by Rick Reed
A female voice from inside said, “I have PMS and a gun. Go away.” It was Little Casket, the Chief Deputy Coroner for Vanderburgh County. She was known for her lack of compassion for the living and the dead. She probably wasn’t kidding.
Chapter 8
It was a little after four in the morning when Coyote stopped in the parking lot of the Interstate 64 rest stop near the Missouri state line. He hadn’t tried to find the truck and wondered if that was a mistake. He wasn’t concerned about the contents. Not his problem. Mother Nature would do her thing. He just didn’t want it to be found before she’d done her job.
He went through a mental list. He’d left no fingerprints or evidence linking him to the murder. The old lady in the shop saw his face. The VW the driver had come in was most likely stolen. Coyote had left it. There was a dog in the car, and that might draw attention to it, but it didn’t really matter. His own car was parked several blocks away from the Coffee Shop. He hadn’t seen anyone out. He didn’t think anyone had seen him walking to the Coffee Shop. He hadn’t passed in front of any businesses where there would be cameras. He’d done the deed and left Evansville without being stopped by police. All was well, but he had a nagging in the back of his mind that he should have found the truck. Made sure the cargo was eliminated. Too late now.
He stayed on the road as much as possible. He seldom slept in roadside motels. He preferred to sleep in his car in truck stops, highway rest areas, anywhere a man sleeping in a vehicle wouldn’t arouse suspicion. State Troopers who were otherwise nosy thought nothing of a car during morning hours with the occupant sleeping. But during the night, with nothing else needing their attention, they were likely to roust him, check him out, and that could lead to nothing good. For them at least.
He was dead tired by the time he’d made it across the Missouri state line. He needed sleep, but he dreaded sleep. He stayed up most nights when he was on the road and slept during the day. He had what his shrink called night terrors. She told him the terrors were repressed memories, and if he could make himself remember and write it down, they would eventually go away. Two years now with this quack. The terrors hadn’t gone away.
He drove a newer Dodge Dart, the kind and color of car you saw and forgot. It spoke of a middle- to lower-class businessman who traveled to make ends meet. He’d changed out the standard engine, a 1.7-liter four cylinder, for a 3.6-liter six cylinder. The standard engine was no more than a lawn mower engine that touted 40 mpg on the highway. The Dart would burn rubber. He’d traded mileage for power and speed.
He parked near the restrooms, left the engine running, pulled his coat tight, tipped his hat over his face, and relaxed. The droning sound of the engine and the hiss of the car’s heater soon became one sound. He drifted off and dreamed.
The .50 caliber machine gun spit hot shell casings so close to his face he could feel the heat and sting of occasional contacts with his skin. He was too busy trying to stay alive to worry about the burn. His M-14 rifle was set on full-auto, and he was emptying magazine after magazine into the tree line where he thought enemy fire was coming from. It was hard to pinpoint their direction in the fading light, and they would be moving. The pounding of the .50 caliber machine gun next to him stopped. The expected call for ammo didn’t come from the gunner, and he turned his head to see the machine gun and the gunner were still there but the top of the gunner’s head was missing.
He laid his M-14 down to get the .50 caliber going again. It was his best chance. He pried the dead man’s hands from the machine gun’s stock and tried to move the gun. The tripod legs it rested on were buried in the mud, and it wouldn’t budge. He shoved the body away and knelt in the gunner’s position. His knee came down on something sharp. He reached down and felt something slick and jagged and recognized it as part of a skull.
He felt a sharp pain in his shoulder and heard a bloody scream, or it might have been the scream first and then the pain. He didn’t remember in what order, or if he was the one screaming. He remembered thinking he’d been shot and that he was going to die. He remembered hearing the crunch in the bones of his shoulder, his body driven back and pinned to the hard clay of the foxhole. He tried to feel for the .45 semi-auto handgun he’d carried since the first day his foot had touched Vietnam soil, but he couldn’t feel his arm or his hand. He saw the rifle bayonet protruding from his upper chest and looked up into the face of a boy. The boy was yanking and twisting the rifle, trying to free the bayonet where it had gone through his shoulder and buried in the clay. The boy was still trying to pull the blade loose when he used his good arm and pressed the muzzle of the M-14 into the boy’s shocked face and blew the head up like a ripe melon.
