"Walter was found dead in his house this morning, Nick," Stan said.
Nick looked down at the table top and picked up a piece of lint. He examined the piece of lint between his fingertips before dropping it to the tan carpet.
"Heart attack or something?" Nick asked.
"No, Nick," Jerrod said. "Someone killed him."
Nick looked at Jerrod and then at Stan.
"How did he die?" Nick asked.
"We're not releasing that right now," Jerrod said.
"Does Donny know?" Nick asked.
"We talked to him today," Stan said. "He knows."
"When was the last time you talked to Donny, Nick?" Jerrod asked.
Nick looked up at the ceiling. "A couple days ago. Monday. Lunch time. At the hospital."
Stan glanced at Jerrod. Donny had told Nate he hadn't seen Nick for a few weeks and that had been at a bar.
"How was Donny when you saw him?" Stan asked.
"He said he fell off a bike and broke his hip or something. He was in bed with a metal contraption holding him together."
"Monday at lunch?" Jerrod asked. "You're sure?"
"Yeah. I ate his Jello. Lemon. He doesn't like Jello. I love it."
"What did you two talk about?" Stan asked.
"About the bike crash. And about how he was going to pay his hospital bill -- because he doesn't have any health insurance."
"Did he talk about Walter?" Stan asked.
"Yeah. He said Walter had been there after the ambulance brought him in -- that was Thursday or Friday -- and every afternoon since then."
"How did they get along?" Jerrod asked.
"Donny and Walter?" Nick asked.
"Yes," Jerrod said.
"Okay, I guess. Donny was his only child and the mom died a long time ago. They both like their beer and they argued sometimes. But they seemed fine to me."
"We know you visited Walter, at his house, on Monday afternoon," Stan said.
Nick looked around the room and at the closed door behind Stan.
"A neighbor saw you there. Monday afternoon, Nick," Jerrod said.
The folds of skin in the space between Nick's eyebrows formed a deep "11." "I... uh... I went by to check... Donny asked me to go check on his dad... when I was at the hospital."
"What time was that on Monday, Nick?" Stan asked.
"In the afternoon. Two... three... ish." The "11" disappeared from his forehead.
"How was Walter when you talked to him?" Jerrod asked.
Nick found another piece of lint and pulled it off the table with a finger. "He was fine. It looked like he was watching TV and having a beer when I stopped by."
"Was the door standing open when you got there?" Jerrod asked.
Nick thought as he searched for another piece of lint on the table. "No, his truck was there, so I knew he was home. The front door was closed and I knocked. He... Walter... asked who I was and he unlocked the door... I heard the deadbolt for sure... to let me in."
"What did you talk about?" Stan asked.
"Donny... mostly. His broken hip. I... uh... asked him about the toilet I fixed a month or so ago and... uh... if he needed any other work done."
"Where did you guys talk?" Jerrod asked.
"At the dining room table. He has his spot... where he sits ... so I pulled out a chair next to him."
"Do you remember a shirt or jacket hanging on one of the chairs?" Stan asked.
Nick studied the piece of lint in detail for nearly ten seconds.
"No. I don't remember anything being on the chair."
"Did you take anything from Walter's house when you left on Monday?" Jerrod asked.
"Like what?" Nick asked.
"Like anything that didn't belong to you," Stan said.
"No."
"Nick. Did you go into Walter's bedroom -- for any reason?" Jerrod asked.
The "11" appeared between Nick's eyebrows. "That time... or ever?"
"That time... or ever," Stan asked.
"Not that time, for sure," Nick said as the "11" vanished. "I've never been in his room... that I can remember."
"Is there any reason your fingerprints would be found in the room, Nick?" Jerrod asked. "We're looking for absolute honesty here."
Nick looked up from the piece of lint and straight into Jerrod's eyes.
"You're not going to find any of my fingerprints in there."
The ride back to Roanoke Court was quiet. The sun had gone down and it had cooled another ten degrees.
