by Blair Howard
Quinn parked the car in front of the house, the Range Rover carrying Leo Martan and my father pulling up behind. Together, the five of us walked the short distance to where the techs were working. There was tape up, of course, but no officers standing guard; the property was so isolated that they weren’t needed.
“This way,” Quinn said as he ducked under the tape.
I followed; Leo Martan and my father stayed outside the perimeter.
“Mind if we suit up?” I asked one of the techs. She shrugged, more or less ignoring me in favor of whatever she was concentrating on. There was a large cardboard box full of one-size-fits-all Tyvek coveralls, and a smaller box full of booties, facemasks, and latex gloves. We donned suits, booties, and gloves.
Inside the tent, a woman of indeterminate age—those coveralls—was on her knees, bent over the body.
“Dr. Jane Matheson?” Quinn said. “This is Mr. Harry Starke.”
The woman turned and looked at me, and I could see, even with the mask on, that she was probably in her mid-thirties. She rose, turned, and offered me a latex-covered hand; her grip was strong and sure.
“Mr. Starke,” she said. The voice was low, not quite husky. “I know your face already. You’ve been in the news more than once over the past few years.”
I smiled. “Dr. Matheson. Nice to meet you, ma’am. Medical Examiner?”
“Oh no. There’s no such thing here on the island. The nearest ME is in St. Thomas. The duties are carried out on a voluntary basis by whoever’s available. And right now, that happens to be me.”
I frowned inwardly. Oh boy. A family practitioner…. Not good at all.
“You don’t seem too happy about that,” she said dryly.
“Er, no…. That is, no, I’m not unhappy about it. It’s just not something I’m used to. Our ME back home is a highly experienced pathologist, a forensic scientist. He does all the work; I listen and take notes. With respect, Doctor, this really isn’t your field of expertise, is it?”
I could see she was smiling under the mask, obviously not in the least put out by my observation.
“You’re absolutely right,” she said. “It’s not. I’m a gynecologist.”
Oh hell. That’s even worse.
“But I’ll do my best for you.”
“Oh, it’s not for me. I’m just here as an observer. To give an opinion, if I have one. So, Doctor, how did she die?”
She gave me a slightly incredulous look. “From the fall, of course.”
“Do you mind if I take a look?”
“Be my guest.”
Gabrielle Martan was lying on her back, legs crossed above the knee, her right cheek lying on her right shoulder. The back of her skull was split wide open and there was a deep cut on her left temple. She was wearing a white bra, panties, and a short, white satin wrap jacket. The outfit wasn’t quite transparent, but it left little to the imagination.
I went down on one knee beside her and scanned her quickly from top to bottom to see if anything stuck out, and my heart sank. Oh shit. Here we go.
Without getting up, I turned and wiggled my fingers at Matheson. “I need a glass, please.”
“Glass? What sort of glass?”
I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes. “A magnifying glass. You do have one, don’t you?”
She didn’t.
“It’s okay. I’ll manage.”
I turned back to the body and picked up the girl’s left hand. It wasn’t stiff, as I’d thought it might be. Must be due to the warm weather, I suppose.
I turned her hand palm up. It was clean. Nothing under the nails that I could see. I laid it back on the ground next to her. Her right arm was flung across her chest, and it too was touching the ground. I picked it up: nothing under the nails. I turned it palm down, squinting in the low light. Oh boy.
“Tommy. Lift the flap for me please?” He did, and sunlight flooded over the body. I was right. I shook my head and laid her hand back down again.
Next, I leaned in close to examine the wound on her forehead. I sighed, dropped my chin onto my chest, and took a deep breath.
“Okay,” I said, rising to my feet. “I have what I need. Let’s go see her dad.”
He was standing with my father just beyond the tape, and he knew what I was going to say even before I opened my mouth.
“She was murdered, wasn’t she?”
I nodded as I stripped off the latex gloves.
“No doubt about it.”
