by S A Falconi
“Isn’t it peculiar that the swine that once praised you are now rebuking you?”
It wasn’t the question alone that fueled the inferno; it was the gleam in Billing’s eye when he uttered it. It was the same look that Judas certainly gave the Christ when he said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him. Unlike the Christ, Donaghue reacted in the only manner fitting a man of his disposition. He liquefied Billing’s nose. The squeal of fear and pain that erupted from the plump journalist’s throat was worth an eternity in hell to Donaghue. That memory alone brought a queer smile to his lips. He replayed the memory once more in his mind and, chuckling softly, strode up the stoop.
An aged officer was lounging behind the front counter when Donaghue entered. Initially, the officer hardly gave him a nod of recognition, but a second glance quickly brought the officer to his feet.
“What are you doing here, Donaghue?” He raced around the counter as fast as his waddled gait would allow. “Get out of here before I notify the chief.”
“Please do,” Donaghue replied. “We’ll skip the nonsense completely.”
“Now, Donaghue!” The officer bellowed, reaching for Donaghue’s arm to drag him out of the precinct.
Donaghue skillfully grabbed the officer’s wrist, spun him around and locked his neck in the vice of his elbow. The officer gagged for breath as he flailed his arms helplessly about.
“I told you to skip the malarky, you fat Polack. Now will you get the chief for me?”
The officer gagged and gurgled for several moments. Donaghue’s patience ran dry and he synched the vice even tighter, choking all sounds from the officer’s mouth entirely. His stout face became bright red and his eyes fluttered as the oxygen-deprived brain slipped into unconsciousness.
“For God’s sake, Pete, you’re killing him!”
The familiar voice forced Donaghue to release his grip on the officer instantly. The officer crumpled to the floor with a thud as he gasped for air.
“You really are something, Pete,” Chief Chapman uttered as he hurried over to the officer and helped him to his feet. “When you gonna learn? What’s wrong with you?”
Donaghue didn’t budge with sympathy or remorse. He merely asked, “What do you want, Harold?”
Chapman ignored the question. “You alright, Archie?” he asked the officer as he helped the officer back to his chair behind the counter.
The officer coughed vigorously several times before mumbling, “I’ll live.”
Chapman turned back to Donaghue and retorted, “Who the hell said I want anything from you?”
“Fine,” Donaghue replied as he turned and proceeded through the entryway.
He was halfway down the steps when he heard Chapman hollering for him.
“Pete, wait!”
Donaghue stopped and turned.
“I need your help with something.”
Donaghue retorted, “I needed your help a few years ago, Harold. On these very steps.”
Chapman held his arms out in passivity. “You dug your own grave, Pete.”
Donaghue shook his head with resentment. “Yeah, and you had no problem burying me.” He turned and continued walking down the steps.
“Pete, stop!”
Donaghue continued walking though. There was nothing Harold could say now to make him stop. Even if he confessed his sins to the Pope, there was nothing that would force Donaghue to listen to him. At least, that’s what he thought.
“It’s about Molly!” Chapman called.
Donaghue’s stride was promptly halted.
“Please,” Chapman added, “just come in my office and I’ll fill you in.”
Donaghue turned and looked at Harold quizzically.
“Pete… please.” There was an urgency in Harold’s tone that sickened Donaghue. Harold Chapman was not the breed of beast that allowed his emotion to ever surface. He was the toughest stud player Donaghue had ever known, and one of the greatest enforcers of the law before Progressivism disfigured Denver’s political atmosphere.
“You found her?” Donaghue asked. Found had multiple definitions, but to Donaghue, found meant her corpse was discovered.
“I told you,” Harold uttered, “I need your help.”
Donaghue returned to the precinct with Chapman and was quickly guided into his office. The room was as Donaghue remembered it – cramped, dark, and reeking of cheap tobacco. Chapman offered an awkward stool for Donaghue to sit on before taking a seat behind his desk. Chapman stared anxiously at Donaghue, seemingly waiting for something out of his control to happen.
