Name Games

by Michael Craft

  Now that we were all working from the same page, Pierce asked Formhals, “What did you find?”

  “This way, gentlemen.” And Formhals led us out of his office, through a set of swinging double doors—the sort designed to accommodate a gurney.

  At this point, my momentary enthusiasm, inspired by office chat of mutual cooperation, waned. Back at the coroner’s desk, the issues we discussed were theoretical; passing through the doors to the morgue complex, we entered the realm of the highly tangible. And once again, I dreaded the notion of seeing Carrol Cantrell’s autopsied remains.

  Formhals gabbed with the sheriff and his deputy as we made our way through several rooms—labs for blood work and photography; the examination room with its stainless-steel dissection table, its drains, pumps, and lights; and finally, the cold, quiet confines of the morgue proper, a file room for the deceased.

  The equipment, the smells of disinfectant, the hum of compressors, the background trickle of water—it was all familiar—other morgues in larger cities served the same purpose. Dumont’s facility was much like the others, only smaller. This final room contained only a few of the refrigerated drawers in which corpses could be stored, not the rows of anonymous crypts found in crime-embattled urban counties. Owing to my work at the paper, I knew that only one suspicious death was currently under investigation. Only one of these drawers was occupied.

  While gripping the handle of the pertinent drawer, Formhals told us, “I’m embarrassed to admit, gentlemen, that during my initial examination of the subject, I failed to notice a small detail that could, just possibly, have an enormous impact on your investigation. The cause of death, which we have all assumed to be strangulation, may in fact have been otherwise. Stand back, please.”

  As instructed, we backed away as the drawer slid open. There lay a long, lean corpse, chilled and fully shrouded, presumably Carrol Cantrell. Pierce stood along one side of the drawer with Formhals; Kerr and I faced them from the other side. I knew what had been done to the body, and I didn’t want to see it. Sensing my uneasiness, the coroner lifted the sheet near the head so that only Pierce could see the face as well as most of the body to confirm the identity of the victim.

  Regardless of how routine such experiences may be in police work, I can’t imagine how Pierce managed to view the corpse with such complete lack of emotion. I knew that the scalp had been cut back and the skull sawed open so that the brain could be removed. I knew that a giant Y-shaped incision had been cut across the chest and down the abdomen so that everything else could be removed, examined, bagged, tagged, and replaced. I also knew that this defiled specimen had, in life, made love to Pierce three nights running. With a sober nod, Pierce confirmed, “Yes, that’s Cantrell.”

  “Now then,” said Formhals, tucking the shroud back in place, “I’d like for you all to have a look at the victim’s right thigh.” Exposing a section of the leg below the hip, he arranged the sheet so that only the flesh of Cantrell’s outer thigh could be seen. “Don’t be shy, Mr. Manning. Please step over here and take a close look.” He offered me a magnifying glass.

  My curiosity was sufficient to outweigh my instinctive reluctance, so I stepped around the feet of the corpse and took hold of the magnifying glass, positioning myself between the coroner and the sheriff. Squatting, I peered at Cantrell’s leg, mere inches from my face. The skin had lost its fleshy color, of course, and now appeared distinctly gray and lifeless. Otherwise, there was little abhorrent about the experience of nearing this framed section of a man’s leg—the rotting had been arrested by refrigeration, and if there was a putrid smell at all, it was well masked by other odors that carried the sting of chemicals. Lifting the lens in front of my eyes, I saw nothing unusual on the skin—a random pattern of short, fuzzy hairs; their follicles; a few blemishes, including a blackhead and a pimple or two. I told Formhals, “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

  He pointed to the pimples, a few inches apart. Examining them more closely, I saw that these two tiny red patches did not have lumps at their centers, as pimples would, but rather craters, darkened presumably by blood.

  Pierce conjectured, “Needle marks?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Formhals. “Unmistakable. Two of them.”

  Standing, I handed the magnifier back to Formhals, asking, “Was Cantrell doing drugs?”

  “There was some residual evidence of previous drug use, but that’s not what killed him, and that’s not what made those marks.” Covering the section of leg, he slid the corpse back into the wall. The drawer closed with a clank.

  Deputy Kerr suggested, “Poisoning? Injected poison?”

