Dead Ringer

by Annelise Ryan

  While I know that in the course of carrying out my current job, I no longer run the risk of killing anyone if I make a mistake, I’ve discovered that I can destroy a life. An erroneous assumption I made robbed a man of his freedom. My guilt is mitigated a bit by the knowledge that the error wasn’t mine alone, and that the stage was set through the conspiratorial efforts of some very bad people. But mitigated isn’t assuaged, and the knowledge of my role in the whole mess still stings.

  The victim, a man named Tomas Wyzinski, was convicted largely on the testimony given by Bob Richmond, one of our local police detectives, and me. Neither of us lied about the facts, which were straightforward and admittedly damning, considering that we found the head of a murder victim in Wyzinski’s refrigerator. My assumption that Tomas was guilty colored the observations and conclusions I made on the day of that first encounter, as well as my observations, assumptions, and testimony later.

  But he wasn’t guilty.

  Eventually the wrong was righted, and just yesterday morning, I sat across from Mr. Wyzinski at a table in our office library—which also serves as office space for me and the person with whom I job-share—atoning for my mistake. I was relieved and glad that Wyzinski was no longer in prison and delighted that he had been rejoined with his brother, Lech, who is mentally challenged. The two of them were accompanied by two U.S. Marshals, who were ready to take them to a secret location, where they would embark on a new life in the Witness Protection Program.

  “I’m so very sorry, Tomas,” I told him with all the sincerity I could muster. I was tempted to try to explain my erroneous assumptions, to paint a picture of the damning scene I encountered that day when I first met him, but I refrained at the last second for several reasons. He’d heard it already the day I testified in court, it made no difference in the end, and I recognized the impulse for what it was: an attempt to explain away my blame. I didn’t want to explain it away; I needed to own it.

  “I jumped to conclusions and closed my mind to the possibilities,” I told him. “And you paid the price for my ignorance. I’m sorrier than you will ever know and will regret it for the rest of my life.”

  Lech, whom I’d visited several times while his brother was in prison, smiled at me. Tomas did not. “You helped us,” Lech said with a big, beaming smile. “And that’s a good thing.”

  I smiled back at him, but it was hard to feel happy about any of this.

  “Your part in this was very minor,” Tomas said finally. “In some ways, you were as much a victim of the puppet masters as I was. I don’t hold any grudges, and I don’t blame you for what happened. What’s more, I appreciate what you did for both me and my brother. Particularly what you did for Lech. You made sure he was safe.”

  “It was the least I could do,” I said with a wan smile. “I knew he was your weak link and suspected it was threats of harm to him that were keeping you in line.”

  “And you were right,” Tomas said. He closed his eyes for a moment and took on a pained expression. “I was so afraid of what they would do to . . .” His eyes opened, and he looked at his brother with sweet affection. “Of what they would do,” he concluded, presumably not wanting to spook his brother.

  “The marshals were really nice,” Lech said with an emphatic nod. “They gave me a new house to stay in. They got me really good food, too. I got to eat ice-cream cake!”

  Tomas smiled at his brother, and it transformed his face. These two obviously bore a deep mutual affection for one another, and I knew that the role I played in nearly destroying that relationship would haunt me for the rest of my life. I hoped it would also serve as a reminder to me in the future, a precautionary note for any time I found myself tempted to jump to conclusions or close my mind to possible scenarios.

  “Thank you for your understanding, Tomas,” I said, getting up from my chair. “I’m not sure I deserve it, but I’m truly happy to have it.” I glanced at my watch and sighed. “I need to get to work and you guys need to get going. You won’t be able to contact me, and I’ll likely never see you again, but know that I’ll be thinking about the two of you often, hoping that you’re enjoying your new lives.”

  “Thank you,” Tomas said, giving me one last smile.

  “Thank you, Mattie,” Lech echoed. He rose out of his chair, came around the table, and wrapped his arms around me, hugging me for all he was worth.

