by A. E. Howe
“Could. He just wouldn’t. So this was probably an accident?” Mel Conway asked us.
“Really, we don’t know yet. Was anyone else supposed to be here at the house while you were gone?” I asked.
“No. Shouldn’t have been. I told him I didn’t want any of his friends, and I use that term loosely, staying here. Actually, that was one thing he was pretty good about. He didn’t like people messing with his stuff, so he tended to keep people at a distance.”
“David doesn’t party much.” His mother took every opportunity to mention the good things about him.
“Always been a loner, really.” His father, on the other hand, seemed to paint every trait in the darkest colors.
“Do you know of anyone that might have wanted to hurt your son?” When I said it, I expected the usual denials that you get from parents. I wasn’t prepared for the angry look I got from Mrs. Conway.
“David didn’t have any enemies until you all started accusing him of those rapes!” she said venomously.
“We never charged him with anything.” I felt myself go on the defensive.
“Your lot were asking questions everywhere. People knew what you thought. We moved here to get away from all those nasty things people said about him, but you couldn’t let him be.”
“In fairness, your son was a registered sex offender,” Pete told her. “That information is public.”
“There, that’s what I mean.” Her eyes were hot coals now, her voice rising.
“They’re right.” Mel Conway put his hand on his wife’s arm. “He did some awful things when he was a teenager.” Conway looked me in the eyes. “But you all did stir things up. He hadn’t been in that kind of trouble for over six years. And Maya’s right. There were people who said things. I was in the Supersave and heard the manager say that sex offenders should be neutered. He said it on purpose. He knew I was there.”
“My son didn’t do those rapes. And you found that out.” Maya hadn’t cooled down much. “You all killed the man who did it.”
“Can you think of any other reason that someone might have wanted to hurt your son?” Pete asked, trying to steer the conversation in a more productive direction.
“No. Like I said, most of the time he just hung around here since he hasn’t been able to get a job. Not that he was trying too hard to find one.”
“When was the last time you talked to your son?”
“I talked to him Wednesday when we were having lunch,” Maya said, her anger turning back to grief.
“We went down to Panama City on Sunday,” Mel Conway added.
“Was there anything unusual about the call?” I asked.
“No. David had just gotten up. He wasn’t really in a mood to talk.”
“Everything sounded okay?”
She glanced at her husband and said, “He asked for money. And I told him that I had some in my bedside table. Nothing more.”
“Do you mind if we look around David’s room?” I asked. I’d walked through the house after I discovered the body, but since we didn’t yet know how he died, we’d have been on very shaky ground if we had conducted a more thorough search. Until Dr. Darzi was able to decide the cause of death, it was reasonable for us to keep the house closed as a crime scene, but to do more without the Conways’ permission would give a lawyer a wide open door for getting evidence excluded.
“It was probably an accident. We’ve told you he used drugs. Couldn’t he have fallen asleep and drowned?”
“Of course,” I had to admit.
“Then I don’t think you need to search his room.” Mel Conway didn’t sound like he could be persuaded.
“It is also possible that someone killed your son. And until the autopsy, we are going to keep the house preserved as a crime scene.” I tried to sound equally determined.
“Fair enough.”
“When can we have him back?” his mother pleaded. I realized that all of us were assuming that the body was David.
“After the autopsy. The coroner will perform the autopsy tomorrow. If it is your son, the body could be released to you as early as Monday. If you can give us the name of your son’s dentist, we’ll contact him and get the dental records. If we have to wait for the DNA tests, it could be a week or more.”
“Dr. Wilde in Tallahassee. We’ve used him since David was in middle school.”
Pete and I watched them while they gathered up fresh clothes, then we escorted them out to their SUV. Mr. Conway told us they were staying at a hotel in Tallahassee and to call them if we needed more information or had any news. He had an eerie way of switching from grieving father to professional businessman in the span of a sentence.
Pete and I followed them out of the driveway and I stopped to put a departmental chain and padlock on the gate, along with a sign declaring it a crime scene.
Ivy was waiting for me when I got home, indignantly demanding her dinner. I was too drained to wallow in the silence of my trailer, and crawled into bed with my nightmares until the sun came up.
Chapter Fifteen
I awoke to Ivy kneading my chest. It was almost nine o’clock. There were two messages on my phone, one from Dad and the other from Dr. Darzi. Dad’s simply said: Call me. I knew that he would want a full report on what had gone on at Conway’s. Darzi’s message was equally brief: Autopsy at noon. The message had been sent to Pete too. I was trying to decide if I could talk him into going without me when the phone rang: Dad’s gunshot ring tone.
“I was going to call you.”
“It’s almost nine-thirty.”
“Yep, that’s what my phone says. Is that all you wanted to tell me?” I tried to sound lighthearted, but I wasn’t in the mood.
“I want to know what went on at Conway’s house.” Clearly he wasn’t in a joking mood either.
“I’ve got to go to the autopsy at noon. I want to grab some breakfast, then I’ll stop by your house on the way to the hospital.”
“Fine.” Then as an afterthought he added, “How are you doing?”
