It’s the worst kind of night to be on the road—windy and stormy—and the drive from Wooster to the scene, which is just inside the township limits of Painters Mill, takes almost twenty minutes. Twice I have to slow down—once because the road is flooded, and the second time because the windshield wipers can’t keep up with the deluge. The Michaels farm is located on a narrow road that runs parallel with the railroad tracks that cut through town. My headlights illuminate a gravel lane with a hump of weeds in the center when I make the turn, and for the second time tonight I’m glad I drive a high-clearance vehicle. Ahead, I see the flashing lights of Glock’s cruiser.
I park behind a newish Lincoln Navigator and cut the engine. The windows of the large Tudor-style house to my right are dark. The immense barn hulks to my left. The sliding door is open and I can see the yellow cone of Glock’s flashlight. I pick up my radio. “Ten twenty-three.”
“Copy that, Chief,” comes the voice of my second-shift dispatcher.
“Ten twenty-eight.”
“Go ahead.”
I squint through the rain streaming down the windshield and recite the plate number on the SUV. “David, Henry, Adam, three, seven, zero, niner.”
Keys click on the other end as she enters the tag number into the BMV database. “Comes back clear to an oh-six Lincoln. Registered to Christopher Thomas Harrington here in Painters Mill.”
“Ten four.” Grabbing my slicker and Maglite from the backseat, I get out. My hair is half soaked by the time I get my hood up. I start toward the barn.
I enter to the din of rain against the tin roof. I get the impression of a cavernous space with a dirt floor and huge wood support beams. On the other side of one of those beams, I see the body hanging from the rafters. It’s too dark for me to discern much in terms of detail, but in the light thrown off by a single bare bulb, I can see the contorted neck, and in silhouette, the protrusion of a tongue from the mouth. Well-worn wingtips dangle six feet from the floor, where Glock is in the process of setting up cones and taping off the immediate area. As always, his uniform is military crisp, the arch of his boots shined to a high sheen. He looks like he just came off the set of some police recruiting video.
A thirtysomething woman wearing a quilted jacket over yoga pants, her feet jammed into lavender-colored skimmers, is standing just inside the door to my left, crying softly into a well-used tissue. Daughter, I think. Probably the owner of the Navigator and the one who found him. Her hair is the color of a new copper penny and sticks to her scalp like wet corkscrews. Glock must have offered her his slicker, because she’s got it draped over her shoulders. I can see her shivering beneath it.
I make eye contact with her, nodding to let her know I’ll speak to her in a moment as I cross to Glock. “She found him?”
He nods. “Name’s Belinda Harrington. Lives in Painters Mill.”
“Have you talked to her yet?”
“Just to get an ID. Swinger’s her dad. Evidently, she’s been trying to reach him for a couple of days. He didn’t return her calls, so she drove over to check on him. When he didn’t answer the door, she got worried and came out here to the barn.”
I look at the body and try not to shudder. The neck is bent at a severe angle with the rope biting into the larynx area of the throat. The fingers of his left hand are trapped between the rope and his flesh, as if he’d changed his mind after jumping, but the weight of his body made it impossible to escape. I’m no expert, but I’ve seen the result of a few hangings in the years I’ve been a cop. This one wasn’t clean.
“Hell of a way to go,” I say in a low voice.
Sighing, Glock glances up at the body. “What are people thinking when they do shit like this?”
I don’t bother trying to answer. “Did you find a note?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll do a more thorough search once we get some lights out here.”
“We’ll need to check the house, too.” I motion toward the platter-size wet spot in the dirt beneath the body. “Any idea what that is?”
“Not sure. Some kind of biohazard.”
It’s not unusual for a hanging victim’s bladder to release at the time of death, but something about it bothers me. I run my beam over the length of the body. That’s when I notice the dark stain on his slacks near the waistband. Too dark to be urine. “That looks like blood,” I say to Glock.