  I hugged him back, my eyes closed to contain burgeoning tears. When Lech released me, I swiped at my eyes and saw that Tomas was also on his feet. He walked to and then past me without another look my way. No hug, no good-bye, no comment of any sort, but then I hadn’t expected one. Lech followed him out of the room, one marshal leading the way, the other falling into step behind the two men.

  I’d stayed in the room to give myself a moment or two to get my emotions under control and to give the marshals and their charges time to leave. Then I went into the locker room, changed into scrubs, and headed for the morgue fridge to retrieve the body I’d put there during the night.

  I’m normally somewhat immune to cold temperatures, in part because you adapt to it if you live in Wisconsin for any length of time, and in part because I come with plenty of my own insulation. But yesterday morning, when I walked into the morgue fridge on the heels of my meeting with the Wyzinskis, I was wracked by a violent shiver that made me hug myself. I made quick work of getting the body out of the fridge, the air in there feeling colder than the look my ex–mother-in-law, Stella, had given me when I’d ran into her—quite literally—at the grocery store the night before.

  * * *

  My marriage to Stella’s son, David Winston, a local surgeon, ended because he cheated on me. Despite that, I’ve somehow become the enemy in Stella’s eyes. She is here in town now because David has remarried and his new wife, Patty, just had a baby. It’s Stella’s first grandchild, as David is her only child and he and I never had any children.

  I have them now, however: a seventeen-year-old stepdaughter named Emily—a surprise arrival in Hurley’s life a few years ago, given that he never knew he had a child before then—and Hurley’s and my two-and-a-half-year-old son, Matthew.

  I’d had Matthew with me when I ran into Stella at the grocery store, and Matthew, in what seems to be his modus operandi of late, was having a meltdown in the cereal aisle, screaming and thrashing about in the cart because I wouldn’t buy a box of Frosted Flakes. He was sobbing that he wanted “Tony Tiger” with all the angst of a kid who’s just been beaten and threatened with death. I was refusing to buy them because I’d done so once before, and Matthew hated the stuff. But there was no way to explain that to the other shoppers, who were watching us with hooded, judgmental eyes, and expressions that clearly communicated their displeasure.

  Desperate to get Matthew to stop, I had bent down close to his ear, telling him in a stern but low voice that if he didn’t knock it off, I was going to run Tony Tiger out of town and he’d never see him again, not even here at the grocery store. It wasn’t my proudest parental moment, but I find that logic and kindness tend to disappear from the equation when dealing with a temperamental toddler amid societal condescension and judgment.

  As I was muttering my Tony-cidal threat to my sobbing son, I steered the cart around an end cap and into the next aisle, eager to leave the row of cereals behind. I wasn’t watching where I was going and ran the cart into someone else’s. An expletive escaped my lips before I could stop it, uttered right near my son’s ear. At least this, combined with the shock of the collision, got Matthew to stop crying. It took me a second to place the woman behind the cart I’d hit, as I’d only seen Stella twice before: once when David took me to Chicago to meet her and announce our engagement, and again at our wedding.

  Stella is a large and imperious woman who literally looks down her nose at people. A wealthy widow—her husband died of cancer when David was in medical school—she is a class-conscious snob. I never felt accepted or good enough when I was around her, a feeling reinforced by the
fact that during seven years of marriage, she never came to visit us or invited us down to Chicago to visit her.

  “I’m sorry,” I’d uttered automatically postcollision, focused on disentangling my cart from the other one.

  The only response I got was a dismissive “Hmph.”

  It was then that I looked up at my victim. “Stella! What are you doing here?” I asked, feeling momentarily disoriented. Then I remembered. “Oh, wait, you came up to meet your new granddaughter, didn’t you? Congratulations.”

  Again there was no response, just a glacial stare delivered from a head that was tilted back ever so slightly to give that look-down-my-nose-at-you posture. After a moment, she gave a derisive glance toward my son, who was gaping at her with a startled yet fascinated expression.

  I whipped my cart around, aiming for the next aisle over. With one last glance over my shoulder, I said, “Tell David and Patty hi for me.” Then I hightailed it out of there and hid in the baked-goods aisle for half an hour before venturing on.

