A Hard Death

by Jonathan Hayes

  He turned the shirt around to show them the back, holding the arms wide-open, as if the boy had been flying.

  “You’ve got smeared blood here at the top of the left shoulder; this stain lines up pretty nicely with the cut in his scalp. Big deal.

  “Now look all the way down here…” He gestured to the back of the shirt. “Down here in the low back, near the tail of the shirt, you have droplet spatter, little droplets of blood, some of which are quite fine.”

  Martin said, “So, what does that mean?”

  “The blood pattern doesn’t fit with his wounds.” Jenner laid the shirt carefully down onto the photo stand and plugged in the cord to the stand lamps.

  He turned to face the officers.

  “Basically, I don’t think this is his blood down here.”

  He smoothed away the ridges of the shirt on the photo stand, picked up the camera, and turned on the tungsten lights. “And we know it’s not the driver’s blood. It looks like it was dripped onto him, with these tiny droplets here maybe coughed onto him.”

  He paused, then looked them in the eye.

  “Let me spell it out for you: there’s someone else out there you need to find. Another victim, possibly. But also, maybe an assailant…”

  CHAPTER 53

  Jenner watched the two troopers walk back down the hall, muttering about him. He shut the autopsy room door with relief.

  Martin and Cooper had quickly turned surly: Jenner was spoiling an open-and-shut case with forensic straw-clutching. No way could Jenner know how the body had rolled when the SUV hit it; maybe blood from the scalp wound landed on the body as it turned, or maybe it spattered off the vehicle undercarriage onto the victim’s back.

  Jenner had listened, nodded patiently, and stuck calmly to his position—the pattern was what the pattern was, and he couldn’t explain it by the victim being simply run over.

  If anything, Jenner’s calm had irritated them more than his insistence that something was wrong. He sighed; it was hardly the first time he’d been second-guessed.

  The shirt now lay face-down on the photo stand, floodlit by four tungsten lamps. Jenner took a wide photograph, then shot close-ups of the blood spatter on the shirt. He tore open a package of sterile scissors and cut a two-inch square of bloodstain from the shirttail. He placed the stained fabric in a coin envelope and labeled the envelope with the case number and the location on the shirt. Then he cut another square of fabric from high on the shirt, from an area where he thought the blood-staining was from the victim’s head wound, and then finally a square of unstained fabric for comparison.

  Jenner turned on the radio; mellow soft rock—Air Supply or Toto, he couldn’t tell, didn’t care—oozed out of the speakers into the quiet of the autopsy room. He spun the radio dial—anything but that. Down at the bottom end, there was religious broadcasting and country, then Latin music floating over the Glades from Miami. As he moved up the dial, a popping bass line filled the air, quickly plastered over with vamping eighties synthesizers—Ready for the World’s “Oh, Sheila!”

  He turned it up with a grin, and went back to work.

  He flipped the shirt over. The maroon blotches on the front were definitely wine—Jenner could smell it rising from the shirt as the stand lights heated the cloth.

  Oh, baby, love me right

  Let me love you till I get it right, unh

  He adjusted the shirt, pressing it flat so the spill pattern was unruffled. He was now sweating under the bright light; in the heat of the bulbs, he felt a little dizzy. He wiped his forehead, took a hand lens, and bent close to the fabric, searching for droplet spatter.

  Oh oh Sheila!

  Let me love you till…

  The cloth swam before his eyes, and then his face was flushing, tears streaming down his cheeks, watery fluid pouring from his nose as his mouth filled with spit. He staggered back retching, his stomach writhing and grinding.

  He pulled himself unsteadily to the wall, dragged over a stool, and slumped down, easing back until his shoulders and head pressed the cool tile. The saliva in his mouth was acrid and thin, and he let it dribble out. He wiped his eyes, but the tears came faster; he began to wheeze.

  Jenner’s breathing was harder now, his breath jerking out in rasping gasps. He pulled himself to his feet. Time to go, time to go quick.