“Shit.” He adds his beam to mine. “Looks like a stain on his shirt, too. Bloody nose? Maybe he bumped something on his way down?”
“I don’t know, but we need to figure it out.” The victim is wearing dark slacks. A white shirt and a sport coat. Looking up, keeping my beam poised, I circle. Sure enough, in the small space between the lapel hems of the jacket I see a dark stain on the shirt.
“Get some photos of the scene and the victim, will you? We’ll take a closer look once the fire department gets him down.” I motion toward the woman standing near the door. “I’m going to talk to the daughter.”
“Sure.”
I leave Glock to his work and make my way toward the woman. “Ms. Harrington?”
She’s frantically blotting her nose with the tissue, which is now shredded, and tossing uneasy glances at her father’s body. She watches me approach, her eyes huge and owlish. “My God. I can’t believe he’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
She closes her eyes and I notice a single fake eyelash stuck to her cheek. “I can’t believe he would do something like this.”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard those words. The family members of most suicide victims are shocked initially. Only after they’ve had ample time to reflect on the things the victim said or did in the weeks and months preceding their death do they realize the clues were there. They just didn’t see them until it was too late.
“I’m Chief of Police Kate Burkholder.” I offer my hand and we shake. “Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
“Sure.” But her eyes keep flicking from me to her father’s body. “Can you guys get him down from there? I can’t stand seeing him like that. His neck … God.”
“We will as soon as the fire department gets here with some equipment and lights.” I motion toward the workbench twenty feet away, and we start toward it. “They’re on the way.”
I stop at the workbench and turn to face her so that her back is to the body. “When’s the last time you saw your dad?”
“Oh gosh. A week ago Sunday, I think. We met for lunch up at LaDonna’s Diner.”
I pull out my notebook and make a note. “Were you close?”
She digs into her purse, pulls out another tissue, and dabs at her eyes. “I don’t see him as much as I used to. But when I was younger, we were close. He was a good dad.” She chokes out a sound that’s part laugh, part sob. “He doted on the grandkids.” Her face screws up and she begins to cry.
Comforting the bereaved is not one of my strong points, but I’ve done this enough times to muddle through. I set my hand on her arm and give it a reassuring squeeze. “Was he depressed?”
“That’s what makes this such a shock. He wasn’t. Not at all. I mean, he didn’t get down in the dumps. He didn’t have that kind of personality. He was strong.… I mean, not that depressed people are weak, but…”
“Did he have any health problems?”
“He’d slowed down in the last couple of years. Complained about his knees sometimes. Oh, and he had a little thing of skin cancer removed six months ago. But nothing since. He was healthy as a horse.”
“Any issues with drugs or alcohol?”
“Never did drugs. Far as I know, he never drank too much.”
“Has he been under any stress lately?”
“He never mentioned anything.”
“Any deaths in the family recently? Or anyone he was close to?”
“No.”
“Any financial problems?”
“No. He hit it big with the Maple Crest development back in the late ’90s, so he was pretty much set
for life.”
“Did he have many friends, Belinda?”
“He used to hang out with some guys his age. They’d visit or play poker or go out to dinner.”
“Do you know their names?”
She lowers her head, presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”
I suspect at least part of the display isn’t grief, but guilt because they weren’t as close as they’d once been.
“Did he have a girlfriend?” I ask.
“Not that I know of. But he was kind of secretive about … personal stuff.”
Movement at the door snags my attention. Deputy Frank Maloney with the Holmes County Sheriff’s Department lugs in a large fluorescent work light. An orange extension cord is looped around his shoulder like a rope. I reach into the pocket of my jacket, pull out one of my cards, and hand it to the woman. “Mrs. Harrington, if you think of anything else that might be important, will you give me a call?”
“Of course.”
I nod toward her father’s body. “You don’t have to stay for this. And if you’re not up to driving, I can call a family member for you or have an officer take you home.”
