Code 61

by Donald Harstad

  “That'd be my guess,” she half whispered back.

  “But there was no blood evidence down there…. ”

  “He said he couldn't kill her there,” said Hester, staring at Toby. “Probably wouldn't be, then…. ”

  Well, sure, Carl. Pay attention. “Ah,” I said, tapping the side of my head with my finger. “Thank you.”

  “He called and told me I'd be really strong,” came from Toby. We both looked at him. “He said I'd have his strength. I did, too, boy. I did. I hit that stake once, and it went right into her chest.” The tears had stopped, but his nose was running. He grinned, an evil grin if there ever was one. “Slicker 'n shit. One powerful hit, was all. He was so fuckin' right.” Then a worried frown came over him. “But I couldn't take her head off. I just got … weak.” His face screwed up, tears started again, and he went back to referring to himself in the third person. “Toby's a failure. But he tries!”

  Hester pushed a piece of scratch paper over to me, with one word written on it. “Committal?” I nodded. It looked like we'd have to.

  “The first time we killed her, she knew it, and she asked me for help,” he said, and this time the crying that he did was nearly hysterical. He lurched to his feet, and came right at Hester. She started to step to the side, and I started for him, and he tripped on the chair leg, and went facedown on the carpet with a resounding thud. He just laid there and cried. “Help!” he wailed, into the greenish gray nap.

  “The first time we killed her” I mouthed to Hester. She was wide-eyed, and nodded.

  “Where were you, you and Edie, the first time you killed her?” I really hated to ask, but we just had to know where she'd been killed.

  He stopped crying instantly, and turned his head so he could see me. “No fuckin' way, dude. No way. That's between me and her and Dan.”

  Well, it had been worth the try, I thought. Probably couldn't have used it anyway, at least not against him.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Dispatch, while Hester knelt down by his head. “This is Houseman. We need an ambulance back here, to transfer one subject to the Maitland Hospital.”

  “Is it ten-thirty-three?”

  “No, but ASAP would be real nice.” Crap. Once there, the diagnosis would probably be of a psychotic episode, or something. The committal process to the Mental Health Institute at Independence would take about two hours. Then one of us would either have to haul him the fifty miles to the mental ward, or one of us would have to go with him in the ambulance. The Board of Supervisors would crap, because, since he was in custody, Nation County would have to pay the bill. And, since he was in custody, we might have to either hire a cop to watch him down there, or send one of ours to stay. Those damned complications, as they say, complicate things. But it needed to be done. Not that I was all that altruistic, or anything. If we didn't commit at this point, and we did have a murder suspect on our hands, we could well lose the case. We were going to need excellent medical testimony as to the fact that Toby was totally tweaked on either meth or ecstasy, or some combination thereof, and not insane. We really needed not insane.

  Hester and I sat him back up in his chair. Physically, he seemed to be just fine. Hester got a wet paper towel and wiped his face, clearing away the tears, mucus, and spittle and that seemed to help. It at least made him easier to look at. I figured the ambulance would take about fifteen minutes.

  And, of course, Attorney Junkel picked that moment to make an entrance.

  “What's going on here?” asked a strident, courtroom voice. I didn't even have to turn around to know it was Junkel.

  “Hi.”

  “What have you done to my client?”

  “Very little, actually.” I shrugged. “Basically, we arrested him,” I explained.

  “How are you, son?” he asked.

  “Toby is shitty,” said Toby. “And Toby thanks you for asking.”

  Junkel looked at me. “Just what is going on here?”

  It took about all I could muster not to answer him in third person. What I said was, “We arrested Toby for breaking in to the Freiberg Funeral Home, and driving a stake into the chest of the corpse of Edie Younger.”

  You just don't get to see an attorney look like that every day. His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped perceptibly. Seeing his startled look, I had an inspiration.

  “It's either a simple misdemeanor, or, if you consider it a hate crime, it becomes a serious misdemeanor. The statutory bond for the most serious one is fifty dollars. Cash.”

  “Can he post?” asked Junkel.

  I played my ace. “Nope. Looks like he's ours.”

  It worked. Just to spite me, Junkel reached into his back pocket, pulled out his billfold, and removed a fifty-dollar bill. Why not? He'd probably received a call from Jessica Hunley, he was on retainer, and the bill would now include a fifty-dollar expense.

  “The hell he is,” he said. “He's now in the care of his attorney!”

  I looked down at the money, then up at Junkel. “I suppose you'll want a receipt?” I tried to sound disappointed.

  He glared at me. “Of course I will.”

  I thought for about two seconds about a possible aiding and abetting in a murder case as another charge for Toby. But to pop him on his statements, while in his current state, would just be asking for trouble. We didn't have any good evidence against him yet, and moving too soon would tip our hand. I rejected the notion.

  “And you might as well also help him with his committal to the Mental Health Institute. We've started that. You might not have noticed, but your client is pretty well pharmaceutically enhanced,” I said.

  Eventually, the mental health referee came up, pretty much took one look at Toby, and told Junkel that, “Your client's having a bad trip,” and offered to sign Toby into the MHI for detoxification and counseling. Translated, that was roughly a three-day involuntary commitment. I was very pleased with detox.