Quinn sucked in air, but before he could speak, Jane Matheson said, “You can tell from thirty seconds with the body?” The look she gave me was incredulous.
“The evidence, and the body, speak for themselves. Tommy, you need to get her to a medical center where she can be properly posted by a qualified pathologist, and quickly, before the onset of serious putrefaction. You’re also going to need a full tox screen done. What facilities do you have?”
“Not many. The nearest forensic center with a resident pathologist is in Charlotte Amalie, on St. Thomas.”
“Then that’s where she needs to go. Can you organize a helicopter?”
“Hmmm. There’s a Lifeforce unit at the medical center that can carry bodies—our police units aren’t fitted out to do it—but….”
“No buts, Tommy. Get on the phone and get them moving, and quickly, before we—before you, I mean—lose what little evidence there is.”
“Hang on, Harry, jeez. I gotta call the chief before anything else can happen.” He turned away, pulling his phone from his pocket. He talked, and nodded, talked some more, nodded some more, and then hung up.
“It’ll be on its way soon. Now, Harry. You wanna tell me and Mr. Martan what’s up, or what?”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Mr. Martan, to have made you wait, but it was important that we—you—no, they—” I nodded at Quinn and the doctor “—move on this as quickly as possible.” I paused for a moment to think about how I was going to handle this.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that she was murdered. It was, I think, the fall that killed her. Her skull has suffered a major fracture….” I shook my head. “And she was alive when she hit the rocks. The back of her head is completely crushed. That was caused by the fall….” Again I had to stop to think.
“But the gash on the left side her forehead was not caused by the fall. It’s not deep enough, and… well, Doctor, did you notice how the blood from it had run not only down the front of her cheek, but also down the left side of her head and around the top of her ear? This indicates to me that she was either standing or sitting upright when she received the blow to her head. The fact that the blood continued to flow means she was still alive after she received the blow. The blood from the cut ran down past the corner of her left eye. She fell to the floor, unconscious, and for several minutes she must have been on her back, which is when the direction of the blood flow changed and it ran down the side of her head. There’ll probably be some of it on the floor, or her bed: somewhere. Someone gave her a hefty bang on the head with a blunt instrument.”
Silence. Not a word from any of them, including the doctor, and then Martan asked, “How do you know that?”
I was about to make a joke and say that I watched a lot of television, but that would have been inappropriate, and it wouldn’t have been true, either.
“I had a good teacher. Doc Sheddon, the Hamilton County Medical Examiner. Pity he isn’t here. I did invite him, but he was too busy to come.”
“So that’s it?” Matheson said. “Well, personally, I think that cut could well have been caused by the fall—”
“No, it couldn’t,” I interrupted. “Not unless the poor girl bounced. The contusion was caused by a blow with a blunt instrument. It’s V-shaped, maybe the edge of a two by four. There’s nothing on the rocks that could have caused such a wound; I looked and, like I told you, it’s not deep enough to have been caused by the impact of such a long fall. And there’s more. There are bruises on her right wrist—”
“What?” Now she interrupted me. “I saw no bruises.”
“I know you didn’t, which is why I asked you for a glass. But they are there, believe me; very light, barely formed; they were inflicted maybe seconds before her death, but they are very much in evidence. Someone grabbed her by her right wrist and pulled her, probably to either carry or drag her to the window. That too indicates that she was murdered. Doc, I’ve been around dead people all my adult life. I know what to look for and what it means when I find it. Take my word for it. She was murdered.” I turned from her to Quinn.
“Have your techs been through that room yet?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“What did they find?”
He was already shaking his head. “Nothing, I think.”
“Tell them to go over it again. Don’t tell them what they should be looking for. They should know that already. It’s there. Believe me; they just have to find it.”
“What are they looking for?”
