by Brad Parks
As such, I was able to learn in fairly short order that Essex County Medical Examiner Raul Ibanez was born on August 9, 1964, and was paid $177,716 a year to slice and dice dead folks and make pronouncements about them. A few keystrokes later and I was looking at a Google Maps overview of his home on Lenox Avenue in Westfield. It looked like a nice crib, though his trees needed some trimming.
I looked at the clock, which told me I had just enough time to ambush the medical examiner and still make it back to Tina’s by eight—but only if I hustled. So I grabbed my peacoat and made like a man in a hurry.
The best way to explain Westfield, New Jersey, is that someone cracked open an upscale shopping mall above it, then sprinkled all the stores onto the streets below. As such, I could have given directions to Ibanez’s place as I would give directions to a food court: take a left at the Victoria’s Secret, pass the Williams-Sonoma, take another left after the Banana Republic.
After making the turn on a suitably genteel suburban street, I found Ibanez’s nicely appointed home on the left side. It had a basketball hoop mounted on the garage, healthy shrubs lining a slate walkway, and a handsome red door with a brass knocker that I was soon putting to use.
A smallish man with a neat goatee and a thin semicircle of hair around his otherwise bald head soon answered. He was wearing suit pants and a button-down shirt—no scrubs for this doctor—but had ditched the jacket and tie. He had a wireless device clipped onto his belt.
“Dr. Ibanez, I’m sorry to trouble you at home, but I thought it would be better to see you here than at your office. My name is Carter Ross and I’m a reporter for the Eagle-Examiner. I’m the guy who posted that story with the autopsy photos today.”
He exerted an effort at keeping himself impassive, though I got the sense hearing my name was like a small kick in the nuts. I was, after all, the guy who had ruined his day.
“What … what are you … I have no comment,” he said quickly, with a slight accent, and I expected the statement would soon be followed by a whole lot of red door being slammed in my face.
But he kept the door open. This was encouraging. Maybe he didn’t want to comment, but he did want to talk. I might be able to leverage what little information I had into a whole lot more—with help from a little semieducated bluffing.
“Dr. Ibanez, I can totally respect that. But I gotta tell you, you seem like a nice guy, and I don’t want to have to end up writing a story about you needing to answer charges from the state ethics board, you know what I’m saying?”
I didn’t know if the state even had an ethics board for medical examiners—much less what this guy was being asked to do that was unethical—but the words “ethics board” were like another shot to his bits. Since pretending to know more than I actually did seemed to be working, I continued:
“I just see how this is all coming together—I’m sure you’ve heard the AG’s office has looked at this thing—and I hate to see you being railroaded on this.”
That got him.
“Railroaded?” he said. “Oh, for the love of…”
“It’s happened before. If this thing spills out all big and ugly, they might be looking for a scapegoat. Look at all the players here”—right, whoever they were—“you think any of them are really going to fall on their swords? Really, who’s going to fall on his sword? You’d be an easy target.”
I was really winging it now, but Ibanez was too wrapped in his own drama to recognize it.
“Oh, damnit. Damnit! Are you … Who’s saying that? Where are you getting that?”
“You know I can’t tell you. Let’s just put it this way: it’s the same place I got the photos from. And it’s someone who’s in a position to know you’re being asked to do something unethical.”
That, of course, was true, in a manner of speaking. That Paul/Powell was in that “position” because he happened to be skulking outside Ibanez’s office was immaterial. The doctor brought his hands to his forehead and massaged his temples. His cheeks were getting flushed. I went in for the kill.
“We’re off the record here. So why don’t you just tell me this thing from your perspective, beginning, middle, and end. And when I put this all in the newspaper, I’ll try to make it look as good for you as I possibly can.”
I thought I had him right where I wanted him: cornered, scared, a little off balance. Total capitulation was just moments away.
But I guess I had cornered him a little too much because he came out fighting. What I heard next was, I imagined, the same version of Raul Ibanez that Paul/Powell had heard earlier in the day.
“You know what? You know what? You want to write something in your paper? You write the facts. I’m not … I … I give them the mechanism. I give them the cause. But the manner, that’s … I’m not … I’m not a detective. I give them the science. That’s my job.”
He started jabbing his index finger at me: “That’s my job. And I did my job. They’re the ones not doing their job. You tell that to the damn state ethics board! You tell that to your damn sources! You tell them I’m going to get this all documented. They want to railroad me? Let ’em try. Let ’em try!”
There appeared to be a Mrs. Ibanez coming down the stairs to learn what all the yelling was about. But I never got a glimpse of more than her feet because the next thing I saw was what I suspected I might get all along: an up-close view of his red front door being slammed in my face.
My last official act of the evening was to slip my business card through Ibanez’s mail slot, just in case he decided he needed to yell at someone in the middle of the night. Then, having done enough damage for the evening, I flipped the “off duty” light in my mind and started driving toward Tina’s.
Except, of course, my brain kept trying to pick up passengers the whole way. Even as I did my requested wine shopping—a connoisseur, I always insist on a silly name or a pretty label—I thought of what I could read into Ibanez’s performance.
