Even the Wind: A Jonas Brant Thriller

by Phillip Wilson

  ``Do you know where this is?’’ he asked Mallek as he showed her the screen, his pulse again quickening. Could it be he had his hands on a virtual log of Eichel’s comings and goings? Had all those sojourns into the woods been logged unknowingly with the iPhone?

  He switched from satellite view to traditional, providing a topographical map with a red arrow in the center denoting the place favored by Eichel. The map showed a small lake and a road a dozen or so miles directly south of the lodge.

  ``I’ve passed that lake. Too small for swimming or paddling.’’

  ``It seems our man Eichel was attracted to it regardless. Look at this. He’s been there at least four times in the past three weeks.’’

  Mallek took the phone. The device seemed outsized in her smaller hands. She flicked through the map and the other icons with the deft, experienced hand of someone who’d grown up with technology at their fingertips. He suddenly felt old. The years were wearing on him. He was being outpaced by those who’d come after him and he knew it. Soon, he’d be one of the old codgers at the station who made a habit of bitching about every decision, every new policy — everything.

  ``We need to get out there,’’ Mallek said.

  ``It’s getting late and the light is starting to go,’’ he said. ``First thing tomorrow.’’

  ``What about the storm?’’

  ``All the more reason to wait until tomorrow.’’

  She shoot him an impatient look.

  ``Tomorrow,’’ he said, more emphatically this time.

  Mallek shrugged. ``I just hope the roads aren’t washed out by then.’’

  ``In the meantime, we have an autopsy to perform.’’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Eichel’s body lay on the table in the cold storage room. Burlap bags of dry ice had been used to preserve the corpse. The canvas tarpaulin remained draped over the body in an act to both preserve its condition and to provide a sense of decorum and discretion in honor of the dead. He’d always found it odd, the way the flesh was treated once the life force had left. The respect was often outsized and unnecessary — particularly in the case of a violent death. What came next, the violation and the disassembly at the hands of a medical examiner was often incongruous with the traditions and tropes of religion. The examiner’s role was altogether different and more base. It was the reducing of flesh to its most elemental, to its most basic. Piece by piece, little by little, the medical examiner’s role was directly contradictory. Whereas the church sought to elevate death to a new plane of existence, the examiner tore it to bits.

  Not that he was a believer in the dogma of religion or in the afterlife. The Sunday mornings he’d spent at church with his father and sister had seen to that. Maggie had been a Buddhist, much to her father’s distress. She’d introduced Brant to a different way of viewing the universe, their existence, the time they’d spent together. She’d been a breath of fresh air in so many ways.

  ``Where do we start?’’ Mallek asked, gazing at him with that appraising, critical eye he’d found so disarming when they’d first met.

  ``Help me get this cover off. You didn’t bring any instruments?’’

  ``Instruments?’’

  ``Tools. Saws. Drills. Knives.’’

  Mallek shook her head as his voice trailed off.

  Brant cast his eyes around the room. Eichel had been placed on the only counter long enough to take the full length of the body. A plywood board had been placed over a pair of stainless-steel sinks. The room was wood paneled and bare with the exception of a row of shelves filled with boxes and jars of supplies. A corner ventilation fan drew air in through the open window. Warm air belched out of a corner portable heater.

  ``Must be standard practice to you,’’ Mallek said as he pulled back the canvas.

  ``Most cops don’t attend autopsies these days.’’

  ``Why’s that?’’

  Brant shrugged. In fact, he didn’t know the answer and he wasn’t even sure that what he’d said was correct. It had seemed the thing to say. Perhaps he was trying to diffuse the tension, to let Mallek know that whatever trepidation she felt about the process was a shared experience.

  ``You have a notebook at least?’’

  ``I have,’’ she said, reaching into the pocket of her oversized sweater and bringing out a small ringed notebook that fit snuggly into the palm of her hand.

  ``We’ll keep this simple. External examination only. I’ll take the notes while you go over the body. Look for any signs of external trauma.’’