At six-thirty-five, Jerrod pulled to the curb and Nick opened the back door himself. Jerrod reached over the seat back with his right hand and Nick shook it.
"Nothing personal," Jerrod said.
"Just doing your job," Nick said as he reached his hand toward Stan. "I hope you find whoever killed Walter. Am I free to go?"
"You're free to go," Stan said as he held onto Nick's right hand. "We may have to talk to you again. Follow-up questions. Okay?"
"Yeah. Sure," Nick said as he subtly, but unsuccessfully tried to pull his hand away.
"We'll keep in touch," Jerrod said.
Stan said just before releasing Nick's hand, "And we will find Walter's killer."
"What do you think?" Jerrod asked after Stan moved to the front passenger seat and they left the cul de sac to head back to Sunland Avenue.
"Do you play poker?" Stan asked.
"Yes. Poorly," he said -- as he flashed back to the previous night's game and the huge pot he had lost to Ted's bold bluff.
"I've been playing poker since I was a little kid back in West."
"'West' what?"
"West, Texas. The city is named 'West.' It's between Austin and Fort Worth."
'That's funny."
Stan ignored the comment. "I've found everyone has a subconscious 'tell' when they get uncomfortable at the poker table. We all do something without thinking about it... a facial expression, a shift in the way they sit, a fidget with their hands, or the direction their eyes look."
Jerrod nodded.
"People do the same thing when they're being interviewed. I always look for their 'tells.'"
"Bullshit," Jerrod challenged.
"I brought up your shooting earlier today, right?" Stan asked.
"Yes. And thanks for bringing it up again... dick."
"You just did it again."
"Did what?"
"You looked down at your right hand... at the scar on the back of your hand from that night. You probably didn't realize you did it -- but you did it all the same. That's your 'tell.' You got uncomfortable and looked down at your hand.”
Jerrod remained quiet as he recalled the thousands of times over the last five years he had looked at or touched his hand when the shooting came up in a conversation... or just when he thought about it.
"I've interviewed a lot of people in a lot of situations over the years," Stan said as he stared out the passenger window. "Donny lied to Nate about seeing Nick at the hospital. We'll double-check with Nate to make sure, but Donny didn't just forget Nick had been to his hospital room. He said he last saw him weeks ago... and at a bar. That's total bullshit. Donny's hiding something."
"Nick was pretty calm with us," Jerrod said, "but his assault conviction tells us he has a bad temper if he gets pushed. So maybe old Walter pissed him off at the house."
"Maybe," Stan said. "It's all too convenient: Donny's in the hospital and can't leave his bed. Damn good alibi. Donny then lies about his friend coming to see him. Nick shows up at Walter's house and Walter gets dead the same afternoon."
"So, what do you think? What was Nick's 'tell?'"
"Did you notice his eyebrows? Stan asked.
Jerrod played the interview back in his head, but didn't speak.
"When we pressed him and he got uncomfortable, the space between his eyebrows narrowed and made two little furrows."
"I noticed that," Jerrod said, "but I thought he was just... thinking."
That was his 'tell.' And he wa
s thinking alright... he was thinking, "Holy shit. They sure found me fast. How am I going to lie my way out of this mess?"
Jerrod looked over as Stan added, "Nicholas Joseph Usher is our fucking killer... but there's going to be way more to the story."
CHAPTER 41
Jerrod stopped in the street on Sunland Avenue next to Stan's unmarked car.
"Sure you don't want to check out the autopsy?" Jerrod asked as Stan opened the door to step out.
"I'm real sure. I can't stand the smell at the morgue. And there's nothing I can add to whatever Doc comes up with."
"Okay."
Stan suggested, "Let's regroup tomorrow morning and get a game-plan going."
"Sounds good," Jerrod said. "I have the Thursday morning meeting at eight-thirty. We can get everyone caught up and go from there."
"Deal," Stan said as he shut the door and walked to his car.
* * *
At a little after seven o'clock, Jerrod parked his car in the nearly empty and minimally lighted lot at the Mesa County Health Department complex.
