Echoes of the Past

by Susanne Matthews

  “Pleased to meet you, gentlemen. I’m sure we’ll get along great, and call me Michelle. When we’re up to our elbows in innards, it isn’t time to stand on formality.”

  The men chuckled, and Michelle smiled. Everything looked promising.

  “I guess we can get started. Jamie, will you do the honors?”

  The orderlies had moved the bundled bodies out of the cooler and Jamie moved over to unzip the body bag. As he did, Milo recorded every step of it on the digital movie camera he held.

  “I’ll need some still shots too.”

  “Yes, Doctor, I mean Michelle.” The young man blushed. “Now or after the bag’s fully opened?”

  “After is fine. Make sure you work from top to bottom so you don’t miss anything. Thanks.”

  Jamie finished unzipping the bag, and Milo picked up the digital camera. While he took pictures, Jamie noted what could be seen and the condition of the corpses and the clothing. Michelle examined the bundled bodies and compared what she was seeing to what she saw in the photograph.

  She noted the cadavers were in almost the same position as they’d been when the bodies had been discovered, but one of the male’s hands had come out of the pockets, no doubt because of moving the bodies around. It was possible the hand had been taken out, but with the bodies in rigor, it would have been difficult. Either Jamie or Milo had placed an empty autopsy table beside the occupied one. Lindsay’s body would be moved onto it as soon as Michelle okayed it.

  For Michelle, this was always the hardest part of the job. The first time she saw the body and touched it, the spirit revealed itself to her and told its story. If she were alone in the lab, it wasn’t too bad, but when others were present, it was hard to mask her reaction to the sad or gruesome news. She’d developed a system, and she hoped it would work this time. Other coroners she knew thought aloud while they worked, but it wasn’t quite the same as what she did.

  Jeremy stopped beside her, looked at the corpses, and shook his head.

  “It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it? If you don’t need me for the moment, I’ll go check on a patient and see about expediting your paper work. I assume you’ll want to send samples to the lab tonight. I should be back in fifteen or twenty minutes. Milo can take them. He knows the drill.”

  “Thank you. I’ll do the full external examination now. I’ll draw blood from the heart and femoral leg vein for toxicological examination and send nail and hair samples to the lab too.”

  She pulled on one rubber glove and smiled. Her face mask hung around her neck.

  “I expect to meet with the families tomorrow and explain the timeline. It’s always hard for them to understand that unlike on television, it may take weeks, not minutes or hours, to get all the results, but I’ll know what I’m dealing with much sooner than that. If we’re lucky, we’ll have answers by the end of the week.”

  “We’ll do everything we can to expedite your tests, but you’re right. Some tests take more time than the hour TV gives them. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Jeremy nodded and left the room. Michelle pulled up her mask, tugged on the other rubber glove, and opened her case. She took out a small personal recording device and turned it on. She spoke aloud.

  “Case number six seven nine four two, Lindsay Miller, and six seven nine four three, Aaron Hart.”

  Michelle explained where the bodies had been found and what had transpired up until this point. She described the physical appearance of the bodies as she saw them now, noting Lindsay’s missing shoe.

  She turned off the recorder and moved closer to the bodies.

  Michelle took a steadying breath and reached for Aaron’s other hand, slowly pulling it out of Lindsay’s pocket. She braced herself for contact with the spirit, but instead of the reactions she usually encountered, she found confusion and fear, clear evidence that Aaron had not gone to his death willingly or knowingly. She gasped and let go of the hand. It flopped onto the table, and she winced.

  “What’s wrong, Michelle?” Milo asked, noting the way she’d dropped the hand so suddenly.

  “Sorry about that.”

  Michelle fought for her usual calm. Thank God she’d pulled up the face mask, covering most of her face. She was sure her shock and surprise would show clearly on it.

  “Nothing. The boy’s hand slipped out of my hand. These gloves are thicker than the ones I’m used to. Okay, Aaron, my boy. Talk to me. What’s going on here?”

  She saw the confused look on Milo’s face.

