Michael Baden - Remains Silent

“That was fast,” Kenneth said. “After we serve the order on the hospital, we’ll be home by supper.”

“I don’t think so. As long as we’re here and finished so early, I thought we might take a little side trip on Patrice’s behalf. See if I can rouse some ghosts.”

It took Jake three hours to complete his morning autopsies, and he still hadn’t started on the paperwork. Pederson’ll ream me a new one if I don’t get it done, he thought, though the words swam before his eyes. Under Harrigan, Pederson’s predecessor, there were far fewer forms with far fewer necessary signatures, and a doctor could get home at a decent hour. He had about decided that rest was worth a tongue-lashing when the phone rang.

“Dr. Rosen?” A man’s voice, oozing honey. Bad news.

“Speaking.”

“My firm represents R. Seward Reynolds, the developer of the Turner Mall.”

“And your name is…?”

“Michael Thompson of Javalovich, Custer, Thompson and Warbler. We understand that your representative is in Baxter County trying to preserve the skeletons and close up the area where they were found, and that you yourself have been espousing preposterous theories that could cause our client financial harm.”

Manny’s work. Good girl! And wouldn’t she love it if she knew he called her my “representative.” “Who told you that?”

“We don’t reveal client confidences. We simply wanted to tell you, as a courtesy, that our client is prepared to litigate for any monies lost as a result of your or your representative’s actions. To put it plainly: Stick to your own job.”

Jake usually responded with great cool, but he had a few trigger points. Threats were high on his short list. Anger flooded his bloodstream like a serum. “Mr. Thompson, are you threatening me? You tell your client that if he tries to stop me or my representative, I’ll bury his bones next to those of Mr. Lyons and personally build a shopping center over them.” He slammed down the phone, surprised at the vehemence of his loathing.

The phone rang again.

“Look, you, if you ever-”

“Dr. Rosen,” said a woman’s breathless voice, “thank God you’re there! You’ve got to help us. Something awful’s happened.”

Jake rubbed at the vein throbbing in his temple. “Who is this?”

“It’s Paula Koros, Theresa Alessis’s daughter.”

His breathing slowed. “Of course Ms. Koros. Forgive me for shouting. I was just about to call you. I’ve completed the autopsy of your mother’s body.” How best to break it to her?

She didn’t give him a chance. “I’m at the funeral home. The whole family’s here. Dr. Rosen, the body in the coffin- it’s not my mother. It’s a different woman altogether.”

He knew the body he’d worked on was Mrs. Alessis; he had seen her alive a few days before. But there were two other bodies at the morgue. Was it possible…?

He called Baxter Community Hospital and got the morgue attendant, a man who sounded not much older than eighteen.

“Last night I performed an autopsy on a woman named Theresa Alessis. She was to be transported this morning to the Fairview Funeral Home, only the wrong body went to that funeral parlor. I need to know what other female bodies were in the morgue last night.”

“I’m not sure I’m authorized to give out that information.”

“This is urgent! Tell me now!” Jake ordered.

The answer came back quickly. “There were two other bodies in the morgue: one female, one male. Female was Brigit Reilly, seventy-five. Husband deceased. No children. The death certificate says Alzheimer’s. File says she lived at Sweetbrook.”

“A nursing home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And where was Mrs. Reilly’s body sent for preparation?”

“Shady Briar. It’s like forty minutes away. Only it’s kinda weird.” He paused.

Jake sighed in frustration. “What’s weird?”

“The van for the county cemetery came here late this morning, looking for Mrs. Reilly. I told them she was gone, that we had received instructions to send her to Shady Briar for private internment.”

The throbbing grew worse. “Mrs. Reilly was initially supposed to be buried in a pauper’s grave?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Only the body now seems to be at a third place, Fairview?”

“Seems so.” Jake could visualize the shrug.

The mix-up was too coincidental. It felt ominous to Jake. Pete’s murder. The stolen bottle. Thompson’s call about the bones. The trashing of Pete’s house. And now a missing body. “Let me have the numbers for Sweetbrook and Shady Briar. I tell you, young man, if this is a hospital error…” But it isn’t. It’s something more.

At Sweetbrook, a nurse from the Alzheimer’s wing agreed to go to the Fairview Funeral Home to look at the body and to call Jake on his pager once she had. An hour later, his suspicion was verified: The body that lay before Theresa Alessis’s grieving family was, in fact, Brigit Reilly.

He called Shady Briar. “My name is Dr. Jake Rosen and I’m trying to locate a body that was delivered to your funeral home this morning,” he told the director.

“We’re not strictly a funeral home,” the man said. “We’re a mausoleum, for the interment of remains. As well as a crematorium, of course.”

A curlicue of dread snaked toward his heart. “The body is cremated?”

“Indeed. At the request of her son.”

“She didn’t have any children! That wasn’t Mrs. Reilly. Mrs. Reilly is lying in a casket at the Fairview Funeral Home in Turner.”

“Impossible,” the director said. “You’re mistaken, Dr. Rosen. We received instructions from Mrs. Reilly’s son early this morning; my service rang me around six. He told me his mother had expired at Baxter Community Hospital and he wanted her cremated as soon as possible. We picked her up- her name was clearly present on the tag on the body bag. I met him myself. A polite man. Very clean. He paid for our services in cash. And we honor our commitments, doctor.”

The dread struck. He felt dizzy. “What did the son look like?”

“Hard to say. I’m not good at describing people when they’re perpendicular.” He chuckled. “Average build, brown hair, in his forties.”

“Did he mention picking up the ashes or make any arrangements for a remains mausoleum?”

“Not as of now.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“Not at all. Remains sometimes go unclaimed for years, regardless of the original intention. People don’t know what to do with them. That’s why we offer eternal storage in our peaceful-”

“Hold on to those ashes. Don’t release them to anyone unless you personally deliver them to the Alessis family at Fairview.”

“The Alessis family? Whatever for?”

“I don’t think you heard me. You cremated the wrong woman. That ‘son’ hired you to get rid of evidence.”

A beat. “Evidence?”

“Mrs. Alessis was murdered.”

“Heavenly God!”

“God,” said Jake, “had nothing to do with it.”

Edward Dyson, the administrator of Baxter Community Hospital, was smarm incarnate. “You didn’t have to bring the papers personally,” he told Manny in his office. “Judge Bradford called me himself. Too late, though,” he said as he gnawed on a jelly bean from the jar on his desk.

The breath went out of her; she felt she’d been punched in the chest. “Too late?”

Instead of answering, Dyson pressed a button by his phone. In moments, a thin man, appearing only old enough to have just graduated high school, arrived at the office door. “Tommy,” the administrator said, “this is Ms. Manfreda. Tell her what you told me.”

“Mr. Dyson said we gotta hang on to those skeletons from the mental bin. But I told him they already got sent away.”