Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

When I round the bend in the wall, two more uniforms confront me, but after shining a SureFire in my face, they wave me through. Thirty yards beyond them, a bubble of artificial light whites out the night. Men in uniforms and street clothes move deliberately through that light, and even from this distance I see the rumpled mess they are orbiting. I feel a rush of vertigo that could have been caused by the ladder climb, but I know better. A man I knew from the age of four is dead, and I am about to look into his empty eyes. I pause to gather myself, then walk forward.

As I get closer, Chief Logan notices me and breaks away from the others. Logan is thin and fit and looks more like an engineer than a cop. Tonight he’s wearing street clothes and carrying a small flashlight, which he aims just in front of his feet. A wise man. I’d hate to know how many venomous snakes are within a hundred feet of me right now.

“That

was

quick.” Logan gives my hand a quick but firm shake. “I didn't want to say any more on the phone, but you’d better steel yourself. It’s bad.”

“I’'ve seen a lot of homicide victims,” I say with more bravado than I feel. The truth is, I’'ve seen a lot more crime-scene photos of victims than victims themselves, though I have seen my share of violent death. But when it’s someone you know, it’s different. Once the insulating barrier of professional detachment is breached, there’s no telling what emotions will come pouring out.

“Did he have his wallet on him?” I ask, moving closer to the scene. “Is that how you knew who he was?”

“No sign of his wallet. A patrolmen recognized him. I doubted it at first, the face was so messed up by the fall, but my man seemed sure. Says he played blackjack at Jessup’s table some.”

I'm close enough now to see the dark blood pooled under Tim’s upper body. Turning away from the carnage, I look Logan in the eyes. “What made you call me?”

The chief stares straight back at me. “Jessup had a cell phone in his back pocket. He landed on his face and hands, so the phone was still working. I took a look at the call log, and the last call he placed before he died was to your cell phone.”

This revelation leaves me speechless. I haven'’t spoken to Tim in the past twenty-four hours. But if he called my cell phone, it should have rung. I was standing on one of the highest points in the city.

“I didn't get any call from Jessup tonight.”

Logan chews on this for a few seconds. “He actually called you four times. Or tried to, anyway. Three times about twelve minutes before he died, and then once in the seconds right before he went over the fence. That'’s the best I can figure anyway. Did you have your cell phone on?”

“Yes.”

Logan doesn’'t ask to see my phone. He doesn’'t have to. He can easily check my records, and I'm sure he will. To save him the trouble, I call up the log on my Razr. It shows no incoming calls from Jessup. I move to Logan’s side so he can see this information.

“Were you in a dead spot or something?” he asks.

“No.”

“Huh. I can’t figure it, then. When was the last time you talked to him before today?”

“I don'’t remember,” I say in an offhand voice. “You know how it is. I’'ve seen him to say hello in the street, but no real conversation.”

Logan nods, but his eyes are watchful.

“I’d like to look at his body now, Chief. Do you mind?” I ask permission because I must. Logan’s allowing this would be purely a courtesy. To help him decide, I add, “I want to get to his house and tell his wife as quickly as possible.”

“Don’t you want to know how it happened?” Logan asks. “How he went over, I mean?”

I can’t believe I haven'’t asked this yet, but then the reason comes to me: I'm a lot more concerned about what Tim might have been carrying when he went over the fence than the circumstances that caused him to do so. “I’d prefer to see his body first. Could you clear those people out of there, Chief?”

“Everybody but the coroner. She doesn’'t answer to me.”

The truth is, the coroner is one of the few people whose presence I can tolerate in this situation. Jewel Washington is a nurse who ran for office after being laid off from one of the two hospitals in the city. An MD isn’t a requirement to be a coroner in Mississippi, but Jewel is a knowledgeable and conscientious nurse, and she does a better job with the dead than was sometimes done in the past.

As I step into the pool of light, I see that Chief Logan didn't exaggerate. Tim’s body sustained massive trauma as a result of the fall. The impact broke both his forearms and split his skull above the eyebrows. The one eye I can see is wide and cloudy, the eye of a dead fish on a pier. In my mind I hear my father’s voice telling me about René Le Fort, the French army physician who created the system for classifying facial fractures by throwing cadavers off the roof of an army hospital. Though Tim is almost unrecognizable, it’s not his shattered face that holds my attention. It’s his chest and arms. His shirt is shredded and covered with blood, and his broken forearms look almost as though they were mauled by a wild animal. His chest and neck also show puncture wounds and tears. Unless he fell forty feet into a pile of nails and broken glass, I don'’t see how he could have got those injuries.

“I turned him over,” Jewel Washington says from the darkness behind me. “Soon as I did, I wished I hadn'’t. You ever seen anything like that?”

The coroner’s voice seems to come from far away, as though we are hikers separated in a twisted canyon.

I’'ve seen worse than this,

I reply silently,

but not on someone I knew well.

“You mean his arms?”

“Yeah, his arms. He didn't get those wounds in no fall.”

I bend over Tim, squinting down at the torn flesh. “Could animals have gotten to him before anyone else did?”

“I guess it’s possible. Histamine tests will tell us that. But you ask me, that stuff happened antemortem.”

“Christ,” I whisper.

“Christ, indeed. This world done gone crazy, I believe.”

Jewel speaks with the weary resignation of a middle-aged black woman who has sacrificed a lot to send her two sons to junior college. Because she has worked closely with my father in the past, I know I can rely on her to give me all the help in her power.

I stand and give her a hug from the side. “Did the fall kill him?”

“Can’t say. Not yet, anyway. He’s got some kind of wounds on his leg that smell like cooked pork to me. Got to be burns, but I don'’t know how he’d get those.” Jewel’s bloodshot eyes hold mine. “Do you?”

I shake my head, trying to repress images of Tim being tortured for information, yet wondering what his torturers did to tear him up so badly.

“We won'’t know about this one until they do the autopsy up in Jackson,” Jewel observes.

“Well, let’s make sure they do it in a hurry.” I turn back to the coroner and give her a small glimpse of my outrage. “Don’t miss a lick on this one, Jewel. Push for every test you can get. Toxicology, everything.”

“I plan to.” She grunts noncommittally. “Let’s just hope the DA is on board for it.”

I expel a lungful of air at the thought of Shad Johnson being in charge of Tim’s case. “I'm going to inform the victim’s wife.”

“Lord,” Jewel says softly. “That'’s one visit I'm glad I don'’t have to make.”

“If anybody asks you tonight, he died instantly. Okay?”

She nods slowly. “I can live with that until tomorrow. I hope it’s the truth too.”

I lean closer and look into her dark eyes, holding her gaze. “Has anybody searched the body?”

“Not since I been here. But you know they did before I got here.” Shouts reverberate along the wall from atop the bluff, and I see drunken spectators peering down at Tim and us.