Wisdom of the Bones

by Paul Christopher

  The first hint had been impossibly small, so small that he overlooked it completely. Standing in the shower one day in May he’d vaguely been aware that the water striking the tops of his feet was slightly painful, as though the skin had been sunburned. That was followed by swollen ankles, which he put down to spending too much time on his feet, a decreasing appetite with a strange inverse increase in his weight, and most of all, an odd lack of energy. Idiotically what tipped the scales and sent him to Dr Ragland at the Medical Arts Building was the fact that the morning erections he’d had since puberty slowly but surely waned as the weeks went by and finally disappeared altogether. By then he’d put on so much weight that the pad of flesh around his groin had almost completely swallowed up his flaccid organ.

  After three minutes in Ragland’s examination room the doctor’s diagnosis was clear as a bell and tolling an almost certain death knell for Ray Duval. He had congestive heart failure and it was killing him.

  ‘You mean I had a heart attack?’ Ray asked.

  ‘A heart attack would have been better. Hearts heal after an attack.’

  ‘So what are you talking about?’

  ‘For some reason your heart’s enlarged. Scarlet fever used to cause it but nobody get’s that now with penicillin around.’

  ‘So, my heart’s enlarged. What exactly does that mean?’

  ‘Your heart gets bigger so it has to work harder pumping blood through your body. Your circulatory system starts to shut down to compensate. That’s why your ankles and legs are swelling up and why you’ve developed that big belly. It’s called edema. You’re retaining water. Lots of it. The more water you retain the weaker your heart gets. Eventually water starts to collect in your lungs. You drown in your own fluids because there’s no way to drain it out of your lungs fast enough.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Ray. ‘What’s the whatchamacallit? The prognosis?’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘How “not good”?’

  ‘They’ve developed some new diuretics – drugs that get water off you – but that might not be enough. The best you can do really is keep off your feet and try not to do too much of anything.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Hard to say. I’ll get you into Parkland and onto the diuretics. We’ll see after that.’

  ‘How long?’ Ray insisted.

  Ragland sighed, stripped off his stethoscope and stuffed it into the pocket of his white coat. ‘Even with the diuretics probably no more than a year or two and that’s if you stop working. Keep going and you’ll be dead in twelve months.’

  Ray looked out through the windshield at the grey, scudding sky. Bad weather coming in off the Gulf. It looked like it was going to rain on President Kennedy’s parade.

  Twelve months, half of them gone. He saw the entrance to the dump up ahead, a county black-and-white Ford Custom parked by the gate, its roof cherry blipping around and a lanky deputy leaning on the front fender smoking a cigarette. Ray switched off the radio. Big boys didn’t cry either.

  The deputy flicked his cigarette away and stepped forward as Ray pulled off onto the gravel shoulder. He walked up to the Bel Air and Ray cranked down the window.

  ‘You Duval?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Follow me?’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  The deputy got back into his cruiser, spitting up a bit of gravel and dinging Ray’s front end as he took off down the shoulder. City cops and county cops, always pecking at each other like chickens in a yard. Ray had never really understood it and now it seemed like the stupid games he and his brother, Audie, used to play, always competing, always at each other’s throats. Nothing but a waste of precious time.

  The Dallas City Dump was a half-mile-square scar on the landscape that was getting bigger with every passing day. Bulldozers rumbled up and around the piles of stinking, smoking garbage like giant rattling insects, pushing the refuse into larger and larger piles. There was every colour of the rainbow to be seen, but the predominant tint was a speckled grey brown. Smoke rose from some parts of the dump, controlled burns meant to lessen the volume of material as well as provide a quick start to the process of decomposition.

  The deputy led Ray along a maze of narrow roadways cut through the piles, finally stopping at a section of the dump that lay along the filth-choked course of Five Mile Creek. This part of the dump had been reserved for salvageable metals – everything from old bedsteads to spools of rusted wire and even the remains of a few old tractors and other agricultural machinery past its day. There were stacks of car batteries, sloped hills of old-fashioned mangle washing machines drifting down into the creek and hundreds of refrigerators, everything from old-fashioned iceboxes to the thirties’ and forties’ models with condensers on the top to aerodynamic-styled fridges from the fifties that bore more than a passing resemblance to his Bel Air.

  It looked like the story of Ray’s life built out of refrigerators. Born with the iceboxes, grew up with the Kelvinator condensers and now he’d die with his last meal coming out of the enamel-and-chrome smooth-walled Westinghouse he’d had since his wife ran off and got herself killed these ten years gone by.

  There was a small shack built beside the creek between a rickrack pile of old car bumpers and a neater arrangement of various lengths of lead pipe. The deputy stopped his car in front of the shack, got out and immediately reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief to cover his nose. Ray climbed slowly out of the Bel Air and followed the deputy into the bedraggled little building.

  There was a card table, a filing cabinet, a half-sized refrigerator, two chairs and a very old calendar for H. J. Justin Boots in Fort Worth. The floors were grease-stained planks. There was a scarred old .22 plinking rifle leaning against the tar paper wall in one corner and the fat man sitting at the card table in his undershirt had a Walther Pistole 38 in a home-made shoulder holster under his left arm. The two windows were so filthy they were almost opaque. The shack smelled of beer and stale farts. The beer probably came from the refrigerator and no doubt the farts came from the fat man with the Walther.

