Fatal Care

by Leonard Goldberg

  “Is anything wrong?” Joanna asked.

  “Just trying to get my brain to click on all cylinders.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  As they approached a second set of swinging doors, Lori checked the bottom of the index card. “They also detected something interesting in the shoe box found at the crime scene.”

  “You mean besides formaldehyde?”

  “They found two strands of blond hair in that shoe box.”

  Joanna stopped in her tracks. “From a female?”

  “They couldn’t tell for certain because the hair was broken off,” Lori answered. “But the strands were really long, so they think it came from a female.”

  “So somebody else had gotten into that shoe box,” Joanna deduced.

  “Maybe he had a girlfriend.”

  “The first thing we have to do is establish beyond any doubt that this hair came from a female,” Joanna said, her mind racing ahead. “I want you to go over the victim’s clothes with a vacuum cleaner. We need some intact strands of blond hair that can be analyzed for gender. And while you’re at it, look for anything feminine in his clothing. Things like lipstick or perfume aromas.”

  “This blonde has got to be involved here, doesn’t she?”

  “Right up to her teeth.”

  They pushed on into the main autopsy room. It was deserted except for Harry Crowe, who was standing beside a bloated corpse. He was impatiently tapping his foot.

  “Why the hell do I have to wait to open up this guy’s skull?” Harry blurted out. “I could have him opened one-two-three. But no! I must wait for you to show me how to do it.”

  “This is a special case,” Joanna said placatingly.

  Harry spat something off his tongue. “A corpse is a corpse.”

  “But this one has a skull fracture that I don’t want you to saw through.”

  Joanna moved over to the X-ray view box on the wall and carefully studied the multiple views of the skull. The skull fracture was now clearly evident. It was located high up on the posterior aspect of the parietal bone near the crown of the head. Using a ruler, Joanna measured the distance between the fracture and the edge of the mastoid bone. Twelve centimeters. She went over to the corpse and again measured the distance before marking the area of the fracture with a green dye. Well beneath the green spot, she painted on purple dye.

  She turned to Harry. “You saw through at the level of the purple dye.”

  Harry studied the area he was going to incise. “It’s too low.”

  “Do what I tell you.”

  “Yeah. Right,” Harry sneered at her. “And you can be the one to put his face back together afterward.”

  “Do exactly as I’ve instructed you,” Joanna said slowly and deliberately, trying to control her temper.

  Harry Crowe cursed under his breath and reached for the electric saw. Once again he studied the area he’d have to saw through. Too low, he thought, too low. The man’s face would end up even more disfigured when the top of his skull was replaced and the scalp pulled back over it. But who the hell cared? The guy already looked like a blowfish from spending a week at the bottom of the sea.

  Harry tested the edge of the power saw with his thumb, making Joanna wait longer, knowing it would irritate her even more. Finally he switched on the saw. It made a loud, high-pitched noise. He smiled to himself, pleased with her irritation.

  “This guy’s skull is tough,” Harry said, and feigned pushing down harder on the saw. “It’s like steel.”

  No, it’s not, Joanna wanted to say. If anything, the bone would be softer because salt water leeched out calcium. Harry was just prolonging the process to make her wait longer.

  Joanna leaned against the wall and briefly studied Harry’s features. He was a short, stocky man, totally bald, with thin lips and very dark eyes that looked like BBs. In his case, Joanna thought, appearances weren’t deceiving. He looked every bit as mean as he really was.

  The screeching noise of the saw abruptly stopped. Harry worked his fingers between the cut edges of the skull and pulled. The top of the skull came off with a loud pop.

  “There,” he announced. “You can put his head back together when you’re done. I’m out of here.”

  Lori watched Harry go through the swinging doors, and then she gave him the finger. “What an asshole! I don’t understand how you can put up with him.”

  “He’s an asshole, all right,” Joanna agreed. “But he’s a very competent asshole.”