  ``You mean besides the gaping hole in the middle of his chest?’’

  ``I mean anything out of the ordinary. Broken finger nails. Bruising. Scrapes. Marks that don’t appear normal. You probably get the picture.’’

  ``I think I understand,’’ Mallek said, handing the notebook to him.

  With the canvas tarpaulin pulled back to reveal the torso, Brant got his first good look at the fatal wound that had ended Eichel’s life. Curiously, the explosiveness of the bullet had inflicted little of the damage that he’d come to associate with gunshot wounds. The skin had been torn apart but the point of entry itself was clean and precise. Blood and tissue had sprayed outward, leaving the waxy chalk-like surface of Eichel’s upper chest spotted with the blackened detritus of what had once been flesh and bone.

  The body itself told much of what had happened, though with several omissions that left him confused and slightly disturbed. Under the white glare of the two lightbulbs that hung from the ceiling, the body shone white as marble.

  ``Do you have a ruler? We need to measure and photograph the entry wound.’’

  Mallek bent over for a better view of the point of entry. The blackened crater resembled nothing so much as an oversized paint spot that had been violently drawn onto the man’s chest. Closer to the wound, the metallic smell blood and pulverized flesh threatened to overwhelm.

  With her mobile phone set to flashlight mode, she attempted without success for deeper insights into the hole that had marked the bullet’s first violation.

  ``Help me take a photograph. I’ll shine the light on the entry point. You take a couple of shots from different angles.’’

  Brant did as he was told, quietly impressed with the way Mallek had taken command of the situation. Without X-rays or an autopsy, there’d be no way to tell the bullet’s path through the body or where it had ended its journey. All they could hope for was a rough approximation of what had happened at the moment of impact.

  ``No measuring tape around here?’’

  He gazed from the shelves to the boxes that had been taped up and pushed into the room’s far corners for storage. He might be able to find some kind of measuring device among the junk scattering the small space but the search would prove lengthy and disrupting. Then he thought of something.

  ``No tape or ruler but I have this,’’ Brant said, tapping the screen of his mobile phone with the blunt tip of the Mont Blanc pen Mallek had handed him for note taking. With his finger, he flipped through his collection of apps, eventually summoning an icon resembling a measuring tape.

  ``It’s crude but it’ll do the job.’’

  Mallek took the phone and measured the entry hole, dictating the results as she did so. Next, she retrieved a piece of string about a meter long from a drawer underneath the sinks and stretched it out so that each end was taut. She lined one end of the string up to the cavity in Eichel’s chest.

  ``I’m impressed,’’ Brant said with meaning. What Mallek lacked in proper instrumentation, she appeared to be making up for in ingenuity. He hadn’t seen the string trick before. All the autopsies he’d attended had been done after the medical examiner had received the requisite films and tests conducted before the physical exam.

  ``Well, it’s crude. But it gives us an idea of where he might have held the gun.’’

  Mallek extended the string in various directions, each indicating a possible location for the gun and the resulting path the bullet would have taken. Ther
e were no visible signs near or around the wound indicating that he’d held the barrel directly against the skin, meaning the gun had been several inches from the body when fired. The absence of tattooing or stippling of the skin meant the barrel had been placed at least six inches from the chest.

  ``The most likely path if he were shooting from down here would be up through the rib cage and into the lower chambers of the heart. In which case, I’d bet the bullet would either be lodged somewhere in the heart itself or it could have embedded in bone. Maybe the back of the ribs. What kind of gun again?’’

  Brant told her. Mallek pursed her lips in thought. She had no experience with guns, had never even held one. The training she’d received thus far had relegated her to the lab where they’d had the traditional first-year task of dissecting a body over the course of the year. She’d found the work stimulating and intriguing though, if she were to be honest, she also felt a bit uneasy about the violations inflicted on the dead. The task had become morbid. By the end of the year, when the temperature in the dissecting rooms had begun to rise and the smells permeated every inch of her body, hair and clothing, they’d become ghoulish and morbid. One of the male students had named his subject and had gotten into the habit of using the old man’s heart as a football.

