Holes in the Sky

by Mark Reps

  “You said they’ve spoken?”

  “Geronimo Star in the Night told Song Bird many different forces are working together to take away the sacred mountain from the Apache. He said the Apache Nation must unite to keep such a travesty from happening. Geronimo Star in the Night said now is the time for the people from every tribe to come together as brothers and sisters against the common enemies of all Native peoples. The issue is more than Native Americans versus the United States Government. Our complaints with the federal government are nothing in comparison to what it would mean if we lost our traditional religion, our delicate ecosystem and our autonomy as a people. This is a time of great importance for the Apache people. We must take an immovable stand.”

  The passion with which Eskadi spoke stirred Kate. Somewhere deep in her soul she realized the small amount of Apache blood running through her veins carried not only her dreams but the dreams of an entire nation, the Apache Nation. Eskadi’s compassionate understanding of the needs of his people warmed her heart. His steadfast faith and principled belief system shifted her perception. Kate now saw him as a warrior, a leader of the people, her people.

  “Both Song Bird and Geronimo Star in the Night have told me we are blessed because you have returned to the tribe.”

  Kate’s spirit soared as she moved one step closer to understanding herself.

  “Because you’re an Apache and a Deputy Sheriff, a great responsibility has been given to you. Our great Medicine Men agree you are going to play a major role in saving the mountain.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Immediately upon returning from the San Carlos reservation Kate headed to the Rodeo Real Estate office. She found Jake and Zeb standing on stepladders examining the wooden beam and noose rope. An additional length of rope was lashed around Jake’s waist.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said.

  “What did Song Bird say?” asked Zeb,

  “Tomorrow he will perform a healing for Delbert at the hospital.”

  “He’s a miracle worker as far as some folks are concerned. Maybe he’s got something in his bag of tricks for Delbert,” said Jake.

  “How did everything else go?” asked Zeb.

  “It went great. I mean, the writs were delivered,” said Kate.

  The enthusiasm in her voice caused Jake and Zeb to chuckle.

  “I swear when you two get together you gossip like a pair of old hens,” said Kate.

  “Right now, we have work to do,” said Zeb. “Grab that one over there.”

  The sheriff pointed to a ladder leaning against the wall. Kate carefully avoided contacting any of the potential evidence as she moved the ladder to the center of the room and climbed up.

  “Here’s what we’ve found. Look here and here.”

  Jake pointed to the spots on the edges of the squared off beam immediately adjacent to the rope. Kate stepped up a pair of rungs and leaned forward, peering downward from above the beam.

  “Now look over here.”

  This time Jake pointed to the opposite side of the beam.

  Kate climbed higher and looked over the top of the wooden beam.

  “That’s odd. One side of the beam has been worn away by the rope considerably more than the other.”

  Deputy Steele ran a finger over the splinters on the more damaged side.

  “It appears that most of the wood splinters still attached are pointing toward the ceiling,” said Kate.

  “Good eyes, Deputy.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a bit strange?” she asked.

  “It sure as hell is odd,” said Zeb. “With the rope being pulled down by the weight of a hanging man, you sure would assume the splinters would be pulled downward.”

  Deputy Steele watched as Jake unfastened the piece of rope tied around his waist.

  “I’ve cooked up a little experiment.”

  Jake took the rope and laid it over the top of the beam. The rope was nearly identical in size and fiber width to the piece of the noose that remained around the crossbeam.

  “Last night when I was lying in bed, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Farrell’s face. I sat within ten feet of the man for the past few years at the county planning commission meetings. You get to know a man a little when you work with him like that. To be honest, I didn’t think much of him one way or the other. But on more than one occasion he talked about how proud he was of his kids. That’s the reason I couldn’t sleep. I got to thinking about how much his family meant to him. No man in his right mind would kill himself and leave behind all that embarrassment for his family to live with. It just doesn’t add up. Besides, he loved his work. A man is measured by his work and his family. I just don’t believe that a man who loved his family would wrap a rope around his neck and jump off a chair to end it all.”

