Remains Silent mm-1

by Michael Baden

  The queasy feeling returned to Jake’s stomach. Corruption. “They’re going too fast,” he said. “They should at least wait until you have the tox and DNA results.”

  “Right. And I need to reshoot the X-rays on the Skeleton Two humerus. Something went wrong with the film.”

  “But Fisk and Stevenson don’t want to hold up construction.”

  Harrigan sighed. “You know, I’d just as soon let ’em go on. I have to live in this town, and I’m not a big fan of crucifixion.”

  Jake felt a surge of anger. “Quitting?”

  “Not really.” He sounded suddenly very tired. “I went over to the site again Monday, looking for the plate from the skull of Skeleton Three. God knows, Fisk wasn’t going to do it. Anyway, I found it. Fits perfectly. You can take a look tomorrow.”

  “Pete, there’s no way I can get there. I’ve got a month’s work here to be finished by Friday.”

  “But who else is going to help me identify the other three bodies?”

  Sly fox. The other three? “You’ve ID’d one of them?”

  “From the laundry mark.” Harrigan sounded smug.

  “Assuming the man was wearing his own underpants.”

  “According to a logbook at the historical society, patient number 631217 was one James Albert Lyons. Height, race, and age match the skeletal findings. I’m trying to locate his next of kin.”

  “You don’t waste any time.”

  “At my age, time’s precious. So haul your ass up here and help out.”

  “Really, I can’t. Pederson will have my head if I take time off, and I’m being deposed on a double murder on Thursday.”

  “Jake, it’s urgent!”

  Despite himself, he was getting annoyed. “Why? It’s routine work. Get one of the hospital staffers to help.”

  “It’s not the identification. I have to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  Pete’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It has to be in person. Has to be.”

  He’s going to tell me about the cancer. “I’ll come up Friday night, then. It’s the soonest I can make it.”

  A pause.

  “Okay?”

  Pete sighed. The sound of despair. “I can live with it.”

  JAKE KNOCKED on the door: no answer. He tried the knob: locked. “Pete, you home?”

  Silence.

  Jake walked to the back of the house. The kitchen lights were on, the door open. Jake entered. There was a dirty frying pan in the sink, along with a single plate and some cutlery. Pete had made himself a steak for dinner.

  “Pete?”

  He moved through to the living room. One light was on, but there was no sign of his friend. Frightened now, Jake opened the door to the master bedroom, hoping Pete had simply gone to sleep after his meal. The bedclothes were rumpled, but there was no one on the bed. Jake could feel his heart pounding; the quiet was oppressive.

  Only the study, where just a week ago they had talked of ghost spots and shared the finest scotch in the world, was unexplored.

  “You in there?” He opened the door.

  Pete was slumped at his desk, a book open in his hands. In two steps Jake was at his friend’s side, taking his pulse, feeling for life but finding none.

  He let out a little moan. I should have talked Pederson into letting me go. I should have spent more time with him. Told him I loved him like a father. Too late. Dear God, forgive me. Too late.

  Verify. He bent over the body and tried to move the jaw, confirming the presence of rigor mortis. Then he gently lifted Harrigan’s face from the desktop. Lividity had developed, but it wasn’t fixed yet. Jake pressed his thumb against Pete’s right cheek, noting that an oval of pale skin appeared and then faded away. Time of death, Jake knew, was about three-thirty, four hours before he walked through the door.

  Science finished, he sat in the chair facing the desk and let himself weep.

  ***

  A small private funeral mass was held for Dr. Peter Harrigan in the local parish of his Catholic church in the Queens neighborhood where he and Dolores spent most of their married life. Given Elizabeth’s position as New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney, there would be a large reception afterward at her home, but Pete had wanted a simple ceremony, and Elizabeth had honored his wishes. Jake spotted her in the front row, her head buried against the shoulder of a man- Daniel Markis, Jake figured. He had never met her husband, but who else could it be? There were two girls on one side of her, a boy on Markis’s right. Their children, but Jake couldn’t remember their names. The sight of them was disconcerting. It had been fifteen years since he’d last seen her, and though Pete had told him of her marriage and the births, it still came as a shock to find they were flesh and blood. He recognized Dolores’s sister- Ruth?- but none of the other fifteen or so mourners. Just as well. The intensity of his grief would have made small talk- even commiseration- impossible.

