stared briefly into the face of Brett Jorgenson and wondered what kind of man he’d been. I thought of his family and how Jack was probably at that moment telling someone that their loved one wasn’t coming home.

  It helped to humanize the victims, to remember that they weren’t just a body on the slab, and to do my best to give the living as much information as they needed. The victim would have been almost as pale in life as he was in death. There was a smattering of pale freckles across the bridge of his nose and cheeks, and his hair was reddish blond. He was young—a life snuffed out just as he started living.

  I grabbed the other digital camera I kept on my desk and took another set of photos of every section of the body, and then I looked carefully at his clothes before I removed them. His gloves weren’t scraped up, which meant he didn’t have a chance to break his fall when he landed. In fact, the only scuff marks at all were minimal and on his left hip and thigh.

  The table had a built-in scale, so once I’d removed all his clothes I notated his weight and height. And then I scanned his prints and loaded them into the computer so I could get a verification on his identity.

  The DMV database didn’t take long to pull his record, and my screen showed the picture of the man who was currently lying on my table.

  “Tough break, Brett,” I said. And then I turned on my recorder so I’d have backup notes to go with my written chart.

  “Brett Jorgenson,” I said. “Caucasian male, age thirty-six. Height is six foot two and weight is one hundred and seventy-three pounds. Identification verified through fingerprint match with the DMV.”

  I turned off the recorder and took more pictures, this time of the naked body, and again, I was struck by the lack of damage he’d sustained. There was slight lividity throughout his right side from head to toe and minimal abrasions that made the skin look raw on the outside of the knee.

  I positioned the body and took a full set of x-rays, thinking I’d see the clear cause of death with splintered ribs or a fractured skull, but when I snapped the x-rays onto the light box above my desk, I saw nothing but a couple of remodeled fractures in the left wrist and tibia that were fairly old.

  “Huh,” I said, picking up my recorder and starting it again. “X-rays show no sign of breaks typically consistent with a hit-and-run. I’ll search for internal bleeding and damage during the autopsy. Moving back to the victim, there are no visible tattoos or birthmarks, but there is an abdominal scar consistent with the removal of an appendix.” I turned off the recorder and made the notations on his chart.

  There was nothing unusual or spectacular about Brett Jorgenson. His lack of injury was uncommon, but everyone’s body was different. His good health could have had a lot to do with the way he physically responded to the crash. He’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and now it was up to us to find out who’d ended his life early.

  Jack, I corrected myself. It was up to Jack to figure out who’d ended Brett Jorgenson’s life early. My place was in the lab.

  I opened the drawer where I kept syringes and took several blood and urine samples for the tox reports. And then I washed the body thoroughly and made my Y-cut. I removed the lungs first, weighing them and taking samples.

  I’d been expecting perfection from his organs, especially as an athlete. But his lungs were scarred and showed signs of permanent damage. Whatever the victim was at this point in his life, he hadn’t always been. His former life had left a mark internally—cocaine use if I had to guess—and I’d say that Jorgenson had cleaned up his act less than a decade ago. Organs immediately started to heal when smoking, drinking, or drug use stopped, but it could take as much as ten to fifteen years for the organs to function like someone who was clean.

  I moved on to the heart and removed it, pulling the overhead light down so I could examine it carefully.

  “And bingo,” I said.

  The heart was a mess. It was enlarged, and fluid and blood had filled the sacs. Vessels and arteries had burst to the point of almost being unrecognizable. The blob in my hand in no way resembled a heart.

  “Massive heart attack,” I said, grabbing my camera to take a couple of pictures.

  That most definitely didn’t go along with the vehicular homicide narrative. I wondered how Jack was going to feel about that. It was clear someone had hit our victim due to the damage of his bike, but the chances of the driver killing the victim were getting slimmer by the second.

  I took samples of the heart and put it in a jar, and then I moved to the organs in the lower cavity. He had some scarring of the liver and there was evidence he’d been a heavy drinker at some point, but again, the signs
of reversal were there, telling me that whoever he was now was not who he used to be.

  That somehow made it all the more a shame for him to die as he had. I understood how hard it was to get locked into an identity and see no way out. It made me respect a man I’d never met to see how hard he’d worked to escape the choices he’d made early in his life. Addiction was never easy, but he’d overcome it.

  I removed his stomach and examined the contents. There was no solid food, only water and something brown and sticky that smelled like chocolate, but the consistency was more like a melted tootsie roll. Probably something to give him energy as he biked.

  What I hadn’t found while examining each of his organs was internal bleeding or damage caused by the accident. I moved to the head and made a thin incision with my scalpel from behind his left ear, over the top of the head, and all the way to the other ear. And then I pulled the skin down over the face to expose the skull.

  I took my saw from my prep table and turned it on, the high-pitched buzz always reminding me of the drill used during a root canal, and I carefully cut away a portion of the skull so the brain was exposed. I turned off the saw and then removed the brain in its entirety, turning it in my hands so I could see if from every angle.

  There was no damage to the skull or the brain. Which meant Brett Jorgenson wasn’t murdered. I turned on the recorder and said, “Official cause of death is sudden cardiac arrest.”

  That bit of information was certainly going to throw a wrench in the investigation.

  4

  The Brett Jorgenson case was turning out to be more interesting than I’d originally thought. I’d been able to rule out vehicular homicide as cause of death, but the tox screen had left me with more questions than I had answers to.

  It was obvious that the victim had prior drug and alcohol abuse issues, but there were no signs he was a current user. Which made the discovery of amphetamines in his system questionable. I couldn’t rule homicide yet, because with a drug history, he very well could have been taking them. But if someone gave them to him without his knowledge and the result was a massive heart attack, then we were talking about murder.