  “Maybe there were parts of him no one knew,” said Kate. “Maybe he was suffering in a way no one could see.”

  “I suppose that’s a possibility,” replied Jake. “But all we really have right now is what’s in front of our faces.”

  Jake tied the rope into a noose. He left just enough extra length dangling so the rope could easily be reached from the floor.

  “You two stay on the ladders. I’m going to grab onto the rope and hang down with my body weight until my shoulders give out. You keep a close eye on the rope as it rubs back and forth over the beam,” said Jake.

  “You sure you don’t want me to do that?” asked Zeb.

  “I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself,” replied Jake. “City can’t afford a work comp claim.”

  Jake grabbed the dangling piece of rope and hoisted his feet up off the floor. Within fifteen seconds he lost his grip and banged his boot heels down hard onto the floor. Jake spit on his hands, prepping for a second attempt.

  “Rope’s slipperier than I thought.”

  “Maybe you’re older than you think,” said Zeb.

  “Bah!”

  This time Jake held on for nearly thirty seconds before his heels smacked against the floor.

  “You want me to come down and hang on it?” asked Zeb.

  “I’ll give it one more shot. Besides Farrell and I are about the same size. You’re too big.”

  “Okay, but don’t hurt yourself. I might have trouble explaining what you were up to.”

  Jake grabbed the rope and pulled his feet off the floor.

  “You’re at one minute and holding,” said Kate.

  “No sense shootin’ for any Olympic records,” replied Jake.

  “Your theory looks right, Jake.”

  The officers examined the markings from the rope on the crossbeam.

  “Almost all of the little slivers of wood are pointing down. But there aren’t nearly as many as where Farrell’s rope was.”

  “How about on the other side?”

  “It looks like there are equal amounts of wood gouging on each side.”

  “What’s your conclusion, Deputy?” asked Zeb.

  “Here’s how I see it,” said Kate. “Farrell’s rope put wear and tear on the wooden beam in the opposite direction of weight bearing. When you compare that with our little experiment showing a downward force producing downward wear and tear, it can only mean one thing. The body was hoisted up there with a rope already around its neck. That way the rope pulling up against the beam would cause the splinters to point upward.”

  “Exactly the way I see it,” said Zeb. “All that hoisting would cause more than enough friction of rope on wood to scrape off a ton of shavings.”

  “The Hush Puppies,” said Kate.

  “What about them?” asked Zeb.

  “These drag marks.”

  Kate pointed to the drag marks running from under Farrell’s desk to beneath the spot where he was found hanging.

  “They were made from the heels of Farrell’s Hush Puppies.”

  “I think you’re onto something, Deputy. If Farrell was at his desk and someone put the rope around his neck, dragged him back to this spot and then pulled him up,
it would go a long way in explaining the direction of the drag marks made by his shoes.”

  “But how could somebody overpower him and do all that? Farrell would have put up some sort of a struggle. We don’t have any evidence of that,” said Kate.

  “He must have already been unconscious,” said Jake. “That would explain it.”

  “But we got one major problem, don’t we?” said Zeb. “Like Kate said, there are no signs of resistance. I didn’t see any injury marks on Farrell. No man just gives up and lets someone put a rope around his neck and hang him.”

  “We’ve got a jigsaw puzzle with some missing pieces,” said Jake. “Let’s go have a little chat with Doc Yackley. Maybe an amateur sleuth can enlighten the likes of us.”

  Jake drove with Deputy Steele to the morgue area of the hospital. Zeb followed in his Dodge Ram truck.

  “Just the trio I’ve been looking for.”

  “Greetings, Doctor Yackley.”

  “Deputy Steele. Gentlemen.”

  Doc Yackley removed the meerschaum pipe from his mouth and peered over the top of his bifocals.

  “Kate, please, just call me Doc. I don’t want to lose the mysticism that goes with being an old country doctor.”