  ‘This is Mr Janowski. He runs this part of the dump,’ said the deputy. ‘He’s the one found the body.’

  ‘Nice pistol,’ said Ray. Janowski smiled. About a third of his teeth were missing and the rest were stained almost black from chewing tobacco. Ray wondered if there was a Mrs Janowski. ‘War souvenir?’

  ‘Got it off a dead German. Got lots of them.’

  ‘Collector?’

  ‘Naw. Just killed a lot of Germans.’

  ‘So you found the body?’

  ‘Just like Cyrus here told you.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘With the rest of the refrigerators.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘Glad to.’

  Janowski picked up the little .22 rifle and led the way out the door. Ray and Cyrus the deputy followed. Overhead Ray could see clouds of gulls up from the Gulf, trying to beat the bad weather and find something to eat. Ray sniffed and smelled burning rubber.

  A rat that must have weighed six or seven pounds raced across their path and headed into one of the labyrinthine heaps of discarded metal. Janowski stopped in front of a relatively new looking General Motors Frigidaire. ‘In there,’ he said, pointing with the barrel of the rifle.

  ‘The door was closed like it is now?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Ray stared at the white enamel coffin. ‘How’d you know there was something inside?’

  ‘Rats,’ Janowski answered. ‘Dozens of them crawling all over it. They can smell meat through ten feet of concrete.’

  Ray turned to the deputy. ‘You called for the medical examiner?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Cyrus. ‘Just like they asked me.’ His tongue flicked out and he looked at the closed refrigerator, almost entranced by it. ‘You want me to open her up?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ray said. The kid seemed to be enjoying himself.

  ‘Stand back then. Stinks to high heaven.’ The deput
y took out his handkerchief again, covered his nose and mouth with it and approached the fridge. It was leaning back against several other refrigerators, propped up at an angle like a coffin at an Irish wake. Cyrus grabbed the handle, pulled it wide open, then jumped back as though someone was going to leap out and bite him.

  The pale, marbled body had been stuffed into the refrigerator with a double fold like a business letter, once at the waist and once at the knees. He was naked and he’d been dead for at least a day or two. Legs, arms and chest were bloated with gas and there were maggots everywhere. The initial report had been correct. The corpse had been dismembered, then reassembled; Ray could see where the galvanised wire used to put Humpty Dumpty back together again was biting into the distended flesh. Two fingers on the left hand were missing and one on the right. There was a deep indentation on the left wrist that hadn’t been caused by the wire. The corpse barely looked human, which was probably a blessing. The only sure thing was the man’s colour and his sex. There was no sign of any blood at all. The man had not been killed in the refrigerator or anywhere in the general vicinity.

  ‘When did you first notice the refrigerator?’

  ‘Like I said, when I saw the rats.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘S’morning when I come in.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Supposed to be here at seven. It was more like six thirty.’

  ‘Why’d you come in early?’

  He lifted the gun. ‘Like to get in some target practice.’

  ‘You do it for fun?’

  ‘Sure. No Germans left to kill. Not legal anyway.’

  ‘Is there a night watchman?’

  ‘You kidding? What’s to steal from a dump?’

  ‘Trouble with kids?’

  ‘No. Sometimes you catch a rag-and-bone man picking over things but not lately. Caught an antiquator once though.’

  ‘Antiquator?’

  ‘You know, one of those guys who gets old junk and polishes it up. Sells it to the rich people along with a bunch of lies about where it comes from.’

  ‘An antique dealer?’

  ‘An antiquator, sure, just like I said.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Year or two ago.’

  ‘You call the police?’

  ‘Took a couple a shots. Ran him off.’

  ‘Any idea who he is?’ asked Ray, pointing at the body.

  ‘Nope.’ There was something in Janowski’s eyes.

  ‘You lying to me?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because you look like you’re lying.’ Ray took an educated guess. ‘You cut off his fingers, didn’t you?’ Ray asked softly. ‘He had rings on and you cut off his fingers.’

  ‘Did not.’

  ‘You make me search you, I’ll send you to jail.’

  ‘He didn’t need them,’ the man grumbled.

  Ray shook his head. It never ceased to amaze him how many truly stupid people there were in the world.

  ‘Wristwatch?’ Ray asked. That would account for the deep indentation around the wrist. Like his own leg against the window crank. He shook the thought off. ‘There was a wristwatch too, right?’

  Janowski nodded glumly. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Get you into very deep shit clipping fingers off a body,’ Ray said. ‘Mutilating a corpse, tampering with evidence. Theft.’

  ‘I got first crack at anything good comes in here. Always been that way.’

  ‘Not bodies,’ said Ray. ‘I get first crack at those. Where are the fingers?’

  ‘Threw ’em away.’

  ‘The rings? Wristwatch?’