“I’ll survive.”
“I talked to Shantel. She said it was the worst body she’d ever seen.”
“It was bad.” He’d inadvertently managed to destroy my appetite.
“See you when you get here,” he said and hung up.
I called Pete and arranged to meet him at the office so we could ride over to the autopsy together. Pete had already gotten in touch with Dr. Wilde, who’d agreed to drop off David Conway’s dental records with Dr. Darzi.
Now I was left staring at my phone, knowing I needed to send a text to Cara, but not sure what to say. It was cowardly to not even consider calling. I justified it by telling myself that if I texted her, I was giving her a chance to respond when she was ready instead of ambushing her with a phone call.
I decided on the classic: I’m sorry about last night. It was a very bad day. Hope you’ll forgive me. I figured that was groveling enough.
Her response was immediate. A good sign? Not mad. Let’s talk when you have the time.
I couldn’t decide if the message absolved me or if I should have been worried about the upcoming “talk.” One of the things I liked most about Cara was that she was straightforward and honest, so I decided to take the message at face value and try to feel better about things.
At Dad’s house, Mauser came bounding out to meet me and led me to the back of the house where Dad was working on his patio. He’d started it shortly before Mom died and since then it had become a gauge of his stress level. It was already large; now it looked like it would soon need its own zip code.
“I’m putting in a brick grill,” he said as I stared at the mess he’d created. “Let’s go inside.”
Mauser seemed reluctant to trade the cold winter air for the warmth of the house, but he didn’t want to be left outside alone so he pushed past me and into the house. I was forced to battle him for a small section of the couch.
I brought Dad up to speed on where we were with Nichols, then r
ecounted the events of yesterday. Dad knew most of the story from monitoring the radio, and he’d talked to Pete at one point early on.
“Hopefully Dr. Darzi will be able to give us a cause of death and the approximate time, or at least day, of death,” I said, shoving Mauser’s big butt off my lap.
Dad got up and waved his hand for me to follow. I was more than glad to abandon the battlefield of the couch to Mauser. Dad led me to the spare bedroom, which had been Mom’s hobby room. Inside he’d laid out several boxes’ worth of files in neat piles. He’d labeled them with either the names of suspects or victims.
“I’ve cross-referenced them,” he said, pointing to a whiteboard where he’d made connections between the suspects and the crimes. “With these cases, it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. We have the murder of Angie Maitland and the shooting of Jeffrey Ayers. Now I’ve added the death of David Conway.”
“Might be too early to put Conway’s death up with the rest.”
“You mean it’s too soon to assume that the body is Conway’s?” Dad asked.
“No. I’m pretty sure that it’s Conway’s body. But don’t you think it might be too soon to put it in the middle of a grand conspiracy?”
“I don’t. I know that coincidences do happen. And if he’d died two weeks after the shooting incident, or even a week, I might be able to see them as separate events. But to happen within a day? Whether before or after. Like you said, hopefully the autopsy will tell us. But that close together, I think it’s safe to say that they’re linked.”
“We believe that Matt is involved with the Thompsons, but we don’t know of any connections between him and these crimes.” I waved my hand at the piles.
“True. I’m not as sure about him being tied into this as I am that the death of Conway is linked. And where the hell does Nichols fit into all this?”
“You know that you can trust Pete, and there are others in the department too,” I argued.
“But if I tell them… If I tell them our assumptions and show them the facts we have, it would put them in an awkward position.”
“Pete already thinks that there is something hinky about the Ayers shooting,” I pushed.
“Which is good, and that’s another reason to keep him in the dark. If he makes the links independently, then we know we’re on the right track. I want him to remain unbiased.”
That actually made sense. Dad could be very persuasive. If he started preaching his theories to Pete or anyone else, he might just sway them based on his powers of argument rather than the evidence.
The sound of whining came from the hallway. Dad had shut the door and now Mauser was feeling left out.
“We’re coming out!” Dad shouted to him, then turned back to me. “I wanted to show this to you so you can think about it while you’re out in the field. I’m going to rely on your instincts.”
I realized again how he’d talked me into becoming a deputy against my better judgment. Dad’s faith in me was a strong motivating force in my life, but I just wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
“I’ve got to go meet Pete for the autopsy,” I said, and opened the door to an aggrieved Mauser, now sulking on the floor.
“I know you’ll be broken-hearted about this, but I started without you,” Dr. Darzi said, not looking up from the ugliest corpse I’d ever seen. The hours in the hot tub had left the body looking like one of those white, swollen grub worms. The odor was still bad, but not as overwhelming as when the body had been swimming in its own heated juices.
I glanced at Pete, who looked as pale and queasy as I felt. “Did you get the dental records?” he asked.
“Yes, and I already X-rayed his teeth,” Darzi said. As if on cue, an assistant came in and began pulling up, clicking and moving things on a computer. A series of images appeared side by side on a set of monitors on one wall.
“They appear to match, Doctor,” the young man said as he moved one digital X-ray over another. Darzi stopped working over the body and went over for a closer look at the dental images.