  “Unless, of course, your client wished to commit himself,” said the referee. I could tell he was thinking about the paperwork. “If that's the case, all this would be unnecessary.”

  Junkel leaped at the offer, so Toby obligingly agreed to commit himself. Cheap trip, as he could check out any time he wanted to, he would be guaranteed to be back out in three days, and his attorney was going to have to figure out how to haul him to the mental health facility at Independence. But at least he wasn't a drain on our meager resources.

  Besides, with what we actually had on him, it would have been three and out, anyway.

  About two hours after we had arrived at the office, Toby was on his way. As we helped pack him into Junkel's car, he giggled, and began to say “Plonk, plonk,” faster and faster.

  “What's he saying?” asked Junkel. “Isn't plonk a term for cheap wine?”

  “I dunno,” I said. “Maybe he's thirsty.” Actually, plonk, in this instance, is a usenet term, and it's the sound that a novice internet user makes when he hits the bottom of the kill ffle. To be “kill ffled” means that his correspondents have told their computers to automatically ignore anything from him. The meaning here was that Toby was, if not already dead, considering himself as good as. I felt no compunction to enlighten Junkel. Let him ask his own kids.

  Toby hadn't been out the door five minutes, when Dispatch told me that Lamar was on the phone. He was calling from the church hall, where the after-funeral luncheon was winding up.

  “Hi, boss.”

  “Marteen told me the details,” he said slowly, evenly. “All of 'em.”

  “Shit, Lamar, I really didn't want you to have to deal with that.” I was about ready to kill the funeral director, too, but didn't say so.

  “I want whoever did it, Carl. I want him bad.”

  A good moment, at last. “Oh, we already got him. He's charged, and on his way to MHI.” I thought for a second. I figured I better tell him. “We think the same suspect was there when she was killed, Lamar. He's shaping up as an accomplice. We only have his verbal statement t
o that effect, and he was wasted when he said it. He's telling the truth, but we have absolutely no hard evidence. I think we should have some pretty soon.”

  After a pause, Lamar asked, “Who is it?”

  “Toby Gottschalk. There's more, but it'll have to wait.”

  “Fine. So long as you got him.”

  “What I have to find out now is where she was killed. But we're working on that.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Tuesday, October 10, 2000

  12:09

  Hester and I had a fast chat.

  “Toby admitted to conspiracy to commit murder,” she said. “If I heard him correctly.”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “I think you did. Not any evidence but his statement, yet, though.” It was not nearly enough, even if he'd been completely rational and had provided it in writing.

  “True. But it opens the doors wider and wider.”

  “Damn, Hester, we really gotta find out where Edie was killed. There has to be evidence all over the place, wherever it is.”

  “We also have to find Peale. Any ideas?”

  “I'd like to talk to Jessica Hunley about him,” I said.

  “Me, too. You think Toby was on meth? Or ecstasy?”

  “I'd say both of them, plus a little home grown psychosis. Too bad, he's sort of a bright guy.”

  “When he talked to Peale, and from what he just told us I think we can safely assume it was by telephone, he really must have been convinced. He even thought he was stronger,” she said.

  “Yeah.” It obviously hadn't occurred to Toby that, since the autopsy, Edie's internal organs weren't all in the same place, or in the same condition, that they had been when she was alive. Not to mention that the chest had already been opened, to enable her heart and lungs to be removed for examination. It was no wonder the stake had gone in so easily. He probably could have just leaned on it, and it would have penetrated into what had once been her mediastinum, and gone all the way to the spinal column.

  “You know,” I said, “he mentioned something about striking the stake. We didn't find anything. I wonder what he used, and where he put it?” Evidence.

  “If he was as wired then as he is now,” said Hester, “he probably used his forehead.”

  I checked my “to do” box at the dispatch counter. There were three notes in it, from the dispatcher who had gotten off duty at 09:00. The first said she'd received a phone call from the DCI crime lab. The blood in the white body bag we'd found in the trash had been human, as expected, and the lab had confirmed the blood type with our pathologist, Dr. Peters. It was the same as Edie's. Type B negative. Not a lot, but one more little piece of the puzzle. We'd have to wait quite a while for DNA matching.

  The second note was hand written on a teletype page. It was confirmation from the London Metropolitan Police, and indicated that there was no such person as Daniel Peale in the London Directory. The third said that Dr. Peters had called, and wanted to talk to me as soon as I came in.

  I called, and his secretary said he was on his way to Davenport to do an autopsy, and patched me through to his cell phone.

  “Peters, here.”

  “Doc, it's Deputy Houseman, up in Nation County.”

  “Carl! I called earlier.”

  “Yeah, we got a little busy with the case. Did you know that somebody snuck into the funeral home and drove a stake through Edie's chest?”

  There was a long pause, and I thought something had gone wrong with the phone.

  “You've absolutely got to be kidding me,” he said, at last.

  “No, 'fraid not. Our local ME took a look at it this morning. So did I.”

  “My God. Who did it?”

