Рита Браун - Claws And Effect

"You know, Harry, a little expression of grief might be in order here."

"Oh, balls, Susan. I did express grief-a little, your qualifier! Besides, I'm talking to you."

A light giggle floated over the line. "He was a downer. Still-to have your throat slit."

"A swift death, I assume."

The animals pricked their ears.

Susan paused a second. "Do you think people die as they lived?"

"Uh, I don't know. No. No. I mean how can you die as you lived if someone sneaks up behind you and s-s-s-t."

"You don't have to produce sound effects."

"And how can you die as you lived if you're propped up in a hospital bed, tubes running everywhere. That's a slow slide down. I'd hate it. Well, I guess most people in that position hate it."

"Yeah, but I wonder sometimes. What I'm getting at is even if you're on that deathbed, let's say, you would approach death as you approached life. Some will face it head-on, others will deny it, others will put on a jolly face."

"Oh that. Yeah, then I suppose you do-I mean, you do die as you lived. Makes Hank's death even stranger. Someone grabs him and that's the end of it. Swift, brutal, effective. Three qualities I wouldn't assign to Hank."

"No, but we'd assign them to his killer."

Harry thought a long time. "I guess so. What's so weird is why anyone would want to kill Hank Brevard other than to stop hearing him talk about how our country is a cesspool of political corruption, Sam Mahanes works him too hard, and let's not forget Hank's theories on the Kennedy assassination."

"Fidel Castro," Susan filled in.

"I count that as part of the Kennedy assassination." Harry changed the subject slightly. "When do you have a board meeting? I'm assuming you'll have an emergency one."

"Which Mim will take over as soon as Sam opens it."

"He'd damn well better smile when she does it, too. She's one of the hospital's largest contributors. Anyway, imperious as Mim can be, she has good ideas. Which reminds me. I was going to call you tomorrow and tell you that Little Mim wants to run for mayor of Crozet."

"Tomorrow. You should have called me the minute you walked in the door," Susan chided her.

"Well, I kinda intended to but then I mopped the kitchen floor because it was a mud slide and then I trimmed Tucker's nails which she hates, the big baby."

"I do," Tucker replied.

"Has Marilyn lost her senses?"

"I don't know. She pressured me a little bit but not in a bad way. She said her father had done a pretty good job but she and he were falling on opposite sides of the fence over the development of Crozet, especially where industry is concerned, and you know, she did make a good point. She said it's time our generation got involved."

"We have been slugs," Susan agreed. "So what are you going to do? Between a rock and a hard place."

"I said I'd think about it. She'll ask you, too. We're all going to have to make choices and publicly, too."

"M-m-m, well, let me call Rev. Jones so he can get the Lutheran Church ladies in gear. Miranda will organize the Church of the Holy Light group. We'd better all get over to Lisa Brevard's tomorrow morning."

"Right. What time are you going?"

"Nine."

"Okay. I'll be there at nine, too. See you." Harry hung up the phone, informed her three animal friends of the bizarre event, then thought about the morning's task.

Sitting next to grief disturbed her. But when her mother and father had died within a year of each other, she had cherished those people who came to share that grief, brought covered dishes, helped. How selfish to deny yourself to another person in need because their sorrow makes you uncomfortable. People feel uncomfortable for different reasons. Men feel terrible because they can't fix it and men are raised to fix things. Women empathize and try to soothe the sufferer. Perhaps the categories don't break down that neatly along gender lines but Harry thought they did.

She reached over and set her alarm a half hour early, to five A.M.

Then she clicked off the light. "Who in the world would want to kill Hank Brevard?"

"Somebody very sure of himself," Mrs. Murphy sagely noted.

"Why do you say that?" Pewter asked.

"Because he or she knew his way around the basement, probably he. He left the body. Humans who want to cover their tracks bury the body. At least, that's what I think. There's an element of arrogance in just leaving Hank crumpled there. And the killer either knew the schedule, the work routine, or he took the chance no one else would be in the basement."

"You're right," Tucker said.

"Will you guys pipe down? I need my beauty sleep."

"Try coma," Pewter smarted off.

The other two snickered but did quiet down.

8

The scale needle dipped. Tom Yancy, the coroner, lifted off the brain. His assistant wrote down 2 lb. 9 oz.

Both Rick and Coop had attended enough autopsies not to be but so squeamish but Rick hated the part when the coroner sawed off the skullcap. The sound of those tiny blades cutting into fresh bone and the odor of the bone made him queasy. The rest of it didn't bother him. Most people got woozy when the body was opened from stem to stern but he could handle that just fine.

Each organ was lifted out of Hank Brevard.

"Liver's close to shot," Tom noted. "Booze."

"Funny. I never saw him drunk," Rick remarked.

"Well, it is possible to have liver disease without alcohol but this is cirrhosis. He drank."

"Maybe that's why he was so bitchy. He was hungover most of the time," Coop said.

"He wasn't exactly beauty and light, was he?" Tom poked around the heart. "Look. The heart is disproportionate. The left side should be about one half the right. His is smaller. Chances are he would have dropped sooner rather than later since this pump was working too hard. Every body has its secrets."

After the autopsy, Tom washed up.

"The obvious?" Rick asked.

"Oh yeah. No doubt about it. Left to right as you noted. Back to the bone. The C-3 vertebra was even nicked with the blade where I showed you. Damn near took his head off. A razor-sharp blade, too. Nothing sloppy or jagged about it. Very neat work."

"A surgeon's precision." Coop crossed her arms over her chest. She was getting tired and hungry.

"I'd say so, although there are plenty of people who could make that cut if the instrument was sharp enough. People have been slitting one another's throats since B.C. It's something we're good at." Tom smiled wryly.

"But the assailant had to be powerful." Rick hated the chemical smells of the lab.

"Yes. There's no way the killer could be female unless she bench-presses two hundred and fifty pounds and some do, some do. But from the nature of the wound it was someone a bit taller than Hank. Otherwise the wound would have been a bit downward, unless he drove Hank to his knees, but you said there was no sign of struggle at the site."