The Extinction Event

by David Black

  But he’d lifted the corpse just enough for the rope, which was tied with a simple slip knot, to slide a quarter of an inch up the neck before the dropping body yanked the noose tight again.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Sciortino asked the deputy, talking around the dead cigar clamped in the side of his mouth. “Never been to a hanging before?”

  “I was at that couple,” the deputy said, twitching his right shoulder forward pugnaciously, “who hanged themselves with the same rope. Over by Stottville.”

  Sciortino ignored him and drifted over toward the County Coroner.

  When the noose slipped, it revealed a parchment-colored furrow, which had an indented impression of the weave of the rope. As if a worm had burrowed under Stickman’s skin.

  The breeze slowly turned the dangling body. Another photographer’s flash.

  And in the flash Jack saw the dead man’s chest heave.

  “Oh, shit!” Jack said.

  Stickman’s face twitched. His arms and legs gave a marionette dance.

  “Sciortino!” Jack shouted. He had jumped up from the junker he’d been sitting on and, his right hand reaching toward the cop, had taken a step toward the hanging man. “The son of a bitch is alive!”

  The coroner looked back over his shoulder.

  “Just contractions,” he said. “Hey, Jack, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “He found the body,” Sciortino said. “He keeps finding bodies.”

  The coroner was walking in a circle around the body, which was slowly twirling in the breeze.

  “All you need is eleven pounds to occlude the carotid arteries,” he was telling a man from the Sheriff’s office, two state troopers and three Mycenae city cops, who looked bored. “Same for the trachea. Eleven pounds. Jugular veins, a little less. Only four-point-four pounds. But vertebral arteries, that’s a biggie. Sixty-six pounds.”

  “Our friend up there got to weigh a hundred-thirty,” Sciortino said. “A hundred-forty.”

  “His weight’s enough you mean,” the coroner said.

  The coroner, part-time in his county job, used to be Jack’s doctor. Danny Troubridge. Every time Jack had a check up, Troubridge would ask, “Any VD, Jack?”

  “I don’t mess around,” Jack would say.

  “Everyone messes around,” Troubridge would say. “One way or another.”

  2

  “Pressure on the neck in the area of the carotid arteries can cause unconsciousness in ten seconds,” Troubridge said. “Death is due to compression of the blood vessels of the neck so there’s not enough oxygenated blood reaching the brain.”

  “Autoerotic?” Sciortino asked.

  Troubridge shook his head no.

  “Where are the traces?” Troubridge asked. “Where are the panties? The porno? The fetish gear? The mirror? The lemon in the mouth? No towel under the rope to protect the neck. Maybe he wouldn’t have bothered with that though. The semen’s nothing. Hanging, autoerotic or not, the guy’s going to shoot off. But take a look. The noose, it’s a simple noose. No complicated knots. Some of these kids, those Goths, you should see the knots they tie. Real elegant. Like Boy Scouts.”

  “Yeah,” Sciortino said, picking a shred of tobacco from his upper lip. “They get their merit badges in piercing.”

  “And, see,” Troubridge said, “he used … it looks like clothesline, plain rope he probably got at Walmart or Ace. Oridinary rope, electric cord, belts—the mark of an amateur suicide.”

  “Amateur suicide, huh?” Jack said.

  “Didn’t tie or handcuff himself—,” Troubridge said.

  “How many times do you have to hang yourself to become a professional?” Jack asked.

  “—which people in autoerotic activities sometimes do,” Troubridge finished.

  “To keep them from changing their minds,” Sciortino said, snapping open his Zippo lighter.

  “And the knot is in front,” Troubridge said.

  Sciortino cupped the lighter flame and leaned into it to light his cigar.

  “In autoerotic hangings,” Troubridge said, “it’s usually at the side of the neck. Or the back.”

  “What’re you looking for, Jack?” Sciortino asked.

  “Virtually all hangings are suicidal,” Troubridge told Jack. “Obstruction of the airway is caused by compression of the trachea or, when the noose is above the larynx, elevation and displacement of the tongue. Because of the small amount of pressure needed to compress carotid arteries, you can hang yourself sitting down. Like this.”

