Doctored Death

by P. D. Workman

  She and Dr. Wiltshire both examined the body closely, looking for anything notable. Kenzie pulled a magnifying lens over the wound on his temple. Since the blood had been washed off, it seemed to be an unremarkable wound, like a toddler might get from running into the table. A bandage or a kiss and he’d be on his way to exploring again. But that wasn’t the case for Cartwright. His adventures had been permanently curtailed.

  “Small laceration,” she announced to Dr. Wiltshire and the digital recorder. She described it as thoroughly as she could as to size, shape, location, and color. She explored the wound, but it did not appear to be deep. It would have bled a good amount, being a scalp wound, but she would be surprised if it were the cause of death. She pressed the wound gently, feeling the skull underneath. “There is swelling under the laceration, but not a lot. I can’t feel any fractures in the skull. Do we have x-rays?”

  Dr. Wiltshire hit a button on the floor with his foot to bring the imaging up on the large view-screen, tapping it several times to get to the photo they wanted. Kenzie walked closer to the screen.

  “I don’t see any skull fractures.”

  “I concur.”

  They continued their examination of the body. When they were finished with the front and sides, they rolled him onto his stomach to examine his back. The lividity had been on his right side. Kenzie didn’t see any blood settled into the back of the body. He had, possibly, curled up in a fetal position on the floor after hitting his head. He had not been lying on his back.

  Dr. Wiltshire had removed the drape. He frowned and pointed to Cartwright’s backside. “Looks like diaper rash,” he said. “I thought the documents from the home indicated he was continent.”

  “Yes. They did.” Kenzie walked over to the desk where she had left the file. She didn’t touch it, but looked instead at the inventory sheet that George had filled out, which had not yet been inserted into the file. She ran her eyes down the list of clothing items. “Pajamas and briefs. No diaper.”

  Wiltshire frowned, thinking about that. He made an official note of it on the recording and they continued with their examination of the body.

  When they turned him back over, Kenzie examined his hands and trimmed his nails, looking for any dirt or foreign substances. Cartwright’s nails were well-manicured and clean. He didn’t have any injuries on his hands. Dr. Wiltshire examined the man’s lower half and replaced the drape folded across Cartwright’s middle before calling Kenzie over to look at the man’s legs. His shins and knees were considerably bruised. Several cuts looked relatively recent.

  “What do you make of that?” Kenzie asked.

  “I would say he’s been walking into things.”

  “That supports the theory that he was disoriented. Maybe he walked into something in the dark?”

  “A few of these might be from last night, but not all of them.” Dr. Wiltshire pointed at the edges of some of the other bruises and examined the healing cuts. “I would say... they go back about a week? What do you think?”

  Kenzie looked at the bruises. Some of them had fading edges, colors changing from blue and gray to green and yellow. She thought about her own experience with bruises and nodded. “Some people heal faster than others, but for a man of his age, I wouldn’t expect him to heal that much in a couple of days. We can compare them to the reference texts.”

  Wiltshire nodded. “Let’s take some pictures. You can compare them later. I’m pretty confident in my timeline.”

  In other words, Kenzie needed to educate herself, but Dr. Wiltshire had been on the job long enough to know his bruises. Kenzie nodded. They took a few pictures with a camera on an articulating arm that hung down from the ceiling. Wiltshire reviewed the images before moving on to make sure they were what he needed.

  Once the gross examination of the body was complete, it was time to open him up. If the cause of death had been obvious, perhaps if the wound on his temple had been more serious, they might not have gone any farther. But so far, they had not come across anything that clearly indicated Cartwright’s cause of death.

  4

  Kenzie took one more walk around the lab to make sure that everything was tidied up and put away. That would make it an easier start the next day. She wouldn’t be on. There wouldn’t be anyone there in the evening unless they had call-outs. If there were remains to be brought in, one of the staff would be on call to go in and deal with it. Anything that could wait for Kenzie’s return on Monday would wait. Hopefully, it would be a quiet weekend.