Coyote woke from the day-mare drenched in sweat. He had drawn his bayonet while asleep. One hand clenched the hilt, the other hand pressed tightly against his upper chest. He could feel the metal plate the Army surgeon had used to mend his collarbone. He ran his fingers over the old healed wound on his chest. The skin felt numb under his finger, like touching a cadaver, but his shoulder still ached sometimes. He swallowed, expecting to feel the click his throat made when the wound was fresh.
It was a dream, but he could still taste blood on his lips, smell the stench of his own body, soaked in his own blood and that of the boy soldier. He had lain in that foxhole, the dead soldier on top of him, for a day before he was found.
His hands slowly moved to the top of the steering wheel, and he pulled himself up straight in the seat. A slow breath escaped his lungs, and he could feel the ghost itch and electrical tingle in the strap of muscle beside his neck. That part never felt numb. He remembered a medic working on him as he was medevaced out of the kill zone. Remembered the pulsing whomp, whomp, whomp of helicopter blades, the medic placing Coyote’s hands against the bleeding wounds and yelling over the noise, telling Coyote to keep pressure on them. He learned that he’d been stabbed twice. Once in the upper chest, and once in the muscle strap and through his shoulder. Mostly he remembered the feel of the steel blade that remained protruding from his body, his fingers surrounding it, pressing down, staunching the bleeding.
The next thing he remembered was briefly waking in a field hospital, and again on a hospital ship. The bayonet had nicked his jugular vein and collapsed a lung, but somehow he had lived. The surgeon removed the bayonet, sewed him up, and presented the weapon to him as a “memento” of his narrow escape from death. During his three tours of duty, he’d been wounded several times. Nothing like this. This was a one-way ticket stateside if he wanted it. He didn’t. He didn’t run from a fight.
The horror faded, replaced by anger, and last, a practiced calm. He glanced around. It was daylight. The clock on the dash of the Dart showed he’d been asleep two hours. It seemed longer. It would have to do. He needed to get another hundred miles behind him.
A tricked-out dually pickup with loud mufflers started up beside him. The driver was checking him out, grinning, racing the engine, no doubt hoping his toy had the desired effect of startling someone. It didn’t. Coyote said, “You’re wasting my oxygen,” but his words were lost in the rumbling and revving beside him. The dually beeped a backup warning and eased out of the parking space.
Every kid needs his toys. He reached inside his coat and found the notebook where he recorded his thoughts. The shrink had told him to write his dreams down if he could remember them. He’d told the shrink that he didn’t have trouble remembering the damn dreams. He was paying the shrink to help him stop remembering.
He slowly recorded the dream, leaving nothing out, describing as well as he could the pain and excitement of killing up close. The more he wrote, the more his anxiety eased. When he was done journaling, he loosened his coat and got out of the car. The frigid air was a slap in the face. He was tired, both physically and mentally. He debated with himself whether to continue driving or to make the call. He decided to make the call.
He saw the dually driver parked beside a
minivan with a family inside. The man driving the minivan was yelling at the driver. Coyote walked on. Not his problem.
He picked up the pay phone receiver, dropped some coins in the slot, and dialed the number. A sleepy voice answered.
“Who is this?” the man asked angrily.
“Nap time’s over, Miles,” Coyote said.
His gravelly voice was unmistakable. “Coyote?”
“Give me Indy.”
“Indianapolis is still a go. Got a pen?” Miles said.
“Go.” Coyote wrote in his journal the next delivery date, driver name and burner phone number, and the route the truck would take. He hung up.