The doctor was absolutely correct, of course: a medical examiner makes objective determinations as to the mechanism of death (in this case, a bullet traveling at high velocity) and the cause of death (that Darius Kipps didn’t have much of a head left by the time the bullet departed his person). When it comes to mechanism and cause, a homicide and a suicide can be virtually identical. From a purely medical standpoint, those ligature marks on Darius Kipps’s arms and legs were about as involved in his demise as a shaving nick.
No, those go more to the manner of death, which is what really counts, legally. The manner of death is a more subjective call on the medical examiner’s part, and it relies on what he can learn from the body and what he’s been told by investigators.
I didn’t know what the investigators had told Ibanez, of course. But in the face of what appeared to be foul play, someone had informed Ibanez no more investigation would be done, giving him little choice but to rule the manner of death a suicide. And he considered going along with that unethical.
Or at least that was my best guess. By the time I reached Hoboken, I hadn’t come up with anything better.
* * *
The last available street parking spot in Hoboken was snatched up in late 1995. So rather than join the legion of people circling patiently for the next one, I parked in a garage. I was just getting out of the car when I got a text from Tina. “Hopping in shower. Let yourself in.”
Tina’s door code, 2229, was easy to remember, thanks to the handy, if slightly disturbing, pneumonic she had given me: it spelled the word “baby.”
Tina’s condo was a one-bedroom on the fourth floor with a view of Manhattan that made you feel like you owned the world. I took in the panorama for a second, then went over by the bathroom door, which was slightly ajar.
“Hey, it’s me,” I announced.
“Hey. Sorry. I’ll be out in a second. My jog lasted a little longer than I thought,” she called over the hissing of the shower.
“No problem.”
“Did you pick the wine based
on the name?”
“No, I went with a cute label instead. It’s got this little black dress on it and it’s called, get this, ‘Little Black Dress.’ It’s a pinot noir.”
“Oh, that stuff is actually pretty good. Pour me a glass and I’ll be out in a second.”
After pouring us both glasses of wine—I drink wine when beer is unavailable—I went and spied what my dinner was going to be. I saw broiled salmon with dill sauce, snap peas with some kind of fancy onions on them, and asparagus sautéed in what smelled like lemon butter. A fish, two vegetables, and no starch. Such was the peril of accepting a dinner invitation from Tina, who mostly eschews red meat and treats carbohydrates like they’re an aggravating relative she visits only on holidays.
I was sitting on the couch, taking in the view when Tina emerged and gave me a better one. She had pulled back her still-damp hair and was wearing a pair of men’s boxers and a black camisole that nicely showed off her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a bra underneath, but I could hardly blame her. I wasn’t wearing one either.
“Thanks for being patient,” she said as she took a sip from her glass of wine, then moved into the kitchen to begin plating our meal. “I just needed that run so badly. I skipped yesterday, thanks to Darius Kipps, and if I had to skip today I would have felt like a giant slug.”
My need for exercise goes into hibernation a little more easily, but I said, “Well, we wouldn’t want that.”
“I left the office early tonight, too. I had to sell my soul to do it—I’ll be closing the paper Wednesday and Thursday thanks to this—but it was worth it. I just needed a break.”
“Yeah, I bet,” I said. The rationalization was as much for her sake as mine. Knowing Tina as I do—take a prototypical Type A, then add three parts of ambition and four parts of ceaseless drive—she was still feeling guilty about leaving early.
She inquired as to the state of my story, and I filled her in on the latest while she continued puttering around the kitchen. She was asking more as a friend than a boss—you can tell the difference because her questions don’t have as fine a point on them when she’s being my friend—and soon we were seated before the dinner she had prepared.
“This ought to be a switch for you,” she said. “Everything you’re about to eat is nonprocessed and a hundred percent organic.”
“Yeah, but I’d like to remind you cavemen ate organic, unprocessed food, too. And they’re dead.”
She shook her head but smiled. “Sometimes I think you’re the caveman.”
“Cheers,” I said. “To evolution or the lack thereof.”
We clinked glasses and set to eating. When we’re not fighting like crazed badgers, Tina and I really do get along quite well. And it was pleasant to finally have a cessation of hostilities. The salmon was dynamite. The wine wasn’t bad, considering who picked it. And we fell into easy chatter.
We were finishing up our meal—and had made the rather easy decision that, yeah, it wouldn’t kill us to open up another bottle of wine—when Tina finally got around to what was, as I figured, her agenda all along.
“You know, I’ve been a real bitch to you lately, and I want to apologize,” she said as I refilled her glass.
“No, no, it’s okay. We’ve all been stressed.”
“It’s more than that. I’ve been…”
“It’s okay.”
“No, let me just say this. I feel like I’ve been, I don’t know, not myself. Like today, with Kira, she called me a voodoo sex witch, or whatever it was, and I was already scheming of ways to make her life hell—really, how dare she? I never did anything to her, right? And then I realized I had been inventing reasons to go back into the Info Palace all day just to give her dirty looks. I know she noticed. She must have thought I was a nut.”
“She didn’t mention anything about it,” I said, and for once Tina failed to intercept the blatant lie I had just tossed up.