“Blood, medium-impact blood spatter, and the weapon. Come on, Tommy. I know it’s remote out here, but hell, you can’t have forgotten everything. There won’t be much. The spatter, the droplets, will be tiny, but they will be there. There may also be some on the floor, or the bed, wherever she lay after being knocked unconscious, but I would expect the killer to have cleaned that up. If so, there may be a wet patch on the carpet, floor, whatever, but Luminol should bring it up. If solvents were used to clean up, you’ll need to go over it with phenolphthalein. There will also be some blood spatter on the assailant’s clothing, but good luck with that one. You also need to get a real crime scene unit on site.”
“It’s already here, what we have. Harry, these are the Islands. We’re not a big department. We have a small forensics unit that can handle the sort of crime we usually have, and they’re here, but, well, you get the idea, right?”
I nodded. St. Thomas was a typical small-community PD. They did a great job of policing the area, but when it came to a major murder investigation…. Well, they just weren’t quite as well equipped as most major US cities.
“Okay.” I looked at Martan, and my father, and at Quinn. “I took a look. I told you what you needed to know. Now I need to go back to my wife, family, and friends. Tommy. You driving?”
“There’s no need for that,” Martan said. “I’ll take you.”
I said goodbye to Matheson and offered her my hand. She took it, reluctantly, gave it a gentle squeeze, and then dropped it.
Okay, so I stepped on your toes. Too bad.
I said goodbye to Quinn and Rawlson and waited while my father climbed into the Range Rover, and then I climbed in after him.
During the short drive back to the resort Martan said not a word, not even thank you or goodbye, and I didn’t blame him one bit. What I’d just laid on him had probably devastated him.
He didn’t even get out of the car once we arrived. He waited just long enough for me and my father to exit, and then he drove slowly away, staring, unblinking, out through the windshield, his mind obviously elsewhere.
-----
Amanda was poolside, in an open cabana with Kate, Jacque, Rose—and Wendy, Jacque’s partner. Bob was nowhere to be seen, and the other members of our party were sitting under umbrellas sipping on a variety of exotic drinks, said drinks being refreshed as needed, or not, by an over-zealous waiter.
Amanda rose to her feet when she spotted me. “Was it….”
“Bad?” I asked, somewhat impatiently. “Yes. It was bad. Was it murder? Yes. It was murder. Now. That’s it. Okay? I don’t want to talk about it; I just want to forget it, relax, and enjoy the rest of the evening with you.”
I said nothing to the rest of the party. Why would I? We’d left the job far behind, back in Chattanooga. This was downtime, and that was exactly how I wanted it.
To tell the truth, though, I didn’t really know how I felt. My emotions were churning. I was angry at being disturbed on my wedding day, sad about what had happened to the girl, and… hell, I was curious, too. What had happened up there on the Mount had all the markings of a case that could have been tailor-made just for me, and I had to admit… I had the itch, and that bothered me even more.
Chapter 3
Saturday, November 12, 8pm
My bad mood didn’t linger long. How could it? I’d just married the girl of my dreams. I was surrounded by all of the people in the world I held dear, and I was on a Caribbean island with a large measure of Laphroaig in my hand, listening to a live steel band playing soft calypso music. Hell, there was even a full moon. How lucky can one man get?
We were outside on the private patio of our resort within a resort, seated for dinner. It was as formal a dinner as it could possibly be considering the situation and location, which meant it wasn’t formal at all. We were all dressed for the occasion—shorts, flowered Hawaiian shirts, flip-flops, whatever. I was seated with Amanda at the head of the table. My father and Rose were on my left; Bob, my best man, and Kate Gazzara were on my right.
That little romance was progressing nicely, by the way, but there couldn’t have been two more unlikely folks in the world than those two.
We dined on fresh conch salad, peas and rice, salt fish fritters, battered and fried Caribbean lobster, and spiced bread pudding, or “pudín de pan.” There was even a small, traditional wedding cake. All of it prepared by our personal chef. Wine, beer, brandy? Oh yes. Plenty of that. And by nine o’clock that evening we were all a little the worse for wear from overeating and over imbibing. And the party got a little noisy, but never rowdy.
