Michael Baden - Remains Silent

Stubborn but cute. “Okay, let’s get it over with.”

The light in the cellar was harsh, reminding Manny of the autopsy room at Baxter Community Hospital. Jake put on a pair of gloves, pried open the box, and lifted out an opaque plastic container. Manny leaned in to read the label:

Specimen 2005, Adam Gardiner. ALCOHOLISM. TUBERCULOSIS. HIV/AIDS. Skin from anterior right thigh. Male, age 41. Date of autopsy 1-29-2005.

“Strange,” Jake said. “This is the name of someone who died decades ago, a case Pete and I were discussing when I last saw him alive.” He screwed open the top.

Manny jumped back. “What’s that smell? And what are those little creatures floating in the fluid?”

He reverted to professor mode. “The smell’s formaldehyde, and the creatures are maggots. Most people hate them, but God must like them- he made so many. Forensic scientists love them because they tell us a lot about decedents: what they were eating, time of death, what drugs they were taking, even their DNA. It’s pretty simple- you can grind them up in any kitchen blender and then do any laboratory tests needed.”

“I think that’s disgusting.” The hands that touched me last night touched maggots? I have to get over that? “Why aren’t they dead if they’ve been in formaldehyde?”

“For one thing, formaldehyde kills the bacteria that would normally kill maggots. That’s the reason it’s such a good preservative. For years, many brands of women’s nail polish contained formaldehyde.”

Manny looked at her once perfectly manicured fingers. Formaldehyde? “Charming picture, maggots in a blender. Remind me to bring my own Waring over if ever I should cook here in the future- now that I know what you do with yours.”

“Still,” Jake said, “it’s a peculiar thing for him to leave for me. Unless-”

His hands are trembling. Manny, about to make some wisecrack, changed her mind. “Unless what?”

“Unless he was hiding something he wanted me, and only me, to find after he died.”

“So he picked a place so disgusting no one else would look in it?”

“Precisely.”

“He was right. Only people named Jake or Damien would want to put a hand in there, even though gloved.” Jake’s gloved hand was already in. Manny turned away.

“I’ve got it!” His dripping hand emerged from the container holding a waterproof bag with an envelope inside it.

“Is it alive?” Manny asked, her head still averted.

“It’s a manila envelope. Look.”

She turned back. Jake had opened the bag and withdrawn the envelope.

“What’s in it?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.” Jake’s name was written on the envelope. “It was definitely meant for me. That’s Pete’s handwriting.”

Manny wished she shared Jake’s excitement. It won’t relate to Turner. Probably has to do with a case they shared. “Open it.”

Jake already had. Inside was a photograph and a folded piece of paper. He handed the picture to Manny and unfolded the paper. “There’s something stamped on the top.” He squinted. “PROPERTY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ACADEMIE FOR THE BETTERMENT OF LIFE.”

Now Manny’s hands were shaking. Excitement buzzed in her bloodstream like electricity. “Yes! Lorna told me I was the second person to visit the Academie. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But Harrigan must have been the first.”

“It’s a dental chart,” Jake said, his voice full of wonder, “signed by dental students from Columbia. Renko was right. They were apprentices. Timothy Iras and Martin Lowell.” He could barely breathe. “They performed four fillings at Turner: November and December, 1963. The patient’s name was Isabella de la Schallier, DOB 13 July 1945. Manny, the mandible showed four fillings. It can’t be a coincidence. This is her chart. The woman. Skeleton Four.”

Shock hit Manny with the force of a bomb blast. Isabella de la Schallier. I d la S. The initials on the wall in the Solitude Room. Harrigan found her bones! “But if that’s true, it means-”

Jake looked at her, his eyes dark with understanding. “Pete Harrigan knew the name of Skeleton Four but said nothing about it.” He shook his head, as though to rid it of demons. “What’s in the photograph?”

Manny looked at it for the first time. “It’s a picture of a picnic at Turner from the Baxter County Daily Gazette. I saw one like it when I went through the files at the Academie. There seem to be doctors and patients out for a stroll. Why would Harrigan hide something like that?”

“Let me see it.” Jake practically snatched the clipping from her hand to hold it under the light. His shoulders slumped and he covered his face with his hands. “I can’t believe it.”

“What? Tell me!”

Jake pointed to a young doctor walking by the side of a young woman. “That’s Pete in the picture. Pete was at Turner. He was there!”

“And the patient,” Manny whispered, as sure of this as she was of any hard evidence she had ever used in a trial, “is Isabella de la Schallier.”

“WELL, Lorna Meissen knows who I am,” said Manny, standing with Jake in front of a thin middle-aged woman who was guarding the reception desk as if it contained gold. “I was here early last week looking at the archives of the Turner Psychiatric Hospital.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Manfreda, but without written approval from our director, Mr. Parklandius, no one is allowed access to our records.”

“I went through this last time, ma’am, with Ms. Meissen. You are a designated governmental repository for public documents. I am entitled as a member of the public to see them.”

“Not anymore, Ms. Manfreda, and Ms. Meissen is no longer in our employ.” Cruella DeVille. “We have a new directive, confirmed by our lawyers, that all patient records, no matter how old, are confidential. None can be released without an authorization from the patient or a ruling from the Privacy Board in Washington, D.C.”

“But the records have been public a long time.”

“That’s irrelevant. Archival records are now subject to privacy laws. As a lawyer, you should know that.”

“I know nothing of the sort.” Don’t hit her.

“Perhaps Mr. Parklandius can straighten this out,” Jake said benignly. “Is he here?”

“I’m afraid not.” Her desk phone rang. She listened to the caller silently, then reddened. “It seems Mr. Parklandius is in. He’s expecting you in the reading room.”

The ride up in the open elevator cage was as eerie to Manny as the last. She clutched the same Vuitton bag she had carried then as though it were a buoy. The papers she had borrowed were inside. “Wonder how he knew we were here,” she said. “And how they knew I was a lawyer.”

Jake grinned. “Lawyers have a special odor, even you. I can smell one coming from fifty feet.”

She elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re a fine one to talk about smells. Why Parklandius’s change of heart, do you think?”

“Because he found out you were a good lawyer?”

“Or because he knows what you’ll do to his corpse if I kill him.”

They walked past the closed door of Mr. Parklandius’s office and entered the reading room. It was empty, but the same files Manny had looked through before were again set out on the table. Jake opened the file for 1964 and riffled through it. “Here’s the picture of the picnic,” he said, comparing the one Pete had left for him, “only it’s been cropped. Pete and the woman aren’t in it.”

“Mysterious,” Manny said. “Somebody must have known Harrigan took the original and substituted the cropped one. Too bad there’s no photo credit. We might be able to lay our hands on an eyewitness.”

A tall lanky man with graying hair and yellow-tinted glasses marched into the room. “Ms. Manfreda, Dr. Rosen, so nice of you to visit.” He did not extend his hand. “I’m Charles Parklandius.”