  Janowski dug into the pockets of his oversize jeans and pulled out a handful of gleaming metal. Ray took out his handkerchief and held out his hand, palm up. Janowski dropped the jewellery into it. There were three rings: one a plain gold band that might have been a wedding ring, a nugget pinkie and a large oval signet with the initials JP scrolled together on the top surface. The wristwatch was a solid-gold Omega Constellation; it looked almost new, no more than a few years old. He flipped it over. There was an inscription in Latin on the back and two sets of initials. Another JP and a PF beside it.

  The radio in the deputy’s cruiser made a garbled crackling noise. Cyrus went back to answer it. Ray wrapped the jewellery up in his handkerchief and slid it into the pocket of his sports jacket. His mouth was dry as dust and the diuretics were making his kidneys ache but there was no way he was going to ask Janowski for one of his beers or even take a leak behind the shack.

  Instead he went back to the Bel Air, took his own Polaroid Land Camera out of the trunk and shot two cartridges of the body in place, waving the prints in the air to dry them, then stuffing them into his jacket pocket along with the wristwatch and jewellery. He’d asked the department to buy one when they first came out but Fritz wouldn’t go for it so Ray’d bought one on his own. He found them useful and by the time the staff photographer appeared the crime scene was usually a mess. This way Ray got things as fresh as possible. He clambered up behind the fridge and looked at the back. The serial plate had been neatly chiselled off. The fridge would be untraceable. Shit. Ray eased himself back onto solid ground.

  Deputy Cyrus came back, took a quick look at the body and then turned to Ray. ‘Meat wagon’s at the front gate. They want me to guide them in.’

  ‘I’ll follow you out,’ said Ray.

  ‘What about him?’ asked the deputy, poking his thumb towards Janowski. ‘We going to arrest him like you said? Mutilating the body and all?’

  ‘He finds the fingers and brings them in to Parkland and I’ll think about going easy on him.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Think you can find the fingers?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Bring them to Parkland? Medical examiner’s office.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘See that you do.’

  Ray stumped back to the Bel Air, feeling the weight of his legs. He climbed into the car, lifting his right leg in by gripping below the knee with his hands, then slammed the door. The whole process had left him short of breath again and he could hear his heart in his ears, tripping and stumbling along like a wounded soldier. He lit a Salem and followed the deputy back to the main gate. The black M.E. station wagon was parked on the shoulder. Two men in white lab jackets sat in the front seat smoking. In the back there’d be a collapsible stretcher and a wicker-basket coffin. Ray thought about stopping and telling them to bring the refrigerator along with the body but then he thought again and kept on driving, swinging right, heading back towards Dallas.

  He’d had a bad feeling getting up that morning and an even worse feeling when the phone rang and he caught the murder. He had a week to go to his annual physical and he knew there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to get through it. Fritz would have him off the roster before you could spit and any pending cases would be handed over to one of the other white hats in the squad. Ninety percent of homicides involved wives killing husbands or vice versa, with the occasional mob hit thrown in just to spice up the stew, but this one was different and he was damned if he was going to let Fritz take it away from him before he’d gone. A week left in his working life, a week to do his final job and do it well. A week to go out strong before he died weak and useless to everyone in the world including himself. A week to find the killer and bring him down.

  Chapter Two

  It was only 11:30 a.m. when Ray Duval reached the third floor of police headquarters for the second time that day but he could already feel the fatigue building. He turned right and stepped into the cramped men’s room beside the elevator and spent five minutes there, sighing as he emptied his bladder. Then he went back to the squad room. Everything was pretty much as it had been before, except now Leavelle and Dhority were gone and Perry was the only one left in the room.

  ‘You’d better find something to do or Fritz’ll be on your case pretty soon.’ Ray dropped gratefully down into his old wo
oden swivel chair.

  ‘Something’ll turn up.’ Perry shrugged. ‘It’s early yet.’

  ‘I suppose.’ To Ray it felt like the middle of the afternoon. He had the bottle of pills they’d given him at the hospital but he knew if he took another one today he’d be taking a leak every ten minutes instead of just once every half hour, which was bad enough.

  Ray emptied the pockets of his sports jacket onto his desk and took off his hat. Perry came over and perched on the desk beside him. ‘This the stuff from the dump?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Perry flipped through the Polaroids. ‘Those cameras are pretty good.’

  ‘Useful.’

  ‘Is it true you have to be real accurate about pulling off the paper on the back?’

  ‘Not so important as they say,’ Ray said. ‘Mind you, I’m not looking for great pictures, just a record of the body in place.’

  ‘Could have used one in Seattle last year,’ said Perry, going through the pictures again, this time more slowly. The previous year Perry had used his vacation to take his wife and his two kids to the World’s Fair in Seattle. They’d heard about it for weeks afterward in the squad room, bored to tears by the young detective’s predictions about how sure he was a monorail and a space needle were just the things for Dallas. ‘Ugly,’ said Perry, dropping the pictures back onto Ray’s desk. ‘Any idea who he is?’

  ‘The kind of man who’d wear three rings on his hands.’

  ‘My old man used to tell me that a man wearing more than one wasn’t a gentleman.’