  ``It’s a small gun,’’ Brant said as if reading her thoughts. ``I doubt it would have done much damage if he’d fired it at someone else. We’re going to have to look into how he got it in the first place.’’

  ``A small caliber would explain why we aren’t seeing much damage. It was a clean shot. Very precise. Not exactly a typical suicide, I’d guess. I don’t suppose there’s any idea where he got the gun?’’

  Brant puffed out his cheeks. She was right. Even a small handgun would have produced a kick that would have resulted in the shooter’s hand recoiling once the trigger had been pulled. In the case of a self-inflicted shot, the kick would likely have been big enough to throw the shooter’s aim, maybe even violently enough that the bullet would have ended up in a shoulder or neck. The shot that had killed Eichel seemed almost too perfect, too precise. Beyond that, he wasn’t willing to speculate.

  ``What about other injuries?’’

  Mallek made a search of the remaining exposed torso, paying particular attention to the fingers, finger nails and forearms.

  ``A bit of blunt trauma to the fingers by the looks of it but that could be consistent with chopping wood or lifting the kayaks. I can’t see anything underneath the fingernails,’’ she said after looking under the nails on both hands. ``No other abrasions on other parts of the body. The bruising and stippling of the skin’s consistent with the position of the corpse after the bullet wound. See these bruises here?’’

  She moved the cellphone’s flashlight over the surface of Eichel’s neck then down the front of his chest, finally resting near the elbows. The phone hovered over discs of darkened skin that yielded easily when prodded by a gloved finger.

  ``Pooled blood. The body would have basically collapsed on itself, leaving his elbows splayed out in an awkward fashion. This shows what happened when the circulation stopped after he’d been shot.’’

  ``Can you tell the time of death?’’

  Mallek frowned as she considered the question. ``Is that even a question here? I mean everyone heard the gunshot. You saw the blood spatters on the bedspread and the walls. It’s clear he was shot in the room.’’

  ``I’m just being stupid. But I’d still like to know.’’

  She replaced the canvas tarp. Covered, the body’s presence seemed to fade into the background, leaving the air in the room slightly deflated. What had been a charged atmosphere seemed at once more ordinary and mundane.

  ``The injuries and the state of the body are consistent with a gunshot wound delivered in situ. He died in the room almost immediately after the bullet hit his heart, or wherever else it ended up in his body. If you want a more accurate assessment, we’re going to have to cut him open. For now, that’s the best I can do.’’

  ``Then it’ll have to do,’’ Brant said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  He reviewed his notes. Mallek had written down her own thoughts. Each of her observations had been entered into her notebook with precise notations.

  ``You’ll make a terrible doctor,’’ Brant said after he’d reviewed her scribbles.

  ``Why’s that?’’

  ``My doctor’s handwriting is a scrawl. I can actually read this.’’

  ``Give me time,’’ she said, snatching the notebook back with a smile.

  ``Can I borrow your computer? We should write up the autopsy notes while they’re fresh. Less chance of getting something mixed up.’’

  She was still smiling when she handed him the laptop several minutes later.

  ``Nothing on here that’ll compromise you?’’

  ``Meaning?’’

  ``Just having fun.’’ Brant weighed the laptop in his hands. It was a new-model MacBook, aluminum body with the sharpest screen he’d ever seen.

  They ate together in the dining room. The other guests had had dinner earlier, leaving them alone at one of the oversized tables in the corner. They said little, each lost deep in their thoughts. Outside, the wind had picked up. Tree branches snapped in the breeze against a backdrop of gray clouds.

  John King had built a fire in the stone fireplace. The logs hissed and popped as they burned, occasionally firing off a burning ember.