  Once she was sure that everything was taken care of, Kenzie grabbed her purse from her locked desk drawer and headed out to her car. She waved to the night guard.

  “Good night, Dr. Kirsch,” he called out to her. “Have a nice weekend.”

  “I plan to! You too!”

  He would be working through the weekend, so he wasn’t exactly going to be enjoying his leisure. Kenzie was glad for the protected parking garage under the building. She didn’t have to leave her baby out on the street all day. The little red convertible would attract too much attention and she didn’t want anyone trying to boost it because it looked like an easy target. A guarded parking garage under the police building was about as safe as it could get in town.

  There were a couple of lights on in the house when she got home, so she anticipated that Zachary was home, not out on surveillance. Which was good; she didn’t like him doing night jobs. Daytime surveillance didn’t bother her, but knowing that he was out after dark watching some adulterer or corporate spy always made her anxious. She found it hard to go to sleep on nights he was out. But he didn’t do a lot of night surveillance. When he didn’t have a big case going on, he was doing skip tracing, insurance fraud, and many other small projects that provided him with a steady income. The adultery and corporate espionage jobs were still there, but most of them could be handled during the day. At night, people went home to their wives or their televisions and relaxed.

  Kenzie pulled her car into the garage and pressed her clicker to shut the big door. She walked through the house door into the back mudroom, then into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Kenzie,” Zachary noticed her immediately. “How was your day?”

  “Pretty good.” Kenzie stretched and arched her back. The table had been set to the right height for Dr. Wiltshire, but he was a little taller than she was, and her upper back and shoulders were feeling the strain by the time they finished the post. “Glad to be home. All weekend. You have time off too, right?”

  Zachary was looking down at his phone and didn’t acknowledge the question. Kenzie waited for him to look back up. “This weekend?” Kenzie prompted, when he eventually looked back at her.

  “Do I have time?” Zachary asked, filling in the question with what he figured he’d missed. “Yes. I took time off. We’re good.”

  “Great. It will be nice to have some real time together.”

  Zachary nodded. It was something that Dr. B—Zachary’s therapist, who was also running their couples therapy—had been pushing them to do. Make more time to spend together. Not just the frayed edges at the end of the day when they both happened to be home at the same time. Some real quality time to visit, go to a movie, visit friends, or whatever other arrangements they felt like making. And, of course, she was right. Kenzie had been a workaholic throughout school, focused on her goal, and she was dedicated to Dr. Wiltshire and the office. Since Zachary had moved in with Kenzie—he did still have his own apartment in case one of them needed some space—they had fallen into the bad habit of assuming they would have time to do things together, with both of them filling up their time with work, chores, errands, meals, and sleep, until there wasn’t anything left for quality couple’s time or dates.

  “Why don’t you go get changed?” Zachary suggested. “I’ll... set the table. Did you want to cook tonight, or do you want to order in?”

  Kenzie considered. “I have one of those deluxe frozen pizzas from the grocery store. Why don’t we have that?”


  “Okay. Do you want me to put it in?”

  “No. You can get it out, but don’t put it in the oven yet.”

  Zachary nodded absently, looking back down at his phone. Kenzie went to her room to change. She dumped her purse on her writing desk and changed out of her work clothes into some comfy loungewear for the evening. She was pretty sure that Zachary wasn’t going to put the pizza in the oven, but he hadn’t really acknowledged what she had said. She knew from his past attempts that he was perfectly capable of putting the pizza into the oven with the plastic wrap on. Or forgetting to set the temperature or the timer.

  It wasn’t that he was helpless, but cooking, even just heating up meals, was not his forte. The poor executive skills and distractibility that came with his ADHD and PTSD meant that completing multiple steps in a particular order and keeping track of several things at once was a challenge. He would have to be completely focused, and he just wasn’t interested enough in meals for it to keep his focus. He would be thinking about whatever cases he was working on, or their relationship, or his family, or Bridget, or some other random thought that flitted through his brain, and the dinner and all the remaining steps it would take to complete the meal would be forgotten.