After several moments passed, Donaghue finally said, “Don’t play this nonsense with me, Harold. What is it?”
Chapman sighed, asking, “When was the last time you saw or spoke to Molly?”
Donaghue shook his head thoughtfully. “Years… before everything happened.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, Harold.”
“Pete,” Chapman added, “it’s imperative that you be completely honest with me.”
Donaghue responded indignantly, “Why would I need to lie about the last time I saw my wife, Harold?”
Although most wouldn’t have noticed, Donaghue saw the slight drop of Harold’s eyes and the gloom that they betrayed. It all made sense to him now. He knew even before Harold said it.
“We think we found her, Pete.” He paused and sighed solemnly. “We need you to help us identify her.”
Donaghue’s eyes were fixated on Harold’s. No emotion emerged in Donaghue’s face. He was exactly as Harold remembered him – cold, emotionless, soulless. Pete was sober too, a state that seemed to intensify his indifference.
Finally, Donaghue said, “You remember what she looks like, Harold. Why do you need me to identify her?”
“Trust me, Pete. You need to see her.”
~
The day seemed to be full of past recollections. First the steps of the precinct, then Chapman’s office, and finally the coroner’s office. Donaghue waited by the entrance as Chapman retrieved the coroner. Chapman emerged from a back office with a slight, balding man trailing grimly in his wake. Wire spectacles clung to his nose and puny ears. His cheeks and eyes were sunken and his skin reflected the hue of old milk. His occupation as an undertaker fit his physique rather ironically.
“Detective,” the old man mumbled in an awkwardly high-pitched tone as he approached Donaghue. “Follow me.”
No need for introductions, Donaghue thought. Clearly the coroner didn’t recognize Donaghue, nor did he care to make his identity known to Donaghue. It appeared the years as a dissector took their toll on the man’s social skills. The coroner scuttled across the room to a pair of heavy twin doors and thrust them open with surprising ease. Chapman and Donaghue hurried through the opening before the doors slammed shut. The familiar smell of formaldehyde was overwhelmingly potent. The examination room hadn’t changed in the slightest since Donaghue’s last visit for a young miner that had his skull transfigured by a wooden club wielded by one of Ed Maclellan’s men. Apparently the man didn’t realize that the services of the bath girls weren’t free, so when he tried to sneak out the back door of the Hanbury House, one of the bouncers halted him with one shift strike. Donaghue saw the pine examination table with its cream cloth smothering it in the middle of the room. The form beneath the cloth was a fraction of the burly young miner though. Had Donaghue not known any better, he might’ve thought a child’s corpse was rotting beneath it.
The coroner skulked to the head of the table and took the frayed ends of the cloth in his hands. He lifted the cloth ever so slowly as if it covered a sleeping beauty he wished to not rouse. He stopped just under the chin and creased the cloth.
Donaghue proceeded forward cautiously, knowing full-well what he was about to see but not fully prepared to see it. The brown hair was the first feature to come into view, flat, unnatural and shorter than Donaghue could recall. Then the skin revealed itself, a muted tint of slate that was ghoulish on the bloated flesh.
Then the features emerged – the slight nose and brow and the pursed lips. The eyelids were shut – thank God, Donaghue thought. The windows of the soul, now shattered and void. He stopped a foot away from the table and starred at the face blindly. It was Molly alright. Decomposition had already erased her natural beauty, but Donaghue would’ve recognized her face in a starless night. He couldn’t believe he was seeing her, not because she was dead, but because she’d left so suddenly as if she’d vanished into thin air. He never in his wildest dreams thought he’d see her again. And yet, here she was lying before him on a medical examination table.
Donaghue’s hands unwittingly drifted to the crease of the cloth.
“I wouldn’t –” the coroner protested. But no sooner were the words in the air, did Donaghue have the cloth pulled down half the distance of Molly’s abdomen.