  “I’m sorry. I should have explained I like to talk to my patients. It makes their plight more real to me. Take this young man. Do you think he went into that lake willingly? Before I’m through here, he’ll have answered all of my questions.”

  Jamie chuckled. “My anatomy professor used to talk to all the cadavers. He said it helped to remind him they’d once been human beings.”

  “Exactly. We must never lose sight of that fact. These people ended up here for a reason and it’s our job to figure out how and why.”

  Chapter Nine

  Michelle nodded at her technicians and turned back to the corpse. She sensed Aaron’s confusion. Every other spirit she’d met had always been aware of their deaths, but not Aaron, and the boy was freaking out. Trying to calm him down with witnesses present wouldn’t be an easy task.

  Where am I? His voice was strong and clear in her mind.

  “Welcome to the Belleville General Hospital Morgue, young man.” There was no point trying to break it to him gently. Dead was dead, and nothing could undo that. “You and this young lady apparently drowned in the Lake of the Mountain Thursday night. How on earth did you end up bundled together like this?”

  Drowned? What are you talking about, lady?

  “I’m Dr. Thomas. I hope you can answer some of my questions. I’ll do my best to find the answers to those you can’t. Now, let’s have a look under the jacket.”

  Michelle reached for the jacket’s zipper, and slowly lowered it. Milo took photographs as she did. When the zipper was undone, she moved Aaron’s arms to the side of his body. She sensed him watching her, and felt his incredible sadness. She’d never met a spirit who hadn’t known it was dead before. She opened the coat and stared at Lindsay’s body and frowned.

  How did we get bundled like that? Agitated, Aaron spoke loudly, and she winced.

  “I wasn’t expecting that.” Her comment applied to both what she saw, and what she’d heard.

  Milo snapped several shots in succession.

  “Jamie, turn the recorder back on for me, please?”

  He did, and she continued.

  “The coat has been opened revealing Lindsay atop Aaron, with her hands tightly pressed into his armpits rather than hugging him as we supposed. This explains why he had his hands tucked in her pockets since it would ensure her hands were kept as warm as they could be by the pressure of his arms.”

  The armpits were one of the warmer parts of the body and even as the core temperature dropped, they’d stay warm longer. One or both of these people had had survivalist training. Things weren’t adding up here. From what she could see, the bodies had been subjected to the cold long before they’d gone into the water.

  Lindsay would have been affected faster than Aaron. She was small, barely five foot tall, and didn’t weight more than one hundred pounds. Her clothing clung to her. She wore jeans, cotton knit socks, a red fleece sweater with what appeared to be a cotton turtle neck underneath. She wore one laced shoe, a black canvas running shoe. While her clothing might have been fine for a drive in the car, it would have provided no heat out on the lake. If the two had decided to go out in a canoe, why hadn’t she put on more suitable clothing?

  Since Aaron wasn’t lying on Lindsay’s arms, Michelle instructed the orderlies to pick her up and lie her on the other table. The pallor of the girl’s face showed she’d been pressed tightly against Aaron at the time of death. Perhaps the canoe wasn’t a factor in their deaths. Had they just fallen into the lake
and stayed that way? The tox screen was vital now.

  What happened to us? Anger had replaced confusion.

  “Your bodies were found submerged in the Lake of the Mountain on Friday morning. People think you were in a canoe on the lake, but I don’t buy it. What did you do Thursday night after dinner?”

  Milo chortled. “It sounds like your cross-examining him, Doc.”

  “I suppose in a way I am. All the answers are here, gentleman. We just have to find them, but to do that we need to know what to look for.”

  She knew the way she was talking was strange, but it was the only way to listen to the ghost and answer his questions as well as her own. They’d get used to it. Other morgue techs had.

  Aaron understood what she wanted. I remember getting in the car and heading out to get water samples before going into Picton. There’s no way we went out on the water that night. We saw some lights near the edge of the lake and went to investigate. That’s it.

  “Let’s see what Lindsay has to say.”