  When she returned to the living room, Zachary was still looking at his phone and had not bothered to get the pizza out of the freezer. Which was fine with Kenzie. Better that than trying to figure out how to get melting plastic wrap off the pizza before it was too late. She set the oven temperature, put the unwrapped pizza in, and set a timer. She had learned not to judge Zachary by how easy a task was for her to complete. And in the same way, he could run circles around her in private investigation, remembering camera f-stops, and out-of-the-box thinking. And he was sensitive and quickly attuned to others’ emotions, when Kenzie might chatter with someone for half an hour without realizing that they were upset about something.

  Zachary slid his phone into his pants pocket and entered the kitchen to pull out plates and set the table.

  “Are you talking to someone?” Kenzie asked. “What’s up with the phone?”

  “Oh. Sorry, were you talking to me? I was just...” Zachary made a motion to his pocket. “Rhys.”

  Kenzie nodded and smiled. Rhys Salter was a teen Zachary had met on an earlier case and had remained friends with. He was Black and selectively mute. While he enjoyed messaging with Zachary sometimes, it could be hard to interpret his gif messages or other pictures or brief words. He didn’t just text sentences like Kenzie would, mirroring what she would have said aloud. His use of language was not linear and writing more than a word or two was a challenge. Zachary’s intense focus on the phone at intervals made sense if he were trying to interpret Rhys’s messages.

  “Oh, I see. How is he?”

  “Good, I think. It’s been rough, but I think he’s at school most days now. Hopefully keeping up with his classes.”

  Witnessing someone getting shot had set Rhys back significantly, bringing back to him the day when his beloved grandfather had been shot. He’d missed a lot of school but was getting settled back into the routine.

  Zachary set the plates on the table, then stared at them blankly for a moment before moving to get glasses and cutlery. He filled a pitcher with water and put it in the center of the table. He looked at the settings, then at Kenzie. “Am I forgetting anything?”

  “Looks good to me. Grab the napkin holder; I have a feeling the pizza is going to be messy.”

  He did so, setting the napkins on the table next to the pitcher. “Do you want anything else?”

  “No.” Kenzie knew she should probably cut up some fresh fruit and vegetables to go with the pizza, but it was the weekend, and she just wanted to chill, not to have to eat right. “You want to put something on TV?”

  “After dinner,” Zachary said firmly. “Dr. B said to focus on each other over meals. Not to be distracted by TV or other entertainment or devices.”

  Kenzie nodded. “All right. Good for you. Because you know I totally would have gone for eating in front of the TV today.”

  He looked pleased with the compliment. He glanced over at the stove. “How much longer until it’s ready?”

  The timer was counting down right in front of him. “Fifteen minutes. You want to clean up and get changed?”

  His face flushed, maybe realizing that he’d been working all day in clothes that he’d probably been wearing most of the week. Fine, if he were pretending to be a homeless person to stay under the radar. Not so good if he wanted to get close to his girlfriend during and after supper. He pinched his shirt between his fingers and brought it up to his nose. “Sorry. Yeah. I’ll throw these in the laundry.”

  Kenzie watched him hurry off to the bathroom for a quick shower and change. He wouldn’t have time to shave off his stubble, but he could at least be clean and fresh in that length of time. While she waited for him, she would check her phone and review any personal emails she had received during the afternoon and maybe be able to check her social network accounts as well. At least one of them.

  Zachary was back just after the timer sounded, his hair still damp, looking and smelling much better. He smiled at Kenzie and gave her a quick hug and kiss before she had a chance to cut the pizza into slices. She kissed him back, then squirmed away, knife in hand. “If you don’t want to get cut, Romeo, you’d better back up and let me get my dinner. I’m starving.”

