Dirty Money ARC

by Deforest Day

  “Tell me about this here sport of yours.” He’d tried surfing a few times, in Indonesia, the Philippines, but this appeared closer to Davy’s preferred pastime, the skateboard.

  Barry’s kayak was a Pyranha Blade. This stretch of river was Class II up at the put in; good water for the novice to learn on. Below the bridge it was mostly Class III, water requiring complex maneuvers in fast currents and good boat control around ledges. For spice there was three hundred yards of Class IV water: Stoppers, pillows, and holes, with constricted passages demanding fast decisions under pressure. That was on the far side, mostly, and could be avoided.

  But, who’d want to do that? Gordon said that Class IV, and V, when you could find it, was the whole reason to run rivers. They were going to Idaho next summer, where the real water was.

  “I know a couple of Navy SEALS, swim this kind of stuff. Or claim to. I never seen it done.”

  “Oh, there’s guys who do that. They're called lunatics. But, then, you already said that, right?” Barry laughed and crushed his coffee container and tried a three pointer, missed, hustled over and dropped it in a trash basket.

  “Sometimes you have to swim for it, get spilled in a strainer.” Gordon shook his head, reliving a past mishap. “That’s a section where a tree, or trash, some wire fencing, get lodged in rocks, and clogs the current. Dangerous as hell, because it wants to hold you under. Best way is to try to climb up, float off the other side. Or use it to climb out of the river altogether.

  “But, yeah, you can swim white water. Everyone does it, now and again. Go hairboating on a three-fifty FPM stretch, get swallowed by an ‘eater, you’ll swim for it. It’s like riding a motorcycle—sooner or later, you fall off.”

  Justice guessed that a bunch of Special Forces lifers, discussing their profession over a few brews, were equally incomprehensible.

  Barry came back, hoisted his craft, put it on the roof rack. “Swimming, the first thing you do, is get on your back, feet down stream. If you get lined up with the current, you can slip by rocks without getting hurt. Assuming, of course, you’re still wearing your floatation vest and helmet. And never try to stand up—you can get your foot stuck between rocks. The water pushes you over, holds you under. So long, been nice to know ya.”

  “Amen.” Gordon secured his boat on the roof. “I knew a guy, drowned that way, in three feet of water. Of course, he was running solo, so he was asking for it. Hey, thanks for bringing the car back to the take-out.”

  That was when a couple of teenagers showed up in a ratty Subaru, and climbed in the Porsche for a ride up river. Justice returned to the hotel, showered, and crossed to the coffee shop for breakfast.

  Chief Schmidt watched him from his office window. He called to a cop passing in the hallway. “Carl. Who’s that?”

  Carl Oxenhammer, his Number Two, with fifteen years of policing Shaleville behind him, stepped into the office, glanced out the window. “He’s with the Jersey Queens. At least he was drivin’ their Porsche, earlier. Came in the coffee shop, bought three to go. Why?”

  “Nothing. Just seems to be a lot happening. Keep your eyes open. I don’t like surprises, and we seem to be getting more than our share, last couple of days.”

  Carl left and the Chief opened his side drawer, stuck a pencil in the opening of Baer’s soda can. He carried it to the booking area, where Foul Ball Freddie, the new forensic technician, was working on a cup of coffee and the newspaper. “Who filled the soda machine?”

  His tech dropped his feet from the desk, and tipped his swivel chair forward. “Uh, that would be me. Like I always do. Because you said it was part of my job, since the sodas are stored in the evidence cage, and I got the only key. Except, of course, yours. Is there a problem?”

  “Not unless you fobbed the chore off on someone else, like Clark.” Charlotte was twice the man Freddie would ever be, but her weakness was an eagerness to please, no matter who asked.

  The Chief put the can on the counter and the pencil in his pocket. “That means any latents on this can that aren’t yours are Mr. Baer's. “Lift his prints, and run them through AFIS.” Thank the Lord and Homeland Security the boy's salary was picked up by the Feds.

  —o—

  309 Maple was a two-story single, with German siding and a red tin roof edged with snow guards reminding Justice of arrowheads. A faded American flag hung from a wooden pole on the porch railing, and a yellow Support our Troops vinyl sticker greeted visitors on the storm door. A tired macadam driveway separated it from 307; its twin, except for the silver roof.