  Troubridge sat on the bumper of a junker and pulled his necktie above his head. He rolled up his eyes so only the whites showed and lolled out his tongue.

  “Beautiful,” Sciortino said. “You look deader than our hanged friend.”

  “Had more practice,” Troubridge said.

  “Dying?” Jack said.

  “Studying the dead,” Troubridge said. “Six, seven months back, don’t you know, this guy hanged himself from the bedpost while his wife was sleeping in the bed.”

  Troubridge beamed.

  “Hanging’s the second or third most popular form of suicide,” he said. “Depending on the part of the country.”

  “What about in Columbia County?” Jack asked.

  “Around here,” Troubridge said. “It’s number one.”

  “February comes around,” Sciortino said, nodding, “and people get stir-crazy.”

  “Christmas bills come due,” Troubridge said.

  “Seems like it’ll be dark forever,” Sciortino said.

  “Cold forever,” Troubridge said.

  “People run out of wood,” Sciortino said.

  “Or can’t afford the oil,” Troubridge said.

  “Or gas,” Sciortino said.

  They stood, side-by-side, finishing each other’s sentences like a vaudeville team. Mr. Bones and Mr. Interlocuter.

  “Friday comes around,” Troubridge said, “they check their pay envelope, see how little they made—”

  “After they’ve given the vigorish to the Uncle,” Sciortino said.

  “They wonder why they’re working so hard,” Troubridge said. “For what? And—”

  Troubridge again grabbed his necktie and yanked it over his head, ghoulishly grinning.

  3

  “Why’re you so interested in maybe the hanging was autoerotic?” Sciortino asked Jack.

  “I’m not so interested,” Jack said.

  Sciortino looked at him. Hard.

  “It’s just,” Jack said, “if it wasn’t autoerotic…”

  “We’re done here,” one of the Crime Scene Unit technicians said.

  “Okay,” a state trooper said, “bring him down. Hey, Minutello, leave the knot intact.”

  “Hmm,” Troubridge examined the body. “We got a fracture, don’t you know. Of the thyoid cartiledge. The superior horns.”

  Jack watched Troubridge examine the corpse, which was lying on a gurney.

  “Fracture of the neck is rare,” Troubridge said. “Only with osteoarthritis, with a sudden drop, or obesity, or old age.”

  Jack approached the body.

  “But his neck is fractured,” Jack said.

  “Ninety hangings,” Troubridge said, “I only seen one fracture of the cervical spine. The woman weighed over three-fifty.”

  “How’d she get up high enough to hang herself?” a trooper asked.

  “She looped the rope over the back of the couch and tied it to one of the back legs,” Troubridge said, “then rolled off the couch.”

  “You think someone could’ve, what, Jack? Knocked out our friend and strung him up?” Sciortino asked. “Any lumps on the head, back of the neck, anywhere someone might’ve given the guy a whack?” he asked Troubridge. “Any contusions on the arms where someone held him against his will?”

  “Not that I can see,” Troubridge said, examining the body.

  “Or maybe two guys snuck up on him.” Sciortino pointed at the body with his cigar. “What do you th
ink, Doc? Two guys maybe hanged this mook?”

  Wiping one hand against the other, Troubridge stood. To Jack, he said, “It’s virtually impossible for one or two healthy males to hang a third unless he’s been beaten unconscious or drugged or drunk.”

  “Maybe there were three guys,” Jack said. “Four.”

  “Why not five?” Sciortino asked. “A dozen? Maybe the Elks interrupted their monthly meeting and came to the junkyard? Or maybe he was attacked by a biker gang? Or Russian gangsters? Or the Mafia? Or the CIA? They forced him to drink a bottle of Jack Black? Made him snort lots of coke? Want to see what the tox scan says? Seems to me, Jack, your boy was probably always drunk and drugged. We pare his fingernails, look for some killer’s DNA? You think we got a budget for that?”

  “You’re going to close the case, huh?” Jack said.