  Michelle reached out to grab the young girl’s hand. Nothing. Lindsay’s spirit wasn’t here. What was going on? One spirit didn’t know it had died, the other was mute? She could see and hear Aaron, but she couldn’t bring up his memories of the moment he’d died as she usually could. His mind was blank. There were no memories to sense. How was that possible?

  “Something’s not right here.”

  She looked closely at Lindsay’s body. There was no white foam near her nostrils or mouth the way there was on Aaron’s. Were her lips blue? She looked at the ears and the nose. It didn’t seem possible, but she wondered whether or not there might be frostbite there. The temperature hadn’t gone below freezing that night, but the winds and rain had been vicious.

  She shook her head, glad the techs couldn’t see the confusion on her face. The only thing that made sense was if Lindsay had died before going into the water. Michelle moved to the foot of the table and carefully removed the sock from Lindsay’s left foot. Post-mortem lividity indicated Lindsay had died standing up. How was that possible? She stared at the sole of Lindsay’s foot. What the hell was going on here? She looked at Milo and Jamie. She needed to get them out of here for a few minutes.

  “Milo, could you go and get me a cup of coffee? I know it probably isn’t standard procedure, but I’m exhausted.”

  “No problem, doc. Lots of people do it. How do you take it?”

  “Double-double.”

  He left the room and headed into the break room.

  “Jamie, can you get me some evidence bags? I want to keep things separate.”

  “Sure thing.”

  As soon as he was out of sight, she turned to Aaron. “I don’t have a lot of time here.”

  Why isn’t Lindsay here if I am?

  “My ability to communicate with the dead is limited to those who died because of drowning. Lindsay didn’t drown. She was dead in your arms before you both went into the water. I need to know what you remember because there is something wrong here. You say you didn’t go out in the canoe.”

  There was a storm moving in. It would have been suicide. I remember having dinner…

  Michelle moved closer to Aaron’s body and slipped off one glove. Skin to skin gave her a better image. Like watching a movie, the last of Aaron’s memories unfolded before her eyes.

  She watched him finish dinner, talk to Tony and then Jackson about the ammonia hydroxide levels in the lake. She saw him rub Lissa’s stomach and kiss her goodbye.

  “We won’t be long. Go to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  Michelle let the images flow. She observed them leave the parking lot and travel along the road. She spotted the lights they’d seen down by the water. They’d driven down the laneway almost obscured by the tall corn stalks. It was dark, and as they got closer, Aaron had turned off the headlights hoping they could sneak up on whoever was down by the water. He was excited.

  “These might be the guys dumping those toxins into the lake. Wouldn’t it be cool to catch them red-handed?”

  “I don’t know, Aaron. Maybe we should go back.” Lindsay had been nervous.

  “We’ll be fine. Stay right beside me.”

  They’d only walked a few feet when a bright flash of light blinded them. Startled, Lindsay had tripped over a root in the boggy area and fallen sideways. “Damn it! My shoe’s caught in the muck.”

  Aaron helped her up. “Leave it. Come on, I’ll walk you back to the car.”

  He did and then continued alone down to the water. Suddenly, dust choked him…It was as if someone had shut a curtain. There was nothing else.

  Does that help?

  “It does. I believe you and Lindsay were drugged and murdered, and I intend to prove it. One more thing, Aaron. Could Professor Steele be responsible for this?”

  The professor? No way. He’s one of the good guys.

  “But you told the mayor he was an ass. He said you argued with the professor frequently.”

  That man’s on crack. The professor never argues with anybody. He doesn’t have to. I’ve never even seen him angry. I don’t remember ever speaking to the mayor. I like Tony. He’s a great guy. I was going to ask him to be my best man.

  She felt his sadness. Thanks, Aaron.

  Ron had lied to her. Why? Toxins were a hell of a lot more serious than most of your run of the mill water pollution.

  Michelle quickly pulled her glove up. She had a fairly good idea as to what had happened. Now, she needed the physical evidence to prove it. She moved over to Lindsay just as Milo walked in with her coffee. She stepped away from the bodies, pulled off her mask and right glove, and reached for the porcelain cup.

