And then she cuts away the clothes, rinses off the insurance man’s pallid body with a damp cloth, her gloved fingers moving rapidly over his midsection and his arms.
“What are you looking for?” I venture, and Fenton ignores me; I fall silent.
With a scalpel she tucks into the chest, and I take another step forward, now I’m standing beside her under the bright halo of the mortuary light, peering wide-eyed as she makes a deep Y-shaped incision, peels back the skin and the flesh beneath. I’m leaning way over the body, pushing my luck, as Fenton draws the dead man’s blood, piercing a vein near the center of the heart, filling three vials in quick succession. And I realize at some point during all this that I’m barely breathing, that as I’m watching her go point by point through this process, weighing the organs and recording their weights, lifting the brain from the skull and turning it in her hands, I’m waiting for her impassive expression to sharpen, waiting for her to gasp or mutter “hmm” or turn to me in astonishment.
To have found whatever it is that will prove that Zell was killed, and not by his own hand.
Instead, at last, Dr. Fenton puts down her scalpel and flatly says, “Suicide.”
I stare at her. “Are you sure?”
Fenton doesn’t answer. She’s moving rapidly back over to her cart, opening a box containing a thick roll of plastic bags, and peeling the top one off.
“Wait, ma’am. I’m sorry,” I say. “What about that?”
“What about what?” I can feel myself growing desperate, a heat building in my cheeks, a squeak sneaking into my voice, like a child’s voice. “That? Is that bruising? Above his ankle?”
“I saw that, yes,” Fenton says coolly.
“Where did it come from?”
“We shall never know.” She doesn’t stop bustling, doesn’t look at me, her flat voice glazed with sarcasm. “But we do know he didn’t die from a bruise to the calf.”
“But aren’t there are other things we do know? Just in terms of determining the cause of death?” I’m saying this and I’m fully conscious of how ridiculous it is to be challenging Alice Fenton, but this can’t be right. I scour my memory, flipping frantically in my mind through the pages of the relevant textbooks. “What about the blood? Do we perform a toxicity screening?”
“We would if we’d found anything to indicate it. Needle marks, muscles atrophied in suggestive patterns.”
“But we can’t just do it?”
Fenton laughs dryly, shaking open the plastic bag. “Detective, are you familiar with the state police forensic lab? On Hazen Drive?”
“I’ve never been there.”
“Well, it is the only forensic laboratory in the state, and right now there is a new person running the show over there, and he is an idiot. He is an assistant to an assistant who is now chief toxicologist, since the real chief toxicologist left town in November to go study life drawing in Provence.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.” Fenton’s lip curls up with evident distaste. “Apparently it’s what she’s always wanted to do. It’s a mess over there. Orders getting left on the table. It’s a mess.”
“Oh,” I say again, and I turn to what remains of Peter Zell, the chest cavity yawning open on the table. I’m looking at him, at it, and I’m thinking how sad it is, because however he died, whether he killed himself or not, he’s dead. I’m thinking the dumb and obvious thought that here was a person, and now he’s gone and he’s never coming back.
When I look up again, Fenton is standing beside me, and her voice has changed a little, and she’s pointing, directing my gaze to Zell’s neck.
“Look,” she says. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” I say, confused. The skin is peeled back, revealing the soft tissue and muscle, the yellow-white of the bone beneath. “I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly. If someone had snuck up behind this man with a rope, or strangled him with bare hands, or even with this extremely expensive belt you’ve become fixated on, the neck would be a mess. There would be tissue abrasion, there would be pools of blood from internal hemorrhaging.”
“Okay,” I say. I nod. Fenton turns away, back to her cart.
“He died by asphyxiation, Detective,” she says. “He leaned forward, on purpose, into the knot of the ligature, his airway was sealed, and he died.”
She zips the corpse of my insurance man back into the body bag from whence it came and slides the body back into its designated slot in the refrigerated wall. I’m watching all this mutely, stupidly, wishing I had more to say. I don’t want her to leave.
