A Death in Lionel's Woods

by Christine Husom

  “That’s a fact, but a helluva deal for you. And I don’t like it one bit when something like this happens to one of my own.”

  “Whoever turned my water on may have had no clue who I am, or where I worked.”

  The sheriff pushed his right fist into his left palm. “But if they did know, then I can’t help but think they are showing disregard and disrespect for the department.”

  I met Smoke by his grey Crown Victoria promptly at 8:00 o’clock Thursday morning for the trip to Jane Doe’s autopsy. When I climbed into the car, and Smoke turned his face toward me, the butterflies in my stomach flew in a completely different direction. There were times when I was particularly taken by his rugged good looks. He wore Ray-Ban sunglasses to protect his eyes from the glare of the sun, but they gave the added value of making him look like a rock star. When his lips curled up in a grin, his long dimples deepened, and the crow’s feet by his eyes formed an appealing frame above them.

  “Howdy, partner.”

  I snapped on my seatbelt. “Howdy.”

  “No more phone calls, or water incidents, I take it?”

  “Nope. I turned my water off, actually both yesterday and today.”

  “That was smart of you.”

  I smiled, and raised my hands as if to say, “Well, yeah.”

  “You know, I’m thinkin’ now that you’ve got a squad car again, having it sit in your driveway might discourage any miscreant behavior.”

  “I usually pull it in my garage, but it probably would be a good idea to park it in my driveway for a while, like you said.”

  “Rita got the scanned photo of our three mystery people emailed to all the counties in Georgia. We included two questions. Can you identify the specific area where the picture was taken, and do you recognize the individuals?”

  “Good.” I crossed fingers om both hands. “I hope we get some helpful information.”

  “It’s not much to go on, but it’s the only piece of potentially identifying evidence we have so far.”

  The Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department had used the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office to perform autopsies since time began, but when they no longer had the time, or staff, to contract with outside agencies, Winnebago had signed a service agreement with the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office in Anoka County. In addition to their team of medical examiners, the office also had death investigators who responded to scenes as needed.

  Dr. Gordon Melberg, our former chief county coroner, had joined the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office as a death investigator. He was a medical doctor, but not a pathologist, and lacked the training necessary to perform autopsies. Bridey Patrick was, and did.

  Smoke turned into the industrial park/office building area in the city of Ramsey, and followed the drive to a newer two-story building that stood alone in the section. The appeal of the red-brick structure, with its eight foot tall windows, gave the appearance that it was a library, or attorney’s office, and not a place where the dead were coaxed for answers as to where, when, why, or how they had died.

  Even after Smoke had parked, shut off the ignition, and gotten out of the car, I was still glued to my seat. He walked around, and opened the door for me. “Are you coming in?”

  I nodded, and got out quickly before I changed my mind. I had seriously contemplated taking an anti-anxiety medication that morning, but hadn’t. As we headed to the entrance, Smoke stepped in close to me. Tasteful pieces of art adorned the waiting area, which at first gave me pause, and then I thought of the family members, and friends, of all the someones who were either waiting to be identified, or were on the examination table. I figured it might help to be surrounded by objects of beauty in a cheery lobby. It couldn’t hurt, in any case.

  Rachel, a dark-eyed, young woman in her mid-twenties looked from Smoke to me when we stepped up to her window and introduced ourselves. “Doctor Patrick is expecting you.” She pressed the button that unlocked the access door for us. Smoke knew where he was going so I followed him. There was something about medical examiners’ offices and morgues that caused me to lower my voice to a whisper. It was both out of respect for the deceased, and in anticipation of what the medical experts would find when they searched for significant answers to critical questions.

  “Do we put on scrubs?” I asked.

  “We don’t have to, but it always makes me feel better. Right over here.” Smoke led the way to a small room where we pulled scrubs over our street clothes.

  We headed into the examination room where the autopsy would be performed. Two scrubs-clad figures were already there. One was bent over a clipboard, penning an entry on a sheet of paper, covered from head to toe in protective wear. I didn’t recognize her until she raised her head to acknowledge us. “Welcome,” Dr. Bridey Patrick said.

  “Thanks,” Smoke and I answered together.

  Dr. Patrick frowned slightly. “We ran some blood tests on our victim, primarily to check for infectious diseases. We’re always on the lookout for anything that may pose a health threat to our community.”

  I thought back to the scene in the woods where we had studied Jane’s body, and investigated the area where she had been found. We all had worn protective gloves, as per usual. It was the most effective, and easy way, to keep first responders safe from infectious diseases and bloodborne pathogens.

  The doctor went on, “Fortunately, she tested clear of any dangerous contagions. And we checked for some of the commonly used illicit drugs and alcohol. I was also curious about chemotherapy, given the wasted condition of her body, so we looked for some of the more widely used ones. Some of them, such as Methotrexate are also used to treat some autoimmune disorders like Crohn’s Disease, for example.

  “Hmm, I didn’t know that. Well, it just goes to show even old guys like me can learn something new just about every day,” Smoke said.

  Dr. Patrick’s lips lifted in a small smile. It clearly made no difference to her if Smoke thought he was old, or not. He wasn’t dead yet.