  Formhals shook his head. “I doubt it. Gentleman, all of you saw the victim at the crime scene on Sunday. Do you recall that he wore a Medic Alert bracelet?”

  “I do recall that,” I told the group. “I noticed it when Cantrell arrived last Thursday—the bracelet’s design was conspicuously different from his other jewelry. Then, when I accompanied Harley Kaiser and Miriam Westerman to the coach house on Saturday morning, the bracelet came up in conversation. Cantrell said he was allergic to nuts.”

  “Indeed he was,” confirmed Formhals. “The bracelet gave clear warning of Cantrell’s nut allergy, which was severe enough to cause anaphylactic shock. The bracelet also gave instructions for use of the antidote.”

  Pierce asked, “The EpiPen? I saw it—Carrol always had it nearby.”

  “You’ve lost me,” I told the others while slipping my notebook out of my pocket and uncapping my Montblanc. “What’s an EpiPen?”

  Formhals explained, “An EpiPen resembles an ordinary fountain pen, which has been described by some as ‘a fat pen.’ It—”

  “Of course,” I said. “When I first saw Cantrell’s pen, I wondered why he’d chosen one of such ungainly design. Then, on Saturday morning, after Harley and Miriam left the coach house, Cantrell tried to tidy up the place, and it struck me as odd that he left the pen near the bed instead of placing it on the desk.”

  “That’s the point,” said Formhals. “An EpiPen is not a writing instrument, but a syringe designed for emergency use. It contains a premeasured dose of epinephrine, a synthetic version of the hormone adrenaline. At the onset of an anaphylactic reaction, the patient removes the pen’s cap and pushes its tip against his outer thigh, injecting the antidote directly into a muscle or vein. If delivered in time, it goes to work on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, causing rapid constriction of blood vessels. It reverses throat swelling and prevents cardiovascular collapse.”

  Deputy Kerr asked, “Can we back up a minute? What’s anaphylactic shock?”

  “It’s an acute allergic reaction that, in sensitive subjects, can be triggered by just about anything—shellfish, bee stings, and pointedly, nuts. The reaction causes rapid swelling of the breathing passage, loss of consciousness, and sometimes death. If fatal, the symptoms are identical to those of asphyxiation. The most evident symptom is cyanosis—the victim’s face and extremities turn blue.”

  I told Formhals, “That’s consistent with Cantrell’s condition when I found him. Pardon an obvious question: Had the EpiPen been discharged?”

  The coroner breathed a short, exasperated sigh. “We don’t know.”

  Pierce explained, “At the crime scene on Sunday, the EpiPen was not in plain view. In fact, it was on the floor under the rumpled bedding. While removing the body, one of the investigators stepped on the pen and crushed it. By the time we identified it, it was of course empty—and thoroughly contaminated.”

  Sheepishly, Kerr said, “I think I’m the one who stepped on it—we’re not sure.”

  Formhals added, “If the victim did inject the hormone to stave off shock, it’s unlikely to show up in lab tests. In other words, we have no direct evidence as to whether the pen was used—just the needle marks. Our best bet is to await analysis of his stomach contents to see if he’d ingested nuts.”

  Reviewing the notes I’d been writing, I asked, “In your
opinion, then, what’s the bottom line? Was the cause of death strangulation or anaphylactic shock?”

  “At this point, we can conclusively state only that the mechanism of death was asphyxiation. The cause of death may have been either strangulation or an allergic reaction to nuts.”

  Pierce suggested, “If he ate nuts, the death may have been accidental.”

  “Unless,” I said, “someone knowingly slipped him the nuts in something else.”

  “But wait,” said Kerr. “If he died from eating nuts, how do we explain the red abrasions around his neck? It sure looked as if he’d been strangled—we even found that wrinkled scarf at the scene.”

  Formhals nodded, telling us, “Yes, the abrasions were real. Unless they were self-inflicted, which seems highly improbable, I suggest this scenario:

  “Carrol Cantrell ate nuts, probably unknowingly, and went into anaphylactic shock. He attempted to inject himself with epinephrine, but the antidote, for whatever reason, failed. Then, when he was at or very near the point of death, someone garroted him with the scarf. The abrasions on his neck, coupled with the blue pallor of cyanosis, created a convincing case for death by strangulation.”

