Michael Baden - Remains Silent

Nostalgic and worried. Color had returned to Pete’s face, and there’d been no recurrence of stomach cramps, but still it was obvious his friend was failing. His eyes are jaundiced. Must be drinking or sick. How do I bring up the subject? He’s one proud son of a bitch.

After dinner, they went to Pete’s study and opened the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, the granddaddy of blended scotches and, Jake knew, Harrigan’s favorite guilty pleasure- that and a foul-smelling pipe. Jake had received the bottle as a gift from the National Organization of Law Enforcement Officers after he’d delivered a lecture on the relationship between police, medicine, and the crime scene. He’d been tempted to sample it but had saved it to share with Harrigan; now he wasn’t so sure it was the right thing to do.

Pete sipped, puffed on his pipe, breathed contentment. “We had some interesting cases together, didn’t we? Remember the ‘ghost spots’ murder? The Adam Gardiner case?”

“Use that one to teach about blood spatter,” Jake agreed. “It was one of the first autopsies I watched you perform.”

Gardiner had been found dead in his garage, naked, facedown in his own blood, a gash over his right eye. His body had more than a hundred red and brown bruises, some small, some large. There was blood in the house as well, smears and drops over the kitchen floor. The police thought it was murder. They shipped the body to Harrigan at the morgue.

“But the gash on the head couldn’t bleed that much,” Harrigan went on. “And the drops on the floor were evenly spaced. When I saw the blood spatter I knew. Gardiner had been walking slowly; there was no killer coming up behind him. The autopsy findings confirmed it. He had undiagnosed untreated tuberculosis that bled into his lungs; he couldn’t breathe and was coughing blood. He was too drunk to call nine-one-one. The bruises were in different stages of healing, indicative of an alcoholic who keeps hitting edges of chairs and walls. Fall-down drunk, as the saying goes. It’s how he got that gash over his eye: he fell. His death was natural. He killed himself- by drinking.”

This was the kind of talk Jake adored. He had some of it with Wally, but his assistant would need more experience to know its full pleasure. “They never taught us in med school that when a person coughs up blood, it mixes with air and forms bubbles,” he said. “But you did. So the drops dry with clear centers, unlike blood drops from a cut. The bubble pops when it hits the ground. After it dries, the center appears pale as a ghost. Ghost spots.”

Pete raised his glass in triumph. “Good work, that. The emphasis today on DNA takes away from the importance of paying attention to small details at the scene and the autopsy. It’s made us lazy.”

Jake joined him in his salute. “You made me realize a good ME is a scientific detective. The obvious answers aren’t always right, and the right answers aren’t always obvious.” He took a deep breath. “Pete, are you all right?”

The older man looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Today, for example. You couldn’t take the sun; you doubled over in the morgue; you were pale as paper. I don’t like it.”

Pete poured himself another drink, swallowed it in a gulp, and poured again, leaving this one on the desk. “I’m fine. Really.”

“I don’t believe you. I’ll get off this, I promise, but if you’re sick, tell me.”

Sadness and pain crept into Harrigan’s eyes. “Jake, I-”

“Go on.”

“I miss her, is all. I miss my wife Dolores.”

That’s not all, Jake thought. Not by a long shot. But if his friend didn’t want to talk, there was no way to force him. Pete had always been secretive, sometimes revealing what he wanted Jake to know only by leading him to that knowledge indirectly. I’ll find out the rest when he’s ready and not until then. Be patient.

By Sunday night, Jake was back home reviewing autopsy photos and witness statements in preparation for testimony he had to give in a murder trial the next morning. If it hadn’t been for the court appearance, he’d have stayed in Turner and taken his first vacation day in God knows how long to keep working with Harrigan.

But the truth was they’d done just about all they could do for the time being. They’d photographed the skeletons, concentrating on the broken vertebra, cracked ribs, and skull defect. They’d collected samples of the soil where the stomachs would have been in hopes of discovering what the decedents had eaten- a wild chance, they knew, but Harrigan would send it to the lab all the same, along with the hair for toxicology. When Jake finally drove off around seven, Harrigan was still at the hospital, x-raying the bones.

Jake didn’t hear from Harrigan again until Tuesday afternoon. It was already past three, and Jake still had two more autopsies ahead of him. He was sorting through messages in his office, putting aside everything that wasn’t marked Urgent, when the phone rang.

“Have a minute?”

“Maybe two, but that’s all. What’s up?”

“There’s been a breakthrough, but it’s a good-news/bad-news situation.” There was tension in Pete’s voice, but at least it was strong.

“Go on.”

“The good news is we know where the bodies came from. The bad news is everyone’s so happy with the answer, they’re about to restart work on the mall.”

“Slow down. How’d you find out about the bodies?”

“I didn’t. Marge Crespy did. Remember the initials on the elastic?”

“Of course.”

“Turns out they stand for Turner Mental Hospital. As long as I’ve lived here, it’s been called the Turner Psychiatric Institute, but Marge is the historian and knew the earlier names- it began as a home for the feebleminded. Anyway, I got in touch with Hank Ewing- Henry Ewing, Nobel laureate, dean of the Catskill Medical School, once head of Turner, friend of mine- and he filled me in on the place’s history. I’ll tell you when we see each other. The point is, they treated nearly ten thousand people over the decades, among them hundreds of indigents.”

“And Ewing says that when they died they were buried in the field?” Jake asked.

“It’s not far from the hospital- which is closed down, by the way. I guess they ran out of crazies in Baxter County, or it got too expensive to keep them. Marge found no record of its being a potter’s field, and as far as Sheriff Fisk and Mayor Stevenson are concerned, the case is closed. Indigents. Untraceable. The backhoe rides again at dawn.”

The queasy feeling returned to Jake’s stomach. Corruption. “They’re going too fast,” he said. “They should at least wait until you have the tox and DNA results.”

“Right. And I need to reshoot the X-rays on the Skeleton Two humerus. Something went wrong with the film.”

“But Fisk and Stevenson don’t want to hold up construction.”

Harrigan sighed. “You know, I’d just as soon let ’em go on. I have to live in this town, and I’m not a big fan of crucifixion.”

Jake felt a surge of anger. “Quitting?”

“Not really.” He sounded suddenly very tired. “I went over to the site again Monday, looking for the plate from the skull of Skeleton Three. God knows, Fisk wasn’t going to do it. Anyway, I found it. Fits perfectly. You can take a look tomorrow.”

“Pete, there’s no way I can get there. I’ve got a month’s work here to be finished by Friday.”

“But who else is going to help me identify the other three bodies?”

Sly fox. The other three? “You’ve ID’d one of them?”

“From the laundry mark.” Harrigan sounded smug.

“Assuming the man was wearing his own underpants.”