by Alex Grecian
Skottie had been in rooms like this, in Chicago, in Kansas City, in Milwaukee. They were always the same, even if the details differed. Clean and orderly, an attempt to boil the ugly uncertainty of death down to facts and statistics. Skottie could see how the rooms comforted some people, gave them lists they could check off and file away, but they made her skin crawl. A woman had been drowned and a man burned, their bodies left for strangers to discover, and there were no facts that mattered except that two people were gone forever.
She knew she would have to open the cabinets, pull out the drawers, and look at the bodies, but she wasn’t ready for that. She went instead to the first desk at the back of the room and tapped the space bar on the computer keyboard. The monitor sprang to life, showing a desktop picture of a smiling man holding a baby, squinting into the camera, deep purple beneath his eyes. A proud sleepy father. Skottie assumed this computer belonged to Dr. Iversen’s assistant. A gray box sprang up, obscuring the young father’s face, and a blinking cursor prompted her to input a password.
“Damn,” Skottie said.
“What are you looking for?”
Skottie started and looked up from the monitor. A very tall man in a heavy brown trench coat and a white Stetson stood in the doorway, a ring of keys in his hand. He had gray hair and glasses and a neatly trimmed mustache. Skottie judged him to be in his midfifties.
“Dr. Iversen?” she guessed.
“Who are you?” Iversen hesitated in the door, torn between curiosity and outrage. “I thought—”
“You were expecting Trooper Kufahl, right? I’m afraid I lied to your watchman out there.”
Dr. Iversen dropped his keys in a pocket of the big coat. “He said the trooper who found the body was here. That’s not you. So I’ll ask again, who are you?”
“I really am with the Highway Patrol. Can I show you my badge?”
Iversen nodded, and Skottie took out her badge holder, flipped it open so he could see the shield inside. He seemed to relax. He unbuttoned his coat and hung it on a peg behind the door while Skottie talked.
“Trooper Kufahl asked me to come out here and check on something for him,” Skottie said. She didn’t want to lie to Iversen—lies seemed to be piling up behind her at an alarming rate—but the truth was far too convoluted. She had no legal or procedural reason to be there, and she didn’t want the doctor to start making phone calls. Once word got back to Lieutenant Johnson, Skottie knew she would be in an enormous amount of trouble. “I didn’t want to disturb you at home, so I thought I’d just take a quick look at the file for him and leave you a note for the morning. Sorry if I startled you.”
Iversen hung his hat on a peg next to the trench coat and used his fingers to smooth his hair. He shook his head.
“Why didn’t Ryan come out here himself? Have I met you before?”
“Only over the phone. My name’s Foster. Call me Skottie.”
“Okay.”
“Ryan’s still caught up with that other case, the pileup,” she said. “Long day.”
“Right. Helluva day. Why I came back. Thought maybe I could get a jump on tomorrow. Two suspicious bodies, one right after the other—well, it’s not a record, but we’re not really set up for that, not to mention the ordinary bodies we’ve got to deal with.” He held out his hands like he was surrendering to the mysteries of life, or the Fates, and shook his head again. “Anyway, what was it Ryan needed?”
“I know it’s early yet, but if you’ve got anything on the John Doe from today, the burn victim . . .”
“Not much, of course,” Iversen said. He went to the refrigerated cabinets and adjusted his glasses, reading the cards attached to the doors. “We got lucky with a couple of details, though, and I’m waiting on an e-mail from the hospital.” He settled on one of the drawers and unlatched it, pulled it out on its rollers, looked in, and closed it again. “We’ll know more when I get him on the table tomorrow, but . . .” He grabbed a file from a rack on the counter next to him and went to a large light box on the wall, opening the file as he walked. He stuck a rectangular sheet of film in the holder at the top and pushed a button on the side. A moment later, the light box flickered to life. “Look at this.”
Skottie watched as he clipped two more X-rays up on the wall. Sections of the dead man’s skeleton were illuminated in no particular order, like a gruesome jigsaw puzzle.
“Here.” Dr. Iversen pointed to a spot on one of the X-rays. “See that?”
Skottie moved closer and squinted up at a blurry white spot on the reversed-out shadow of an arm. “That line, is it a fracture?”
“Not just one. Three fractures, close together here. And here, too. And see there?” He pointed again, but Skottie didn’t see anything unusual.
“Harder to see,” Iversen said. “But those dark spots there, the head of the radius has been dislocated enough times that scar tissue built up in the joint. Monteggia fractures of the proximal forearm. These are old injuries, set well and healed. Probably childhood trauma.”
“Abuse?”
“Not necessarily.” He held his arm out and hit the heel of his hand against the counter. “You put your arm out to break a fall and the pressure gets transferred up the line and breaks at the weakest point, which is your ulna . . . here.” He pointed at his forearm. “It probably wouldn’t happen this way, especially with the dislocation at the wrist, if he had been hit with something from above or from the side. If I had to guess, I’d say he spent a lot of time on a skateboard. Or maybe a bicycle or in-line skates. Fell often enough that he broke that arm three different times.”
“Ouch,” Skottie said.