  A side door opened, and a thin man, about a foot taller than Dr. Patrick, wheeled a stainless steel table into the room with Jane Doe’s body on it. Stomach acids rose in my throat, and tears gathered in my eyes at the sight of her. Skin clung to her cheek bones, neck, shoulder bones, rib cage, hip bones, arms, and legs. There were spots where the skin simply hung. She had a minute amount of defined muscle on her shoulders and calves, but there did not appear to be one single ounce of fat anywhere.

  I lifted my elbow so it touched Smoke’s arm. He pressed in closer to me, providing a wall of support to lean against.

  “Why don’t you two have a seat, and we’ll begin,” Dr. Patrick said. I figured the sitting suggestion was for my benefit. It was highly probable my skin tone had taken on a green tinge. Dr. Melberg had once told me that autopsy came from a Greek word that translated as “see with your own eyes.” As much as I needed to find out everything possible about our Ms. Doe, the condition of her body pushed the limit of what my “own eyes” were able to view.

  As Smoke and I sat down on the straight back chairs, several feet from the examination table, he exhaled a short breath. “Dear God,” he whispered.

  Dr. Patrick nodded from her assistant to us. “This is Doctor Calvin Helsing. Have you met?” Smoke nodded, but I shook my head so she focused her eyes on me. “Sergeant Corinne Aleckson. But they call you Corky, right?”

  “Right.” I moved my attention from Patrick to Helsing. “Nice to meet you, Doctor.” I made a faint stab at a smile.

  The pupils in Dr. Helsing’s large round eyes, the darkest shade of brown possible, dilated slightly. I was caught off-guard by the subtle sign that he found me attractive. He didn’t smile when he said, “Sergeant,” to acknowledge the introduction.

  Dr. Helsing was close to my age. I guessed he was of American Indian descent. His black eyebrows were a thick frame above his eye protectors, which rested on a Roman nose that blended well with his prominent cheek bones, and thick lips. His hair w
as covered, but the color likely matched his eyebrows.

  Dr. Patrick tipped her head to the other woman in scrubs on her right. “And Karen Sherman, our pathology assistant.” Karen was in her early forties and plain looking in a pleasant way. She had a pale, flawless complexion and wore no makeup. She appeared slightly plump beneath her scrubs and was around five six. Her light blue eyes blinked as she looked at us then lifted the pen she had resting on her clipboard in a small wave.

  Smoke said, “Hello, again.”

  I nodded at her.

  Dr. Patrick picked up a scalpel from the stainless steel tray and pointed at Jane Doe’s abdomen. “You can see her surgical scar here. It is not new, and I have no way of knowing with any degree of certainty, but it appears to be at least several years old. And it is not the best job of stitching up I’ve ever seen. It looks like they used stitches instead of staples, because staples would be more uniform.”

  I wondered if she’d had the surgery in a rural area where the general practice doctor was also the surgeon. It made sense that a rural area doctor would perform less-complicated surgeries like appendectomies, since they were often emergencies, and needed to be done without the delay a transfer to another facility might take. But it seemed to me, most rural doctors would refer a person needing major surgery to a larger, better-equipped hospital.

  “Cal, if you’d get a measurement,” Patrick said.

  Dr. Helsing pulled another scalpel, with a ruler on its blade, from the assortment of instruments, and held it over the scar. “Twenty point one centimeters. Almost eight inches.” He added the conversion for Smoke’s and my benefit.

  Karen recorded the number on her clipboard sheet.

  “We’ll know in a few minutes what the surgery was for. You can see that her body was starving. It’s evident that it was literally devouring its reserves of fat and muscle. Her organs will tell their own stories.”

  As Dr. Patrick poised the blade of her scalpel above Jane’s left shoulder to begin the Y incision, I closed my eyes and braced myself for the gagging odors that were about to fill the room. Smoke reached into the pants pocket of the scrubs, pulled out the small tube of mentholated ointment he’d put there, and handed it over. I took a glob, and swiped it under my nose. He took the tube back from me and did the same.

  The doctors worked for some time without uttering a word. Many autopsies, like this one, were quiet, reverent procedures. “Her right kidney was removed. But why? Aside from some of her organs—left kidney, liver, bladder, and spleen—all showing signs of shutting down due to the starvation, there are no obvious external signs of disease or illness. Of course, there is a lengthy list of diseases and disorders that can cause renal failure.” Dr. Patrick was talking to herself more than to the rest of us.

  If Jane Doe’d had a healthy kidney, she could have donated it to someone in need. There would be a record of that somewhere.

  It was the first autopsy I had attended in some time, and my senses were heightened. I tried to separate my emotional response from the important scientific information the doctors were gathering by removing, weighing, and examining each organ, but it was very difficult. It was an exhaustive process, and reminded me there was more than one reason I had chosen criminal justice over pathology.

  “As I said, her body was literally eating itself. The question is, why? But the bigger puzzle for me is why she had a nephrectomy.” Dr. Patrick had used the word ‘why’ many times during the procedure. “In the absence of illness or injury—which I find no sign of—it seems there are only two other explanations. Voluntary organ donation or it was harvested, with, or without, her permission.”

