Code 61 ch-4

by Donald Harstad

  “Oh, and consider yourself assigned to the case until further notice. Authority Lamar.”

  “Oh! Uh, thanks, Carl.”

  “Think nothing of it. You need the experience. I need the help.”

  The first DCI agent I talked with at the Cedar Falls district office wasn't sure, but thought Hester was at home. He gave me the home phone number of his boss, Alan Hummel. Lamar and I had known Al for nearly twenty years. I explained the situation, in some detail, emphasizing Lamar's relationship with the deceased, and the condition of the body.

  “Boy, Carl. That's a shame. But you do need an agent because of the suspicious nature of the thing, right?”

  “Yes.” Like I'd say differently.

  “But you say it's a suicide?”

  Well, that was what I'd said, standing in the hall of the huge house, and not being too sure just who was able to hear me. “This isn't a secure line.”

  “Got it.” He paused. “Look, as far as I'm concerned, you've got Hester. I'll have State Radio give her a call. If she's not at home, they'll page her. I'll instruct them to contact your office as soon as they get an ETA.”

  “Thanks, Al.” “And, Carl, be sure to tell Lamar he has my sympathy.”

  As I hung up, I saw Toby, the young man from the front steps, standing in the room across the hall. He was staring at me.

  “I hope that was a local call,” he said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I said, I hope that was a local call,” he replied.

  I've always found that, when dealing with someone who's trying to win the Junior Dickhead award, it's most rewarding to play things irritatingly straight, but vague.

  “No, it was long distance,” I said, smiling. “Sorry to dash your hopes.”

  He looked like he wanted to say more, but I held up my hand and dialed the sheriff's office.

  “Hey, can you spring some more people for me up here… maybe two, if you can? Three or four'd be good. I've got folks moving around up here, and I have better things to do than control foot traffic.” The dispatcher said she'd try. “And,” I said, “Hester should be on her way up pretty soon.” Just a way to inform and alert the dispatcher that things might get really busy in a while.

  Done with that, I put the phone back on the receiver. Toby resumed our conversation as if I'd never made the second call.

  “Who pays for it, then?”

  Again, I smiled. He was really trying to get some attention. “Is the phone in your name, Toby?”

  “No.”

  “Whose name is it in, then? Do you know?” The last question surprised him a bit, I saw. Unexpected turn, when he'd thought some sort of confrontation was coming.

  “Jessica Hunley.” The way he said it, I got the impression that I was supposed to know who Ms. Hunley was. I didn't, but I'd find out. I was also going to find out why Toby was here, if it wasn't his phone. Guest? Resident? Patron? But it could wait.

  “Then, can I rely on you to tell Ms. Hunley that I used a credit card?”

  “Well, yes. Yes. I'll do that.”

  “Excellent,” I said, heading for the stairs. “Don't go too far, Toby. I'll get to you pretty soon, now.” I went up a couple of stairs. “Oh, Toby… thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For getting the message to Ms. Hunley for me.”

  “Sure.” He sounded just a little uncertain, but not ready to concede anything. Good for him. I knew he'd be a witness of some sort, to whatever it was we really had here. Not that I'm cynical, but it's never too soon to start working on a witness.

  I stopped on the landing, and looked at the newspaper Lamar had handed me. It was today's copy of the Freiberg Tribune and Dispatch. All six pages of it. On the front page, lower left, was a headline: “Dracula Visiting Freiberg?” The article was about our window-peeking incident from two days ago. No names. But it quoted a “young lady” as describing the window peeker as having “enormous fangs” and “just hanging in space outside my second-floor window.” The article was mostly tongue in cheek, naturally, but the damage was done. Shit. Just what I needed to muddle a case. I could almost hear what Harry was going to say about this.

  I put the paper in my back pocket, and continued up the stairs. I wanted a cigarette again.

  When I got to the top, I motioned Borman over. “Go sit on that Toby kid downstairs, will you? I don't want him wandering off. Get his full name, address, all that shit, and see if he'll do a voluntary statement.”