“Well, yes, but a lucky break for us, so to speak. Lucky breaks, I should say. We ought to be able to use those to help us identify him. He was too badly burned for much else.”
“What about dental records? Or a DNA test?”
“Dental records, sure. Sarakay’s going to get on that first thing. But I’m afraid a DNA test would take weeks and cost more than the county will probably want to spend.”
And Skottie knew that a DNA test, aside from being slow and costly, was no guarantee of any real results. There had to be something to match the DNA to in order to make an identification. It was a long shot.
“But if he’s a murder victim . . .”
“Oh, I think that’s beyond any doubt.”
“Really?”
Iversen pointed to another X-ray. “See that?”
“Okay, it’s a skull,” Skottie said. “Besides that, what am I looking at?”
“Here.” Iversen tapped his finger on a line that looked like a curly hair had fallen across the negative.
“Another fracture,” Skottie said. “But it’s—”
“Not a fracture. A piece was cut out of this man’s skull. He’s had brain surgery.”
Skottie felt her level of excitement rising. “That should make it easier to identify him.”
“Maybe. There’s one more thing you can tell Ryan, although I’ll show him all this tomorrow anyway.”
Dr. Iversen led the way to the refrigerated cabinets and pulled out the same one he’d opened before. This time he rolled it all the way out and waved Skottie over.
“Look at the side of his head there,” Iversen said. “Isn’t that interesting?”
“I don’t see it.”
The man’s head was badly burned, most of the skin blackened and thin as parchment. His hair was burned away, and the flesh that was visible along his scalp was a livid pink. His features were obscured by a mound of blisters like mushrooms on an old log. Skottie wanted to look away, but she didn’t want to embarrass herself with Dr. Iversen.
“It’s hard to spot,” Iversen said. “This poor man. But if you know what you’re looking for, and I was curious after looking at the X-rays, right in here you can see it. A puckering of the flesh along the temple. Ther
e was a recent wound; you can see the indication of stitches all along here.”
“You’re saying that surgery on his head”—Skottie looked away toward the X-rays—“he had that done right before he died?”
“I’m certain of it.”
“So maybe he was confused. He drove that tractor out there when he shouldn’t have been driving at all, and something went wrong.”
“I can’t speak to his state of mind,” Iversen said. “That’s outside my job description. But between this and those fractures he’s suffered to the proximal third of his right ulna, I think he’ll be very easy to identify, even without DNA testing.”
“That’s great news.”
“Like I said, I’m waiting on an e-mail from the hospital, but I wouldn’t expect anything for a few days yet. A lot of the older files haven’t been computerized yet, so the victim’s childhood injuries might not be readily available. And it’s very possible he didn’t grow up around here. If he came here from Wichita—or New York or Russia or something—it’s going to take a lot more digging. But I’m optimistic.”
He rolled the body back into the cabinet and went to the light box, turned it off, and took down the X-rays. He put them back in the file and returned it to the rack on the counter.
“I’ll get a look inside as soon as possible tomorrow,” he said. “Could be we’ll find something more to go on. It’s hard to think of a better example than this one, in terms of being able to identify a body this far gone. We’ll figure him out.”
Skottie’s excitement at the possibility of progress was tempered by the realization that she might not have a job by the time the burn victim was identified. She might never get the chance to follow up, to help solve the case. And there was a possibility the dead man had nothing to do with any of this. She was far out on the ice and no longer knew how to get back to shore. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Dr. Iversen took a step back and tapped his chin with an index finger. “Come to think of it, why did you say Ryan needed this information tonight? If he’s working on something else, why couldn’t this wait?”
“You know how it is,” Skottie said. “Curiosity. It’s hard to sleep when you’ve got something gnawing away at you.”
“So he sent you.”
Skottie shrugged.
“And you were looking at Sarakay’s computer when I came in. What did you think you would find there?”
“I just thought maybe there was a file on the case. Maybe you’d found some identification.”
Dr. Iversen walked over to the desks and glanced down at his assistant’s computer. He tapped the space bar, just like Skottie had done, and seemed satisfied when the gray box popped up prompting him for a password. He turned and went to the other desk and sat down. He entered his own password and nodded at the monitor.
“No harm done, I guess,” he said.
The computer chimed, and Iversen rocked back in his chair. His eyebrows shot up.
“Well, what do you know?” He looked up at Skottie, his suspicion of her dissolving in the face of a new discovery. “An e-mail from the hospital. Might be what you’re looking for.”
He moved the mouse and clicked it, studying the screen, while Skottie moved closer to the desk, holding her breath. Iversen spent a long minute reading the e-mail, then looked up at her with a smile.
“They got a match already,” he said. “For the arm fractures, not the damage to the victim’s skull, but it seems to me that matching those three breaks makes it fairly conclusive. Especially if the surgery to the skull is as recent as I think it is.”
“Are you sure it’s a match? I mean, wouldn’t the hospital have a record of brain surgery?”
Dr. Iversen gave her a grim look. “If it was done at a hospital. That cut looked ragged to me. Like I say, I’ll know more tomorrow when I can get a closer look at the actual work done.”
“So what’s his name?”