  Zachary grinned and sat down at the table to give her space to use the long blade to quickly cut the pizza into wedges. Kenzie put the sliced pizza on the table and grabbed a couple of slices to start out with. Zachary looked for the smallest slice and put it onto his plate. Kenzie took a bite of her first wedge.

  “Did you eat any lunch?”

  Zachary frowned and considered. He toyed with the slice for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I took a break.”

  “And ate?”

  He pursed his lips. “Maybe.”

  “That’s not good enough. Your body needs more than a granola bar and a slice of pizza in a day.”

  “I know. And I’m pretty sure I did.” He looked at the platter of pizza that remained. “I’ll have a second piece.”

  “You’d better.”

  He nodded and had a bite of pizza. Kenzie had another bite and swallowed. “Old guy we did a post on today, his nursing home said that his appetite hasn’t been too good the last couple of days. And he had nothing in his stomach. Nothing.”

  “You don’t think they were starving him, do you?” Zachary’s mind immediately jumped to elder neglect.

  “No, I don’t think so. They have a pretty good record. We get residents from there now and then, and we haven’t seen any starvation cases.”

  Zachary nodded. “So what killed him?”

  “We’re not there yet. Have some slides to look at tomorrow, tests to be run at various labs. Nothing obvious, but the home said that he hadn’t been well the last few days, and we did notice a couple of anomalies during that time. Not eating, bruises, just little things. Maybe he had a virus and just wasn’t strong enough to fight it off. Although,” she shrugged, “he seemed like he was in pretty good shape before it hit.”

  “Maybe a change to his meds?”

  “Nope. He wasn’t on a lot of different prescriptions. What he was on, he’d been on for a while. No changes that the home could point to in the last week or so. Just that he took poorly.”

  Zachary nodded thoughtfully. He took another small bite of the pizza and chewed slowly. He was only going to be half done his first slice in the time it took Kenzie to wolf down two.

  “Other than that... We had a John Doe overnight. Dr. Wiltshire did that post by himself; I’ll have to read his report when it comes back from transcription tomorrow. Monday, I mean.”

  “Where was he found? Was he mugged? No ID?”

  “Homeless, I think. Found in an alley. No ID. Probably alcohol or drug overdose, or some secondary effect of drinking.”

  “Nobody knew him? It’s not that
big of a town. I’d think that anyone else out there, on the street, they’d know him. Or someone at the shelter. He must have gone there in the winter, at least.”

  That was one thing about Vermont that couldn’t be said about warmer climes like Florida and California. The homeless didn’t survive through the winter without help. Someone in the shelter or another service company would have run into him at some time or another. They would be able to give the John Doe a name, even if it were only a first name or a street name. They didn’t have the flourishing homeless problem that the warmer states dealt with.

  “The police will do a canvass. I’m sure they’ll find something.”

  “Yeah. They’re bound to. So that’s it? Just two today?”

  “That’s enough. We still have other work to do too. It isn’t just doing two posts and then going home because there’s nothing else to do.”

  5

  Kenzie and Zachary had fallen asleep in each other’s arms. Kenzie awoke as Zachary’s breathing got louder and he started squirming around and pushing her away from him.

  He pushed his covers back, huffing hard as if they were restricting his ability to breathe. He murmured something over and over again but, like with most of his dream talk, she couldn’t make out his words. She nudged his shoulder gently.

  “Zachary. Zach, wake up.”

  He squirmed away from her touch, then flailed suddenly as if he were falling and jumped, all his muscles activating, holding himself as stiff as a board.

  “Zachary. It’s okay. Wake up.”

  He let his breath out and, at first, his muscles started to relax; then he began to whip his head back and forth, looking for an escape.

  “You’re safe,” Kenzie told him. She reached over and fumbled for the switch on the lamp. She managed to click it on, and squeezed her eyes shut tightly at the sudden dazzling light. Zachary sat bolt upright.