  “Sure.”

  “Don't interrogate him, though. Not yet. No specific questions about what's happening here today. Just background data on Edie, and her,” I said, indicating Hanna, who was still on the bench in the hall. For the first time I became aware that she was in pajama pants and a sweatshirt, with incongruous six-eyed work boots on her feet, unlaced. She did get up in a hurry, I thought. And hasn't been inclined to go back to her room to dress. I noted that because it made what I'd heard quite believable.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Be firm, but nice.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “Do we know for sure what his connection is here? He said he lived here. That true?”

  Borman nodded. “He's one of the residents here, as far as I know. Long-term house-sitters, as far as I can tell. I found that out from the lady EMT who's talking to Hanna. There are about six of 'em, I guess.”

  That was why the locals called it the Dropout Dorm. Not school dropouts. It was sort of a matter of pride in Nation County's four high schools that we'd had precisely two dropouts in the last ten years. The “Dropout” came from dropping out of the mainstream. Something I'd always thought to be a harmless idea.

  “Six?” More than I'd expected. “So, where's everybody else?”

  “Some of 'em have gone to work already. And there's one girl raking leaves in the backyard.”

  Well, Jesus Christ. “Uh, you want to get her into the house? Keep an eye on her, too. The damned leaves can wait.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Easy.”

  “And get her to fill out the same forms Toby does. And find out who the others are, okay?”

  He started to go by me, and I stopped him. “Hey,” I said, lowering my voice, “you happen to know who this Ms. Hunley is?”

  “Owns the house,” he said. “Lives over north of Chicago, I think. That's what the lady EMT told me.”

  “North of Chicago” covered a lot of territory. “See if you can get an address.”

  As he left, I found myself wondering if I were standing in a hotel lobby. Six? Well, the Mansion was easily big enough to hold that many. I just hoped there weren't any more potential witnesses being overlooked because they were outside doing yard work.

  SIX

  Saturday, October 7, 2000

  09:24

  Dr. Henry Zimmer arrived at exactly the same time that the office called and told us that Special Agent Hester Gorse was en route from her residence, and had an ETA of about forty-five minutes. Things were beginning to move, finally.

  Doc Zimmer was a large guy, and altogether an exceptional MD. Doctors just don't like being commandeered for medical examiner duty, because it either means that they have to leave their office, or to show up on their day off, or come out in the middle of the night. But Doc Zimmer never, ever complained. He was always cheerful, friendly, and very good at what he did.

  We told him who it was, and where. He instantly expressed his condolences to Lamar.

  “Lamar, I'm really sorry.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “It seems like just yesterday that I delivered her daughter.”

  “Yeah,” said Lamar. He spoke to both of us. “Look, you don't really need me, so I better get over to my sister's for a while.”

  “Before anybody else tells her?” I asked.

  “Nope,” said Lamar. “She's the one who told me who it was, this morning. That's why I told the office to send you.”

  That was a real compliment, coming from Lamar. He was very re
luctant to discuss his sister's side of the family with anybody. I felt kind of flattered.

  “How's she taking it?” I asked, just to be polite.

  “Her? Hell, she's already talking about suing the lady who owns this place. She's just bein' herself.”

  When he entered the bathroom, Doc Z. just said, “Oh, boy.” He snapped on a pair of latex gloves, and started to examine the body, moving very slowly and carefully, and not moving her about much at all. At one point he gently lifted her head, and studied the gaping wound.

  “More a stab than a cut.” Then, “Seems to be some rigor present in the neck and jaw.”

  Rigor mortis is a strange thing. It's the phenomenon that causes the muscles to stiffen after death. It starts when the body gets to about room temperature, half an hour to an hour or so after death. The smaller muscles stiffen completely first, the larger muscles lagging a bit behind. It lasts about twelve hours, and then subsides in another twelve or so. At that point, rigor in the neck told us that she'd likely been dead for more than a half hour. Given that I'd first observed her body about an hour before, it was hardly a revelation. But you have to start somewhere.

  Doc Z. reached down and lifted Edie's left hand.