“Thank you, but no.” She shakes her head. “The least I can do is be here for him through this.”
As I start to walk past her, I think of one more question. “Mrs. Harrington, do you have a key to his house?”
“Yes, I do. Why?”
“I thought he might’ve left a note.”
“Oh.” Her face crumples. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“Is it okay with you if we take a look inside?”
“Sure. Whatever you need.”
Giving her a final nod, I turn my attention back to the scene. The Holmes County coroner, Dr. Ludwig Coblentz, has arrived. He’s a rotund man and clad in his trademark extra-large scrubs, a slicker draped over his shoulders. There’s a young technician with him. Judging from the tuft of peach fuzz on his chin, I guess him to be a trainee and new to fieldwork. I wonder how long he’ll last.
While the doctor slips into biohazard gear, the technician, who’s already suited up, kneels and unzips a body bag. Several yards away, two paramedics from Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg stand just inside the sliding door, watching. A volunteer fire fighter has set up an aluminum combination ladder beneath the body. A second volunteer stands on the platform section, trying to figure out the best way to lower the corpse to the ground.
I cross to Doc Coblentz and motion toward the biohazard on the ground beneath the body. “Do you guys have a field test for blood?” I ask.
“We do.” The coroner nods at the technician. “Randy, grab one of those Hemastix strips, will you?”
The technician digs into his equipment bag, removes a bottle of Hemastix, and plucks out a single plastic strip.
“It’ll test for the presence of hemoglobin, which indicates blood,” the doc tells me. “If it’s present, we’ll get a color reaction.”
We watch the technician press the colored end of the strip against the moist earth. Within seconds, the tip turns green.
“I got a positive,” the technician says.
From his place near the workbench, Maloney plugs the work light into the extension cord, and the barn is abruptly flooded with severe fluorescent light. I get my first good look at the corpse—and the size of the reddish black stain on the shirt.
“Too much blood for a hanging,” the doc says grimly.
“Let’s get him down and take a closer look,” I say.
We watch in silence as the firefighter standing on the platform uses a utility knife to cut the rope. Keeping it looped around the rafter for friction, he slowly hoists the body toward the ground. As the body descends, the technician and Doc Coblentz open the body bag on the ground. The victim’s boots make contact first. The technician pulls the victim’s feet toward the base of the bag and places him in a supine position. I can tell by the stiffness of the dead man’s legs that he’s been there awhile. Rigor mortis peaks at about twelve hours, then subsides after twenty-four to thirty-six hours. It would have been a much grislier scene had more time elapsed before he was discovered.
Beneath the glare of the work lights, Dale Michaels’s face is swollen and purple. His tongue is twice its normal size and protrudes from his mouth like some overripe fruit. The flesh around his eyes is like crepe paper, fluid filled and nearly black in color. The eyeballs within are milky-looking and bloodred with petechiae. Though I’ve backed six feet away, I’m repelled by the odors of urine and feces.
Death is always an ugly sight to behold, whether it’s homicide, suicide, accidental, or from natural causes. But from all indications, Dale Michaels’s demise was particularly brutal. The doc has removed the rope from around the victim’s neck. It left a two-inch-deep trench in the flesh and severely abraded the skin. The yellow nylon rope is about three-eighths of an inch in diameter, and there’s about thirty feet of it. I watch as the technician coils it and then places it in an evidence bag. From where I’m standing, I see blood and abraded flesh embedded in the fibers.
Suicides don’t require the same level of scrutiny from law enforcement as a homicide, but the scene must still be documented. In the state of Ohio, all unattended deaths require that an autopsy be conducted, and this case will be no different. Unless it is determined that foul play was involved, there will be little in terms of actual police investigation.
My mind drifts as the doctor goes about his work. I’m wondering if I can wrap this up in a couple of hours and get home in time to help Tomasetti with that bottle of cabernet when the coroner gives me a sharp look over his shoulder.
“Chief, I’ve got an irregularity here.”
