William Lashner - Falls The Shadow

“Now, Dr. Peasley, you put the time of death at approximately midnight, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Peasley, in his slow, deep voice. “That is right.”

“And you saw her how much later?”

“She was brought to me at approximately noon the next day. So it was approximately twelve hours later.”

“And what condition was the body in then?”

“When a person dies,” said Peasley slowly, slowly, “the body goes through a number of specific stages of deterioration. At the very moment of death, the heart stops, the muscles relax, the bladder and bowels release. Depending on the environment, the body will begin to lose approximately one and a half degrees Fahrenheit each hour. This loss of temperature is referred to as algor mortis.”

“What happens after thirty minutes?”

“Under normal conditions, after thirty minutes blood begins to pool in the lower portions of the body, which is referred to as livor mortis. The skin turns purple and waxy. The hands and feet turn blue. The eyes begin to sink into the skull.”

“And after four hours?”

“At four hours, the pooling of the blood and the purpling of the skin continue. And rigor mortis begins to set in.”

“What exactly is rigor mortis, Doctor?”

“Rigor mortis is a rigidity of the body that occurs after death. It is effected by chemical changes in the muscle tissue and causes the joints to become so stiff it is almost impossible to move them without breaking the bone. This starts after about four hours, becomes full at twelve hours. After that, the body gradually returns to a limp state.”

François was listening to this testimony with a sense of bland detachment on his face, which didn’t surprise me. Testimony on the texture of dead muscle was no mystery to a four-star chef whose signature dish involved a rack of ribs, I figured, even if the dead muscle being testified to was that of his wife. But Beth’s emotionless reaction, as she sat between François and me at the defense table, was somewhat puzzling. She had a yellow legal pad before her, a line drawn down the middle of the page, and she bit her lip with concentration as she listened to the doleful responses of Dr. Peasley and took notes on the testimony in preparation for her cross. From her expression, the witness could have been talking about real estate valuations or a stock deal that went south, not describing the condition of a murder victim laid on his autopsy table or the stages of deterioration of the human body after death.

“Now, when you examined the body at the morgue,” said Mia Dalton to the coroner, “you determined that she had been dead for about twelve hours.”

“That’s right. I determined the time of death first by analyzing the algor mortis. I did this by taking the temperature of the liver, which was just over eighty degrees, and doing the calculation. I also examined the extent of livor mortis, or the pooling of the blood, which was extensive, and determining the state of rigor mortis, which at the time was full.”

“Which meant what, Dr. Peasley?”

“All her muscles and joints were completely stiff.”

“At that time did you try to move any of her joints?”

“Yes, I did. Her right arm was bent beneath her, as you can tell in the photographs from the crime scene. In order to examine her hand, I had to move the arm. It was quite difficult.”

I leaned over and looked at Beth’s notes. Algor mortis – 80 degrees. Livor mortis, pooling of the blood. Rigor mortis, completely stiff. “How about mortis and pestle?” I said softly.

“What?” she whispered back.

“If you’re going to include all the mortises in your notes, you shouldn’t forget the good old mortis and pestle.”

“That’s mortar and pestle,” she said without looking away from the witness.

“Or my grade-school friend Freddie Mortis.”

“Happy boy?”

“No, actually, a bit depressed. Obsessed with death, for some reason. I suppose we know why this Dr. Peasley went to med school.”

“Be quiet.”

“To fight the scourge of insomnia.”

“Shhhh. I need to get ready for my cross.”

“What are you going to ask him?”

“If he’ll share his Valium with me,” said Beth.

“Were you able to see the deceased’s hand?” said Dalton after glancing our way with irritation. I smiled back.

“Eventually, yes,” said Dr. Peasley.

“What state was it in?”

“It was blue and clenched.”

“Did you have cause to open her hand?”

“Yes. As part of the autopsy, it was important to examine her hands and fingers for any possible wounds, also to determine if there was any tissue matter under the nails, which we could analyze. Unfortunately, there was not.”

“Can you describe opening the hand?”

“It was difficult. It was clenched tight.”

“Could that have been the result of rigor mortis?”

“No. A hand won’t clench as a result of rigor mortis, it will just stiffen. Her hand was already clenched when rigor mortis began to set in.”

Beth jotted down this little nugget on her notepad. I stared at her profile for a moment, sturdy and sincere, her forehead attractively creased in concentration. It was the familiar profile of my best friend, yet somehow different than I had ever seen it before. And then François leaned forward, so that in my viewpoint his handsome features were now side by side with Beth’s. The girl in the back seat of the Pontiac would have seen her father ripped from her youth in the most violent way. For the rest of her life, she’d be pining for him. And perhaps looking for a substitute. An older man, maybe. Or a doctor. Or a man with a streak of anger in him. Or maybe a man similarly separated from his child, his daughter. Maybe a man who looked to that girl in the back seat, now grown, as his only hope for salvation.

“And what did you find when you tried to open her hand?” said Dalton to the witness.

“As slowly as I could, I pried open her fingers. I was working carefully so as not to break any bones. And that is when I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“The thing that she had been clenching.”

“Did you recover it?”

“Yes.”

“What state was it in?”

“It was creased, there was some blood, but it was still recognizable.”

“I want to show you what is marked as People’s Exhibit Twenty-one. Do you recognize that exhibit?”

“Yes. It is the object I found in the deceased’s hand. It has my initials on the back.”

“And what is it, exactly?”

“It is a photograph,” he said, and then he pointed his long, bony finger at François. “Of him. What I found clenched in the murder victim’s hand was a photograph of the defendant, François Dubé.”

There were gasps in the courtroom. Dalton had cleverly not mentioned the photograph in her opening and it was a surprise to the jury and some of the spectators, and so there were gasps. And at that very moment, along with the jury, I gasped, too.

But not at the photograph.

And that was not the last of the surprises for me at that trial. Let me tell you, the hits just kept on coming.

Mia Dalton stood at the lectern and gave me a sly smile. It wasn’t overt, and because the prosecution always sits closest to the jury box, and because she was turned from the jurors when she gave it, it wasn’t discernible by the twelve and two alternates who really mattered, but there it was, clear as the sun on a clear, sunny day.

Son of a bitch.

“Please state your name for the record,” she said to the witness.

“Geoffrey Sunshine,” said Geoffrey Sunshine, who proceeded to spell his name as if we all were second-graders who needed the help.