  Joanna reached down for the detached upper portion of the skull. “Now let’s see if we can piece together the death of Mr. Edmond Rabb.”

  Lori snapped on a pair of gloves and focused her mind away from Harry Crowe and onto Edmond Rabb. She glanced down at the corpse, thinking that ten days ago Rabb was living the life everybody dreamed of. He had been a venture capitalist worth untold millions who enjoyed the best of everything. Now he was a lump of putrid flesh. She saw Joanna examining the detached piece of skull with a magnifying glass and asked, “Do you see anything?”

  Joanna slowly nodded. “A through-and-through fracture of the parietal bone. And there’s blood around the site, which means the fracture occurred while he was still alive.”

  Lori moved in for a closer look. “But that fracture didn’t cause his death. Drowning did. Remember, his lungs were filled with froth and mucus, which is characteristic of saltwater submersion.”

  “I know,” Joanna said. “What I’m trying to decipher now is how he got into the salt water to begin with.”

  Lori shrugged. “He accidentally fell off his yacht.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  Lori stared at the skull, wondering if Joanna had uncovered some subtle clue that everybody else had missed. But what? Everything pointed to an accidental death. She decided to summarize aloud what she knew about the case. Maybe the clue would pop out. “According to eyewitnesses, he was last seen standing at the rear of his yacht. He was leaning against the railing with a drink in his hand. The sea was calm that night. Approximately ten minutes later he couldn’t be found. The assumption was he accidentally fell overboard.

  “Why no screams or yells for help?” Joanna asked.

  “Maybe he hit his head on the railing as he fell overboard. That would explain the fracture and the absence of any yells for help.” Lori nodded to herself. “That would fit.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Joanna said at once.

  “Why not?”

  “The position of the skull fracture.”

  Lori wrinkled her brow, concentrating on the clue. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “When he struck his head, do you think he was falling forward or backward?”

  “I’d guess backward, because that’s more likely to cause a head injury.”

  “If that were the case, he would have hit the back of his head and the fracture would have involved the occipital bone—which it didn’t,” Joanna explained. “And had he fallen forward and struck his head, the fracture would have been in the frontal or temporal area—which it wasn’t.” Joanna held up the detached piece of skull and pointed to the green dye. “The fracture site was very near the crown.”

  “How do you think it got there?”

  “I think somebody whacked him,” Joanna said matter-of-factly. “As a rule of thumb, homicidal skull fractures are almost always located at or near the crown. Victims are usually hit on top of the head, you see. Accidental fractures are located elsewhere.”

  “That may all be true,” Lori agreed reluctantly. “But I think it’s going to be impossible to prove that this guy didn’t die accidentally.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Joanna said, and placed the segment of skull down. “I want you to make sections of the fracture site and the tissue around it. Then have them examined under routine and electron microscopy.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Anything that shouldn’t be there.”

  Joanna lifted Edmond Rabb’s brain and pul
led back the dura mater, exposing a pool of blood in the parietal area. “Jesus! He really got whacked good.”

  Lori stood on tiptoes and looked over Joanna’s shoulder. “A big-ass subdural hematoma.”

  “Right beneath the fracture site.”

  “So our man gets conked on the head, which fractures his skull and causes the subdural vessels to rupture,” Lori summarized. “Then he’s pushed over the side and drowns—and we can’t prove a damn thing. In a court of law, his death would still be considered an accidental drowning. Right?”

  “I guess,” Joanna said wearily, and handed Lori the corpse’s brain. “Would you mind weighing the brain and sectioning it for me?”

  “Not at all.”

  Lori expertly sliced the cerebral hemispheres apart and examined their glistening convoluted folds. “A multimillionaire’s brain looks the same as everybody else’s, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Joanna said absently, still thinking about the traumatized area on the skull. Rabb was a tall man at six feet two and was struck near the crown of the head. The killer would have to be at least Rabb’s height to land that blow. Unless Rabb was leaning over the railing at the time of the attack. Then anyone five feet or taller could have done it. Joanna wondered what type of weapon was used. She heard Lori asking a question. “What was that?”