  The comforting sounds of the fire and the coziness of the room did their work. Suddenly, Brant realized he was tired. Not just sleepy, but exhausted. A deep-in-the-bones fatigue that he wore like a jacket.

  He’d been so caught up in the investigation that he had ignored the warning signs. He could put it off no longer. By the time he’d said goodnight to Mallek and returned to his room, his footsteps were dragging on the wooden flooring and he almost tripped on the upturned border of the carpet at the foot of his bed.

  Ingrid King knocked on the frame of the door to his room. Brant had just removed his shoes and had fallen onto the bed’s thick duvet.

  ``I brought you more of these,’’ she said, smiling as she handed him a stack of freshly laundered white wash cloths and bath towels.

  ``Thanks.’’

  ``The shower pressure isn’t great but the water’s hot.’’

  Brant smiled. Whatever the shortcomings of the lodge, he was sure he’d be much more comfortable than he would have been back at the cabin. The sad little place had had its charms, but he had to admit he felt more at home among the relative luxuries of his more civilized surroundings.

  ``That cabin is awful, isn’t it?’’ Ingrid King asked, correctly reading his thoughts.

  ``It was definitely rustic.’’

  Brant rose and took the towels, placing them at the foot of the bed along with the earlier set he’d found when he’d unpacked.

  ``You must be very upset.’’

  Ingrid King bit down on her lower lip. Sadness appeared on her oval face as she brushed a strand of blond hair from her brow.

  ``I just can’t believe Franz would do something like this,’’ she said as she took the seat across from the bed and curled her legs like a cat. Worry wore heavily on the downturned edges of her mouth.

  ``You were close were you?’’

  Ingrid King shook her head.

  ``No, not really. Franz kept to himself. We didn’t mind. It’s better that way.’’

  ``But you were surprised when you’d heard he shot himself?’’

  ``Yes, I suppose I was. You don’t really expect something like this. Not here. We are very…isolated.’’

  ``Yes, I’ve noticed.’’

  ``How did the autopsy go?’’

  ``Autopsy?’’ Brant asked, momentarily surprised at the question.

  ``John told me. You and Christine are investigating, no?’’

  ``Oh, yes,’’ Brant said. ``Yes, we are.’’

  ``And the autopsy?’’

  Brant was thoughtful f
or a moment. ``We were only able to do an external evaluation.’’

  Ingrid King knitted her eyebrows together in thought. ``It’s a terrible thing, suicide.’’

  ``So you believe Franz killed himself?’’

  King dismissed his question with a shrug. ``What else could it be, yes?’’

  Brant considered the woman across from him. He’d yet to make up his mind about her. She was in her mid thirties and wore the wholesome, fresh outdoors look like a comfortable blanket. Her skin was flawless. She had bright red cheeks, an oval face and the finest-looking blond hair he’d ever seen.

  Had it not been for the slight air of gloom and hopeless despair that seemed to hang omnipresent at the periphery of her personality, he would have taken her for one of those women obsessed with yoga, healthy eating and auras. Instead, he found her checked reserve unsettling. She wasn’t rude. But there was something about her that didn’t quite fit. Maybe her background, he surmised.

  ``Where do you call home?’’ he asked finally out of curiosity.

  She furrowed her brow for a second time, seeming slight offended at the question.

  ``We live her year round.’’

  ``No, I meant originally. I heard the hint of an accent.’’

  She smiled demurely.

  ``My accent betrays me sometimes.’’

  ``Betrays?’’

  ``Just a turn of phrase. Perhaps not the right words.’’

  Brant smiled in turn.

  ``I’ve been away from home so long that I thought my accent had been watered down. But to tell you the truth, a Swedish accent never really leaves you.’’

  ``So that’s it.’’

  King cocked her head slightly to the side. ``Sorry?’’

  ``We have a Swede in the department back in Boston. You remind me a bit of him.’’

  ``Ah, I see. And what about you, lieutenant? Maybe you have some Nordic blood in you? I knew many boys called Jonas when I was growing up.’’