He pounded on the unmarked extra-wide door of the morgue and waited thirty seconds until it was swung open by Sergeant Ted Lindsey.
"Doc already started... but you didn't miss anything."
Jerrod stepped into the hallway and was immediately overwhelmed by the stench of death and formaldehyde Stan Walsh so detested.
"Gotta love that aroma," Jerrod said.
"What aroma?" the veteran coroner's investigator said.
"What's happening, Shroom?" Jerrod said to CSU Detective Ray Mingus as he walked into the autopsy room. Shroom sat, bored, on a tall stool in a corner of the room with his 35mm Nikon hung around his neck.
"Nada. Long fucking day."
The morgue hadn't changed since Jerrod had last been there nearly five years earlier. A time capsule existed in the same square room, with the same tile floor, with the same garbage can with the red bio-hazard liner, with the same clothes line, and with the same stainless steel sink with its continuous flow of water running from the rubber tube.
"Good evening, Doc," Jerrod said to Doctor Robert Torosian. Now nearly fifty, the doctor's hair was a little thinner than he remembered and he had a little more gray in his neatly trimmed goatee. He was dressed in his customary set of green hospital scrubs.
"Hello Jerrod," the doctor said. "Haven't talked to you in few years.
"Almost five."
"Welcome back. I'll catch you up on what we've already done."
Walter Jelinski lay naked on his back on a stainless steel coroner's gurney, his head resting on a bright red rubber block. The blue bathrobe sash had been removed and a one-inch brownish indented ligature mark remained around his neck halfway between the head and shoulders. His head, face and neck retained a reddish-purple color... but only above the ligature mark.
The standard "Y" incision had been made from his shoulders to the midline of his torso and down to his pubis. The sternum and portions of the front ribs had been cut away and his internal organs had already been removed.
"Mr. Jelinski has some minor abrasions on both hands and a few on the back and sides of his head. These all appear to have been caused perimortum, or at the time of death."
"He was in a fight or struggle?" Jerrod asked.
"The hand wounds would indicate that. The head wounds were pretty superficial and were consistent with Mr. Jelinski hitting his head on the bed frame and night stand I saw in the crime scene Polaroids."
"Did he have any health issues that contributed to his death?" Jerrod asked.
"He was in pretty good shape for his age," the doctor said. "He was obviously a heavy smoker and it showed in his lungs."
The doctor stepped to the foot of the gurney to a two-gallon stainless steel bucket with a clear plastic liner on the sideboard of the large sink. He placed his gloved hand in the bucket and the contents made a subtle slopping sound as he moved them. His hand emerged from the bucket with a single human lung -- pink, but laced with trails of dark specks.
"He had some early signs of emphysema," he said as he traced some of the trails with his fingertip, "but no cancer."
The doctor slid the lung into the bucket and pulled out the heart.
"There was some congestion in the major blood vessels of the heart. Forty to fifty percent blockage in most. But there's no evidence he suffered a heart attack during the struggle or that his heart condition contributed directly to his death. And all of his other organs were in pretty good shape and showed no other contributing cause of death."
"Thanks, Doc."
The doctor plopped the heart back into the bucket and rinsed his gloves with the water from the rubber hose.
"Check this out," the doctor said as he dried his hands with a brown paper towel and moved to the right side of Walter's head. Jerrod moved to the left side of the gurney as the doctor used his forefinger and middle finger to gently and simultaneously pull back Walter's eye lids. Walter's pale gray pupils were dull and cloudy. "See those little red spots in the clear lining over the sclera," the doctor said. "You'll have to look close."
Jerrod bent at the waist and moved his face over Walter's as the doctor pulled the eyelids back to expose more of the eye. In both of Walter's eyes, Jerrod could see subtle clusters of dull red spots in the white portion -- the sclera.
"What are those spots, Doc?" Jerrod asked.
