by Aaron Elkins
“Here’s a picture of him,” he said, sliding it over to John, who had been browsing through the case file.
John put down an open folder. “Jesus, is that after or before they cremated him?”
On the other hand, he had to admit that sometimes black humor did help, and he was grateful for the opportunity to smile. “Before. But you’re right, he was pretty well charred, especially the upper body. Externally, he’s pretty well carbonized from the chest up. Not quite as bad below.”
“Is there one of him face-up? They must have flipped him over.”
Gideon paged through a few more photos. “Yes, here.”
Both men leaned closer to look at it. “Ugh. You can see why they wouldn’t have known who it was from the face,” Gideon said.
“Face, what face? His head looks like a . . . like a lump of coal, like a . . . I mean, where are the eyes, where’s the nose?”
Gideon nodded. “Notice the damage is so much more pronounced around the head and shoulders. Interesting.”
“I can tell you why that is,” John said. “I just read the arson investigator’s report. There’s no question at all about it being arson, by the way. They found traces of two different accelerants—paint thinner and diesel fuel oil—and at least five different origin points in the building, one of which was him.”
“Him? You mean they set him on fire?”
“Yeah, pretty much. His face was resting right on a roll of straw matting that’d been soaked in diesel oil.”
Gideon looked at the photographs. “Yes, I guess maybe you can see a few burned chunks of matting—of something, anyway—on the floor there.”
There were six pictures of the body in all, and Gideon fanned them out so they could both look at them. From the chest up, it was barely identifiable as a human form, more like a black, barely started sculpture than the remains of flesh and bone and muscle. Below the chest, the form was recognizably human, but made of charred, piebald skin, split in places like a sausage left too long on the grill. The clothing had been completely burned away except for the residue of a wide belt at the waist—or perhaps it was just the impression the burning belt had left on the burning skin—and the coalesced remnants of cowboy boots on the feet.
“John, I can’t tell anything from this. There’s just nothing distinctive, nothing to say if it’s Magnus or it isn’t Magnus. It’s human, that’s about it. And obviously, the toes aren’t visible. I just hope there’s something more in the autopsy report.”
“Well, I can tell you who Torkel wanted everyone to think it was: himself—Torkel.”
“Sure, but we already figured that out.”
“We thought that. We assumed that. But now there’s proof. Torkel took off his own ring and put it on Magnus’s body.” He leafed through one of the folders until he came to what he wanted. “Here. ‘Also under the decedent’s right hand was a signet ring made of white gold or similar material, with a ruby or similar stone set in a circular, braided border. This ring was subsequently identified by decedent’s family as belonging to him, an heirloom gift from his father when decedent joined the Swedish merchant marine.’”
“So you think Torkel planted it to fake the identification.”
“Sure, Doc, it’s obvious. What else could it be? He wanted everybody to think he was dead.”
Gideon shook his head. “John, I don’t know anymore . . .” He lifted one of the pictures and gazed at it for a while. “Maybe it is Torkel.”
John had a habit of suddenly flinging out his arms when he was excited, and he did it now. Gideon knew enough to anticipate it and was just able to get his head out of the way of a flailing right hand. “Doc, don’t start with me! Why do you do this? Jesus! First the guy in the plane is Magnus, positively. Then it’s Torkel, absolutely. And now you’re telling me this guy—”
“All I’m telling you is that I concluded the body on the plane was Torkel’s because of the amputated toes—a reasonable conclusion, you’ll agree—but now, according to Fukida, this guy here was missing the same two toes, which I can’t confirm or refute from these pictures. And when you tell me that Torkel’s ring was found with the body, how am I supposed to know what to think? Maybe somebody wanted everyone to think the body in the plane was Torkel’s, when it was really Magnus’s.”
John’s arms, still extended out to the sides, went to his temples. “Please let him tell me he’s joking.”
“I’m joking,” Gideon said. “Well, I think I am.”
“Doc—”
“No, I am, I am,” Gideon said. “Joking. Nobody doctored that foot for effect. Resorption, remember? Osteoporotic atrophy, remember?”
“Right, right,” John said, pacified.
“No, the man in the plane was Torkel Torkelsson, period. We can forget about him. But what we don’t know is who the guy in the fire was. There’s no way I can come up with anything solid from these pictures.”
“It’s Magnus,” John said stolidly. “There’s nobody else it could be. You heard Fukida.”
“So what happened to his toes?” Gideon murmured.
“What happened is what Fukida said. Torkel cut them off himself. Or maybe the guy who did the autopsy let his imagination run away with him. Either or both—probably both, would be my guess.”
“I suppose so,” Gideon said.
John had calmed down enough to go back to leafing through the folders while he was speaking. “Hey, here’s Auntie Dagmar’s statement to the detective working the case. Want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, ‘Statement of Dagmar Torkelsson, Date November 5, 1994, taken by Detective Paul Webster,’ blah, blah, blah . . . here we are:
DT: Yes, that’s right. After dinner my brothers went back to the hay barn to do some work.
PW: The hay barn? That’s the building that burned down? DT: Yes, in the old days it was our hay barn, but now it’s just used for storage space and the ranch offices. We still call it the hay barn. That is, we did.