  I summarized, “What you’re saying, then, is that he may have been poisoned—with nuts.”

  “In the broadest sense, yes, that would be poisoning.”

  “My God,” I said, capping my pen, “that implies that whoever garroted Cantrell with the scarf didn’t need to physically overpower him. The victim was already in his death throes when the killer scarred his neck. The killer didn’t need brawn to subdue him—the poison did the dirty work.”

  After a moment’s consideration, Formhals agreed, “Certainly. Anyone could have done it—anyone, that is, with knowledge of the allergy.”

  “Anyone,” I repeated. “Even a woman.”

  “Miriam Westerman would stoop to anything—the hateful witch.”

  “Isn’t that a touch strong?” Pierce asked me through a grin. We were in his car again; he was driving me back to the Register from the morgue.

  “She is hateful,” I insisted. “She is literally ‘full of hate.’ She hates pornography. She hates homosexuals—”

  “Homosexual men.”

  “Precisely. The point is, in her twisted view, Carrol Cantrell was about as low as they get. You’ll recall that Miriam was the driving force behind Dumont’s obscenity ordinance in the first place. She looks forward to the impending porn trial as her finest hour. And if Harley Kaiser’s story is true—that it was Miriam’s idea to visit the coach house on Saturday—we can assume that she’d somehow found out that Cantrell had come to Dumont to thwart their efforts. Add to that the fact that Cantrell was so obviously gay, and it’s easy to imagine that Miriam might see him as not only a threat, but a target.”

  Pierce nodded, eyes on the road. “She’s nutty enough.”

  I turned on the seat to face him. “And speaking of nuts, she knew; about Cantrell’s allergy. She was at the coach house Saturday morning with Kaiser and me when Cantrell told us about his Medic Alert bracelet.”

  “I don’t know. Miriam’s been goofy for years. Do you actually think she’d try to kill someone?”

  “She’s vicious. I’ve had my share of run-ins with the woman, and believe me, I’d put nothing past her.”

  Reluctantly, Pierce acknowledged, “Maybe we’d better question her.”

  “That won’t be easy. The moment she knows she’s under suspicion, she’ll start yapping about harassment and restraining orders and God knows what. Plus, she’s in so thick with the DA, she could probably outmaneuver us. She’ll be a tough subject to interrogate.”

  Stopping at an intersection to wait for a light, Pierce turned to ask me, “Any better suggestions?”

  “Actually”—I grinned—“yes. Miriam’s been bleating that the Register hasn’t given her new school the publicity it deserves, so why don’t I send Glee Savage over to talk to her? We’ll tell her we’re planning a big photo feature. Glee is fully briefed on the Cantrell story. I trust her instincts—she’ll know what to dig for.”

  “Not bad,” said Pierce, impressed with the plan. “But even if Miriam is dumb enough, or arrogant enough, to admit that she had an ax to grind with Carrol, you can bet she isn’t going to come right out and say, ‘Yeah, I slipped him the nuts.’” Pierce laughed, then added, “How would someone get an allergic person to unknowingly eat nuts?”

  I shrugged. “Grind ’em up, I guess. Put them in something.”

  Pierce pulled the car through the intersection. “Something,” he asked slowly, “like a cake?”

  We looked at each other in silence for a moment, amazed at our stupidity. There’d been a partially eaten homemade cake at the crime scene Sunday morning. I’d seen it; so had Pierce. For all I knew, he may have helped Cantrell eat it for breakfast that morning.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “In evidence—along with the computer and the silk scarf and the bracelet and the broken EpiPen and everything else.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Do you know where it came from?”

  “Not a clue. It was there late Saturday when I arrived for the night.”

  I got out my pen and was making more notes. “Can you have it analyzed?”

  “I’ll talk to Vernon as soon as I get back to the department. He’ll handle it. The stomach contents are out for analysis as part of routine toxicology—those results may take a while. But analyzing the cake should be much faster—that’s easy.”

  “A piece of cake,” I quipped.

  Pierce rolled his eyes as he pulled the car to the curb in front of the Register.

  Before opening the door, I checked over my notes. “Any chance of my getting a photo of the gold-colored scarf that was found at the scene?”

  “Sure. What for?”

