Robert Walker - Final Edge

The diver with the camera, Bert Quinn, continued to snap shots in such a way as to not again look into the dead man's missing eyes.

"Jesus, damn most horrible thing I've ever seen," said Bert's partner, going for shore, anxious to distance himself from the floating coffin.

The third diver kept one hand on the gunwale, steadying the boat for Dr. Nielsen, his attention on her. "How'd you ever decide-ta become a coroner, Dr. Nielsen?" he asked, staring across the boat and into her eyes. "I mean, didya just wake up one morning and say to yourself I wanna work with stiffs, or what?"

"I went to med school to become a physician, and I somehow wound up working under an extraordinary man in forensic pathology who gave me great respect and from whom I could learn….A too good chance to pass up."

"Everybody over in Norway talk so cute?"

She felt uncomfortable now at his attention. "I am from Sweden, not Norway, and I do not have the time to teach you the difference."

"Maybe over dinner sometime?"

The cameraman looked over his lens to see her reaction to the other man's pass.

"I don't think this is the right place to talk of such matters."

"That's why I'm saying we ought to continue this over dinner, maybe some wine?"

"No, no, thank you. I don't date men outside my profession," she lied. "Still, your offer is a…a compliment. Thank you, but no, thank you."

Nielsen had begun to work as she spoke, pushing aside worm colonies from the nude body of the middle-aged gardener, searching with her gloved fingers and her sharp eye for any obvious wounds other than the enormous one at the throat. She immediately isolated a smaller curious puncture wound also in the throat, one masked by the larger wound. She ran her gloved hands down the torso, her eyes following, searching for any contusions, bruises, anomalies, or irregularities.

"This guy was hung like a thumb tack, like the size of an earplug, that thing," said the police diver who'd propositioned her over the body.

"Agent, if you're trying to embarrass me, you can 7, and if you're simply being rude because I said no to you, then I have to suspect you are hung like an earplug as well. Now please, allow me to do my job."

Both Bert the cameraman and his friend on the FBI dive team laughed at their colleague, Bert saying, "She got you good, Al."

She continued to survey the nude corpse, her gloved hand and eye now down to his scarred knees-recent bruising-and next she noticed the deep brown, tobaccolike stains under all his toenails. She took scrapings and efficiently put these into a vial, safely tucking them into a valise on a strap she'd placed around her neck. Finally, she said, "All right…we're needing to come at this in a fresh venue."

"Whataya make of what happened to this guy, Doc?" asked the third diver from shore now.

"Obviously, someone's cut his throat. Presumably Blodgett."

"That little woman?" erupted one of the divers, and this started a cacophony of disagreement.

"I saw her pictures! You're right. Skinny as a coyote."

"No bigger than a hen."

"The guy had almost two hundred pounds on her."

"Okay, gentlemen. I want the boat upended like the one we dragged into shore already, one with all the bullet holes." This boat had already been examined and photographed.

"Why're we turning the boat over with him in it?" asked the one named Al.

"I don't need or want the worms in the body bag, gentlemen, so let's upend the boat and feed the fish, shall we? We'll then float the man to the pier and lift him out there. I can better examine him once he's been…ahhh, baptized."

They reluctantly did as instructed, flipping the rowboat after some effort and spilling its contents out into the lake. The divers gently guided Kemper's floating body, facedown, to the pier. His plunge and short swim to the pier had dispersed the worms, and it had the added virtue of cleansing the wound that had killed him.

They lifted Kemper's body from the water, as the news chopper did another flyby, further grating on Nielsen's nerves. Kemper lay now faceup on the weathered dock, but the body bag, so patiently awaiting his arrival till now, suddenly flew off and into the lake on the other side of the berth, caught up in the whirlwind of the chopper as Nielsen climbed the ladder from water to platform.

"Kee-rist!" she shouted up at the chopper pilot, waving him off. "In Sweden we'd have shot those fools from the sky by now."

The body bag was retrieved, and the 2NEWS bird backed off while Lynn Nielsen leaned in over Kemper's throat for a closer look. She was unaware that the newsman overhead was shooting close-up footage of her lanky, curvaceous body now, and the divers too sat back and appreciated her statuesque beauty kneeling in over the corpse, the wet suit stretched to its limit. Nielsen's own attention was on the remaining, clinging worms that had stubbornly come along for the ride, burrowed as they were in the eye sockets and the gaping neck wound.

She again identified a small but deep gouge at the center of the throat other than the critical wound that had emptied the man's blood. There'd been no blood in the bottom of the boat, curiously enough, only cold, clear water, and of course the feasting worms. He'd been killed elsewhere and dumped in the green boat crudely carved with the Brody names- Myron, Lorene, Candice. The worms remained a mystery.

From the angle of the deadly jugular slash, Nielsen surmised that the killer was perhaps two and a half to three feet taller than Kemper-impossible, she could hear Chang saying-unless Kemper was kneeling at the time he was caught from behind and his throat cut right to left. Was he made to grovel on his knees perhaps?

There were other questions as well. For the slight Lauralie to have attacked so large a man and gotten his inert body down to the lake, she'd have had to have some sort of help, but Belkvin was out of the picture, long since dead. Had she lured a new boyfriend into her web, some local dupe she'd met at the M amp;M Cafe perhaps, to do her bidding? Had one of the Farnsworth boys fallen under her charms, only then to be murdered along with his brother? Perhaps she had even tempted both young men. She seemed to have an uncanny, near-supernormal power over men.

"Bag 'im, gentlemen." Nielsen stood and turned to face the lawn and the driveway, the house on the knoll. She saw Chang directing some guy in a cherry picker from his standing position atop the shed. She lifted a perfunctory wave in his direction, seeing that he was staring back at her now. Her eyes then went to the lawn, where the unevenly cut grass had been trampled by officers from the county, ATF, and FBI. She saw men smoking cigarettes, leaning against trees, cowboy boots resting on black valises, men and women in ball caps and Stetsons, some in uniform, others in jackets pulled over white shirts and ties. The overall effect was of a bizarre Norman Rockwell painting: a crowd of picnickers stepping over a pair of corpses, the bodies acting as focal point in the composition. Other than gabbing and biting on pipes, cigars, and cigarettes, these people on the lawn and standing around the vehicles in the drive looked as if they were doing nothing. She guessed most were standing about discussing the weekend college ball games. These thoughts wafted through her head, when suddenly it struck her. She knew how Lauralie had killed Kemper.

The lay of the grass coming toward her, creating a near- imperceptible path, screamed in her head; the lawnmower had made this errant path down to the docks. The more she stared at it, the clearer the picture came into edgy focus. She now recognized the faint little dirt and mud trail along the pier boardwalk, a trail they'd managed to trample over-the evidence that the mower had been guided with Kemper still sitting astride the cushion, with her knife at his throat while she straddled the back.