I walk over and kneel beside him. With gloved hands, he opens the jacket to reveal a partially tucked shirt. A hole in the fabric the size of my pinkie is surrounded by a wide bloodstain that spreads downward to soak into the waistband of his trousers and underwear.
“There’s the source of that blood,” he tells me. “I’m pretty sure that’s a gunshot wound.”
“Self-inflicted?” I ask.
“Hard to tell.” He looks at me over his bifocals. “The only thing I can tell you with relative certainty at this point is that he was alive when he was shot. There’s not much blood, but enough so that I feel the heart was beating when he sustained that gunshot wound.”
“So he was shot and then hanged?” I ask.
“Correct,” the doc confirms.
I look at Glock and Maloney. “Anyone find a handgun on scene?”
“Nope,” Glock mutters. “But I’ve only done a cursory search.”
“Might’ve shot himself in the house and then walked out here and finished it,” Maloney offers.
“Doubtful scenario,” the doc tells him. “Judging by the location of the wound, I would venture to say it was debilitating.”
“Have a look around,” I tell Glock and Maloney. “Check for casings, too.”
The men are already on their feet, their eyes seeking.
I stare at the blood, the pattern of the spread. “Looks like he was upright when he was shot.”
“That’s my thought, too,” the doc says. “Blood traveled down with gravity.”
I risk a look at the dead man’s face and try not to shudder. That’s when I notice something in his mouth. “Doc, is there something in his mouth?”
The coroner leans closer. “Tongue is pretty swollen, but it looks like there may be a foreign object in the back of his throat.” He glances at the technician. “Hand me the large needle-nose pliers.”
The tech removes a stainless steel instrument that looks like a combination pliers and tweezers. The doc sets his hand against the victim’s face, turning the head slightly so that the mouth opens wider. After inserting the tip of the pliers, he gently tugs out an oblong object about three and a half inches in length.
I set the beam of my flashlight on it. “What is it?”
“Looks like
some kind of … figurine,” the doc murmurs.
Recognition sparks when he turns it over. “It’s an Amish peg doll,” I say.
The doc gives me a questioning look over the tops of his bifocals. “Come again?”
“A wooden doll.” I move my flashlight closer for better illumination. “It’s faceless, which tells me it’s Amish.”
With a turn of his wrist, he flips it upside down. I can just make out the faded and bloodied letters on the underside of the base: HOCHSTETLER.
“I know that name,” I say.
The doc looks at me over his bifocals. “Used to be a business here in town. Amish family made furniture. Place closed when they were murdered back in the late 1970s.”
I was only a year old at the time, but now that he’s mentioned it, I remember the stories from when I was a kid, most of which were of the ghostly variety. “Interesting that this would show up at a murder scene thirty-five years later,” I say.
The doc nods. “I’ll say.”
I look down at the bloody peg doll clamped within the pincers of the pliers, and I wonder why someone saw fit to shove it down Dale Michaels’s throat. I start to reach for an evidence bag, but realize I’m not in uniform and look around for Glock. “Do you have an evidence bag?”
“Right here, Chief.” He crosses back to us, working a bag from a compartment on his belt. He opens it, holds it out, and the doc drops the figurine inside.
“We’re going to need to courier that to the BCI lab ASAP,” I tell him.
“Sure thing.”
The technician and coroner roll the victim slightly, and the doc checks the trouser pockets. “I’ve got a wallet here.” He hands the beat-up leather wallet to Glock, who checks the driver’s license and slides it into a second evidence bag. “Jacket is torn. No weapon on him.”
I rise quickly, look around, aware that I’m seeing the scene in a completely different light. I address Maloney, who’s standing a few yards away. “Frank, can you get everyone out?”
He’s already motioning the two paramedics through the door.
“I want all vehicles except the coroner’s van parked away from the house and barn, too.” But I know the rain has more than likely eradicated any tire tread or footwear imprints.
The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel Page 3