  “Why would somebody want to kill this guy?” Lori asked again, rapidly sectioning the brain.

  For money, love, or power, Joanna thought at once. According to Jake Sinclair, those motives accounted for virtually every murder ever committed. And when it came to millionaires, the motive had to be money. “For his millions,” Joanna said aloud.

  “That would be my guess, too.”

  Joanna leaned against the wall, so tired she could barely stand. The wall clock said 9:20. The drowning victim would have to be her last case of the day. Her fatigue was growing by the minute, and soon she wouldn’t be able to think at all. But her workload was still so stacked up she’d have to work through the weekend just to make a dent in it. The fetuses in the bottles hadn’t even been looked at, and pressure for answers was coming from all sides. The police, the news media, church groups. And everybody wanted answers now.

  “Done,” Lori announced.

  Joanna pushed herself away from the wall. “Let’s go take a peek at those fetuses.”

  Lori glanced at the wall clock and gave Joanna an odd look. “You want to start on them now?”

  “I only want to take a quick look,” Joanna said. “I’ve got an important meeting tomorrow morning, and I can’t just tell them that those fetuses are still in their bottles sitting on a shelf.”

  “I’ve never done an autopsy on a tiny fetus,” Lori admitted. “How do you do it?”

  “With a magnifying glass.”

  They hurried out of the autopsy room and down the deserted corridor. Everything was dead quiet. There was no music or laughter coming from behind the closed doors. Joanna decided to examine only one fetus. She’d pick the largest because it would be the easiest to do. But she would perform only a gross, cursory examination and look for obvious abnormalities. A more detailed examination would have to wait until tomorrow.

  They entered the special autopsy room and went directly to the shelf that held the fetuses. Joanna picked the bottle that held the largest one. It measured about three inches. She carefully opened the bottle and waved her free hand, dispersing the pungent odor of formaldehyde. Using forceps, she gently removed the fetus from its surrounding fluid.

  It was well formed with clearly defined hands that had tiny fingers and small feet that had tiny toes. Joanna could easily see its eyes and ears and mouth. There was a deep incision across its chest and abdomen.

  “Jesus,” Lori breathed. “This is like a horror show.”

  “I know,” Joanna said softly.

  “Do you think the cut is the result of an abortion?”

  “Could be,” Joanna replied. “But the incision is so straight. That’s not what we usually see in a D and C. And I see only one cut.”

  “No, no,” Lori said hastily. “There’s another cut here atop the head.” Lori swallowed hard. “Do you think that a fetus this age could feel anything?”

  “I hope not,” Joanna said, and reached for a small pair of tweezers. “Let’s see how deep these incisions go.”

  Lori held the fetal limbs stationary while Joanna gently separated the edges of the incision that ran from the abdomen to the upper chest.

  Joanna’s eyes suddenly widened. “Oh, Lord!”

  “What?”

  Joanna looked up at Lori with a stunned expression. “This fetus has been eviscerated. Somebody has removed all of its organs.”

  11

  Joanna could hear the rain pounding down on the patio outside her bedroom. In the distance there was a low, continuous rumble of thunder.

  She snuggled up to Jake under the blankets. “You know what’s strange?”

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “How one minute you’re so tired you can hardly move,” she told him. “And an instant later you’ve got plenty of energy for sex.”

  “That happens when you shut your brain off.”

  Joanna smiled. “Do you want to explain that to me?”

  “Sure,” Jake said easily. “In people like you, who think for a living, fatigue is mostly mental.”

  Joanna looked at him strangely. “So, if I shut my brain off, the fatigue should magically disappear?”

  “Naw,” Jake said. “That just pushes the fatigue aside so you can get on with more important things.”

  Joanna chuckled and moved even closer to Jake. She wished that time would come to a sudden stop and stay frozen in place. If only for a little while.