The air caught in Donaghue’s throat at the sight.
The coroner added apologetically, “I haven’t sewn the wound yet, Detective…”
Donaghue paid no mind to the meek examiner behind him. All he could do was stare at the necklace of a laceration around her throat. He stared for minutes on end, not from shock nor disgust nor fear nor grief nor pity. From anger. From hate. Each passing moment distilled his fury, that distinguishable Irish fury that was a rock beneath his being. It swelled in him more than any sensation, even his hatred of T.G. Billing, ever had before. As the moments passed and the fury intensified, sublimation began to take its course, lighting the fuel of his fury with the flame of his investigative faculty. Before the coroner or Chapman could object, Donaghue had the cloth balled up on the floor.
“Pete,” Chapman muttered, “I can’t allow you to–”
“What’s this?” Donaghue remarked, his index finger aimed beneath Molly’s navel. “What’s this scar here?”
The coroner didn’t respond initially, merely glancing at Donaghue, then Chapman, then back to Donaghue.
“Pete, please,” Chapman urged. “Just tell me if it’s Molly or not.”
Donaghue didn’t seem to hear the Chief at all though. “What in God’s name is that scar, Doc?”
The coroner inaudibly muttered something before Chapman interrupted him.
“Stop, Pete. Put the cloth back and tell me if that’s Molly.”
Donaghue’s fury began to surface as he replied, “Not until he tells me what this scar is.”
“Hell, Pete,” Chapman remarked as he strode over to the cloth on the ground and picked it up. “We’re leaving. Now.” Just as he had the cloth spread out and poised to cover the naked body once again, he stopped, staring at the six-inch vertical scar at which Donaghue pointed. It was stitched together expertly, the thread taught against the two folds of skin. Chapman’s head snapped up and his eyes locked on the coroner.
The coroner stood weak-kneed in the corner of the room, his eyes as wide as his skull would permit. “I haven’t finished my report yet, Chief,” he managed to squeak.
The room was a graveyard for several moments until Donaghue finally spoke.
“I suggest you give us that report now, Doc.”
The coroner inched himself out of the corner, his knees still trembling for no other reason than the frightening prowess of Chapman and Donaghue. These were lawmen of the Wild West, not the prim enforcers with whom the coroner worked in the civilized cities of New England. There, intellect carried a far greater girth than any pistol or fist. Here, though, the only weight of a man’s being that mattered was the girth of his grit. And that, the medical universities did not teach.
“Doc, we’re not accusing you of murder,” Chapman barked. “Just give us your damn report.”
The coroner’s mincing gait went unchanged though and Chapman and Donaghue waited expectantly for him.
“That scar,” the coroner uttered, “could be a number of things.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, it’s fresh for one thing. I’d say within the last four days or so.”
“Did our killer have anything to do with this?”
The coroner shrugged. “Potentially –”
“For God’s sake, Doc,” Chapman barked, tossing the cloth to the ground. “Give us something definitive. Something we can work with.”
“Well, the incision –”
“Yes –”
“–was –”
“Yes –”
“Her womb was extracted, Chief,” the coroner blurted.
Donaghue’s brow folded several times over. “I beg your pardon?”
“Her womb, Detective. This scar is from when she had it removed.”
Donaghue and Chapman gaped at each other with confusion.
Donaghue shook the bewilderment away and asked, “Why would she do that?”
The coroner bobbed his shoulders childishly. “I can’t even begin to imagine. She might’ve had medical complications or wanted to stop the risk of pregnancy –”
“Or she wanted to terminate a pregnancy,” Chapman interrupted.
The coroner nodded. “That too, although an unorthodox way of doing it if you ask me.”
“Okay,” Donaghue remarked, “but does that have anything to do with who killed her or why?”
“Maybe the procedure went wrong?” Chapman added.
“Possible…” the coroner trailed.
“…but?”
“Highly unlikely.”
“How so?”