After dinner, the pool became the focus of the celebration; everyone but Tim ended up in the water.
I know what you’re thinking: skinny dipping, right? Wrong. There was not a bare ass or breast to be seen anywhere. Poor Tim, not usually one to drink, bless him, was asleep on a lounger, his iPad cuddled against his chest, his glasses safe in Sammie’s bag, but Sammie, Tim’s girlfriend, was hardly in better shape than he was.
Jacque? It was as if she’d come home. Dressed only in a brightly colored halter top and a very short wraparound skirt, she was on the tiny stage with the band, dancing to the toxic rhythm of “Island in the Sun,” watched lovingly by her partner, Wendy. Why am I telling you all this? To set the mood, of course. Good times were a happenin’. I was inordinately happy and at peace with the world; Gabrielle Martan was gone from my mind… but not for long.
“Excuse me sir.”
I was sitting at a table, poolside, wet and sipping on something red and fruity with rum in it, that tasted like… hell, I have no idea what it tasted like. I know it was good. I looked up to find one of the resort concierges standing behind me.
“Hey. What can I do for you?” I smiled up at him, and then I saw who was with him, and the smile turned into a scowl.
I stood, kicked the chair out of the way, and turned to face Tommy Quinn, Leo Martan, and two men I didn’t recognize, both in suits.
The concierge backed away, turned, and walked very quickly from the property. The four men stood their ground. I looked at Quinn. He stared, straight-faced, back at me. He didn’t look happy.
I looked at Martan and, as I did so, I was joined by Amanda, my father, and Rose. The band stopped playing, and the entire company froze as if Medusa had suddenly appeared and turned them all to stone.
For a moment, nobody spoke, and then Martan said, his voice so low I could barely hear it, “Mr. Starke….”
“No,” I interrupted. “You’re disturbing my very special evening. Please leave.”
The man looked haggard; his face was drawn, his eyes were watering, and he was twisting his hands together.
“What is it, Leo?” my father asked quietly.
“Dad?”
“Shut the hell up, son. The man’s in pain. Can’t you see that? The least we can do is listen to him for Christ’s sake.” He grabbed my upper arm. “Give us a couple of minutes,” he told them, then pulled me away out of earshot; Amanda f
ollowed.
“What the hell?” I jerked my arm away from him and almost passed out from the pain that speared upward from my still-healing wound.
“Jesus!” I gasped, then took a deep breath. “What the hell, Dad?”
“I’m sorry, but you need to listen to him. We owe him big.”
“Okay, so explain. You said he was responsible for Mom living as long as she did, how….?”
“When they diagnosed your mother with cancer, they gave her less than a year to live. It was hopeless. I didn’t know what to do. This was back in the early eighties, so there was nothing available, not like there is now. I wasn’t the lawyer then that I am today. I’d just defended Leo in a workman’s comp case—and won it, but only just. I’d heard there were new drugs coming along, but they were years away from FDA approval. So I turned to Leo. I knew, of course, that he was in pharmaceuticals. He got us the drugs we needed. Thanks to him, your mother lived another three years. You have to listen to him, Harry. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Harry,” Amanda said quietly. “Go back and listen to what they have to say. Please.”
“What? What happened to ‘Never again, Harry’?” I asked her. “After last time—”
“I know,” she said, looking away, then back toward me. Her gaze was steady. “But Harry, you have to.”
She was right, and I did. I returned to where Martan and the others were standing, nodded at Martan, and said, “Let’s go into the cottage. It’s quieter.”
I beckoned for Jacque and asked her to get the party going again, telling her we’d be back soon.
As I’d suspected, the two men in suits were both cops—and not just any cops; one was the police commissioner, the other was the chief. Both had flown in by helicopter from St. Thomas. Quinn, we already knew.
Even before they began, I knew where it was going, and I was boiling. Any other time…. Yeah, but people don’t die to a schedule.