“What about you, Dr. Fenton?”
“Excuse me?” She stops at the door, looks back.
“Why haven’t you left, gone off to do whatever it is you’ve always wanted to do?”
Fenton tilts her head, looks at me like she’s not exactly sure she understands the question. “This is what I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Right. Okay.”
The heavy gray door swings closed behind her, I rub my knuckles into my eyes, thinking, what next? Thinking, what now?
I stand there alone for a second, alone with Fenton’s rolling cart, alone with the bodies in their cold lockers. Then I take one of the vials of Zell’s blood off the cart, slip it into the inside pocket of my blazer, and go.
* * *
I find my way out of Concord Hospital, weaving my way through the unfinished corridors, and then, because it’s already been a long and difficult day, because I am frustrated and exhausted and confused, and wanting to do nothing but figure out what I’m going to do next, my sister is waiting for me at my car.
Nico Palace in her ski hat and winter coat is seated cross-legged on the sloping front hood of the Impala, undoubtedly leaving a deep dent, because she knows I will hate that, and tapping ash from her American Spirit cigarette directly onto the windshield. I trudge toward her through the snow-crusted emptiness of the hospital parking lot, and Nico greets me with one hand raised, palm up, like an Indian squaw, smoking her cigarette, waiting.
“Come on, Hank,” she says, before I can say a word. “I left you, like, seventeen messages.”
“How’d you know where I was?”
“Why’d you hang up on me this morning?”
“How’d you know where I was?”
This is how we talk. I pull the sleeve of my jacket up over my hand and use it to brush ash off the car down into the snow.
“I called the station,” says Nico. “McGully told me where I could find you.”
“He shouldn’t have done that,” I say. “I’m working.”
“I need your help. Seriously.”
“Well, I’m seriously working. Would you climb down off the vehicle, please?”
Instead she casts out her legs and settles back on the windshield like she’s spreading out on a beach chair. She’s wearing the thick army-issue winter coat that was our grandfather’s, and I can see where the brass buttons are etching little trails into the paint job of the department’s Impala.
I wish Detective McGully hadn’t told her where to find me.
“I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass, but I’m freaking out, and what’s the point of having a brother who’s a cop if he won’t help you?”
“Indeed,” I say, and look at my watch. The snow has started again, very lightly, stray slow drifting flakes.
“Derek didn’t come home last night. I know you’re going to be like, okay, they had another fight, he disappeared. But that’s the thing, Hen: we didn’t fight this time. No argument, nothing. We made dinner. He said he had to go out. Said he wanted to take a walk. So I said sure. I cleaned up the kitchen, smoked a joint, and went to bed.”
I scowl. My sister, I believe, loves the fact that she can smoke pot now, that her policeman brother can no longer lecture her sternly about it. For Nico, I think, this is a silver lining. She takes a last drag and pitches the butt into the snow. I crouch down and pick up the doused stub of cigarette between two fingers and ho
ld it in the air. “I thought you cared about the environment.”
“Not so much, anymore,” she says.
Nico swivels back to a sitting position, wrapping the thick collar of the coat around her. My sister could be so beautiful if she just took care of herself—combed her hair, got some sleep every once in a while. She’s like a picture of our mother that someone crumpled up and tried to smooth out again.
“So then it’s midnight, and he’s not back. I called him, no answer.”
“So he went to a bar,” I offer.
“I called all the bars.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, Hen.”
There are a lot more bars than there used to be. A year ago you had Penuche’s, the Green Martini, and that was pretty much as far as it went. Now there are lots of places, some licensed, some pirated, some just basement apartments where someone has got a bathtub full of beer, a cash register, and an iPod set on shuffle.
“So he went to a friend’s house.”
“I called them. I called everyone. He’s gone.”