Chapter 9
Chief Deputy Coroner Lilly Caskins, aka Little Casket, stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She wasn’t armed, but her thick-lensed horn-rimmed glasses were trained on Jack like a sniper scope. She had earned the nickname Little Casket because of the grim nature of her profession and her lack of compassion for both the living and dead. Instead of a scowl, her mouth was twisted into a maniacal smirk. She was in her element.
“Hi, Lilly,” Jack said.
Little Casket turned and stalked away toward the autopsy room without responding. Jack’s cell phone buzzed. He checked the screen. It was Assistant Deputy Director of the FBI Toomey. Jack disconnected.
“Aren’t you going to talk to Fearless Leader?” Liddell asked.
Jack thought that was as good of a nickname as any other. “Fearless Leader isn’t in town. He can leave a message like other telemarketers.”
Little Casket held the door to the autopsy room open for the detectives. “You almost missed the party.”
The smell of strong disinfectant in the autopsy room made Jack’s eyes water. Another smell, too. Liquor. Cheap whiskey. Jack sniffed Little Casket. It was awfully early to be drinking.
“It’s not me,” she said. “It’s Dr. Frankenstein’s idea.” She was referring to Dr. John Carmodi, or Dr. John, the forensic pathologist who would likely be performing victims’ autopsies for the next week or longer.
Dr. John was pouring whiskey over the pubic area of the corpse lying on the stainless-steel autopsy table. The feet were nearest the sink; the head was propped up by a curved piece of plastic. Another empty bottle of rotgut whiskey sat atop the stainless-steel sink tray by the table. Sergeant Tony Walker stood to one side, snapping digital photos of the body. Two clear plastic bags with the tops tied tightly were on the floor near the door to the garage. Jack recognized the victim’s coat in one of the bags.
Dr. John emptied the bottle. “Greetings and salutations, my friends. It’s a wonderful day, isn’t it?”
“Why the whiskey?” Jack asked.
“Phthiriasis,” the pathologist answered. “Common spelling.”
“Hir-ri-a-what?” Liddell asked.
Dr. John smiled. “It’s pronounced ‘hi-rye-a-see’. In layman’s terms, his clothing is infested with mites and he has crabs in his pubic hair.”
“Oh,” Liddell said and stepped back.
“You won’t catch anything,” Dr. John said. “Not unless he was a really close friend, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Looks like you were the one drinking with him,” Liddell said.
“Whiskey is the quickest way to get rid of the crabs,” Walker said.
“I’ve never heard of using whiskey,” Jack said.
Liddell stepped further back.
Walker said, “I couldn’t disinfect the clothes with that stuff.”
Now Jack took a few steps back.
Dr. John grinned. “This guy probably hasn’t bathed in a year. Most of his teeth are rotted out of his mouth.”
“Summer teeth,” Liddell said. “Sum’r there n’ sum ain’t.”
Little Casket said, “If the comedy routine’s wrapped up, we have work to do.”
Little Casket had taken the requisite X-rays and prepped the body before Jack and Liddell arrived. She clipped three X-rays to the light box.
“Join me, gentlemen,” Dr. John said. “You too, Liddell.”
Jack, Liddell, and Walker stood around the light box on the wall while Dr. John explained what they were seeing.
“Three narrow, deep stab wounds,” Dr. John said. “Without measuring the wounds themselves, I’m going to guess the object used was twenty to twenty-three inches in length.”
Jack asked, “A spike?”
“I don’t think so,” Dr. John said. “I’ll show you on the body in a minute.”
Jack saw two vertical lines entering at the shoulder strap near the neck. They continued down into the mid-chest. A third line, this one horizontal, crossed the side ribs and intersected the other two lines in the mid-chest.
“Punctured his heart?” Liddell asked.
“We won’t know for sure until we open him up, but that’s in the right area.”
“We?” Liddell said. “Not me. I’m staying over here. Marcie wouldn’t believe I got crabs from this guy.”
“Please continue, Dr. John,” Jack said and nudged Liddell.
