Рита Браун - The Tail Of The Tip-Off

Yancy returned to H.H.'s head. He brushed back the nice-looking man's straight hair, cut in the old Princeton style. He checked his eyes, nose, ears.

Then he felt at the base of his neck, running his fingers upward to the ears. Fair, standing just a step to the left of him, squinted for a moment. Yancy, too, stopped.

"What's this?"

Fair bent over. "Looks like a hornet sting without the swelling."

The door opened. Kyle Rogers, the photographer, stepped in. "Sorry. I got here as soon as I could. The roads are okay, but-" He realized Yancy was intent so he shut up.

As Kyle removed his coat, taking his camera out of his trusty carry bag, even Ned was drawn closer to the body.

Ned kept telling himself that this was no longer H.H. H.H.'s soul had gone to its reward. The toned body on the slab before him was a husk. But while H.H. had bid goodbye to that husk, it was hard for his friends to do so.

"Kyle, get a close-up of this right now." A note of urgency crept into Yancy's voice.

Kyle, all of twenty-five, quietly snapped away.

Yancy glanced over at Fair as he reached onto his tray of implements, what he called his "tool kit." He pulled out a calibrated probe so fine it was thinner than a needle. He leaned down and expertly inserted this into what looked like the sting. "Penetration, an inch and a quarter." He pulled out the probe. "No bleeding."

"No discoloration," Fair said in a low voice. "It's as though he were hit with a microdart."

"Yes." Yancy drew out the word.

"I was in the row behind him. If he'd been hit with a dart I would have noticed." Fair thought a moment. "I hope I would have noticed."

"Odd, how every scene is different when you try to reconstruct it in your mind. The most commonplace object takes on new significance." Yancy plucked up his scalpel. "All right." He cut a Y, with the top of the Y looking like a large necklace, the bottom going directly to the pubic bone.

Ned gulped.

"The first cut is the hardest." Fair's voice had a steady reassuring quality.

Kyle worked quietly.

Ned blinked and as Yancy began removing and weighing organs he got ahold of himself. The science of it took over and H.H. as a person began to recede from view.

After weighing the heart, Yancy expertly opened the stilled pump. He pointed to Fair, and Ned even came over to look. "See the scarring?"

"Ah," Ned exclaimed because he could see tiny, tiny scars, tissue different from the striations around it.

"Cocaine. I'll know from the blood tests if he used any within forty-eight hours."

"I think that part of H.H.'s life is long past." Fair defended H.H., who had enjoyed a wild youth.

"That's just it. It's never truly over because everything you do leaves its mark on the body."

"So The Portrait of Dorian Gray is the truth?" Ned held the clipboard tightly.

"In a fashion, yes." Yancy intently studied the heart. "Left ventricle contracted. M-m-m, right ventricle normal."

"He died of a heart attack?" Ned was furiously writing on the clipboard.

"Ultimately we all die when our hearts stop beating. No, I wouldn't say he died of a heart attack. It's just that the left ventricle is not relaxed. Something . . ." Yancy's voice trailed off as he studied the stilled heart, blood seeping through the ventricles. He snipped tissue samples from the heart as well as the other organs. Intent, Yancy was in a world of his own, not conversing again until he was sewing up the body.

As Yancy and Fair washed up, Ned took a last look at H.H., a sheet covering him, as he was rolled into the cooler. H.H.'s body would soon be prepared for its last journey.

"Kyle, get those photographs on Sheriff Shaw's desk as fast as you can."

"Yes, sir." Kyle packed up his gear and left.

The coroner folded his arms across his chest. "Gentlemen, H. H. Donaldson did not die a natural death. The blood work will certainly help me pinpoint what was used to kill him because I can't tell from this exam what poison was used."

"Poisoned?" Ned gasped.

"Absolutely." He hung up his lab coat. "One looks for the classic symptoms, like the odor of bitter almonds for arsenic. Certain types of internal bleeding, the condition of the gums." He paused. "None of those changes are present in H.H.'s body, except the abnormality in his left ventricle. I'm willing to bet you the poison was delivered by whatever pierced his neck but-" He held up his hands.

"My God." Fair shook his head. "I can't believe it."

"Well, I'm sure he had enemies. A man can't go through life without gathering them, and if a man doesn't have a few enemies, then I really don't trust him. Know what I mean?"

"An enemy is one thing. An enemy who kills you is quite another." Ned's jaw set.

"We'd better go to Anne." Fair dropped his eyes to the floor then looked up at the ceiling. He hated this.

Yancy put his hand on Fair's big forearm. "Simply tell her there are irregularities. Wait until-" He stopped mid-sentence, walked to the phone in the lab, and dialed the Sheriff's Department.

"Coop, is Rick there?"

"No." The young deputy, usually a regular at basketball games, answered. She'd pulled extra duty thanks to the weather.

"Can you come over here a minute?" He explained why.

As the Sheriff's Department wasn't far from the coroner's office, Coop managed to get there despite the snow within twenty minutes.

Yancy rolled H.H. out of the cooler and pulled off the sheet. Wordlessly he pointed to the mark on his neck. "Kyle will have the photos on Rick's desk in an hour or however fast he can work. I'll have my report faxed over within the hour, minus all the lab work, obviously. Deputy, I believe he was murdered."

She exhaled. Cynthia Cooper, a tall, good-looking blonde, could make decisions swiftly. She pulled out her cell phone.

"Sheriff, I'm sorry to disturb you at home. I'm going to seal off the Clam. I need as many people as we can round up."

After speaking to Rick, whom she genuinely admired, she walked back and inspected the mark one more time. "Yancy, how soon before the blood work comes back?"

"I'll put a rush on it, but you never know. Normally it takes three to four weeks. Like I said, I'll beg for promptness."

"I was at the game," Fair said. "I can show you where H.H. sat, where he fell."

"Me, too," Ned volunteered.

"Good." She smiled tightly. "It's going to be a long night."

"I'm used to it," Fair replied.

Ned halted a moment as they opened the door. "What about Anne?"

Cooper turned to Yancy. "Will you call the Donaldson house? I'm sure someone is with her."

"Little Mim and my wife," Ned said.

"Well, one of them will probably answer the phone." Cooper weighed her words. "Just tell Little Mim or Susan that Anne can go ahead with funeral plans. Don't tell them more than that. Not even your wife. Rick will talk to Anne tomorrow."

"If you cordon off the Clam people will know something's not right," Ned sensibly observed.

"That's true, but it's eleven-thirty now. How many people are going to be out tonight? And if they are, they won't know what we're doing. We've got a little window of time. Let's use it."

7

The phone felt clammy in Susan's hand as her husband informed her Anne could go ahead with funeral plans. She and Ned had been married nineteen years. She knew Ned inside out. She wasn't getting the whole story or even half the story and she knew it.

She hung up the wall phone in Anne's high-tech kitchen. Anne and Little Mim sat at the table. Cameron had finally gone to bed. The adults were thankful the child could sleep.

"Anne, you can make arrangements." Susan's voice sounded strangled to her.

"Tomorrow." Little Mim, not the warmest person, genuinely wanted to spare Anne further distress.

"Yes." Anne's nostrils flared, she blinked. "It doesn't seem real."