“He’s not gone,” I say, and what I’m not saying is the truth, which is that if Derek really had pulled a runner on her, it would be the best thing to happen to my sister in a long time. They had gotten married on January 8, that first Sunday after the Tolkin interview. That particular Sunday had set the record, apparently, for the most weddings on a single day, a record unlikely ever to be beaten, unless it’s on October 2.
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“I told you, I can’t. Not today. I’m on a case.”
“God, Henry,” she says, her studied insouciance abruptly gone, and she’s hopping off the car and jabbing me in the chest with a forefinger. “I quit my job as soon as we knew this shit was really happening. I mean, why waste time at work?
“You worked three days a week at a farmers’ market. I solve murders.”
“Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry. My husband is missing.”
“He’s not really your husband.”
“Henry.”
“He’ll be back, Nico. You know he will.”
“Really? What makes you so sure?” She stamps her foot, eyes blazing, not waiting for an answer. “And what are you working on that’s so important?”
I figure, what the heck, and I tell her about the Zell case, explain how I’ve just come from the morgue, that I’m developing leads, trying to impress upon her the seriousness of an ongoing police investigation.
“So wait. A hanger?” she says, sullen, peevish. She’s only twenty-one years old, my sister. She’s just a kid.
“Maybe.”
“You just said the guy hung himself at the McDonald’s.”
“I said it appeared that way.”
“And that’s why you’re too busy to take ten minutes to find my husband? Because some jerk-off killed himself at the McDonald’s? In the goddamn bathroom?”
“Nico, come on.”
“What?”
I hate it when my sister uses foul language. I’m old-fashioned. She’s my sister.
“I’m sorry. But a man has died, and it’s my job to find out how and why.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry. Because a man is missing, and it’s my man, and I happen to love him, okay?”
There’s a hitch in her voice all of a sudden, and I know that’s it, that’s game over. She’s crying, and I’ll do whatever she wants.
“Oh, come on, Nico. Don’t do that.” It’s too late, she’s sobbing, open mouthed, violently pushing tears from her eyes with the back of her hands. “Don’t do that.”
“It’s just, all of this.” She gestures, a vague and woeful gesture encompassing all of the sky. “I can’t be alone, Henry. Not now.”
A bitter wind courses across the parking lot, flicking drifting snow upward into our eyes.
“I know,” I say. “I know.”
And then I’m gingerly stepping forward, gathering my little sister in my arms. The family joke was that she got the math genes and I got all the height. My chin is a good six inches up from the top of her head, her sobs burying themselves somewhere in my sternum.
“All right, kid. All right.”
She backs out of my awkward embrace, stifles a final moan, and lights herself a fresh American Spirit, shading a gold-plated lighter against the wind as she sucks the thing to life. The lighter, like the coat, like the brand of cigarettes, was my grandfather’s.
“So you’ll find him?” she asks.
“I’ll do my best, Nico. Okay? That’s all I can do.” I pluck the cigarette from the corner of her mouth and toss it under the car.
* * *
“Good afternoon. I’d like to speak to Sophia Littlejohn, if I could.”
I’ve got a nice strong signal, out here in the parking lot.
“She’s with a patient just now. May I ask who’s calling?”
“Uh, sure. No—it’s just—a friend of mine’s wife is a patient of … gee, what do you even call a midwife? Doctor Littlejohn, is that what I would—?”
“No, sir. Just the name. Ms. Littlejohn.”
“Okay, well, my friend’s wife is a patient of … of Ms. Littlejohn, and I understood that she had gone into labor. Like, early this morning?”
“This morning?”
“Yeah. Late last night, early this morning? My friend left me a message, early this morning, and I could’ve sworn that’s what he said. But it was garbled, his phone was all staticky, and—hello?”
“Yes, I’m here. There may be a mistake. I don’t think Sophia was delivering. You said this morning?”
“I did.”
“I’m sorry. What was your name?”
“Never mind. It’s not a big deal. Never mind.”