“Three stab wounds. Two of them downward through the left trapezius strap as you can see. They angle inward to the heart. This one broke the clavicle on its path,” he said, pointing to one line that seemed to pass through the bone. Pieces of bone could be seen near the break. “This one”—he pointed to the horizontal line—“entered the left side of the chest through the ribs. I suspect it punctured the heart. There’s evidence of cardiac tamponade—fluid around the heart. You can also see the left lung is smaller than the right. When a lung is punctured, the air escapes and it deflates. Any of these wounds could have caused death. The entry wounds are shaped in a cruciform design. I’ll show you.”
They followed Dr. John to the autopsy table where he pointed to one of the puncture wounds. “See the marked edges of the skin where the blade entered There are four striations, but it’s not exactly a square. See where the flesh between the ridges is curved.”
“A star shape,” Jack said.
“That’s close. Cruciform is the term for that wound pattern,” Dr. John said.
Walker said, “I’ll go through my weapon books.” He was referring to the forensic books depicting and describing various penetration wounds caused by guns, knives, animal bites, animal attacks, or other objects and what made them.
Dr. John picked up one of the dead man’s hands. “There’s no abrasions on his palms.” He turned the hand over. “Nothing on his knuckles. He has a fresh scrape on his right cheek bone just below the eye. Tony showed me photos of the body from the scene, and I’d guess this scrape is from his falling face forward. No scrapes on his hands tells me he was unconscious or dead when he fell forward. It’s instinct to put your hands out if you’re falling.” He held his hands in front, palms facing forward, to demonstrate. “Either that, or the killer held him up,” Dr. John concluded.
Jack saw a slight abrasion on one of the victim’s knees. “Can you tell which of the stab wounds came first?”
Dr. John said, “Most likely, the stab wound in the left side. It didn’t penetrate as far as the other two.”
“Would a wound like that bring a man to his knees?” Jack asked.
“Maybe.”
“Stand in front of me, Bigfoot,” Jack said.
“What are you thinking, pod’na?”
“This guy is around five feet ten inches. Right, Doc?” Jack asked.
“Five feet eleven,” Dr. John corrected.
“The owner of the Coffee Shop said her customer was shorter than her by about five inches. She’s almost my height,” Jack said.
Liddell let Jack stand behind him.
Jack pretended to hold a weapon in his left hand and stab Liddell in the left side. “The wounds are all on the left side of the victim. Here’s what I think. He stabs this guy in the side.
The victim drops to his knees. The killer is standing behind him and stabs downward twice.”
Dr. John said, “Sounds about right. If he was standing behind the guy that is.”
Jack stood in front of Liddell and imitated stabbing him in the left side again with the pretend weapon in his right hand. “There were no defensive wounds on the victim. If the killer was facing him, he would have tried to defend himself.”
Dr. John said, “I think you’re right.”
Liddell said, “So the killer is left-handed and possibly smaller than the victim. That makes Freyda’s customer sound plausible. I’m playing devil’s advocate here. For all we know, the killer could be a woman. Let’s not be gender biased.”
“A knife isn’t usually a woman’s weapon of choice, Bigfoot,” Jack said. “Maybe in domestic violence situations, but unless this guy’s ex-wife caught him cheating on her with the dog, my money is still on the customer.”
“Did this woman say her customer was left-handed?” Dr. John asked.
“I didn’t ask.” Jack called Freyda, asked the question, and hung up. “She said he was writing in that notebook with his left hand. Doc, you think this guy was trying for the heart?”
Dr. John went back to the X-rays. “The wound in the side was placed very exact, and there’s fluid around the heart to indicate bleeding. One of the other wounds hit the clavicle, so it may have deflected the blade. He may have been trying for the aorta. The second wound took out the lung, and if I’m reading the X-ray correctly it pierced the aorta.”
Walker said, “Morris fingerprinted the VW and got a match with the victim’s fingerprints. He was definitely in the VW.”
“Can you give us a time of death?” Jack asked.
“Midnight is close,” Dr. John said.
“This wasn’t a robbery. It was an execution,” Jack said.