  “Thanks. This is just what I needed.”

  Jamie returned with a dozen evidence bags.

  She took several mouthfuls of the hot liquid trying to decide what to do next. There was no real mystery to Aaron’s cause of death. It could wait.

  “Guys, let’s put Aaron away for now and focus on Lindsay. I think the young lady is full of surprises. Get her undressed. I want pictures at every stage of the process, and then I want each garment folded and placed in an evidence bag. Make sure you fold everything with an evidence sheet under it. Be specific in describing the garments. She’s got mud embedded in the right knee of her jeans, but her left shoe is missing, and the sock is filthy as if she walked on her tip toes. I’m not convinced what we’ve found here was an accident. I’m officially pronouncing these suspicious deaths. We’ll treat them as homicides until it’s proven otherwise.”

  Jamie looked at Milo and smirked, an I-told-you-so look on his face.

  “You pay for dinner tonight.”

  “Seriously, Milo?” Michelle laughed. “If you’ve spent any time in the morgue, you could’ve bet I’d rule that way just from the way the bodies were bundled.”

  “I know, but he called suspicious first—what was I to do? I had a fifty-fifty chance.”

  Michelle shook her head. The morgue might not be the best place for humor, but sometimes sharing a laugh was the only way to deal with the sadness of it all. She undressed the body, unzipping the fleece sweater. She noticed something in the pocket and pulled it out. It was a brand new synthetic cork. Where did it come from, and did it have any bearing on the case? The one person who might know was the last man she wanted to see tonight. Unfortunately, she didn’t have much choice. She thought about the scene she’d viewed. Ammonia hydroxide was a hell of a serious case of pollution. Just what was going on here? If the team had proof, how could Ron dismiss them like that? People stood to lose a lot of money if an unfounded rumor like this got out. It could ruin the county—but if it were true, how many might die?

  * * * *

  Five hours later, freshly showered and back in her own clothes, Michelle got into the Camaro for the drive to the Lake of the Mountain Resort. She’d completed Lindsay’s external examination. The body had been cleaned, weighed, her hair brushed, and all the trace from it as well as from und
er her fingernails sent to the police forensic lab along with the rest of her clothing. She’d hung onto the cork, and tossed it in her purse. She’d ask Ron about it in the morning; after all, he’d know which wineries used them. Of course, the cork might have nothing to do with the case at all.

  There’d been a perimortem cut on her Lindsay’s right hand, bruising around her left ankle indicating she’d sprained it shortly before her death—consistent with the fall she’d seen in Aaron’s memory. She’d also found bruises on her arm as if she’d been grabbed and dragged. Milo had suggested Aaron had put them there, but the boy’s spirit vigorously denied even the idea he could have hurt her. Her fingertips and toes had shown signs of frostbite. Michelle ordered the body x-rayed, but nothing unusual had presented itself. Chances were good Lindsay had gotten wet when she’d fallen. If the rain had started, conditions would have been ideal for hypothermia, but time would’ve been a factor too, and with the abrupt end to Aaron’s memories…

  Michelle had taken blood samples from both bodies, tissue samples from inside Lindsay’s nose and ears, and had sent them to the hospital lab for a full chemical analysis. If Lindsay died from hypothermia, her blood sugar levels would be elevated, and Michelle hoped the lab would have the immunoassay information for her by tomorrow afternoon. Something Aaron’s spirit had said had rung a bell. She’d added a request that they check the blood for all types of drugs. Scopolamine, one of the date rape drugs, was said to impair memory. She’d read a paper on it recently stating it could be effective when inhaled in its powdered form. It was also used as a truth serum even though its primary function was to control nausea and travel sickness.

  She had her recorder with her and would listen to and transcribe her notes before she went to bed. She’d also downloaded the pictures Milo had taken and would add them to her meagre file. She hoped the others had come through by now. This case wasn’t adding up and it bothered her.