The Squeeze

by Paul Schueller

  Doug got that she wasn’t amused and changed his tone and demeanor.

  “Sorry. Do you have a minute to discuss my case?”

  “Our case,” she corrected him, and she was actually interested.

  Over nearly ten years, Shirley had developed quite a reputation as a skilled coroner and got more than her share of interesting cases. This was turning into one of them, and although she found Doug repulsive, she interrupted the autopsy to talk to him. The fact that her patient could wait was part of the beauty of the job and her schedule. Shirley continued, “You and I have been over this before, but since you’re back, I’m assuming things aren’t going well.”

  “You could say that,” Doug admitted.

  “Let’s see,” Shirley said pulling out the file. “The coroner in Montana did a decent job on this report. Separate blows to the head and the body.

  The body blows could have been done when the body was lying on the ground, causing fractures to the front and back of the ribs and pelvis.”

  “What do you mean, could have?” Doug asked.

  “Just that—it could have been done on the ground, but it also could have happened when the guy planted the side of his face into a tree and had the front and back body injuries occur as his body tumbled after initial head impact.”

  “I thought you said it was murder.”

  “No, that’s when I used the word ‘could’ as in it could be murder. Do you always have this much trouble hearing what people say? Plus, it’s all in the report,” Shirley stated.

  “Yeah, the report,” Doug mumbled.

  “You haven’t read it, have you?” Shirley asked incredulously.

  “Figured I could go on what you told me,” Doug explained.

  “That might have worked if you had listened to what I said.”

  Doug thought about the couple of drinks he had at lunch that day, paused, then continued, “Do you have anything else for me to go on?” Doug asked.

  “Blow to the head killed him within a few minutes. The broken ribs and pelvis and ruptured spleen wouldn’t have done it . . . at least not quickly. No sign of hypothermia, which confirms it was a quick death.”

  “Thought the ribs and pelvis were crushed when the body was on the ground,” Doug asserted.

  “No. Broke . . . cracked. Crushed is your word, not the report’s or mine.”

  “So that means no murder?” Doug frowned.

  “No. You need to figure out what he hit, or what hit him.”

  “So, if it’s murder, I need a murder weapon?” Doug asked.

  “Kind of, yeah. The history this Tommy fellow had with the other suspicious death and the other information you shared about the phone records makes this intriguing, but I think that you need to get to the scene. I need more information. Maybe blood and guts splatter from the tree. There was significant tissue mass missing from his ear and the right s ide of his face. It still might be out there. I’m not sure what I need. Why don’t you go be a detective?”

  “I guess I should do that since I already brought Tommy in and threatened to arrest him,” Doug said.

  “You did what?! I didn’t even rule this a murder, nor did they in Whitefish,” Shirley said. “As of now, this is still an accidental death. You don’t have a warrant or even clear jurisdiction for that matter.”

  “Hey, I can arrest someone without a warrant, but yeah, I got a bit ahead of myself on that one,” Doug said.

  “You think?” Shirley questioned, her tone escalating.

  “Great. The local cops will be glad to see the guy who took their closed accidental death case and tried to turn it into a murder investigation.

  Instead, why don’t you do some fancy image or simulation thing from the photographs to show the bark pattern and test the shit the Whitefish coroner pulled off of him, then tell me what hit him and how fast he was going?”

  “I can tell you all of the stuff that was in the report that you should have read. That it was a Douglas fir, and the bark pattern and angle makes it look like he hit a branch, not the trunk.”

  “Is that everything?” Doug asked.

  “He had liver cancer that had metastasized to his brain. Probably had it for more than a year but doesn’t look like he even knew it. I checked. He hadn’t been to his family doctor in almost two years and no sign of treatment or any records. He only had a few months, even with aggressive treatment.”

  “Ironic, murdering a guy that was going to die anyway,” Doug offered.

  “Murder. Again, your words, not mine. The death certificate still says accidental death and will until you get me more. You need to go to Montana, or let it go.”

  It took Doug a couple of days to convince his bosses that he should go to Montana and to schedule a meeting with the local law enforcement and ski patrol staff who had handled the investigation. Doug had previously led Tommy to believe that he had already been out to Montana and even tried to make him believe that he had a warrant, but that was still far from the truth.

  Doug hadn’t run into the reluctance yet from the local law enforcement that he had anticipated. A lot of cops get territorial, but the main concern he heard over the phone was taking up their time with a useless trek up a mountain. He convinced the deputy, Officer Murphy, who had originally

  handled the case and who he had spoken to previously, to meet him at the bar at the base of the hill with the lead ski patrol guy. The Bierstube was the same bar that John and his friends liked to frequent.

  As Doug pulled into the parking lot, he could still see plenty of snow on the mountain and lift chairs that looked abandoned for years, not a week. The gravel parking lot was as big as a football field, but was nearly empty, not a surprise for early afternoon after the close of the mountain.

  He walked into a building that felt and smelled as tired as it looked. If a building could need a rest, this one did. The bartender and waitresses didn’t even give Doug a glance as he entered. He strolled past the main bar and peered into the back room, immediately spotting the two he was set to meet.