  Justice drove behind the house to the two car garage, and parked beside a green VW bug with a 101st decal on the rear window. Narrow wooden stairs led to an apartment. Moving furniture in or out would be a tricky task, but he guessed it was the sort of place that came furnished. Twin dormers watched like hooded eyes.

  He climbed the stairs, saw no bell, and tapped on the glass. After a moment the flowered cotton curtain was pulled aside and a face briefly appeared. The curtain fell back and the door opened six inches, stopped by a chain. “Yes?”

  “Penny? Penny Driver? It’s Justice.”

  The door slammed, rattled, flew open, and she stepped onto the landing, and threw her arms around him, buried her face in his shoulder. “Oh, my God!”

  She held him for what seemed an eternity, and he stood, hands at his sides, not knowing the protocol. Didn’t much happen, in his world. Soldiers weren’t big huggers.

  Finally Penny stepped back, but still held the fabric of his sleeves in her fists. There were tears in her eyes, and her nose was red. She studied his face, trying to separate the here and now from the then and there. “I didn’t recognize you, without the beard and the hair.” She snuffled. “You used to be taller.”

  He finally got a good look at Davy’s sister. Still slim, still a redhead, but now a woman; the awkward colt had become a thoroughbred. With coppery hair, long and loose, and pale skin, dusted with freckles. Davy’s kin; no doubt about that. ”Well, I ain’t shrunk. I think maybe you grew a mite.”

  She let a tiny laugh escape, snuffled again, said, “Come inside; where are my manners! Standing out here for all the world to see me blubbering. Did you just get here?”

  “Naw, I pulled in last night, but it was late, and I didn’t want to come calling. I got me a room at your hotel. According to the register, Davy was the last guest.”

  “I know.” She waved her hand around the small apartment. One room; kitchenette against the righthand wall, wooden table with two matching chairs in the middle, a convertible sofa and easy chair under a dormer. The sink, the stove, the metal cabinets said 1950’s, the furniture looked twenty years younger. Neat, clean, and tired. “As you can see, It’s not set up for overnight guests.”

  A whistle began to shriek. She filled a tea ball from a canister, put the ball in a tea pot, poured in boiling water. While it brewed she put two cups and saucers on the table, spoons, a carton of milk. A plastic bear half full of honey was already there. She sat, and poured, completing the ritual. “Davy told me how you two got split up, in Afghanistan. He blamed himself for that. What’s your side of the story? ”

  Justice sat across from her, sipped the hot brew, straight up, feeling its astringent bite, and told her his side of the story.

  The contractor who built the Johnson Funeral Home had looked to the White House for inspiration. Sweeping driveway, a portico supported by fluted columns, immaculate landscaping. Conveniently across the street from one church and down the block from another.

  Inside the stillness was palpable. The carpeting was like walking on a sponge. Somewhere in the indeterminate distance soft organ music was the only hint at the presence of life. A cloying floral scent hung in the air; made Justice think of off-post strip clubs and too-strong deodorants covering unwashed bodies.

  The door must have activated a distant bell, because an elderly man, dressed in a snowy white shirt and black suit and tie, appeared. His translucent skin and the monochromatic
blackness of his hair made him an unwitting advertisement for his embalming skills. “Yes?” he asked. “How may we be of service?”

  “This here is Miss Penelope Driver. We come to identify her brother.”

  “Yes, of course, of course. If you will just walk this way.” He turned, and extended a long arm down the hallway.

  “Do I have to?” She remained rooted, clung to Justice’s arm.

  “No of course, not,” he immediately said. “I can do it.”

  “Are you the next of kin?”

  He gave the old man a stern look. “Next enough. Name’s Justice, and I spent the last ten years with Davy, in the Army.”

  “Well. I suppose that will suffice. Perhaps Ms. Driver would like to wait in our Chapel of Serenity?” This time the other arm indicated a doorway to their right.