  He could barely see through the tears. He leaned into the sink, rinsed his face, splashed water on his scrub top until it was soaked, then pulled it up to cover his nose and mouth. Gasping and heaving, he stumbled back near the photo stand, hugging the wall as he made his way to the lighting power cord; he yanked the cord out of the wall socket, sending the expensive stand crashing to the floor in an explosion of sparks and popping bulbs.

  The shirt was on the floor now, half-covered by the wrecked photo stand. He tossed a disposable plastic shroud over the shirt and stand, then moved back to the far wall. He could barely see now; he felt along the wall until he found the high-powered accessory ventilation switch and flipped it on; there was a low hum, and then the feel of cooled air moving against his skin.

  He pushed through the swing doors into the corridor, fell out into the breezeway and slumped onto a bench, gasping in the warm, humid air.

  The wheezing eased, but he was still breathless. It took a minute or so for the heaving to stop; he was spitting less but tears still poured from his eyes.

  It took another five minutes before he felt normal. He walked back into the morgue wing, and peered through the autopsy room viewing window, staring at the red-stained shirt, still visible under the splintered stand plinth.

  Jenner breathed out raggedly. Now he knew exactly what had happened.

  CHAPTER 54

  With the entire mortuary staff standing in the sheriff’s office parking lot, the emergency evacuation had turned into a party. Someone opened a case of cold Coke, and Calvin had the door of his PT Cruiser open, pumping dancehall reggae loud into the lot. A splinter group gathered near the loading bay to smoke, until the safety officer, a thin, angry-looking woman who drove a Volvo station wagon the color of a freshly stubbed toe, chased them away, warning of the exposure risk.

  She monitored their sheepish departure, then returned to Jenner.

  Reason didn’t seem to be working with her. Jenner said, “Look, the fumes only developed because I heated the shirt with really hot photo lights—I’d had it out all day, and nothing happened! The lights are off now, I bagged and sealed the shirt, I turned on the room exhaust, the autopsy room air has been exchanged many times. There was no need to evacuate the entire building—or even just the autopsy wing!”

  She wouldn’t budge.

  “Doctor, this constitutes an airborne toxic exposure, and until the Hazmat team says it’s okay, the Forensic Sciences wing will stay shut. On your say-so, I’ve let staff law enforcement personnel return to the main municipal building, but the forensic labs, including the morgue, are closed…”

  Jenner shrugged irritably. “Well, whatever. Your call. But it’s a complete waste of time. And I need to get back in there as soon as possible so I can test my samples and find out exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  She shook her head decisively. “Out of the question. The morgue stays shut. The lab stays shut. Those specimens will keep until Hazmat gives the all-clear.”

  “No they won’t! If I want meaningful test results, I need to centrifuge the blood as soon as possible!” Jenner ran a hand through his hair. “When the hell will Hazmat get here?”

  “They’re coming down from Fort Myers. I’d say we’ll be up and running again in about three hours.” She scribbled something on her clipboard, then peered at him over her glasses.

  She said, “Do we need to worry about the body? Is that contaminated?”

  Jenner thought for a second, then grudgingly decided the question was fair. “It’s okay; he’s been sutured closed, and is in a body bag now. Actually, I remember feeling a bit light-headed a couple of times during the autopsy; I just ch
alked it up to not getting enough sleep last night. In fact, I felt a bit woozy when I collected the stomach contents, which makes complete sense now.”

  Her eyes were sharp. She said, “So, doctor, tell me again: in your opinion, what are we dealing with?”

  “I think someone fed him an organophosphate poison. You’ll find organophosphates on every damn farm in Douglas County—insecticides, mostly. But they also exist in weaponized form—sarin, tabun…”

  Too late, Jenner realized it was the wrong time to showboat; she was now leaning forward intently, pen hovering over God only knew what disastrous checkbox. Terrorist threats were porn for safety officers—they lived for the stuff. If Jenner didn’t talk her down, she’d shut down the whole county and call in Homeland Security.

  He said, “This is pretty clearly an insecticide poisoning. Someone spiked his wine with some kind of bug juice.”