* * *
At headquarters I walk briskly past a trio of Brush Cuts in the break room, hanging around in a circle by the Coke machine, laughing like frat boys. I don’t recognize any of them, and they don’t recognize me. No one among them, I warrant, could quote from Farley and Leonard, not to mention the New Hampshire Criminal Code, not to mention the United States Constitution.
In Adult Crimes, I lay out what I’ve got for Detective Culverson: tell him about the house, the Dear Sophia note, Dr. Fenton’s conclusions. He listens patiently, his fingers steepled together, and then he doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Well, you know, Henry,” he begins slowly, and that’s plenty, I don’t want to hear the rest.
“I get what it looks like,” I say. “I do.”
“Hey. Listen. It’s not my case.” Culverson inclines his head slightly backward. “If you feel like you’ve got to solve it, you’ve got to solve it.”
“I do, Detective. I really do.”
“Okay, then.”
I sit there for a second, and then I go back to my desk and pick up the landline and initiate my search for stupid Derek Skeve. First I repeat the calls that Nico has already made: the bars and the hospitals. I reach the men’s prison and the new, auxiliary men’s prison, I reach the Merrimack County sheriff’s office, I reach admitting departments at Concord Hospital and New Hampshire Hospital and every other hospital I know of in three counties. But no one’s got him, no one matching that description.
Outside, there’s a thick clutch of God people clustered in the plaza, thrusting their pamphlets at passersby, hollering in gospel cadences about how prayer is all we’ve got left, prayer is our only salvation. I nod noncommittally and I keep on moving.
* * *
And now I’m lying in my bed and I’m not sleeping because it’s Wednesday night, and it was Tuesday morning that I first looked into the dead eyes of Peter Zell, which means he was killed sometime on Monday night, and so maybe it’s almost forty-eight hours since he got killed, or maybe the forty-eight hours have already passed. Either way, my window is sliding closed and I am nowhere near identifying and apprehending his murderer.
So I’m lying in my bed and I’m staring at the ceiling with my fists clenching and uncl
enching at my sides, and then I get up and open the blinds, and I look out the window, into the cloud-fogged blackness, past the handful of visible stars.
“You know what you can do?” I say softly, raising one finger and pointing it at the sky. “You can go fuck yourself.”
1.
“Wake up, sweetheart. Wakey-wakey-wakey.”
“Hello?”
Last night, before going to bed, I unplugged the phone from the wall but left my cell phone on and set to vibrate, so tonight’s pleasant dream of Alison Koechner has been interrupted not by the alarm-bell clamor of the landline, Maia shrieking into the windows and setting the world on fire, but by a gentle shivering rattle on the night table, a sensation that has inserted itself into my dream as the purr of a cat at ease in Alison’s gentle lap.
And now Victor France is cooing at me. “Open your eyes, sweetheart. Crack open those big moody peepers, Mustache McGee.”
I crack open my big moody peepers. Outside is darkness. France’s voice is whispery and grotesque and insistent. I blink awake and catch one final sidewise glimpse of Alison, radiant in the auburn front room of our wooden house on Casco Bay.
“I’m so sorry to wake you, Palace. Oh, wait, I’m not sorry at all.” France’s voice dissolves into a queer little giggle. He’s high on something, that’s for sure; maybe marijuana, maybe something else. High as a satellite, my father used to say. “No, definitely not sorry.”
I yawn again, crack my neck, and check the clock: 3:47 a.m.
“I don’t know how you’ve been sleeping, Detective, but I have not been sleeping too well, me, personally. Every time I’m about to crash out I think to myself, now, Vic, baby, that’s just dead hours. That’s just golden hours right down the tubes.” I’m sitting upright, feeling around on my night table for the light switch, grabbing my blue book and my pen, thinking, he’s got something for me. He wouldn’t be calling except that he’s got something for me. “I’m keeping track, at my house, can you believe that? I’ve got this big poster with every day that’s left, and every day I check one off.”
Ben H. Winters Page 7