  I capped my pen and returned my notes to my pocket. “Just a hunch.”

  Shifting into park, Pierce thought aloud, “I assumed the investigation had taken a new direction.”

  “It has,” I assured him while getting out of the car. Before thumping the door closed, I told him, “The hunt is on—we’re looking for nuts.”

  That afternoon, I left my office at the Register early, claiming the need to spend some time at my desk at home. It’s not that I owed anyone an excuse—I owned the paper, after all, and could work any hours that pleased me. No, this white lie regarding my intentions was meant more to assuage my own conscience. During the midst of a major story, on a day that had been marked by the discovery of important new details, leads, and suspicions, I couldn’t honestly convince myself that a responsible publisher would go home early to take a run through the park—but that’s precisely what I did.

  At times a person needs to step back from a grueling situation, to focus elsewhere, to clear the mind. Besides, seeing Carrol Cantrell’s four-day-old corpse at the morgue that afternoon had proven unexpectedly disturbing, leaving me in a weird, introspective mood. I wanted to shake the memory of that experience; the smell of disinfectant still clung to my clothes. Simply put, I needed some fresh air.

  Throughout my life, at least since high school, to run has triggered a powerful, inexplicable response somewhere in my psyche. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a particularly avid, committed runner—I’m no fanatic. I’ve simply come to understand that running is good for me. They say that it strengthens the heart, and I know that it’s kept me thin. Vanity alone would be an adequate explanation for enduring these physical rigors, but my interest in this pastime runs deeper. It’s about goal-setting. It’s about competing with yourself. It’s about staving off the paunch and sag of middle age. And it’s also…well, erotic.

  This aspect of running is admittedly idiosyncratic—I assume few of my fellow runners get quite the same charge from it that I often feel. I can’t quite trace the root of these feelings; perhaps they stem from vague locker-room fantasies that may have tickled my subconscious during the early years of puberty. Who kno
ws? And who cares? If it is essentially my libido that has kept me running all these years, I feel lucky to have been so driven.

  That Thursday afternoon in early autumn was reminiscent of my cross-country days in high school, when we practiced in a park in the town where I grew up in Illinois. I’d never been outdoorsy, and I was downright miserable at competitive sports—team sports—but I found both the setting and the challenge of cross-country oddly to my liking. Crisp, blue-skyed fall weather has always marked my favorite time of year, and to spend those late afternoons with a group of other guys who weren’t out to “beat” me, but rather to cheer me on, helping me boost my endurance, my distance—the whole experience was nothing short of revelatory. Not only had I found an athletic activity that I could actually do, but I discovered, all the more to my surprise, that I was pretty good at it.

  Autumn had entered Dumont exactly on cue that week, and the season’s first hard frost had worked its magic upon the town’s trees, adorning them overnight in fresh new hues of gold, accented with crimson. The lure of the afternoon was irresistible, so when I arrived home early from the office (to “spend some time at my desk”), I didn’t even pause in the front hall as I passed by the door to the den and climbed the stairs to my uncle’s old bedroom, which I now shared with Neil.

  The house on Prairie Street was quiet. Thad was still at school, Neil at work. In this silence the creak of the closet door seemed magnified as I opened it and quickly undressed. Donning faded yellow cotton shorts and a roomy gray T-shirt, I then perched on the edge of the bed to lace up a worn pair of Reeboks over rumpled white crew socks. Standing again, I lingered for a moment to inspect myself in the long mirror mounted on the closet door. Though my attire hardly qualified as a fashion statement, I found it oddly pleasing—so basic, so right for its purpose, and yes, in a word, so butch. Perhaps because I had never aspired to hypermasculinity in my manner, appearance, or mind-set, it was something of a turn-on to glimpse the reflection of this athletic-looking figure and to realize that it was none other than me. A tingle in my groin alerted me to the initial stage of arousal, a warm chubbiness between my legs that was not yet visible but certainly felt. If I tarried there much longer, I would be apt to forget my purpose (running) and indulge instead in an impromptu bout of mutual masturbation with my macho twin behind the glass—a tempting thought. But no. I shut the closet door, swinging the mirror to reflect its own darkness. After a few quick warm-up stretches there on the bedroom carpet, I bounded down the stairs and out the front door.