  She seemed disappointed they’d moved on from poison gas. “But if it was insecticide, wouldn’t he…wouldn’t he be able to taste it in the wine?”

  “Yes, I think so, taste it and smell it. They probably held him down and poured the stuff into his mouth—the splash pattern on his shirt looks more like, well, splashes, than if he’d puked it up.”

  She put a hand to her throat. “So you think…”

  “He was murdered.” He paused, then looked at her intently. “They got him drunk, poisoned him with insecticide, then somehow he escaped and made it onto the road where he was hit. Or maybe they pushed him in front of the car. The accident is just a distraction—he’d have died sooner rather than later.”

  She said, “Oh my gosh! How horrible!”

  She jotted on the clipboard, then said, “Now, coming back to the poison gas for a second…”

  He watched her write. “The sooner we get into the lab and run those specimens the sooner I can tell you if there’s anything more serious going on…”

  She pulled out her cell phone, hit the walkie-talkie button, and asked where the hell the biohazard-containment team was.

  CHAPTER 55

  Three hours: enough time to get up to Bel Arbre and see the accident site. In his gut, Jenner was sure this killing was linked to the hanged men in the Glades—and to Marty.

  But where was the scene? The EMS report, all the records, were in the cordoned-off autopsy room. But the EMS dispatch log wasn’t—Rudge could dig up the ambulance call location.

  As Jenner walked down the hall toward Major Crimes, he saw the sheriff moving in his direction, half-hidden by a TV news crew. And walking alongside the sheriff…

  Jenner stopped.

  Amanda Tucker.

  He was instantly back in his loft, Ana crying, kissing him, pressing her hands against his chest like a treadling cat. “Why are they doing this, Jenner? All you’ve done is be kind to me. Why can’t they leave us alone?”

  And then, the next day, waking to find her by the bed with her little bag, whispering that she couldn’t stay anymore, couldn’t watch what they were doing to him, she couldn’t take it anymore, she had to leave him, and it was better for him, and it was better for her…

  He stared at Amanda Tucker, watched her smiling approach, her cameraman scooting around to get the two of them in frame together, the soundman swinging the boom mic his way.

  She nodded, almost did a little curtsy. “Dr. Jenner!”

  Anders stormed into the shot, blustering. “What the hell, Dr. Jenner? You shut my entire facility down?” The camera swung toward Anders.

  Jenner spoke in a low mutter, through gritted teeth, too quiet for the sound recording. “I did nothing of the sort. I was the only person exposed, the only person at risk. I contained the hazard, then informed your safety officer. She closed you down—take it up with her.”

  He gestured at Amanda Tucker, and said to Anders, “Be careful, sheriff—this bitch would sell her own mother for a ratings bump.” Jenner slapped the boom out of his face, then shoved past the soundman and the producer, to head back to the mortuary area.

  There was a peal of delighted laughter from behind him, and Amanda Tucker called out, “Dr. Jenner! How did you get the black eye?”

  As he pushed through the door to the breezeway, Jenner heard Amanda Tucker saying, “Gene darling, tell me you got him saying ‘bitch’!”

  CHAPTER 56

  Rudge found Jenner in the loading dock, standing over a folding table onto which he’d spilled the cleaned ribs of the hanging victims. From a distance of ten paces, he watched Jenner arrange the ribs by size and by side of the body, smallest at the top, recreating the chest wall with the now-spotless bones.

  Jenner bent close to the table, scanned each rib with a moving finger, as if he were reading Braille, pausing every couple of seconds to adjust the bone positioning. Finally satisfied, he straightened and scrawled notes on a diagram on his clipboard.

  Rudge said, “We can rebuild him…Steve Austin, right, doc? The Six Million Dollar Man?”

  Jenner looked up, nodded. “Hey, Rudge.”

  “They said you were looking for me.”

  “Yes. Thanks for coming down.”

  “I hear you had a close encounter with Amanda Tucker.”

  Ignoring the comment, Jenner gestured to the sealed mortuary access. “I’m still locked out of the morgue. Thank God I’d put this stockpot out here.”