  * * *

  As I tally up my encounter with Stella, yesterday’s meeting with the Wyzinskis, and the current realization that the body we are working on is providing evidence of yet another possible wrong conviction, my emotions feel tighter than the SPANX I wore to my sister’s Christmas party.

  “Let’s try to get ahead of this case,” Izzy says, nodding toward the woman’s body between us and refocusing my thoughts. “Call Arnie and have him come down here to collect some of this trace. And then call your husband and get him up to speed on this right away.”

  I nod and step back from the table, stripping off my gloves. I wash my hands, flexing my fingers a few times to test my dexterity. For some reason, my fingers have been swollen for the past couple of weeks, making my rings so tight that I had to take them off. I suspect it’s due to the ten pounds I put on over the holidays and have yet to take off. It’s now April and those extra pounds are taunting me, reminding me that shorts and bathing-suit season is right around the corner.

  First I use the phone on the desk by the far wall to call Arnie down from his second-floor lab, and then to call Hurley. I get Hurley’s voice mail and leave a message telling him we need him to come to the autopsy suite ASAP. By the time I’m done, Arnie has arrived.

  “What’s up?” he says, eyeing the body on the table through his thick-lensed glasses.

  After cutting off his ponytail as payment for a lost bet, Arnie is trying to grow his thinning hair long again, and it’s not a good look for him. The long, thin strands hanging down around his head are prone to static and it makes him look like the love child of Mr. Magoo and a sea anemone.

  “You haven’t cut yet?” Arnie says, coming close to my own thoughts, though mine are regarding his hair, not our body.

  “Getting ready to,” Izzy says. “But we found something in one of the stab wounds that I want you to take a closer look at right away.” He holds up the jar that contains the flower petals, and Arnie walks over and takes it from him.

  “Flower petals, I believe,” Arnie says, turning the jar around in his hand. “Yellow ones, maybe from . . . a carnation? That could be potentially significant since the yellow carnation symbolizes rejection, or disappointment.”

  “You know that off the top of your head?” I say, surprised. I hadn’t given him a clue as to why Izzy wanted him to come down here.

  Arnie smiles at me. “I know a lot of things,” he says cryptically. “This particular tidbit I know because it’s part of an RPG I play a lot that has mystical and mythological overtones based on real folklore.”

  “RPG?” Izzy says.

  “Role-playing game,” Arnie and I say at the same time. Then Arnie says, “You found them inside a stab wound?”

  Izzy nods. “Mattie says she remembers hearing about a case at the conference she attended last year that also had these flower petals embedded in the stab wounds.”

  “And the same stabbing pattern we see here,” I add, making Arnie look again at the body.

  “Does that ring any bells with you?” Izzy asks Arnie. “Have you and your evidence tech cronies chatted about anything that sounds like this?”

  Arnie’s brow furrows in thought. “Not the flowers, but I remember a case out west that involved a unique stabbing pattern. I think they determined it was a pentagram. Ended up being a twisted devil worshipper. This is more of a triangular shape, though. Didn’t that recent serial killer in Eau Claire stab in a similar pattern?”

  “He did,” Izzy says with a grim smile.

  I gather he’s pleased that Arnie made the connection without any prompting or clues from us, but also worried about the questions it raises regarding Ulrich’s guilt or innocence.

  “I don’t recall any mention of flower petals in that case, though,” Arnie says, looking bemused. He rubs his chin and stares at the petals in the jar. “Wait . . . does this mean—”

  Before Arnie can finish his question, the door to the autopsy suite opens and my husband walks in. As always, the mere sight of him gets my heart to racing, that long-legged stride, those sky-blue eyes, that thick black hair. I sigh and smile, hoping my reaction to the sight of him never wanes. Then I wonder if he has a similar reaction when he sees me.

  “What’s going on?” he asks, walking over to where Arnie and I are standing. He glances at the body on the table and frowns. “You haven’t opened her yet?”