"Those are ruptures of tiny blood vessels in the eyes and are known as 'petechial hemorrhages.' Some natural disease processes can cause those spots, but, several studies have found, in eighty to ninety percent of the time, they are caused by some form of asphyxiation by strangling. We see it all the time in suicides by hanging. During the strangulation, blood pressure builds in the head, those delicate blood vessels fail, and blood escapes. I'm certain that's the case here."
"Okay," Jerrod said. "Can we safely assume the robe sash was the item used to cause the strangulation?"
"It did," the doctor said. "But I'm curious how much total damage was done to Mr. Jelinski's neck in the process. I need to look at the underlying tissues to determine that."
Doctor Torosian walked along the side of the gurney and picked up a scalpel with a curved "ten-blade" from the plywood cutting board on Walter's shins. He shifted his attention inside Walter's chest cavity and the mass of muscle, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, the trachea, and the esophagus he had previously severed when the lungs and heart were removed.
The doctor carefully cut with the scalpel and a pair of surgical scissors for nearly ten minutes as he removed, intact, the internal tissues which lay under Walter's neck from the severed ends to the tongue. He placed the tissue on the cutting board.
"This is very interesting," the doctor said.
Jerrod and Ted walked to the left side of the gurney. Shroom had nearly fallen asleep on the stool, but got up to see what the doctor had found.
"You see here where the ligature, the sash, was wrapped around the neck?" as he pointed to an area midway in the mass of tissue.
"Yes," Jerrod said.
"See that gland there, the butterfly or bow-tie looking gland, that's the thyroid. The area around the thyroid is all bruised. That means the ligature was tightened around the neck as it compressed the trachea to stop air from exchanging and it also compressed the major blood vessels of the neck -- the carotid arteries and the jugular veins -- to prevent blood flow to and from the brain.
"We've seen that lots of times, Doc," Ted said.
"Sure," the doctor said. "But there's more bruising to the tissue higher in neck. See that... the bruising to the strap muscles of the neck." He pointed to the long thin muscles to the front and sides of the trachea. "The bruising appears to also be perimortum."
Doctor Torosian picked up the scalpel and cut away tendon and ligament and muscle under the tongue. He removed a small U-shaped bone and rinsed it off in the sink.
"What's that, Doc?" Jerrod asked.
"This is the hyoid bone," he said as he pi
cked small shreds of tissue from it. "This bone floats in the neck and is an attachment point for the small musculature. It lays flat and the base of the bone's "U" faces forward. The bone has four comus, or horns." He held up the bone and looked through the "U" at Jerrod. "These two little horns near the base are called the lesser comus. The bigger ones, the tips of the bone, are called the greater comus. He held the base with one hand and grasped the tip of a bigger horn with the fingertips of his other hand. "This side, the left side on Mr. Jelinski, is fractured." He moved his fingertips and the end of the bone silently folded over.
"What does that mean?" Jerrod asked.
"The hyoid bone can get fractured from a blow to the neck, like, say, a martial artist during a sparing match who loses control of a strike. The fracture would be extremely painful and medical attention would be needed."
"So he got hit in the throat?" Shroom asked.
"Not necessarily," the doctor said. "The most common way for that bone to be fractured is by violent manual strangulation -- someone using their hands and strength and weight to push against the neck." He placed the bone on the board and held his hands up with his palms exposed and his thumbs crossed. He bent over the gurney and placed his hands a few inches away from Walter's neck. "Like this. Fingers on both sides of the neck and the thumbs pushing against the trachea. If he was just compressing the trachea, it could take at least a few minutes for the victim to lose consciousness."
"Manually strangled and strangled with the ligature? Both?" Jerrod asked.
"Yes. Both. And your killer had to be fairly strong to do that much damage."
The morgue got quiet for a full minute. Shroom broke the silence.
"Let's say our killer comes to the house, there is a struggle that ended somehow in the bedroom, the killer strangles Walter with his hands, and then makes it look like he was strangled with the robe sash thing." He looked around and shrugged.
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