Beverly Connor - Dust to Dust

“Whom can we get to do it? The autopsy, I mean,” said Kingsley. “I have some funds I can use.”

“Good,” said Diane. “There is only so much you’re going to be able to get for free.”

“Did you find anything outside?” Diane asked Jin.

“I found a few cigarette butts at the side of the road nearest the steps to her apartment. I don’t expect much from those. Most look too new. Could be from anybody before or since. I searched the wooded area in back of the house. Didn’t find anything. Took a lot of pictures. But there is an empty house just beyond the woods. There are a lot of empty houses in the neighborhood. I kind of wanted to see if I could get in, but I figured you wouldn’t want me to.”

“I think if we find enough to get the police to reopen the case, they can call the GBI in to do a search,” said Diane.

They stopped at the museum to drop Jin off. Diane had called ahead and a member of museum security was waiting at the door with a cart to transport the crime scene gear inside.

“I’ll start analyzing the evidence for you, Boss,” he said, unloading the crime scene equipment and a duffel bag filled with the bags of evidence they had collected.

“Do you have time?” she asked.

“I’ll do it in my free time. We’re doing good in the lab. Don’t worry,” he said. “Am I ever not on top of things?”

“I never worry about the DNA lab,” said Diane. “Thanks, Jin.”

“Sure thing, Boss. We’ll have to do this again sometime. It was fun.”

“Where to now?” said Kingsley. “Shall I take you home?”

Diane shook her head. “Let’s arrange for a medical examiner. I have someone in mind.” Diane made a call on her cell to see if it was a convenient time for a visit, and directed Kingsley to the home of Lynn Webber. She lived in an apartment complex close to the university.

“Hey,” said Lynn when she answered the door. “This is a surprise. What are you doing in this area?” She looked at Ross Kingsley as Diane was about to introduce him. “I know you. You’re the FBI profiler, aren’t you? I worked on those hanging victims. That was just terrible.”

“That’s right,” said Ross. “I’m not with the FBI anymore. I work for a private firm.”

“Well, come in and tell me about it,” she said.

Lynn Webber’s home was clean, neat, and modern. There were a lot of white-and cream-colored fabrics, shiny chrome, crystal fixtures, and modern art.

Lynn was about five feet five, shorter than either Kingsley or Diane. She had short, shiny black hair that always looked as if it had been done at an expensive salon. Her eyes were dark and her smile bright. She wore turquoise silk slacks and a white silk shirt and silver jewelry. Many men who met her fell in love with her. Diane could see Kingsley found her interesting. But she wasn’t particularly worried about him. Kingsley’s wife, Lydia, was pretty interesting herself and more than a match for Lynn.

“Please sit down. You have me intrigued. Can I get you something to drink? I always have fresh coffee.”

Diane and Kingsley accepted and had several sips of hot coffee before Diane began her request.

“By intrigued , what Lynn means is, what am I trying to get her involved in now?” said Diane. “She knows I have a habit of coming to her with, uh, interesting problems.”

“Oh, dear, what are you up to?” said Lynn, smiling over her cup of coffee.

Diane let Kingsley explain his job at Darley, Dunn, and Upshaw. When he got to Stacy’s file, which he had brought with him, Diane took over.

“I’d like you to look at the autopsy report and the photograph. It’s the only one we have of her. If there were any autopsy photos of her, we don’t have them,” said Diane. She handed Lynn the photograph and the report.

Lynn examined them carefully for several minutes. “I see your concern,” she said, tapping them with her polished fingernails.

“We have the father’s permission to exhume her and were wondering if you would perform the second autopsy,” said Diane. “I don’t know the ME who did the first one, but I don’t imagine he will be pleased.”

“He won’t,” said Lynn. “I know Oran Doppelmeyer.” She looked at Kingsley and then at Diane. “He won’t be pleased at all, which, I’m so ashamed to say, is the main reason I’d be happy to do it.”

Both Ross Kingsley and Diane looked at Lynn Webber with raised eyebrows. Ross had his coffee cup halfway to his lips, about to drink the last sip. He held it there.

“There must be a story here,” he said.

“There is. It’s a two-cups-of-coffee story,” said Lynn.

She poured them each another cup.

“About seven years ago, Doppelmeyer was the medical examiner in South Carolina and I was assistant ME to him. One evening I was called to the apartment of a young couple after neighbors heard a gunshot and alerted the police. She was on the couch, gun in hand, with a bullet entry wound in her right temple and a big exit wound in the left side of the head. It was messy. She had been dead only about fifteen minutes by the time I got there. She held the gun so tight in her hand, it took me and two paramedics to pry it loose.

“The neighbors said she and her husband had been arguing. The arguing stopped. A few minutes later there was the gunshot. The husband was an accountant and said he left the apartment following the argument and went to his office to work. That’s where the police found him.”

She took a sip of coffee and set down her cup, almost spilling it on the glass coffee table.

“I did the autopsy, determined the manner of death to be suicide, and released the coroner’s report. Well, you would have thought I had just given national secrets to the Russians. What I didn’t know, but wouldn’t have changed anything if I had been aware, was that her parents were well connected. They hated the son-in-law and were convinced he shot her and left her there with her brains spattered all over the white couch they had given the couple. The district attorney liked that story better than mine and he had the police arrest the young man.”

Diane and Ross were quiet during her story, Diane because she knew Lynn and knew better than to interrupt her with questions, and Kingsley because he was enjoying watching her tell it. Lynn also talked with her hands and was quite animated.

“To make a very long story a little shorter,” she said, “Doppelmeyer changed my report to say the manner of death was homicide. It went to trial and the defense called me. I testified that it was suicide. I explained about cadaver spasm and how we had to pry, with great difficulty, the gun from her hand. The prosecution, the family, and Doppelmeyer all came down hard on me. Doppelmeyer took the stand and told the jury I was incompetent and he had to constantly check my work-a blatant lie. He told them that what I called cadaver spasm was simply early onset of rigor mortis and the rigor caused her to hold on to the gun that her husband had placed there. He intimated that I had been out drinking before I got the call-I had been out to dinner, but not drinking. It was just awful. I was fired. Me, fired!” She frowned and shook her head.

Diane half expected her to stamp her foot.

“The poor husband was sent to prison. He did get out three years later because the prosecution had made several other errors in the trial and the defense attorney gave the new prosecutor a ton of information about cadaver spasm. But you know, there are people in South Carolina today who think that poor fella killed his wife.”

Lynn’s cheeks had turned pink during the telling of the story. Diane could see it still stung.

“I can tell you this,” said Lynn. “I’m willing to bet that when Doppelmeyer saw this photograph, he made up his mind this girl was trash. Not only is he a pig, he is a self-righteous pig.”