“And the thing is, I don’t really even care that you two are seeing each other, or dating, or whatever it is you’re doing—”
“It’s sort of still undefined,” I interjected.
“That’s fine. It’s none of my business and, besides, it’s not—I mean, no offense—it’s not something I’m even interested in doing, you know? I don’t want a relationship with you. I don’t want a relationship with anyone. And yet there I was, getting jealous and acting crazy because you guys are … whatever. I think sometimes my competitiveness gets the best of me. I need to win for the sake of winning, never mind that I don’t even particularly want what I’m trying to get.”
“It happens to all of us sometimes,” I reassured her.
“Me more than most. Anyhow, please accept my apology. I’ll try to be on my best behavior from here on out.”
“No problem. Thanks for apologizing.”
“You’re an easy person to apologize to,” she said.
We clinked glasses again. It soon turned out I was easy in other ways, too.
* * *
For the record, it really wasn’t my fault. I try to own my mistakes in this life and know when I am to blame for things. I accept full responsibility when I am. But it wasn’t me. Not this time.
First, it was the kitchen. Tina has this narrow, galley-style kitchen, as is often the case in crowded Hoboken, and there isn’t room in it for two people. So as we did the dishes—with me manning the sink and her puttering around me—she kept brushing into me with that lithe body of hers or having to put a hand on my hip for balance as she scooted past. It was just slight, incidental contact, yes, but sometimes that sets a tone for the less incidental kind.
Next, it was the couch. Tina only has one that faces her television at the right angle. So when she suggested we watch a movie—and, really, I needed at least a movie’s worth of time before I was remotely in shape to drive home—there was no choice but for us to both sit on it lest one of us have a ruined viewing experience.
Finally, it was her calf. The movie was perhaps ten minutes old when she announced that it had been giving her troubles lately and was starting to stiffen up after her jog. She asked if I wouldn’t mind rubbing it, and being the amiable sort of chap that I am, I acquiesced. Isn’t that what good friends do?
The next thing I knew, I had both of Tina Thompson’s long, lovely, bare legs stretched across my lap. I began rubbing her left calf, finding the kink in the muscle and slowly kneading it out. She let out a series of delighted sighs.
Then, because I was already in the neighborhood, I rubbed her right calf. After all, as any jogger knows, it feels good to have your legs rubbed after a run, whether you’ve strained a muscle or not. So she kept right on making those pleasant little noises.
Next thing I knew, Tina had scooched down closer to me so I could rub her quads. And I figured that was reasonable because they are, after all, the largest muscles in the legs, and they get sore from running, too. I worked around the knee, then moved up to the thick part of the thigh. Tina was really getting into the massage, having closed her eyes and flung her arms up over her head, such that her camisole was riding up a little, exposing part of her lean midriff.
At a certain point, she asked if I could rub her hip flexor as well because, she reported, that was also a little tender. And because apparently I wasn’t quite hitting the sore spot with her boxers “getting in the way,” she removed them, leaving her in a pair of rather insubstantial black panties.
I kept up the pretense of the massage for a little while longer as I worked on one hip, then the next. Then somehow I was rubbing her arms, then her shoulders. Then, well, of course she had to remove the camisole so I could really work on her back a bit without that “getting in the way.”
So somehow, in this purely innocent fashion—through no fault of my own—I ended up with Tina more or less naked and writhing on the couch, moaning in pleasure. And it would hardly seem sporting of me to let her do all that writhing and moaning by herself, so I joined in.
Tina and I had gotten to this spo
t—or variations of it—a number of other times during our dalliances through the past few years. And usually one of us pulled back, knowing that taking the final step could change everything. Especially at the right time of the month.
And so I kept expecting she would announce a halt to this little romp. Only she was way too into it, perhaps because my hands were straying into areas where the massage therapist at the health club wouldn’t go.
Then I kept expecting I would finally come to my senses. Except I was way into it, too, perhaps because she had tugged off all my clothes and started playing with some of my happier places.
Soon what started on the couch went to the floor, then to the bedroom, where very, very bedroom-type things started happening. This was, technically, our first time at this, but it didn’t feel like a first-time thing. There was none of the awkwardness or the haltingness. No one was checking in to make sure anyone was okay—the answer was already obvious.
I let her cross the finish line first because I’m just that kind of guy, then followed her soon thereafter. We held each other for a while without discussing any of what had just transpired. And frankly, I didn’t have the energy left to ponder what we had just done, how it would impact Kira and me—that relationship was still so undefined—or whether the Ross family tree had just added another branch. I just lay there and let my senses enjoy the smell, touch, and sight of Tina in her postcoital glory.
The next thing I knew there was a dim, morning light coming through the window and a phone was ringing somewhere. It sounded like a home phone, but it wasn’t my home phone. Then I remembered that’s because I wasn’t in my home. Tina grabbed it and offered a “hello” that managed not to sound like she had just been ripped from sleep.
“Oh, hi, Katie,” she said. There was only one Katie I knew of that would be calling at this hour, and it was Katie Mossman from the All-Slop.