“Wes Weber,” Iversen said. “Thirty-three years old. Unmarried. As of six months ago, a resident of Hays.”
“Weber,” Skottie said. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“Yes . . .” Dr. Iversen stood, sending his chair rolling backward to the wall behind him. He strode to the refrigerated cabinets and bent forward, pulled his glasses down on his nose while he read the cards on the three occupied drawers. He reached over and grabbed another file from the rack and held it up.
“Same last name as our other mysterious victim,” he said. “Margaret Weber. Drowned at Kirwin Lake. Coincidence?”
Skottie shook her head. And then she remembered the other place she’d heard Wes Weber’s name. On Monday she had found his abandoned green pickup truck at a rest stop and had arranged for it to be towed.
Except now she was certain he hadn’t meant to abandon it.
4
“She’s back!”
The man in the back seat awoke with a start and wiped his mouth. His left shoulder was wet with drool. “Huh?”
“The statie,” said the man in the driver’s seat. “She just got home.”
The man in the passenger seat was snoring softly.
“Don’t wake him up,” said the man in the back seat. “We got a while. Might as well let him rest. Me too. Wake me up a half hour after the lights go out in there.”
He flopped back and was breathing deeply within seconds.
“Right,” said the driver. “Yeah, you guys rest while I sit here and watch a house. Jackasses.”
“What?” The man in the back seat was only half-awake, his voice thick and drowsy.
“Nothing,” the driver said. “I didn’t say a damn thing.”
5
Maddy was a light sleeper. She had been living in her grandmother’s house for nearly six months, but she was still waking up every night, lying in the dark, staring up at nothing and listening for her parents’ angry voices. Her father wasn’t around anymore to argue with her mother, but that was disturbing in a different way, and she hadn’t decided which was worse, the constant fighting or the quiet Kansas nights.
So at first she wasn’t surprised when she woke and heard people whispering in the living room. She checked the clock next to her bed and saw it was after midnight. Sometime during the night, while she was asleep, the rain had stopped. Now there was only the steady plink of water falling off the roof and hitting the lawn chairs on the patio outside her bedroom window.
She slid from under her blanket to the floor and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Bear was standing at her bedroom door and Maddy tiptoed over to him. He looked at her when she patted his head, but he didn’t move from his post, and it occurred to Maddy that the big dog was blocking the doorway, protecting her from whoever was out there.
At the same time, it occurred to her that the people talking didn’t sound like her mother and her father, or her grandma Emmaline. There were strangers in the house.
“It’s okay, boy,” she said in a low voice even she could barely hear. “You stay here. I’ll check it out.”
She slipped out into the hallway. Her mother’s door was open, and she was softly snoring. The voices coming from the front of the house were louder now, and Maddy could make out isolated words.
“. . . got a gun?”
“Hurry, I . . .”
“. . . trash it first, make it look . . .”
She snuck across the hall and up to her mother’s bed, reached out and touched her on the shoulder. Skottie came awake right away, squinting and reaching out to stroke Maddy’s hair.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Skottie’s voice was soft and hoarse, trying not to wake Grandma Emmaline in the next room.
“There’s people in the house, Mama.”
Soft light from a streetlight outside stretched across the blankets and made Maddy’s T-shirt glow pink. Bear’s shadow moved across the wall as he padded aroun
d to the other side of the bed.
“You’re having a bad dream,” Skottie said. “It’s just the rain. Let me—”
“There’s two men. Maybe three. They’re in the living room.”
Skottie sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, frowning now, concern creasing her forehead and digging grooves alongside her mouth. “You sure, Maddy?”
Maddy nodded and pointed at the open door and they both held still, their eyes wide as they strained to hear. Again, snippets of sound drifted through the air, the low rumble of faraway thunder, the whistle of a distant train, and low male voices in another part of the house. Maddy could no longer make out whole words, but there were at least two people out there.
Skottie was out of bed in an instant and she crossed the room to her gun safe in two long strides.
“Take Bear with you and go to your room. Get under the bed.”
“What about your bed?” Maddy cast a suspicious eye at the shadowy space beneath the edge of the bed skirt.
Skottie crouched in front of the safe and looked up at her with a grimace. “No room. Grandma’s stuff is under there, remember?”
Maddy recalled the day they had moved in, the two of them shoving boxes of her grandmother’s clothing and linens under the bed in order to make room for their own things. She instinctively glanced at the tiny closet. It was so full the door didn’t close properly. For the first time it occurred to her that they had imposed themselves on Emmaline.
“Hide under your own bed, Maddy,” Skottie said. “Hurry up. Don’t try to get the dog to go under there with you, and don’t come out until I come for you.”
Skottie worked the dial on the safe’s door, and Maddy backed up, then turned and crept out into the hallway again. She glanced at her own door, but the thought of hiding under her bed like a helpless kid held no appeal. Which left her with two options: she could wake her grandmother or she could scout the situation in the living room. There was no one else there to help them. Her mother had a gun, but if the men were armed, too, Skottie would need to know that. And she would need to know where the men were. Someone was going to have to call the police, and Maddy wanted to call her father. There was a lot to be done, and her mother already had her hands full.