  As Doug moved toward the pair at the far wall, he started to see this place might be a good reason to take up skiing. Everything was wood, nicely worn, and a fireplace still sooty and full of ashes. The walls were noisy with beer signs and food specials. The only one that stood out to Doug was the small Pabst Blue Ribbon club sign, presumably a good way for the locals to buy beer cheap, leaving the tourists to overpay for more sophisticated brands. He was accustomed to using his finely honed detective skills to find cheap alcohol.

  The Whitefish Police Department officer was in full uniform: wide brim hat on the table, brown, properly adorned shirt with the name ‘Murphy’ on the pocket, tan pants, and a gun belt stocked with pepper spray, club, flashlight, radio, and every other accoutrement, looking way too heavy to be wearing if he really had to chase someone.

  The second man looked like he could have been Officer Murphy’s brother, both being in their early thirties, clean-shaven with similar thin noses, shallow-set pale eyes, and light complexions. Dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and hiking boots he introduced himself first, reaching out a hand to shake. “Hi. You must be the detective from Chicago. I’m Brett Kelly, the ski patrol supervisor. This is Ryan Murphy, the officer assigned to your case.”

  “I am. Thanks for meeting me here. Hey, can I buy either of you a PBR?” Doug said and watched as Brett signaled the waitress to bring two beers, since Ryan was on duty, and the three men sat down. Doug wasn’t much for small talk, getting right to it. “So, what happened the day George died?”

  “We got a call well after dark that a skier didn’t show up for dinner with a friend. Didn’t think too much of it. We get at least a few calls like that each season. People are usually just somewhere having fun and drinking or whatnot and by morning, they are back where they belong,” Brett said.

  “Who called it in?” Doug asked.

  Murphy spoke up. “Some guy. Only said his name was Joe. He left a cell phone number that turned
out to be a pay-as-you-go phone. We tried to track it down once we found out the missing guy was dead.”

  “Didn’t that look suspicious to you?”

  “Well, the call went to the ski patrol, not 911,” Murphy offered. We only had their caller ID to go on and yes, maybe a little suspicious.”

  “Then what happened?” Doug asked.

  Brett spoke again. “We waited until morning. If a skier is down on or near a run, the ski patrol or the groomers will find them. If they’re in the woods, we wouldn’t have a prayer in the dark anyway.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Early the next morning, he was still missing, or so we thought since the original caller couldn’t be reached,” Brett said. “We were trying to decide what resources to dedicate to looking for our mystery man when all hell broke loose.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Doug.

  “This guy must have been connected. All of a sudden, we had a helicopter and a group of locals organized and searching. Found the body in an hour. Guy was pretty frozen. Clearly died the day before.

  These accidents happen every few years. He fit the profile. Guys in their forties or fifties out to prove to themselves or whomever that they’re still young, but the reality is they don’t have the reaction time that they use to anymore,” Brett explained.

  “You said accident,” Doug reminded him.

  Murphy jumped in again. “Besides fitting the profile, the scene looked like an accident. No helmet and a good chunk of blood and guts were on a tree at what looked to be the right height for him to have hit it on his own.”

  “Was it the tree trunk or a branch? What kind of tree? Where was it?” Doug asked with no time for answers.

  “Let’s go take a look,” Murphy said, and then pointed up the mountain. After an ATV ride up the mountain, they arrived at a steep wooded area that separated two runs. It was about 100 yards across and extended about 300 yards down the mountain. A route was clearly discernible, but spring rain and melting snow masked any other activity. The entrance was partially blocked by a stumpy evergreen that didn’t know if it was a tree or a bush. There was a slight mound within the trees that, along with small evergreens, would have blocked anyone who happened to pass by from seeing what happened.

  “Mostly locals use this kind of path through the woods. We just thought he came in hot and didn’t know what hit him,” Murphy offered.

  “Yeah, if you come in too fast, you need to bail out down the mountain into these small firs. You try to stay on-line and you can hit the big Douglas, which he did. Left part of his face right here,” Kelly pointed to a spot about eight feet up the twelve-inch diameter of the trunk.

  “That seems pretty high. Has that much snowpack melted?” Doug asked.

  Murphy answered quickly. “Yes. That mark was about six feet off the top of the snow the night of the accident.”

  “How come the branches are cut up from the ground? Seems like a strange place to be tree-trimming,” Doug said.

  Kelly handled this question. “Some of the locals plan routes in the summer and trim them in. This is all Flathead National Forest land, but as long as you aren’t spending a half a day with a chainsaw, no one’s going to catch you.”

  “Would George have been in here without help from some local skiers?” Doug asked.

  “We figured if he was with locals, he wouldn’t be dead. We thought he followed someone in trying to keep up and didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “How fast could he have been going?”

  “If you were crazy, you could probably hit the opening at about twenty-five miles per hour. There really isn’t time or space to build up more speed before you enter, and obviously you wouldn’t want to. By the damage, it looked to us like he was going as fast as he could.”