The coroner pointed to the scar. “You see here. There’s no inflammation or any sign of infection. In fact, I’d have to say this procedure was a relative success.”
“So the scar has nothing to do with our killer then?”
“I didn’t say that either, Chief.”
Chapman smacked the table with a balled fist. “What are you saying, Doc?”
Donaghue replied before the coroner could though. “He’s saying we need to figure out who the hell did this procedure because whoever did is likely the last one to see Molly alive.”
Chapman nodded affirmatively.
The coroner’s squeak of a voice sounded again. “There’s one more thing though, Chief.”
“What’s that?”
“The pattern of the laceration on the throat.”
Chapman was quizzical again. “What about it?”
“It’s indicative of our murder weapon.”
Chapman’s eyes grew wide. “Hell, Doc, why didn’t you say so earlier?”
The coroner shook his head as he walked over to one of the work benches against the wall. “Because it’s inconsistent with the surgical scar on the pelvis.” He pulled open a bottom drawer and revealed a butcher’s blade that was at least a foot in length with a slight upward swoop on the blade’s tip. “This is your murder weapon, Chief. That I’m sure.”
The story seemed to fall together so logically in Chapman’s mind that he wanted to storm out of the coroner’s office at once. There was a meat-packing factory just across the street from the Hanbury House for God’s sake! For all he knew, their murderer was butchering hogs by day and innocent women by night. Hell, the wretch probably used the same blade he used at work.
“I need to get back to the precinct,” Chapman uttered. “Pete, I need your assurance that you’ll stay as far away from this investigation as much as possible. Don’t tell anyone I brought you here and definitely don’t try investigating this on your own.”
Chapman’s words nearly knocked the air out of Donaghue’s lungs. “Chief,” he snapped, “how the hell do you expect me to stay away from this? This is my wife we’re talking about.”
“Don’t even try, Pete. You know why I can’t have you near this thing.”
“What a load of shit, Harold. You’re covering your own ass again, aren’t you? Molly’s dead and all you can think about is yourself.”
“Don’t give me that,” Chapman barked, his face growing crimson with rage. “It’s for your own good. Think about it, Pete. Your estranged wife ends up butchered in a back alley next to your place of work no less. You wanna win
d up being the top suspect? Is that what you want? You know how pleased the scum of Denver would be to string you up by the balls for slaughtering your wife? They would die for it, Pete. They’d put you in stocks and stone you like a witch. Is that what you want? To be the Denver scapegoat all over again?”
Donaghue erupted. “The hell with you, Harold!” He burst through the double doors, nearly tearing the girth from the hinges. He stormed up to the entryway and nearly thrust the door open to run down to the meat-packing factory to accuse the first son of a bitch he saw wielding a meat cleaver. But he stopped. His hand remained frozen in the air inches away from the door. An invisible force seemed to be blocking his path, preventing him from irrationally condemning himself to life as a tramp if not a convict. And luckily for him, his sober mind could heed the barricade.
Chapman’s voice sounded behind him, calm and guttural once again. “You know just as well as I do that you can’t do this. As much as it kills me to hold you back, I know there’s no other way.”
Donaghue nodded, his eyes still transfixed on his hovering hand.
“For what it’s worth,” Chapman continued, “I’m sorry about Molly.”
“Don’t be, Chief,” Donaghue mumbled, “I was dead to her long before today.”
Chapman’s heavy footsteps closed in on Donaghue. His paw of a hand rested on Donaghue’s shoulder, the only shred of compassion that the chief could muster.
“You had nothing to do with Molly leaving, Pete. You loved her, we all did. But she was a tumble weed. She was as untamed as these mountains, a true woman of the west. You could’ve given her everything in the world and she still would’ve left.” Chapman pulled Donaghue’s shoulder and he turned obediently to look at his former chief. “Let me tell you something though. That doesn’t mean we’re not gonna go full chisel to find the son of a bitch that did this to her. Her killer’s gonna pay, I assure you. He will pay.”