  “It’s a deal,” replied Kate. “If you call me Kate.”

  “It looks as though I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you. Why don’t you come in and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.”

  They followed Doc through swinging aluminum doors and across the spotlessly clean morgue floor.

  “Here, put on these face masks,” said Doc. “There’s always a little bit of an odor hanging onto a dead body. This one stinks a little more than most.”

  Donning the rubber gloves, they followed Doc to the body in single file, like school children.

  “I want to show you a few things. You will probably come to the same conclusion I did. Take a look at these pupils.”

  Doc Yackley reached overhead and pulled an illuminated lamp close to Farrell’s corpse. Using the thumb and first finger of his right hand, he spread open the eyelids of the dead man. A scalpel in his left hand doubled as a pointer. Kate blinked reflexively as the coroner placed the tip of the knife next to the dead man’s eyes. Doc twitched his head to the side, signaling them to have a closer look.

  “Dilated,” said Doc. “Farrell’s pupils are dilated. Now look at this.”

  Doc placed the scalpel on the table near the dead man’s ear. Carefully, he closed the eyelids. Inserting a single finger into the mouth of the dead man, he rubbed slowly along the inside of the upper teeth, then toward the back of the tongue and finally under the tongue. Chunky white thick material was gathered on the tip of his fingers. He exhibited the exudate for Kate and Jake by wagging his finger in front of their eyes.

  “Gastric ruminant, known to the general public as vomit. Farrell was full of it. I gathered up almost four ounces of the stuff.”

  Doc placed the material into a sterile specimen container.

  “You say that like you’re surprised,” said Zeb.

  “There is no medical reason for a hanged man to toss his cookies. At least not from being hanged.”

  Doc pulled back the sheet covering Farrell’s body, exposing him from the waist up. Incisions made during the autopsy revealed the inside of John Farrell. Carefully using a forceps, Doc retracted the muscles of the neck.

  “Right here. You can see where the neck is broken. Four fractures. Quite unbelievable. Four fractures. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is the third, fourth, fifth and sixth vertebra of the cervical spine, the neck. All fractured. And look at this, the larynx, the windpipe, and this is the cricoid cartilage. All crushed.”

  Kate, Zeb and Jake weren’t exactly sure what Doc was getting at.

  “Now for the pièce de résistance.”

  Doc grabbed a large pair of forceps. He pulled the skin away from the chest wall. The exposed rib cage had been cut and the ribs removed, leaving a five-inch hole in Farrell’s chest.

  “You’re probably wondering how I made such a perfect cut. I used a Skill Saw from Sears. Cuts through bone like a hot knife through butter.”

  Doc reached inside the body, pulling a gooey, pale pinkish gray matter from beneath the ribs.

  “This is what a lung looks like. The goo is called viscera. This is the pleura. You’ve heard of pleurisy. When this stuff is inflamed, you’ve got pleurisy. This stuff is called alveoli. It’s where respiration, breathing, takes place. Technically, it’s where the gaseous exchange between the lungs and the blood takes place. But here, right here, is what I want to show you. Actually, it’s what you don’t see that makes the difference. This is the bronchial tree, so called a tree because of the continuous branches it has. When you look at it, you should see something that resembles an upside down tree trunk with branches.”

  “Sorry Doc, I don’t see that.”

  “Precisely.”

  The coroner jammed the lungs back into the cadaver.

  “Because they are nowhere to be seen.”

  Removing his examination gloves, Doc Yackley lit his pipe. He casually leaned back against a steel examining table. Kate, Zeb and Jake took off their examination gloves and face masks. Following Doc’s instruction, they placed them in a bin marked ‘disposables.’

  “You want to be a little more exact, Doc,” said Zeb. “We’re hardly medical students.”

  “Based on what I see, I’d have to state the cause of death as respiratory paralysis. That’s why you didn’t see what you should have seen in the lungs.”