  “Jack,” Sciortino said, “it’s over, done, finished. The boy hanged himself.”

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  “Who knows?” Sciortino said. “The guy was a fruitcake. Look at the way he was living. A pig.”

  “And pigs always hang themselves, right?” Jack said. “He suddenly got real disgusted with himself and decided to end it all.”

  “You think that doesn’t happen?” Sciortino said.

  Sciortino grabbed Jack’s arm and steered him away from the crime scene.

  “It ain’t murder, Jack,” he said. “What the hell’re you trying to do?”

  “He knew Gaynor,” Jack said.

  Sciortino stared at Jack.

  “Could’ve given her the drugs that killed Frank,” Jack said.

  “Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve,” Sciortino said. “You want to take that to the DA? Get a true bill on could’ve?”

  “It’s a big coincidence,” Jack said.

  “Like someone finds you dead in your car, which accidently runs off the road some night?” Sciortino said. “You know life is full of coincidences.”

  “Seems to me—,” Jack started.

  “Seems to me,” Sciortino said, “you’re not paying attention.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  1

  Jack, who made himself scarce after Sciortino’s warning, got a flashlight from his car and, after the cops had left, circled back to the crime scene. He played the flashlight on the ground below where Stickman had been hanging, up at the branch where Stickman had tied the rope, and ran the beam along the branch, the light illuminating bark greenish and diamond-patterned, like a snake. When the beam came to the end of the branch, it dropped down the trunk, elongated, a finger of light, as if it were dripping liquid.

  Jack aimed the light to the right and left and higher, picking out broken twigs and small branches, where Stickman might have climbed up to tie the rope.

  Jack aimed wider and higher.

  The area of broken branches extended three, maybe four feet, in each direction.

  More than one man would make climbing a tree?

  Or damage consistent with one or two men hauling up a third?

  No, Jack thought, I’m building a case. Anyway, if Stickman had been drugged, unconscious, and then hanged by others, only one guy would have to climb the tree and tie the rope. Then, climb down and put the noose around Stickman’s neck.… No, two men. One to lift Stickman’s body and a second to set the noose, then drop the body, fracturing the spine.

  Building a case …

  “Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve,” Sciortino had said. “You want to take that to the DA? Get a true bill on could’ve?”

  “It’s a big coincidence,” Jack repeated aloud and repeated Sciortino’s answer:

  “Like someone finds you dead in your car, which accidently runs off the road some night?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, again out loud, “life is full of coincidences.”

  Like Frank getting together with Jean Gaynor, Jack thought.

  2

  “Let’s say Robert asks Frank to do a favor,” Jack said, leaning across the table in a booth at the Mohawk Trail Diner overlooking the river.

  “To help Jean?” Caroline said.

  “We could look in the court records,” Jack said, “the cops must’ve pulled in Jean plenty of times. Frank puts in the fix.”

  “And whatever Robert or his father is giving Frank for doing the favor, Jean decides to sweeten the thank-you with sex and drugs,” Caroline said. “That could explain how Frank started using.”

  “But not why somebody would kill Frank,” Jack said.

  “You’re sure the bad coke wasn’t an accident?” Caroline asked.

  Like someone finds you dead in your car, which accidently runs off the road some night?

  “Just a coincidence?” Jack said.

  Life is full of coincidences.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” he added, gesturing at the passing waitress for a coffee refill.

  “You like long odds?” Caroline asked.

  “I don’t think the odds are all that long,” Jack said. “Do you?”

  Caroline shook her head no.

  After the waitress topped off Jack’s cup, he tore open a packet and poured sugar into the coffee, stirring.

  “Three people are dead,” Caroline said, not looking at Jack, who raised his cup and gazed at Caroline over the rim. “You’ve been attacked.”

  “Go back through Frank’s papers,” Jack said. “Whatever’s left at the office. Think you can get into his home? Say you’re looking for something relating to a case Frank left pending. I’ll hit the library, see what I can find about Gaynor’s condition. Her neurological condition. Why she went to the hospital.”