  Smoke and I turned to face each other, and our eyebrows rose in sync. He mouthed, “What the hell?” Organ donation had entered my mind. Organ harvesting had not.

  5

  “Okay, thanks Rita.” Smoke closed his phone, and dropped it into the beverage holder in the center console of his car. We were on our way back to the sheriff’s office after the autopsy. “She says we’ve heard back from a hundred and fifteen of the departments in Georgia, and nobody so far recognizes that specific scenery. And there are no missing person reports that match any of the three in the photo. But they’ll post them and see if anything turns up.”

  “That’s a pretty overwhelming response this fast.”

  “Trying to identify an unknown person gets to all of us in this business. Everyone knows how frustrating it can be.”

  “When we want answers yesterday.”

  “You got that right, little lady.”

  “Jane Doe’s missing kidney is really bugging me. I know we’ll have to wait a while before all the tests are done, but Doctor Patrick believes Jane had a healthy kidney removed.”

  “With or without her blessing,” Smoke said.

  “That’s the part that’s bugging me.”

  “And Jane is forever mute on the subject.”

  “Which is why we have to find her family, or someone who knew her.”

  “That’s the plan, little lady.”

  “The sheriff asked about getting that photo into the local papers. It’s been three days, and no one has stepped forward to identify Jane. Maybe we should run the photo. I know Doctor Patrick thinks our victim was probably in her early thirties, but let’s say she was ten years older. In that case, the kids in the photo could be adults by now, and may not even know their mother is missing. I’d personally never get away with not checking in pretty much every day with my mom, as you well know, but a lot of people maybe talk to their folks once or twice a week. Or even less often than that.”

  “Good point, and something to strongly consider. I’ll talk to the sheriff about it. Which brings to mind a change of subject. Kristen and Denny haven’t set their wedding date yet?”

  “No, and I haven’t asked Mother about it the last few months either. They seem to be in this holding pattern of committed to each other, but. They did just start dating a little over a year ago. And if you think about it, my Mom is fifty and didn’t have a chance at a real marriage. My parents only lived together a few months. They basically had two honeymoons when my dad was on leave, before he got killed in Vietnam.”

  Smoke shook his head. “It’s hard to know why things happen the way they do. I figured that your folks would live to celebrate at least fifty years together. But two honeymoons about sums it up what they had, as it turns out.” Smoke had been a high school friend of both my parents.

  “And then there’s Denny who was married for about thirty years before he was widowed. Mother and Denny have had two very different experiences.”

  “I suppose that scares them both a little. Or a lot.”

  “I think it does. That and the fact that John Carl is going through a complicated divorce, and feels he can’t move away from Denver until he sells the house that he and Emily own together.”

  “It would help the poor guy a lot if he could trust Emily to do the right thing in that regard.”

  “Yes, it would. Emily’s not overly concerned that John Carl gets his fair share.”

  “We’ll have to hope for the best in that deal.”

  “And there are other things, like Gramps’ health, and the amount of time my mother spends over there. And where Denny and Mom are going to live after they get married, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “They’re smart not to rush things. But on the other hand, there is never a perfect time. You may have to wait a long, long time before all the stars and planets are aligned.”

  “Yeah, I guess you have some experience with that, huh?” Smoke’d had a serious, long-term relationship with a woman he’d hoped to marry some years before. But she had other ideas.

  “Over, and done with.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “When we get back to Oak Lea, I’m going to go pay another visit to Kevin Lionel. See if I can find out what he’s not telling us. Does he know something about Jane, after all?”

  “You go, girl. I’m going to chec
k on the progress we’re making with the Georgia counties.”

  Kevin Lionel opened his front door, and pasted what looked like a hopeful smile on his face. “Have you found out more?” He smelled much sweeter without the buck scent perfume he’d been wearing on my last visit to his house.

  “I have. If I can come in?”

  He half-turned his body, and lifted his arm so his hand was pointing toward the kitchen area. “Oh, sure. Sorry I keep forgetting my manners. Ma had trouble with us boys that way.”

  I asked if we could sit at the kitchen table to talk. He nodded then led the way. “Want anything to drink? Water, soda? Or to eat?” Supper was simmering on the stove. It smelled very tasty. “Pork chops and rice,” he added.

  “Oh, thank you, but no. You go ahead, though.” I sat down at the table. “You mentioned your mother having trouble with you boys. How many of you were there?”

  “Five of us, and no sisters. I didn’t mean we got into a lot of trouble. We just didn’t always have the best manners. You know, did some roughhousing. I’m the oldest of the bunch, so my parents often got after me to keep my brothers in line.” Kevin sat down across from me.

  “I’ve noticed there’s often a lot of pressure on the firstborn.”

  Kevin shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think too much of it. I didn’t know any different. We spent a lot of time working on the farm. My parents both had pretty high standards of keeping up the house, and buildings, on the place. I didn’t have time for sports, dating, things like that.”

  I thought of other farm kids I’d known who’d had similar experiences. “But you eventually fell in love, found someone to share your life with.”

  He looked down and studied his folded hands, but didn’t respond. It was obviously a sore subject.