Рита Браун - Santa Clawed

“Can you hurry the drug report from Richmond?” Cooper mentioned the location of forensic research.

“It’s Christmas. No one will be in a hurry, but, Sheriff, you can try to prod them a wee bit.” Dr. Gibson’s curiosity rose higher as he considered again the clean cut at the throat.

Rick crossed his arms over his chest. “Used a sharp blade.”

“Yes, no ragged edge. The wound is quite neat and clean.”

Cooper flipped her notebook shut for a moment. “No struggle. Drugs unknown at this point. Either he knew his assailant or the killer snuck up on him.”

“Definite possibility.” Dr. Gibson started to hum as he worked.

Rick understood how methodical most coroners were, especially Dr. Gibson. “I don’t want to interrupt your procedure, but I am curious.”

“I appreciate that,” Dr. Gibson answered as he continued his exam.

“I’m curious, too. Seems to me that type of cut had to be made by someone who knew what they were doing.” Cooper was always fascinated by murder.

“Takes work and skill, which you know. If you pull the head back, it’s easier to cut the jugular.”

“Dr. Gibson, we’ll leave you to it, and I thank you for coming down here at night,” Rick said.

The old pathologist smiled. “House full of grandchildren. I needed the quiet.”

After bidding the good doctor good-bye, the two work partners and friends drove to headquarters. Cooper followed Rick into his office, where he shut the door. “Search back ten years to see if there’s been any killing of priests, nuns, monks.”

“Right.”

“Are you sure you want extra duty over Christmas?”

She nodded in the affirmative. “My holiday will start New Year’s Eve, when Lorenzo visits.” She mentioned her boyfriend, whom she had met in the fall and was now home in Nicaragua. The romance was budding.

He looked at the large wall clock. “How’d it get to be two?”

“The earth just keeps revolving on its axis.” She smiled, feeling ragged.

“Hey, go home. Get a good night’s sleep. I will, too. You know, sometimes if I give myself a problem to solve before I go to sleep, I wake up with the answer. Try it.”

“I will.”

“One more thing. See if you can keep Harry out of this. Bad enough she and Fair found the body.” He rubbed his palm on his forehead as if to banish cares.

“Boss, I’ll try, but don’t hold your breath.” He laughed. Cooper left. Rick did not take his own advice. He started searching for similar cases, even though he’d assigned the task to Cooper. The phone rang at three- thirty. Dr. Gibson’s light voice was on the line. “Figured you’d be up. Sheriff, I found a curious thing in his mouth. Under his tongue there was an ancient Greek coin, an obol.” Rick, not having read much Greek mythology, blurted out, “What the hell could that mean?”

“Oh, the meaning is quite clear, Sheriff. He needed an obol to give to Charon, who pilots the dead across the River Styx to the underworld. If he doesn’t have the coin, he wanders in limbo, a cruel fate.”

“That is odd. He’s murdered, but the killer wants him in the underworld.”

“Not quite so odd, Sheriff. For one thing, it’s a slap at his proclaimed Christianity. The killer is paying homage to the old gods. The other thing is, there may be someone waiting for him on the other side. Someone who will do even more damage.”

Rick hung up the phone, knowing he needed sleep or a drink or both.

6

Tuesday, December 16. A light snow covered the tops of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but only a few swirling flakes traveled to the valley below. Still, those glistening rounded mountains, once the largest peaks in the world, looked perfect when the sun came out.

Susan drove Harry and herself in her Audi station wagon, a purchase she had never regretted. In the backseat, along with Christmas packages and a large fuzzy rug, sat Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, Pewter, and Owen, Susan’s corgi and full brother to Tucker. When Susan’s kids, now in college, reached the stage where she became a taxi, her corgi breeding fell by the wayside. She hoped to pick it back up, since it fascinated her.

“If I hear one more Christmas carol, I’m going to scream,” Susan grumbled.

“Scream what?” Harry loved to tease Susan.

“How about, ‘Jesus was born in March, why are we celebrating in December?’ That ought to get their knickers in a knot.”

“You know why as well as I do. We sat through six years of Latin. Too bad we didn’t go to the same college. I kept on and you didn’t.”

Harry referred to the fact that the Roman winter- solstice festival, Saturnalia, was so popular the Christians couldn’t dislodge it. Since they lacked a winter festival, they fudged on Jesus’s birth, killing two birds with one stone.

“Ah, yes, Latin. I switched to French so I could order French food cooked by American chefs who pretend to know what they’re doing.” She braked as a Kia pulled out in front of her, the young man behind the wheel yakking away on a cell phone so tiny it was a wonder he could find it much less press in phone numbers.

“Ever notice that the people who take the most chances in the world are always in cheap cars?”

“No.” Susan switched back to French cooking. “Actually there are some extraordinary French chefs now. I mean Americans who can cook.”

“All men. If a man cooks, he’s a chef. If a woman cooks, she’s a cook.”

“Harry, you’re being ever so slightly argumentative.”

“Me?” Harry responded with mock surprise.

“You, lovie.”

Harry stared out the window at the jam-packed lot to Barracks Road Shopping Center. “Can’t get Christopher out of my mind. Such a waste for him to die.”

“When you called me, I couldn’t believe it. We’d just been talking about him.” Susan sighed as she began the hunt for a parking space. “Obviously no one has come forward to lay claim to the deed.”

Harry smirked slightly. “Coop’s keeping something from

me. I can always tell.” “Harry, she can’t tell you everything.” Harry shifted in her seat. “I know, but it drives me crazy.” “Not a far putt,” Susan, a good golfer, teased her. “She did tell me one thing this morning when I talked to

her. Christopher had an obol under his tongue.”

Susan, after the years of high school Latin and hearing about the myths, knew what that meant. “Aha. My parking karma is working.” She slid into the space, popped the car in park, cut the motor. They sat still for a minute. “An obol for the ferryman. Some kind of symbolism, apparently.”

“It’s just so odd, but at least we have an educated killer.”

“It is odd.” Harry shook her head. “He’s fired up my curiosity.”

“God help us,” Pewter piped up. “She gets these notions and we have to bail her out,” Mrs. Murphy agreed.

“Then she gets my mother in trouble,” Owen said. “Look at it this way. No one is bored.”