  Outside, lightning cracked and the rain was coming down so hard it caused the sliding-glass door to rattle. Good, Joanna thought, hoping all the streets and roads would flood so badly that everybody would have to stay where they were over the weekend.

  Jake’s stomach suddenly growled and then growled loudly again.

  Joanna looked at him. “I think somebody skipped dinner.”

  “Busy,” Jake said, as if his mind was elsewhere.

  “How does chicken pot pie and cold beer sound to you?”

  “Like manna from heaven.”

  They put on terry-cloth robes and left the bedroom. Joanna skipped into the kitchen, humming happily under her breath. Jake went over to the fireplace, where he stoked the fire back to life and added a fresh log. The fire blazed, lighting up the living room.

  Jake glanced at the clothes strewn about. On the coffee table were his pants and shorts and holstered weapon, and next to them were Joanna’s skirt and blouse. Her bra and panties were on the floor, partially covered by his tie and coat. Jake had been waiting for her at the front door when she arrived home. They barely made it to the bedroom.

  “Here you go,” Joanna said, and handed him a frosty mug of beer. “My microwave is on the fritz, so I had to put the chicken pot pies in the oven. It’s going to take a while.”

  “No rush,” Jake said, and sat down on a bearskin rug in front of the fireplace. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Do you want to talk a little murder?”

  Joanna quickly sat next to him. “You got something?”

  “Bits and pieces,” Jake said tonelessly, “that may or may not add up.”

  Joanna reached for his cigarette and took a puff; then she handed it back. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

  “For starters, we think the Russian guy lived in the neighborhood,” Jake told her. “The doughnut lady said he came into her shop two or three times a week for over a year, and a couple of times he was carrying a big bag of groceries.”

  “He doesn’t live too far away,” Joanna agreed.

  “We also know the bar he was in just before he went to the convenience store,” Jake continued. “It’s a crummy low-class bar with a lot of regulars. They recognized his face, but he always kept to himself, so nobody knew his
name.”

  “Damn,” Joanna groaned. “He sounds like a real loner.”

  “And some,” Jake went on. “But on the night he got iced, he was talking to somebody in that bar. He spent some time with a well-dressed woman who had never been in the place before. They left separately, but the bartender was almost certain they met up outside.”

  “But he doesn’t know that for a fact?”

  “He’s pretty sure,” Jake said. “He could tell from the way they left the bar. Bartenders are really good at that. In addition, he heard her propositioning the Russian.”

  Joanna’s brow went up. “She did the propositioning?”

  “Big time,” Jake assured her. “According to the bartender, she offered him a hundred and twenty-five dollars for a bang.”

  Joanna thought for a moment. “Was this woman a blonde?”

  Jake stared at her wide-eyed. “How did you know that?”

  “Because we found two long strands of blond hair in the Russian’s shoe box.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Jake jumped to his feet and started pacing the floor, moving articles of clothing aside with his foot. “She was inside that guy’s shoe box.”

  Joanna nodded. “That’s for sure.”

  “And I think she looked in it after she killed him.”

  Joanna looked at him strangely. “How do you figure all that?”

  “Follow me,” Jake said, puffing on his cigarette as he thought aloud. “We’ll take it step by step. First, the Russian leaves the bar with the shoe box under his arm. She hadn’t looked inside it yet. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then he walks a half block to the convenience store and buys a candy bar,” Jake continued. “The clerk remembers that the Russian was alone. The blonde was nowhere in sight. So far she still hasn’t looked in the box.”

  “Maybe they did a quickie, like in her car.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jake said promptly. “There wasn’t enough time. The Russian left the bar just before nine. He bought the candy bar at nine-o-five.”

  “She’s following him,” Joanna deduced.

  “Had to be.” Jake nodded and then flicked his cigarette into the fireplace. He started pacing again. “The Russian leaves the convenience store and walks down a dark street. She pops him with two slugs in his head and looks into the shoe box.”