PW: Did they always do that? Go to the hay barn to go back to work after dinner?
DT: Not always. Two times, three times a week.
PW: Did you go with them?
DT: No, I never do. I stayed home. I cleaned up the dishes and turned on the television.
“Yes, that’s right,” Gideon said. “They all lived together, didn’t they?”
“Yup. In the Big House. It’s Inge’s and Keoni’s now, home of Kohala Trails Adventure Ranch. Dagmar moved down to the coast after the fire. She has joint problems, so the weather’s a lot better for her down there.”
“Did they get along?”
“Like you’d expect two brothers and a sister in their seventies, living in one house, to get along.”
“In other words, they didn’t.”
“No, that’s not exactly right. Let’s just say they were really tight, but at the same time they could get pretty crabby with each other. With anybody, for that matter. They were all one-of-a-kinds, Doc. No problem with weak personalities for that bunch.”
Gideon laughed. “I’m starting to think you’re right about that.”
John began reading aloud again.
PW: And the next time you heard from your brother?
DT: I already told the officer—
PW: I know, but tell me again, please.
DT: Well, he called me . . . Magnus . . . and he said—
PW: What time was this?
DT: I don’t know. I was watching Hill Street Blues, so it must have been—
PW: Okay, and what did he say?
DT: He said that Torkel was . . . that they’d killed Torkel and he had to get out of Hawaii before the same thing happened to him.
PW: Now, when you say he said “they”—
DT: I don’t know who he meant. He said “they,” that’s all I know.
PW: He definitely said “they”? Plural? Not “him” or “her”? No names, no descriptions?
DT: He said . . . I think he said “they.” I�
�m not sure, I can’t remember.
PW: Did he say how your brother had been killed?
DT: (Shakes head.)
PW: Did he say there’d been a fire?
DT: I—I’m not sure. I don’t think so. Maybe he did, I’m just not sure. It was all so—
PW: Okay. And what else did he say?
DT: He said he had to leave. He said he’d come back as soon as he could. He said he loved me. He was . . . he was very excited, I could hardly . . .
PW: Just take your time, ma’am. Would you like some water or—
DT: He said they were after him, too, and—
PW: Ma’am, why did you wait so long to tell us this? Why didn’t you tell the police about it last night?
DT: He told me to wait.
PW: Your brother told you to wait?
DT: Yes, until today. Magnus said don’t tell anyone what he was doing until today.
PW: Anyone? Or just the police?
DT: Anyone. I keep telling you, he was afraid they were coming after him, too, and he needed a chance to get away.
PW: Did he tell you that? That “they” were coming after him?
DT: No, he didn’t say exactly that. Well, I don’t think so. It was very quick, only a few sentences. He was so excited.
PW: And did he say where he was going?
DT: (Shakes head.) He was taking the plane, that’s all he said.
At this point, Sarah returned. “Mission accomplished.” She put another clasp envelope, a thinner one, on the table. “Autopsy photos. And here”—she waved a thick sheaf of paper in her other hand—“is the autopsy report itself. It was less hassle to copy it than to check it out, so I made you one you can keep. Don’t tell anybody.” She slapped it into Gideon’s hand. “Enjoy.”
Dr. Meikeljohn, the deputy coroner, might not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he couldn’t be faulted on exhaustiveness. Or wordiness. His problem was organization. There was no breakdown into external examination and internal examination, no evidence of injury section, no evidence of medical and/or surgical intervention section, no pathology section, no put-it-all-together findings and opinion sections, no explicit structure of any kind. The report was simply twenty-two pages (compared to the usual four or so) of disorganized, densely typed observations, along with many lengthy stream-of-consciousness detours into conjecture, speculation, and hunches that were usually—and for good reason—not found in autopsy reports. It was difficult for Gideon even to locate the part in which the condition of the toes was described. Looking for it, his attention was caught by a few pages that described in fastidious detail the courses and locations of the two bullets found in the body.
Despite the charred condition of the external remains, a five-by-three-centimeter gunshot wound is visible in the ventral aspect of the thorax at the level of the third intercostal space, four centimeters to the left of the lateral border of the sternum. Because of tissue destruction of the dermal layers due to post-mortem thermal injury, the forensically pertinent characteristics of the wound, e.g., the existence or lack thereof of marginal abrasion, soot deposit, stippling, and other adjunct features are not possible to determine.
Subsequent dissection shows that both projectiles entered through this entrance, penetrating the left pectoralis major and proceeding medio-dorsally, grazing the superior border of the fourth costal cartilage and perforating the superior lobe of the left lung. Entering the medial mediastinum, the projectiles transpierced the heart through the right ventricle and the left atrium, separated the descending thoracic aorta—
“No problem positively identifying the cause of death, anyway,” Gideon murmured.
A few paragraphs before, he’d read that no soot or other carbon material had been found in the respiratory passages, proof positive that the victim had no longer been breathing at the time of the fire; he’d been dead when it started. And Meikeljohn’s description of the bullets’ horrific path made the reason for that crystal clear.