  “Not pronounced in the left elbow… ”

  Ah. Now we were getting someplace. The fact that she'd not gone rigid in her larger arm muscles suggested that it was probably not more than four or so hours since she'd died. Roughly, of course. “Suggested.” You hang around the courts long enough, you start to think like that. Anyway, call it 05:00, or so.

  “Doc, what? About five A.M. or so, you think?”

  “Make it four to six.” He didn't even look up. “The fingers are stiff, the legs seem flexible… Assuming she died in here, at about this temperature… ”

  “Okay.” Four to six. Assuming a constant, or relatively constant ambient temperature. Close enough. Assume room temperature. We were in a room, after all. Assume we had no other way to estimate the time of death, yet. Just ballpark.

  I helped him rock the body to either side, and then forward a little, so he could see all of her. Lividity was just barely apparent in her buttocks, her elbows, and on the backs of her legs. The gluteal muscles were important, because they're the largest in the body. They would be the last to go completely rigid.

  “Shouldn't there be a little more lividity?” I asked. Lividity is the purplish mottling of the skin that occurs when blood settles to the lower parts of a dead body.

  “Not if she'd experienced great blood loss,” said Doc Z. “And I'd say she has.”

  “Right.” Well, there went my little theory that she'd just bled until her heart stopped.

  Doc Z. stood up. “Do you feel certain about the suicide aspects of this?” he asked, sotto voce. “I have some suspicions about the bruises.”

  I shrugged. “Me, too, but I don't see any real evidence to the contrary. Not unless the bruises were caused at about the same time she died.”

  “Those are the sort of pronounced bruises I expect to find in the elderly,” he said.

  “Abuse?”

  “That might be consistent, but what I meant was, in the elderly who are being prescribed blood thinners to reduce the possibility of stroke.”

  “Oh. Well, there's a pillbox out on the vanity. One of those weekly ones. You could check that.”

  “Good. I suppose you've already noticed that much of the blood seems to be dried from evaporation, as opposed to being clotted.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Attaboy,” he said with a grin. “The neck cut bothers me, too.” Henry moved her head a bit to see the wound again. “No hesitation marks.”

  “Right.”

  “I'd feel a lot more comfortable if we had a good forensics specialist up on this one.”

  “Okay… ”

  “I'm not comfortable with this one, Carl. No hesitation marks, no sawing motion, just puncture and pull. That's a deep wound. Very deep. I would expect it not only got the jugular, but the carotid as well.”

  “Sure. Reasonable.”

  “But if it did, there are no indications of arterial spurts. None.”

  No, there weren't. A severed jugular would give you a copious flow, to put it mildly. But a flow, nonetheless. If the carotid was cut, you'd get spurts, all right. High-pressure spurts that could splatter on a wall ten feet away. We didn't know, but the cut did look deep, and if the carotid had been cut, there sure as hell should have been spurts at the location of the event. Forensics expert prior to moving her?… You bet. Like they say, err on the side of caution.

  “I'll see who we can get for a pathologist. We may have to wait until the DCI agent gets here, to order up the forensics and crime scene analysis people, though.”

  “Fine,” said Doc Z. in a matter-of-fact tone. “I'll be a lot happier. Do you have plenty of photos?”

  I told him what I'd taken. He had me take several more as he held her head back, and then as he moved her joints to show the progress of the rigor mortis. I noticed that he had to push a bit harder to move her head up and expose the cut. After he released it, it took several seconds for it to drop back into place. Spooky.

  “Unless the lab dictates otherwise,” said Doc Z., “she can be removed anytime now.”

  “Okay.” We'd call the local funeral home, and have her taken there. That's where the autopsy would be done.

  “Uh, Henry, before we get out among 'em, I think you might want to talk to the local ME over in Conception County.”

  “Alice? Sure. Why?”

  “They had a body yesterday. Young fellow, with a really ugly neck wound. Not cause of death, possibly post mortem. Not quite like this… but, enough to make me wonder.”