  3

  The morning Jack started his research, sheets of rain swept over the façade of the public library, a Beaux Arts building four or five times larger than one would expect in a city the size of Mycaenae. Hunching his shoulders, clutching his turned-up coat collar, Jack ran from his parking spot a half block away from the library, up the library’s six stone steps, past two human-size saucer-eyed Chinese guard dogs, baring ancient ceramic fangs, and through the new steel-and-glass doors, into the overheated library foyer, which smelled of damp wool. As Jack entered, the rain stopped and the clouds rolled away.

  Jack pushed through double doors into the main room, which was flanked by half a dozen narrow two-story-high cathedral windows. In front of him at the far end of the room, towering over the wooden card catalog that no one used anymore, was a Tiffany window: A woman with shoulder-length auburn hair. Draped in what looked like a bed sheet, falling in peek-a-boo folds over her small bosom, she sat in an arbor. The sudden sun passing across the colored glass made it seem as if the grapes, which in the moving light turned from pale gray to purple, were ripening as Jack watched.

  “Start with Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine and Mosby’s Internal Medicine,” said the librarian, a red-faced, red-haired man who looked, Jack thought, like a short-order cook. The sunlight streaming through the windows made the thin red hair on his forearms glow as if they were lightbulb filaments. Each book was eight-and-a-half by eleven, three inches thick, one over two thousand pages, the other just shy of three thousand. Together they weighed twenty pounds.

  Jack started with drug addiction—narcotics may suppress the production of endorphins or a craving for narcotics may be caused by a lack of naturally produced endorphins—and worked his way through Jean’s symptoms: alcoholism; the causes of headaches from dilation of arteries to inflammation; headaches associated with the eyes or infection or hemorrhage; muscle aches, myalgic states, due to inflammation; systemic infection from Colorado tick fever to glanders (which sounded to Jack like a city in the Netherlands), an initial symptom of rheumatoid arthritis, or, according to Harrison’s, “In thin, asthenic adults … the authors have found it difficult to exclude hysteria or other neurosis or depression,” through the rest of the list: dizziness; ringing in the ears; irregular menstruation; irregular heartbeat; hallucinations; and difficulty in concentration.…

  Each symptom
branched out into multiple possible causes. Each cause ramified into other paths to research. Each path led to worlds of pain, misery, and disease. At times, Jack felt like an explorer hacking his way through a dense jungle, where he might find lost tribes or forgotten species. Prehistoric monsters. Insects of monstrous size.

  Networks of nerves seemed like spiderwebs. Charts showing spikes of chemicals in the blood seemed like mountain peaks he had to climb. A diagram of “an approach to the evaluation of diarrhea and wasting in AIDS patients” could have been a constellation on a star map. The two ghostly ovals in an illustration of radioactive iodine scanning of the thyroid gland hinted at the wings of fraudulent fairy photographs or ectoplasmic emanations from a nineteenth-century medium. A picture of a “perivenular area with dense collagen (progressive alcoholic fibrosis)” looked pitted like a stretch of dead coral near the seashore on the part of Andros Island Jack had visited.

  From Harrison’s and Mosby’s, Jack went on to other standard medical textbooks, working backwards from symptoms to causes like, he felt, Hansel trying to find his way home through a mazy wood where the birds had pecked up the trail of bread crumbs. Headaches behind each eye made Jack feel as if he were absorbing Gaynor’s symptoms.

  “That’s one way to figure out what Gaynor was suffering from,” Jack told Caroline at dinner, after his third day in the library. “Become her and look in the mirror.”

  “Don’t be in such a hurry to do firsthand research,” Caroline said. “Remember, Jean’s dead.”

  Sitting in the library at a computer terminal, books stacked on either side of the monitor, Jack scanned dozens of journals on line: The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, International Journal of Medical Science, The Canadian Medical Association Journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, Alcohol and Alcoholism, The Lancet, American Family Physician, American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Archives of Internal Medicine, Archives of General Psychiatry, Archives of Neurology.

  Half of what Jack read, he didn’t understand. Even after leafing back through Harrison, other texts, and Stedman’s Medical Dictionary.