  Spring rains had removed most everything from the tree, but Doug collected and bagged what he could. He took what looked like tissue, some tree bark samples, and more pictures in between taking notes. He looked for anything that resembled a club or branch that could have been used as a murder weapon, but after scouring a fifty-foot perimeter, he felt going further was a useless exercise. He returned to the bar to look at his evidence and have a couple more PBRs. His return flight wasn’t until morning. He would get everything to Shirley and see what she could do.

  21

  A few days after returning from Montana, Doug received a message from Shirley asking him to stop by the morgue when he had a chance.

  Doug, of course, thought she was interested in him because they could likely just talk over the phone, but she wanted him there. An inflated ego, a semi-constant stupor, and a propensity to sleep with married women had him again hoping for the most.

  When Doug arrived, scrubs and tennis shoes had been replaced by a black skirt, teal blouse, and heels, all of which he thought were for his benefit. Shirley, however, had other plans. “I have to be in court to testify in twenty minutes. I have five for you.”

  “That’s all it will take,” Doug said and smiled slyly.

  “Yeah, well, your guy hit a Douglas fir, or the Douglas fir hit him, whichever way you want to look at it,” Shirley said.

  “Kind of already knew that from the last time around.”

  “Good. You remembered something. What I really meant is the tree with blood and guts on it is a Douglas fir and so is the one that hit his face.”

  “Great,” Doug said. “So, my murder weapon is a tree. Do you have anything I can use?”

  “What’s left of the splatter pattern on the pictures looks a little small, but that may be because of the rain.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A colleague of mine looked at the facial injuries from the original photos and thinks he needed to be going at least 40 mph to do that kind of damage.”

  “Can you testify to that?” Doug asked. “Because the local guys said he couldn’t be going more than 25.”

  “Sure, but under cross, we’ll probably get killed because we didn’t do the original autopsy, and it’s an inexact science to begin with. Given the bark patterns on his face are perpendicular to a normal tree trunk, I assumed that he hit a branch. Maybe thought he could get under it, or whatever. Now that I see he hit a trunk, he would have almost had to be parallel to the ground to leave the imprint on the side of his head that it did, so yes…”

  “So, you think he was murdered but can’t prove it?”

  “I think someone hit him with a club made from a hunk of Douglas fir, then hit the tree to transfer splatter to the tree,” Shirley continued.

  “Then smashed his ribs and pelvis when he was laying on the ground.”

  “What do I do now?”

  “Get me more, or find other evidence that a killer was there. You can win cases with good circumstantial evidence or good physical evidence, but it’s difficult with neither. Find more, please.” With that, Shirley turned and headed down the hall. Doug lusted in her direction until she turned the corner.

  22

  For early May in Chicago, the air was alarmingly thick and even a touch oppressive. Tommy thought it felt more like Beale Street than Belmont as he waited in line for coffee a few blocks from his condo. The floor was dried-orange-soda-sticky as Tommy pried loose his shoes for each painfully slow step while the man in front of him overpowered the smell of coffee with his ripeness. Tommy let out a pathetic sigh, loud beyond warranted, that he somehow thought could be heard by baristas over the din of espresso machines and conversation. Tommy knew in his mind that everyone was inconvenienced by lines and waiting but was convinced in his heart that no one suffered more than him under their weight. There were no texts or emails to return or calls to make, so Tommy was forced to look inward to think about what he always thought about. Why? Why do I do the stupid things that I do?

  When his coffee was finally served, he sat down, not having any idea what to do next, although he assumed finding a job someday would be in order. For today he decided he would again turn to wandering Chicago’s pub
lic transportation system trying to decide what to do, but now it was without money or a future. As usual he turned to Susan, this time with a text.

  He typed, “I’m back in town. Can we meet tonight?”

  “Are you thinking wine and sex at your place?”

  “Sure.”

  “Not what I was thinking. Not by a longshot. Goodbye Tommy. We’re done. You were just too selfish too often, and to think by the end of our relationship I actually loved you. My mistake.”

  Tommy stared at the text, emotionless. He didn’t call Susan in an attempt to get closure. He really didn’t love her, and Susan knew that love wasn’t supposed to be part of their relationship. He had kept his end of the bargain by not getting too attached. Tommy was sure that he would have felt worse about the breakup, and even fought to win Susan back, if it weren’t for the hope of working things out with Jenny. Instead of riding the L as he planned, Tommy walked the Lake Michigan shore from the north side, walking south towards downtown. The wind off the cold lake water made it feel comfortable compared to the rest of the city, but that went unnoticed by Tommy. Without money, a career, or a girlfriend, he was too busy feeling sorry for himself.

  He thought maybe, with some time passing after talking to Doug, he would calm down and come to grips with his situation and move on.

  However, the more he thought about John living his life in Montana, the worse it got. John was going to get away with it, whatever it was, unless Tommy did something.

  He was convinced that getting Pat involved to draw John in was the only thing that he could do, but knew that he owed Jenny an explanation.

  He also knew from his last conversation with Pat and Mary that Jenny was in Chicago with friends for a couple of nights. Tommy called her and asked if they could meet. Jenny was staying with a friend who lived near the Hilton on Michigan, so she suggested meeting there. He hoped that no one would remember him from his last visit. Tommy was only a short cab ride from the hotel, so he asked Jenny if they could meet right away.