Gideon told John what he’d read, eliminating the jargon. “Shot right in the heart, huh?” John said, looking up from the case file.
“Right through the heart. Twice. And if that wasn’t enough, the bullets destroyed the aorta, too. You can’t get much more killed than that.”
“Two bullets,” John mused. “Both in the heart. Well, there you go, see? You had a couple of shooters who knew what they were doing. The cops did get one thing right, Doc. These were professionals, not one old crank shooting another.”
“Mm,” Gideon said and silently went back to the report.
—separated the descending aorta, and lodged in the corpus of the eighth thoracic vertebra (T8), one above the other, three millimeters apart. The projectiles were found to be somewhat deformed, medium-sized, non-jacketed lead bullets of different calibers, with the inferior, smaller one showing some fragmentation. Among the interesting circumstances associated with them was the presence of a cartridge case partially embedded in the intervertebral fibrocartilage separating T8 and T9. Various possibilities come to mind to account for its presence there . . .
And off the good doctor went on another of his roundabout excursions into supposition and surmise. Gideon paged on until he found what he was looking for at the bottom of page thirteen.
“Here we go, John.” He read aloud. “‘The right foot was naturally examined with especial care. External examination of the toes was not possible, inasmuch as the partially melted boot had fused to the skin. Therefore—’”
“Ah, there, you see?” exclaimed John, jabbing a finger in Gideon’s direction. “He was expecting to find those amputations. He already had them in his mind. Why else would he ‘naturally’ examine the right foot with ‘especial care’?”
Gideon nodded. “That’s a good point.” He continued reading.
Therefore, a partial deep dissection of the anterior dorsum was accomplished to reveal the condition of the toes. It was found that parts of the second and third toes had been amputated, resection having taken place approximately one centimeter from the distal ends of the medial phalanges.
He turned the page, scanned the next one. “I don’t believe it,” he exclaimed, flipping to the following page, and then the one after that. “You’re kidding me.”
“What’s the problem?” John asked.
“The problem? The problem is, that’s it: ‘On the right foot, parts of the second and third toes have been amputated, resection having taken place approximately one centimeter from the distal ends of the medial phalanges.’ Here this guy takes pages and pages describing every sulcus and pimple on the bladder, but when it comes to something important, something that could make or break an identification, what do we get? ‘On the right foot, parts of the second and third—’”
“Okay, okay, I heard you the first two times.” John shook his head, puzzled. “But I don’t get it. Isn’t that what you were looking for? I mean, the toes aren’t there anymore, what else is there to say?”
“There’s a lot he could have—should have—said. Was there any callus formation on the stumps? Was the medullary cavity open or capped? Was there any atrophy? All the things that would give us some idea of whether it was post- or antemortem.” He stood up, slammed the sheaf onto the table, and stormed around the room.
“Gee, Doc, don’t get yourself in a—”
“Was there anything to suggest whether it was a clean surgical procedure or some kind of amateur boondoggle? Was there—”
The door opened and Fukida walked in wearing a Colorado Rockies baseball cap and carrying a paper bag. “Problem?” he asked.
“Nah,” John said. “He gets like this sometimes. Don’t worry, he’s usually not violent.”
Fukida opened the bag and took out three lidded sixteen-ounce cardboard cups. “Here, I stopped on Ali’i Drive and got us some real coffee. I don’t know,” he said, looking hard at Gideon as he handed a cup to him, “I think I should have got you a decaf.”
“This’ll be fine,” Gideon
said. He laughed and dropped back into his chair. “Thanks, smells wonderful.”
Fukida took a seat across the table from them, took the lid off his cup, crossed an ankle over one knee, and immediately started jiggling his foot. “I gather the autopsy report wasn’t too helpful?”
“Not about those missing toes, no. It’s the one place in the report where he decided to be concise.”
“What about the photos?”
“No, there wasn’t anything—”
“He means the autopsy photos, not the crime-scene ones, Doc. You haven’t even looked at them.”
“Autopsy photos! I forgot all about them!” He reached for the envelope.
“He’s also a little absent-minded,” John explained.
There were six black-and-white photographs: two pre-autopsy shots of the body from different angles, one of the entry wound, two taken during dissection that showed the bullets’ trajectory . . . and one excellent-quality close-up of the right foot, post-dissection.
“Ah,” Gideon murmured with satisfaction. He propped the photo against one of the case files that were now strewn on the table and settled back in his chair, hands clasped on his belly, to study it from three feet away. After a minute he leaned forward so that his face was twelve or fifteen inches from it. Finally, he straightened up.
“You were both on target,” he announced. “This was faked. It’s not Torkel. Those toes got hacked off after he died.”
“I knew it. I told you.” Fukida was pleased for a moment, but then he rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy, like I really need this.”
“Or possibly right before,” Gideon said, “but that makes no sense. Anyway, it was peri-mortem, not antemortem. It didn’t happen years ago, that’s for sure.”
“You’re positive about that?” Fukida asked dejectedly.
“Oh, yes. And it wasn’t done by any surgeon, I’m positive about that, too. Or if it was, you better hope he never operates on you.”