  Justice followed the mortician through several doors, the carpeting devolving into hardwood, then vinyl flooring. There was a sofa and end tables with boxes of tissue. A large window, curtained, took up most of one wall. The undertaker gestured to the window; the man seemed to use his hands and arms like a concert master. “Wait here a moment, sir, and I will bring the deceased for your viewing.”

  Justice shook his head. “Naw, that ain’t good enough. I want to fix on him, without no window in between.” Johnson shrugged, slipped through double swinging doors. The final room had ceramic tiles on the floor and plastic wall panels that could be pressure washed with disinfectant. An abattoir.

  The familiar smell of death greeted Justice as the funeral director led him into the icy room. Rotten eggs; hydrogen sulfide. Intestinal gasses, beginning the inevitable dust-to-dust process. The mortician picked up a jar of Vicks from a shelf, offered it to Justice.

  “I’m good.” He walked over to the three bodies at the far end of the room, zipped into bags on gurneys. The two white vinyl bags bore the logo of a regional hospital; the third, black and well-used, held his friend, as evidenced by the tag bearing his name on the zipper pull. The director opened the bag, exposing Davy’s face. “That him?”

  Justice swallowed, nodded. “Yes, this is David James Driver. So, where do I sign?”

  “Uh, I really should have his sister, as next of kin . . .”

  No need for her last glimpse of her brother to be this one, Justice thought. Yesterday, alive, would make for a better memory. “She’ll sign, I tell her to. She don’t need to see him. I lived with this guy; shared showers and foxholes. You want more ID, he has shrapnel scars on his left thigh.”

  “All right, sir; it really doesn’t matter to me. It is David Driver. Come to the office, and we will complete the paperwork.”

  “You the one doing the autopsy?”

  “No, no. I’m the Coroner. I only determine the cause of death, and arrange for an autopsy, if deemed necessary. A pathologist is required to perform a Post Mortem. However, I’ve ruled it a ‘death by misadventure’, which is legally the same as ‘accidental death’. There won’t be an autopsy, sir, unless the sister requests it. And comes up with the eighteen hundred dollars.”

  “Don’t Pennsylvania require one, in any suspicious death? Tennessee does.”

  “Well, yes, but this case is hardly what one would call ‘suspicious.’” The old man lowered his voice, not wanting the other corpses to hear what he was about to reveal. “From what the police chief told me, it was a case of AEA.”

  “And that is?” Justice thought he had a pretty good handle on the alphabet soup of medical terminology, but this was one he must have missed.

  “Autoerotic asphyxia. Self induced strangulation, during the act of masturbation.”

  That made no sense, at all. Not Davy. Now he recalled a teenager brought into the ER, back when he was in training. The boy survived, but with some brain damage. “Isn’t that autowhatsis a kid thing?”

  “Yes, I believe it’s more an adolescent occurrence. I’ve only seen two instances in thirty one years in the business, and both of them were youngsters. Tragic.”

  “Let’s take a quick look at the body.” Before the mortician could protest, Justice pulled the zipper to its bottom, folded back the sides. Davy’s shirt was unbuttoned. As were his trousers. No paddle marks on his chest; paramedics hadn’t tried a jump start.

  Justice pulled his friend’s pants to his knees. His shorts were already there; the first responders hadn’t been too fussy about dressing the corpse before zipping it into the bag. He ran his hand over his friend’s penis.

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Looking for semen. As I’m sure you know, your line of work, dried seminal fluid has a certain feel to it.”

  “He may have expired before achieving, uh, orgasm.”

  “Yessir. Point is, I knew this guy, stalked poon with him. He scored more than Michael Jordan. No way he’d get hisself off that way. Let’s take a closer look at the scene of his demise.”

  “Scene? The hotel?”

  “Naw. His neck.” Justice saw a powerful lamp on wheels, and he pulled it over the body, clicked it on. He gently raised Davy’s eyelid, studied the eyeball. Disconcerting, looking into his friend’s empty stare, and a chill sensation made his skin clammy. Something flashed across his mind, ‘the windows of the soul’. He suppressed his emotions and engaged his medical brain. No petechial hemorrhage. “You see that?”

  “No, I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly. Suffocation causes the rupture of blood vessels in the retina. There ain’t none.” He turned Davy’s head to the side. “What the fu—” He turned it the other way. “His neck is broke!”