  “The bronchial tree. You mean because it was missing?”

  “Right.”

  “And what about the dilated pupils? And the vomit?” asked Zeb.

  “The dilated pupils and the vomit lead me to believe he was poisoned. Pupillary enlargement is a sign of chemical toxicity. The vomit more or less confirms a consumed irritant.”

  “You seem pretty damn certain, Doc. Any idea what kind of poison?”

  “I sent some blood and tissue samples up to a lab in Phoenix. Should have a pretty good idea of what poison it was, if it was poison, in a few days.”

  “You get anything else?”

  “Just one more obvious thing. Farrell’s socks were pulled down around his ankles. He had deep fingernail gouges in his skin just above the malleoli...the ankle bones. I’m certain they weren’t made by Farrell’s own hand.”

  “Why do you think that, Doc?” asked Jake.

  “His fingernails were short. He clipped them even with the tips of his fingers. Not only did Farrell not have enough nail to gouge that deeply into himself, there wasn’t any evidence of skin under his fingernails.”

  “We’d better have another look around Farrell’s office,” said Zeb. “Doc, you’ve been a great help.”

  “I’ll phone you once I get the lab results,” said Doc.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Darla Thompson paced back and forth frenetically outside of the Rodeo Real Estate office.

  “I’m so glad you’re back,” she said. “I’ve got a real problem.”

  “What is it?” asked Kate.

  “I just can’t stand the idea of anyone seeing the office in such a messy state. I always kept it as neat as a pin. It really would be wrong for Mrs. Farrell to come in here to gather up Mr. Farrell’s things, thinking her husband’s last day was a messy one. Can I please go in there and clean now?”

  “We’re just about done. We have a couple of final things to do. Then you can go ahead and clean.”

  “Thank you. By the way did you find Mr. Farrell’s espresso cup? It’s funny but it bothers me terribly it wasn’t in its usual place.”

  “We didn’t run across it yet. Why don’t you have a seat? We’ll be finished in there shortly.”

  Kate walked back into the office to join Zeb and Jake.

  “Farrell must have passed out right at his desk,” said Zeb. “If he was poisoned somewhere else, we’d have more drag marks from the
heels of his Hush Puppies. So, for the sake of argument, let’s assume someone slipped poison in his drink, and he passed out in his chair at his desk. Then whoever gave him the poison pulled his chair back underneath the wooden beam.”

  “Which explains the single set of drag marks from his Hush Puppies,” said Kate. “And the missing espresso cup.”

  “From there the killer must have tossed a rope over the top of the beam, put the rope around Farrell’s neck and hoisted him up from his chair,” said Zeb.

  “Which makes perfect sense of the fray marks on the rope, the upward direction of the splinters and the way one side of the beam took so much more wear and tear,” added Jake.

  “What about the fingernail marks in his ankles?” asked Zeb.

  “Dear lord,” gasped Kate.

  “Tell me,” asked Zeb. “What?”

  “The broken neck,” said Kate. “Remember Doc said the type of noose around his neck wouldn’t have caused the neck to break, yet it was broken in four places.

  “Go on,” said Zeb.

  “I think the killer either pulled down hard while grabbing around the ankles thereby breaking the neck or…”

  “Or what?”

  “This is really gruesome. The killer grabbed onto Farrell’s ankles and swung back and forth. With the amount of damage to the beam and all the splinters it really does indicate the body was swung back and forth while being pulled down on.”

  “Jesus,” exclaimed Zeb. “If that’s true, we have a very twisted killer on our hands.”

  “It would go a long way in explaining four fractured bones in the neck.”

  “Did you find the espresso cup yet?” shouted Darla Thompson.

  “No, Darla. We’re looking right now,” said Kate.

  Jake, Zeb and Kate quickly scoured the room.

  “We didn’t find one,” explained Kate. “But if you find it when you’re cleaning the office, please call us right away. Don’t wash it. Don’t even touch it. It might be evidence.”