  “Oh, you know it! When I’m praying to the Lord tonight, I’ll be thanking sweet baby Jesus that Dr. Jenner put his corpse soup out to cook in the garage today…”

  “Well, don’t mock the soup, detective—it’s given us answers…” Jenner beckoned Rudge over and gestured to the bones. “It’s what I was expecting—there are bilateral fine score marks down the anterior aspects of the ribs in the midclavicular line.”

  “And again in English?”

  “These are from the big guy. They carved him up on the front of his chest, both sides, deep enough to cut the ribs.” Jenner paused. “They did the same thing to Marty.”

  Rudge nodded. “I see.”

  “I think that kid from Bel Arbre is connected to all this. Obviously, the cause of death is completely different, but…”

  “Any drugs on him?”

  “Nothing in his pockets. Tox’ll take a few weeks.”

  Rudge stepped back. “I like him for a connection. And I like him for a homicide, too. Look, we’re a two-homicides-a-year county, so when you get two messed-up murders, then another four even more messed-up murders, and then another really, really fucked-up death, the dots pretty much connect themselves.”

  “Good.” Jenner smiled with satisfaction. “So, I don’t suppose you want to talk to Cooper and Martin in Highway Patrol…”

  “Nope—I start talking to them, I want to hit something.” Rudge’s voice sunk to a mutter. “That something ideally being Gordie Cooper…”

  “They want it to be a simple accident; I’m worried they’re going to shit-can the investigation. You want to take a little road trip?”

  “Where to?”

  “Bel Arbre, see where they found the kid.”

  “Can we stop at the Arby’s out by Mitre Road?”

  Jenner slung his scene kit over his shoulder. “Sure.”

  The detective gestured grandly out beyond the open garage shutters to the parking lot. “The adventure begins!”

  CHAPTER 57

  They drove north on I-55 into a darkening sky. Rudge had pulled the highway mile marker location from the call sheet, but the precise accident site was harder to identify. The SUV driver had been traveling northbound, so they parked the car a tenth of a mile before the marker and walked up the highway. They rounded a slight turn and then the road dipped downward.

  The shoulders of the road were well-tended; Jenner had seen convict labor from the county jail mowing the roadsides, mostly black and Hispanic men in cartoonish black-and-white striped uniforms watched over by equally cartoonish mirror shades–wearing guards with pump-action shotguns. Beyond the grass road border was a continuous fence, overg
rown by bushes and shrubs, which separated the highway from the fields a couple feet below.

  Jenner peered over the fence. An irrigation ditch ran between the fields and the highway. Long rows of pale green bushes stretched off into the distance, those to his left hidden by covers. Shimmering in the heat before his eyes, a dozen or so workers were scattered across the field, dark clumps of cloth with heads covered to protect them from the sun. They were pulling up metal hoops and plastic sheeting, leaving the plants open to the sky. He squinted: strawberry plants.

  Jenner checked his cell phone; still no call from Maggie.

  Rudge, about twenty feet ahead of him, called out, “Doc, got some EMS stuff here…”

  He was pointing to a purple glove discarded on the roadside.

  A few feet further on, there were more gloves and detritus from the resuscitation; the wrapper from a disposable defibrillator electrode flapped listlessly against the fence.

  “This looks like it.” Jenner glanced back down the road. “They’d have been coming this way, hit him, shunted him maybe twenty feet up toward us as they ran him over. And look over there—tire marks from the skid.”

  They walked toward the fence, scanning the grass, reaching it without finding anything.

  Jenner looked out over the field. There was nothing out that way, just the strawberry fields stretching out under the gloomy sky. An access road ran along the far side of the field, after which the grid of orange groves resumed, continuing all the way out to the Everglades.

  He glanced back at the road. They were thirty miles north of Port Fontaine, and a good ten south of Bel Arbre; it was more likely the victim had come from the fields than walked along the road.

  Unless he’d hitchhiked.

  “So, what do you think, Jenner?”