Steven Havill: Twice Buried

“Yes, sir.”

Archer was the high school principal. He’d grumble that our department was ignoring him again, but I didn’t see a round of fisticuffs after a Friday night basketball game as any big deal.

I hung up the phone and glanced at the time. I had about six minutes before Deputy Torrez arrived. Coroner Emerson Clark would be sound asleep, nestled in beside his wife of fifty-eight years, when his telephone rang. He’d be grumpy as hell, but he wouldn’t argue with Gayle. He would arrive in less than ten minutes.

I went out on the back porch and sat on one of the window sills, my back against the screen, and waited-and wished that I’d arrived within six minutes of Anna Hocking’s last telephone call.

Dr. Emerson Clark looked at the stairway and stopped, one hand on each side of the door jamb.

“Oh boy,” he muttered. Both Deputy Robert Torrez and I reached out a hand to steady him but he waved us off. “I’m not that goddamned old,” he said. He was, but we didn’t argue. He went down the stairs one at a time, both hands on the rough wood of the floor joists. I followed. Bob Torrez waited at the head of the stairs, probing through the cobwebs with his flashlight.

“She used this place all these years and never had a damn lightbulb installed,” Clark said. He reached the bottom and regarded the tiny, almost doll-like remains of Anna Hocking. “What time did you get here?”

“Shortly after eleven.”

Clark used one hand against the dirt cellar wall for support as he lowered himself to his knees. He felt for a pulse, waited several seconds, then took one of Anna Hocking’s hands in his. He gently flexed the fingers, then just knelt quietly for a minute.

“She called you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Was she hearing spooks again?”

“I never asked Gayle. I assumed so.”

“What time did she call…not that it’s any of my business.”

“Shortly after nine.”

Clark lifted an eyebrow but otherwise said nothing. He reached out and stroked the thin wisps of hair away from Anna Hocking’s neck. His examination was brief. His own fingers were arthritic and beginning to hook, but they were still strong and sure. I’d had confidence in him nineteen years before when he’d taken my oldest son’s knee apart and put it back together, and I had no doubts now.

“I’d break into a million pieces too if I were 86 years old and took a tumble like that,” he said. “She probably hooked a toe on something. Or maybe a stroke. Autopsy will show.”

“There’s a loose corner of linoleum right here by the first step,” Deputy Torrez said. He still hadn’t come down into the basement.

“Well, maybe that’s it,” Clark said. “I can imagine her hitting the wall there with her head on the way down. That would account for the little scrape on her forehead.” He looked at me, expectant.

I held out a hand and this time Clark accepted the help. He came to his feet with a grunt. He turned his own light this way and that, looking around the cellar. “I can think of more comforting places to check out,” he said.

“By the time she got down here, it probably didn’t matter much,” I said.

“There’s that,” Clark said. He looked down at the corpse again. “I’ve known her for close to thirty years, Bill. Remember when she broke her hip at school that night?” I nodded. “Bruce Wayland and I worked on her for almost four hours. Hell of a hip job.”

He shuffled to the stairway and looked up at Bob Torrez. “You afraid of the dark, son?”

“No, sir,” Torrez said. “And sheriff, Linda Rael wants to know if she can come in.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said and Clark laughed a dry, short cackle. “She’s outside?”

Torrez looked just a trifle uncomfortable. “She rode down with me. She was in the office when you called.”

“Then let her sit in the car. This is a private home, for God’s sake. Tell the ambulance crew we’ll be ready for them as soon as we take a set of pictures.” I followed Clark up the stairs and then went outside to fetch the camera kit from the trunk of the car. I glanced down the driveway and saw Linda Rael’s dark figure in Torrez’s car. The dome light was on. Who knew what she was reading. Probably the deputy’s patrol log.

It wasn’t until Torrez had mentioned her name that I remembered the letter of permission our county attorney had drawn up so that the young reporter could ride with the deputies on patrol.

None of us knew what Linda and her boss Jim Maestas were after, if anything. She could ride with us until we all retired for all I cared. Sheriff Martin Holman had different ideas, of course. He broke out in goosebumps at the very mention of the media sniffing for anything but the best public relations pieces…those bland, awful things that most county sheriffs released around the holidays.

As undersheriff, I was supposed to sign the letter of permission as well. I hadn’t yet, and as far as I knew the document was still buried under mounds of likewise worthless trash on my desk. It was probably right under the newest edition of the department budget-Holman wanted me to read that, too. I would rather have dropped a rock on my foot.

Linda saw me and didn’t waste time. It had been thirty years since I could have got out of a car that fast. The ambulance had parked behind Torrez’s car and its lights pulsed and bounced off the side of the house.

“Mr. Gastner,” Linda Rael called. I set the camera case on the trunk lid and waited. She was a cute kid-maybe twenty-four with a round, dark face framed by one of those old-fashioned pageboy haircuts. I’d read her articles in the Posadas Register during the past year or so and she was a competent writer. I’d never noticed her opinions creeping into the stories, even when she was covering one of the deadly county commission meetings. Anyone who could keep a straight face reporting on that nonsense had to have iron will.

“Good evening, Ms. Rael.”

“I was going to ask you if I could come inside.”

“What changed your mind?” I asked and she looked briefly confused, then smiled.

“I mean, can I come inside?”

I hefted the camera bag. “I don’t think so.”

“Is the woman dead?”

“Yes.” I started toward the back porch door.

“Sir,” Linda Rael persisted, and I stopped and turned to face her.

“Look, Linda. Mrs. Hocking was an old woman who lived alone because she chose to do so. She tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. Maybe she had a stroke. But there’s no foul play, no crime. It’s just an unattended death. The only dignity she has remaining is what we preserve. The public has no rights in there. And we haven’t notified any next of kin, so I’d rather that no one was in that house who doesn’t need to be.”

She didn’t argue after that sermon, bless her. Instead she nodded once and said, “I’ll wait in the car.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said, still surprised to be off the hook so easily. “Were you at the game earlier this evening, by the way?”

She nodded and opened the door of the patrol car. “I got some good shots…some of them were even of basketball.” She grinned. Glenn Archer would be at least as nervous as Sheriff Holman. The two of them were a matched pair-public relations paranoids of the first order.

Inside, the two EMT’s waited in the living room. “Give us five minutes,” I said and went back down in the cellar. I make no claim to be an ace photographer but I burned enough film to make sure I had what I wanted.

Bob Torrez held a flashlight for me while I focused each frame. A full roll of film later, I was satisfied.

In another five minutes the ambulance had left with Anna Hocking’s remains.