  Johnson shook his head. “No, that’s not possible. I’ve handled a number of suicides by hanging, over the years. None of them broke their neck. I’m hardly the expert, but I think it requires quite a drop for that to occur.”

  Justice again turned Davy’s head left, then right. “Shouldn’t there be ligature marks, from his belt?”

  “Well, yes. Unless whoever found him loosened the belt, before his heart stopped beating.”

  “Naw. If someone done that, he’d still be alive. Looky there, at his chest; there’s no evidence a defibrillator was used. What’s that mark on his neck and his jaw?” Justice pointed to five parallel red lines, not much larger that the teeth of a comb, and a small half-moon above them.

  The coroner shrugged. “His belt buckle? Something he fell on? I wasn’t at the scene.”

  “Maybe so. Where’s his personal effects? You got his billfold, wristwatch somewheres? I see his Army ring is still on.”

  The funeral director picked up a ziplock bag from the gurney, handed it to Justice. “Everything that was on the body is in there. Except the ring. Rigor had set in by the time we received the remains.”

  “Well, it’s come and gone, now.” He slipped Davy’s ring off, a twin to the one he wore. His sister would want this. He carefully dropped it into the bag, took out the release form, signed it, handed it to the man. “Where’s his music box at? Bitty thing, has a set of headphones.”

  Johnson shook his head. “What you see is what was with the body. The police have the rest of his effects, unless they already gave them to his next of kin.”

  Justice laid the plastic bag down, and took a closer look at the marks on Davy’s neck. He thought about hand to hand combat, the many ways he knew to kill another man. He put his left arm against his own throat, pressed. He felt his metal watchband bite against his skin. He pressed harder, held it for a few seconds, dropped his arm and tilted his head. “What do you see?”

  “My Lord. A wristwatch could have made those marks. Chief Schmidt described the scene to me; the belt, the magazines, bottle of hand lotion. A classic scene of autoerotic asphyxia, case closed.”

  “I think it may not be a closed case, after all.”

  “Perhaps you are right. What do you want me to do?”

  “Your job, sir. Your job.”

  The funeral director carefully parted the curtains at his office window, and watched the sister and the fr
iend converse in his parking lot. He picked up the telephone, did what he was legally required to do. It was most certainly not what he wanted to do. Chief Schmidt ran a tight ship. And the stranger, Mr. Justice, gave him a sense of unease.

  Outside, in air filled with the complex smells of life, Justice stood beside her little green car, hands shoved in his trouser pockets while he studied his shoes.

  She clutched the small ziplock bag in her hand and studied the furrows above his eyes. “What?”

  “The good news is he didn’t kill himself.” No need to even explain autoerotic asphyxia, since it didn’t happen. “The bad news is it is possible that he was murdered.”

  “Murdered! how-”

  “His neck is broke. Suicides die by strangulation, not a broken neck.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Naw. But the signs point to foul play, like they say in the pictures. The funeral director is also the County Coroner, and I lit a fire under him. He’ll order an autopsy.”

  “Autopsy? Uck! I don’t think I-”

  “I understand your feelings, but it’s out of your hands, now. As a matter of fact, I think it’s routine to order one up in any death not attended by a physician. Leastwise that’s the way they done it at Virginia Commonwealth.”

  He looked back at the funeral home, caught the movement of curtains at a window, sensed eyes upon them.

  She crossed her arms and hugged herself, eyes filled with confusion. He reached out to touch her, but didn’t quite know how. A hug would be too familiar, and a pat on the arm condescending. He shoved his hands back in his trousers, stayed on comfortable, medical ground. “Autopsies can be good things, even in a natural death. They can reveal all sorts of latent problems, ones that could affect the living.” He felt his ears burn. For God’s sake, Justice, quit lecturing! This ain’t some ER fatality’s Next of Kin, this is Davy’s sister.

  “Oh, I know; of course you’re right. It’s just the idea of slicing him open. . .” She opened the car door, slid behind the wheel, but didn’t start the engine. She turned to Justice. “I think I’d like to stop at the church. You mind?”