“Yes, I can say with no doubt that this is David Conway.” One question answered, I thought.
“Time of death?”
Darzi gave me a frown. “Don’t rush me. Actually, that is easier than cause of death. From the condition of the musculature and the skin, or the lack of skin, the data from the body farm suggests that he was submerged in the tub for at least forty-eight hours, and no more than seventy-two. So sometime between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon.” He held up his hand to stop me. “Cause of death. Much harder.” He went back to the body.
“Can you rule anything out?” Pete asked.
“One, he doesn’t have any broken bones. Two, there is very little liquid in his lungs, so I don’t think he drowned. Three, his windpipe is intact, so he probably wasn’t strangled. Four, the X-ray didn’t show any foreign objects in his body. So no bullets or anything stuffed down or up an orifice.
“What I can’t tell you is if he was beaten without breaking any bones, and I’m still checking for stab wounds or punctures. Remember that something with the diameter of an ice pick could be used to kill someone. With the body swollen like it is, it’s going to be almost impossible to find a small incision or puncture. I’m going to dry the body out and see if that helps us find something, but I can’t guarantee anything.”
“What are your ‘we-won’t-hold-you-to-them’ thoughts?” I pressed.
Darzi shrugged. “If it was an accident, then it was probably caused by heat stress or drug overdose. The two could even have augmented each other. Natural causes could be heart failure or aneurysm, rare in young men, but possible.”
He stopped and looked at Pete and me. “Of course, what you are most interested in is murder. If he was murdered, I would suspect suffocation, drug overdose or poisoning. The condition of the lungs might tell me if he was suffocated, but unfortunately the hot water destroyed his eyes and other possible markers. Toxicology will tell us if drugs were involved, but not whether they were self-administered. If it was poison, the toxicology report will also give us that information.”
“What do you think you can learn from him now?” Pete asked.
“As soon as I open his stomach, we will get some answers.” Darzi turned back to the body and began making the “Y” incision in Conway’s chest. An hour later he was able to tell us that Conway had undigested pizza in his stomach and nothing else.
“No undigested pills. That’s something. And nothing in his lungs or airways to suggest that he was suffocated. I think you’re stuck until we get the lab reports. Maybe by Friday,” Darzi said.
“From what we know or don’t know now, wouldn’t it be logical to look for evidence of drug use or suicide at the victim’s home?” I asked after the proverbial lightbulb came on over my head.
“You always talk about how the evidence beyond the body can be very important when determining a cause of death, if there isn’t a clear-cut answer from the autopsy,” Pete added, seeing where I was going with this.
Dr. Darzi stared at Pete as though he was seeing him for the first time. “You sound like you read my article in the University Medical Review.”
Pete almost blushed. “I did.”
“I’m flattered.”
“My point being, we would like to acquire a somewhat extensive search warrant for the victim’s house, and if you could reinforce our probable cause, that would be very helpful.”
“Of course, if it pertains to a possible cause of death.”
“Suicide, drug use and murder I think would cover it. We can even include suspicion of involvement in the rapes.”
“Exactly, because that could be a motive for suicide or murder,” I said.
“Brilliant,” Pete said admiringly.
Leaving the morgue with a new sense of purpose, we called the State Attorney and put the request for a warrant in motion. He was a little dubious of the rape link, but was willing to roll with it. He also bau
lked at the rush aspect, but since we could tell him that people currently resided at the residence and had an expectation that we would clear the matter up as quickly as possible, he agreed to push it through.
We had the warrant by the time we were back in Adams County. I called Mr. Conway.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but the coroner confirmed that the body is that of your son.” There was never a good way to tell someone that they’d lost a person they loved and cherished. I’d decided that the best course was to simply deliver the news. They didn’t want my sympathy and there was never anything I could say to diminish their grief.
“I knew it was him.” Conway’s tone was flat and emotionless.
“We have a warrant to search your house for evidence that might help to establish the cause of death. You can be present if you’d like.”
“I can meet you there in an hour,” he said.
Chapter Sixteen
As Pete drove us back through Calhoun on the way out to the Conways’ house, I saw something that made my breath catch in my throat. “Go back around the block!” I shouted at Pete. “Right, here, take a right.”
“What, what?” he yelled, skidding a bit into the turn.
“Turn right again. Now go up two blocks. Your reaction time really wasn’t great,” I kidded him.
“Let’s go to the range and we can compare reaction times,” Pete shot back.
“I saw Nichols. I want to know what he’s up to.” I didn’t tell him that what had really interested me was the fact that Nichols had been talking with Matt.
Pete turned back onto Jefferson Street. Nichols was standing next to Matt in front of the Deep Pit Bar-B-Que stand.
“What’s up?” Pete asked.
“It’s okay. I was just wondering who he was talking to.”
“Yeah, might be interesting to find out from Matt if Nichols was asking about the investigation.”
If he’d tell us, I thought. “It would.”
“You should ask him. God knows that jerk won’t talk to me,” Pete said bitterly. That was another reason I couldn’t share our suspicions about Matt with Pete. He wouldn’t be able to look at it objectively.