  Izzy counters, “You haven’t identified her yet?”

  The two men stare at one another and then collectively sigh with such coordinated timing you would have thought they’d practiced it.

  “We have some interesting findings,” I say to Hurley, hoping to disperse the tension in the room. I then explain it all to him, beginning with the pattern of the stab wounds, finding the flower petals, the discussion I had with the fellow at the forensic conference last year, and the fact that the flower petals were never mentioned during Ulrich’s trial.

  Hurley listens with little reaction and without interruption. When I’m done, he says, “Are you saying you think our case might be tied to the guy who killed those women in Eau Claire?”

  “It appears that way on the surface,” I say.

  Hurley looks over at Izzy, who nods his agreement.

  “And if I remember right,” Arnie says, “all the victims of the guy in Eau Claire were of a physical type, the same as our girl here. Blond, tall, late twenties, early thirties.” He pauses and eyes the woman’s body with this last bit. There is a hint of doubt in his voice and on his face. I get why. It’s hard to estimate her age based on how she looks.

  “Hmm,” Hurley says. “A copycat perhaps?”

  “You’d think so,” Arnie says, “given that the guy convicted of the Eau Claire murders is in prison serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.”

  “Except for the flowers,” I say. “I remember this guy at the conference telling me that the prosecution never raised the presence of the flower petals during the trial, and apparently, the defense attorney either missed it or didn’t think it was relevant.”

  Hurley rakes a hand through his hair and I realize he’s overdue for a cut when he ends up with a Mohawk. He looks over at Arnie. “Your thoughts on this?”

  “You mean other than the fact that another innocent man may be in prison?” Arnie says.

  “Another . . .” Hurley starts to speak, but then stops himself and looks at me. “Right.”

  There is an awkward silence until Arnie clears his throat and says, “There is some symbolism associated with yellow carnations.” He then tells Hurley what he told Izzy and me earlier.

  “Sounds like it’s personal for the guy,” Hurley speculates, once again turning his attention to the dead girl. “Is Arnie right?” he says, looking at me. “Did this guy you talked to say that the other victims shared a physical resemblance?”

  “I can’t recall,” I say. “I don’t remember a lot of what we discussed, but we didn’t get into any in-depth details about the case
other than the flower thing. It was one of those late-night bar chats, just shoptalk. Nothing official. You know how that goes. We were discussing interesting oddball cases we’d encountered.”

  Arnie and Izzy both nod, but Hurley arches his eyebrows at me. “You had late-night drinks with a guy in a bar?”

  Izzy clears his throat and suddenly becomes very focused on our victim’s body. Arnie pulls at his chin and pretends to look away, but he can’t quite pull it off. A second later, he’s watching to see how this one is going to play out.

  “I did,” I say, offering no additional explanation.

  Hurley and I stare at each other for a few seconds.

  “Why didn’t you mention it before?” he asks.

  I shrug. “Didn’t think it was important. Until now, of course. Now the conversation is very important, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Hurley pins me with those blue eyes. They are intense, but I also see a hint of a twinkle there and know he’s teasing me, at least partially.

  “Sounds like you two should find this guy Mattie talked to,” Arnie suggests. There is a hint of voyeuristic interest in his voice, as if he thinks this talk might somehow explode into something more emotionally fraught that he’d like to have a ringside seat for. And maybe a tub of popcorn.

  The tension in the room is crackling so much that I swear I can feel it sparking on my skin. Then Hurley’s phone rings, and just like that, the tension dissipates.

  “Detective Hurley,” he says.

  All of us watch his face eagerly, trying to discern the nature of the call and if it relates to our case. When Hurley says into his phone, “Hold on a second and I’ll ask,” I feel certain it does.

  My suspicion is confirmed when he says to Izzy, “Does she have some kind of wine mark, a birthmark on her head, near her left temple?” Hurley looks a little confused by the question, but I know immediately what he’s asking about. Izzy does, too.

  “A port-wine stain,” we both say at the same time.