  “Toby. You remember? The squirrelly one. And we've pretty well established that he was probably there when she was killed, too.”

  Another silence. Then, “Right. Well, then, you might like to know this when you talk with him.” And he went on to explain what he'd done.

  He had, as a routine precaution, examined each section, piece and fragment of the tissues from the wound in Edie's neck under magnification, primarily to make certain that the edges of the pieces were consistent with the use of a sharp edge, and not inflicted in a contrary manner. For court purposes. But, while looking at the three main segments of her right jugular vein, he'd come across a puncture mark. It was small, with a cut running right above it. But a puncture mark, nonetheless.

  “Really?” What else to say?

  “Remarkably like the puncture you'd expect to find from, say, a syringe. Or an IV stick.”

  “Really?”

  “And, I've found an amount of a substance called warfarin in the blood samples. It prevents clotting; you can find it in Coumadin. Not naturally present in the body, of course. It has to be administered.”

  “Really?”

  “You know how I hate to speculate,” he said. “I don't want you going off on the wrong track because I've misled you.”

  “You bet.”

  “But I'm virtually certain that the massive wound in her neck was inflicted post mortem.”

  I was quiet.

  “And that the wound was inflicted to cover up the needle mark,” he said. “There doesn't seem to be a corresponding mark in the skin. We're not completely finished with the examination yet, but I'd be willing to bet that the cut was made directly on the external puncture, to cover it up.”

  Wow.

  “With the warfarin, the puncture … She could bleed to death very easily. Not really quickly, but fast enough.” He paused again, and I heard him mutter something about “idiots,” that sounded traffic related.

  “Where was I?” he asked, and then answered his own question. “Oh yes. Do you remember when I said that the cut in the trachea bothered me at the autopsy, that there was no significant amount of aspirated blood?” he said. “If the trachea had been cut while she was alive, she would have aspirated blood.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, just another item on the report, but all this says she died, then her throat was cut post mortem, and the minimal stains on the floor in various places indicate that she then was moved into the tub post mortem.” There were more road noises, and then he said, “She bled to death. There just isn't any other evidence of any injury or trauma other than the puncture wound in the jugular. No blood chemistry consistent with asphyxiation, for example. But massive blood loss prior to death is indicated, and there's no other evidence of any hemorrhaging other than via that puncture. There were abnormally constricted vasoconstrictors in the surface vessels, the kidneys, and the GI tract. The vessels were shutting down due to loss of blood volume. There was a remarkable lack of fluid in the interstitial spaces. There was an elevated amount of epinephrine and norepinephrine in the tissue samples. All consistent with a reducing blood volume. She had to lose at least forty percent of her blood volume, more likely fifty percent. Judging from what we found, I'd say at least that much, but some probably post mortem. I'm not in any doubt about that.”

  “Right, then.”

  “Carl?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Carl, with the use of the IV stick, that's the only point where the circulatory system was breached, you know. So, it very likely took her a while to die, and she was conscious almost to the end.”

  “Okay … ”

  “When people bleed to death, they become feisty after a bit, agitated. They tend to get aggressive on you. You might not be looking for conspicuous blood spurts after all, but I'll bet there was some sort of thrashing about going on, at a later stage.”

  “How later?”

  “I expect that she passed through the agitated stages a good forty-five minutes before she died. She would just have been sleepy after that. Subdued state, going to a shocky one. You know.”

  That I did. Accident victims will do that, for example. But forty-five minutes?

  “Doc, you said forty-five minutes, is that right?”

  “That's right. It took her some time, I think.”r />
  “Okay. So, maybe not any indentations, from ligatures, at least.”

  “Right. Oh, and Carl?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She'd maybe tend to get whiny, you know? Like some drunks. Mumbling, too, maybe. If you need anything like that to confirm an account. From a suspect.”

  “Thanks. I really appreciate this.”

  “Just get whoever it was, Carl.”

  “Yeah. We will.”

  Afterward, I briefed Hester on the conversation.

  “So, now we know at least one more piece of the thing,” she said.

  “Yep. Jesus, Hester. Forty-five minutes, at least. I get this image of her knowing what's going on, at least at some point. That she was going to die that night.” I took a deep breath.

  “I wonder how long it really took,” she said. “For her to die, I mean.”

  “I got the impression of an hour or so,” I said. “At least.” I shrugged. “Gets us right back to 'where' doesn't it? Where could you have that level of isolation and privacy for a good hour?”

  We stood in the kitchen, and drank our coffee.

  “We gotta talk to Jessica Hunley,” said Hester, running a little cold water in her cup at the sink. The coffee was too hot and too old. “We just have to do that.” She took a sip and poured the rest of the cup into the sink. “Think you'd be able to come along?”

  That was a good question. First, our budget was a bit thin. Second, we were short of help due to the damned flu. Third, there was the awkward complication of Hester and me not being able to share a room.

  “Let me check with Lamar,” I said.

  “Don't go paying for it out of your own pocket,” she said. “I'm serious.”

  “Okay.” I sat at the table. “I won't.”

  “Remember when Toby said 'When we killed her the first time.' That one gave me the willies, Carl, and I'm not kidding.”