  Back in the bedroom, Dr. Z. looked at the contents of the pillbox. He pointed to one, a little green pill with a numeral six impressed in it. “Six-milligram Coumadin,” he said. “A warfarin sodium pill. This is a really powerful blood thinner,” he said. “It requires a course of treatment, but I see that she has dosages in her noon box on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The rest of the week is already consumed.”

  “What for? Stroke?”

  “That, and some post-heart attack treatment. Not likely here. I'll double-check, but I can't imagine why Edie would have needed these.”

  “But, since she was taking them, that means, well, the bruises?”

  “It doesn't take much pressure to bruise someone who is on Coumadin,” he said.

  “And?… Help me out, Doc.” I grinned.

  “Well, the bruises tell us less. The autopsy will look into the muscle tissues, to see how deep they are.”

  Nothing, it seems, is ever black or white.

  “Certainly would explain the absence of clotting, though,” he said.

  After we finished up, I really needed a break. I also could have used a cigarette. Nothing like a dead body to make you want to smoke again. There's just something about hanging around a violent death scene like that that really starts to get to you.

  Before I could leave the room unattended, I had to seal it. To preserve the evidence. Pretty simple, really, as all you have to do is put sticky vinyl seals on every entry point.

  I did the windows, and sealed the door behind me, and did the same with the bedroom door. Before I left, I opened the door to what I'd assumed to be the bedroom closet, just to make sure it wasn't a staircase. It wasn't. I did notice several dresses that I mentally classified as “formal.” Really nice fabric. Two caught my eye in particular; one green velvet, one black with beadwork. The first thing that entered my mind was that she had a job as a hostess at a classy restaurant. Would have been a good guess, too, if there had actually been any classy restaurants within a hundred miles.

  The rooms sealed, I decided to relax by seeing how Borman was coming with the interviews. I pulled off my latex gloves, put them in an evidence bag, and went downstairs. I should have stayed in the bedroom.

  As I got to the bottom of the stairs, I could hear Borman say, “Just
fill out the form there, Jack, and don't give me any shit.” He sounded exasperated. Swell.

  I stuck my head around the corner, into what was a really period-looking “parlor,” the kind you'd see in an old movie where Clifton Webb would be chatting with Jane Wyman. Except here it was Borman arguing with good old Toby.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  They both spoke at once, the gist being that Toby didn't think Borman had the right to ask him to identify himself. Borman disagreed. I think the tone was set when Toby said, “You ever hear of the Constitution, Mr. Cop?”

  I sighed, and reached into my hip pocket, removing my badge and ID case. I opened it, careful to avoid any sort of flourish. “Toby Gottschalk,” I said, showing him my credentials, “I'm Carl Houseman, Deputy Sheriff here in Nation County. Since you've already told me who you are, I can't see the problem with you identifying yourself to this officer.”

  “He wants my date of birth, my address, and my middle name,” said Toby. “I don't have to give that. I know a little something about the Constitution.”

  The problem was, of course, that they were nearly the same age. From my lofty distance of almost thirty-five years their senior, I thought I'd have a bit more luck.

  I smiled at Toby. “Never say you know a 'little' about the Constitution. There's always somebody waiting to show you how right you are.” I put my badge case back in my pocket. “What you gotta understand, Toby, is that we have to treat any questioned death as a murder unless and until we can prove it's, oh, like a suicide or an accident. Okay?”

  He at least had the sense to just nod.

  “Cool. Now, since we're sort of constrained by procedure to assume we're dealing with a murder at this point, we have the right to ask you for a variety of personal identifiers.”

  “I'm sure that's true,” said Toby. “Not to piss you off or anything, but I do have the right to refuse.”

  “Yep,” I said. “You do. But then, we may have to do things that are not to your liking, to discover that infor mation.”

  “Such as?” Toby looked completely self-possessed.

  I was beginning to like Toby as a potential witness. Guts, fairly smart, and didn't have the sense to concede a point. “Such as,” I said, moving a little closer, and smiling, “determining your age by cutting off one of your legs, and counting the rings.”