  To Pete’s delight, Elizabeth, a lawyer, had risen from ten years with the U.S. Justice Department to become New Jersey’s first female U.S. Attorney. Recently, she had uncovered major corruption in Monmouth County involving kickbacks by a contractor to mayors and assemblymen to assure his participation in a public housing project already behind schedule and running three times its estimated cost. Word was, Jake knew, that she was angling for governor, and he suspected she’d succeed. Her ambition and single-mindedness had scared him off when years ago they had dated briefly (Pete’s idea); he supposed those attributes had only intensified. Markis, Jake guessed, didn’t mind them. He was a high school football coach, affluent by inheritance and arrogant by nature, but, Pete had told him, “so much in her shadow it was sometimes tough to see him at all.”

  Elizabeth caught up to him on the church steps after the service and took him over to Markis and the kids. Markis was younger than Elizabeth, in his mid-thirties, Jake guessed, with thinning brown hair and dark eyes. His hostility toward Jake was badly disguised; he glared as though Jake were responsible for his father-in-law’s death. Probably hates me because I once went out with her. If I tell him all I got out of her was a kiss, and that an icy one, would he feel better? Markis insisted on being called by his last name by anyone outside his family, his only pretension. Elizabeth didn’t object- maybe, Jake guessed, because it made him sound important.

  Elizabeth grabbed his arm. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” She was tall and thin and auburn-haired. Jake remembered how beautiful she was, but also how indifferent when they dated.

  She led him up the stairs to the door of the church. “Elizabeth, I’m so sorry.”

  She bowed her head. “Thanks. I feel terrible that we didn’t visit him more, but”- a rueful smile-“the kids are a handful, and I’ve been incredibly busy.”

  “So I read in the papers. No need to blame yourself. I didn’t see enough of him, either.”

  “Still, I should have been a better daughter. It’s not that his death wasn’t expected. I mean, he had a heart condition and couldn’t sit still for two seconds. I tried to talk him out of working. Fat chance.”

  “He was stubborn as hell.”

  “You said it.” She blew her nose, took a step closer. “And on top of everything else… A couple of times when I called him at night, I could tell he’d been drinking. I hardly knew what was going on in my own father’s life. Made me feel like a truant until Dad owned up.”

  “Cancer,” Jake said, the word escaping too loudly.

  “So Dad told you, too.”

  “No. I guessed. What kind was it?”

  “Pancreatic. A death sentence. Incurable, inoperable, unbeatable.”

  Ah, Pete, you stoic bastard. I hope the rest of that scotch was ambrosia. He remembered something Harrigan always told his medical students before they entered the morgue for the first time: “It’s the heart that animates life. When the murmur of the heart finally ceases, the rest remains silent.” He wanted Pete to break his silence for one more day so he could tell him he loved him.

  �
��Daniel and I drove up last Monday, after Dad and I had a heart-to-heart over the phone earlier that morning and he admitted he was sick. We had dinner with him. Daniel went back to New Jersey, and I stayed the night and had a federal marshal pick me up and take me to the office. He didn’t seem particularly upset- said he knew his body and that something was very wrong. He spent most of the time telling us about the case he was working on, the one with the skeletons, and how you’d come to help. I can’t tell you how thankful I am that I was there. It was the best talk we ever had.” She squared her shoulders. “At least I got to see him. But I didn’t think it was going to be this quick.”

  Jake felt a twinge of resentment. Pete confides in his daughter but not in his best friend? He put his hand on her back. “He had a good life and a long one. He got to see you that Monday night- you know how much he adored you- and then he worked until the last second, until the last breath.”

  “Actually, I don’t know that he adored me, but I sure adored him.” Elizabeth paused and jabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “You know how your friends say, ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do?’ Well, there’s something you can do- if you don’t mind.”

  The request came as a relief. “Name it.”

  “I can’t face the cottage now. But somebody’s got to go there. Dad’s housekeeper, Mrs. Alessis, said vandals broke in over the weekend.”

  Rage made him light-headed. What scum would do that? “Anything missing?”

  “Some of the liquor and pipe tobacco. Kids, probably.”

  “Still, what an awful thing to do.” He was struck by his last image of Harrigan, glass in one hand, pipe in the other. Happy.

  “The furniture’s going to charity. The housekeeper said she’d stay on long enough to take care of it. But his study”- she shuddered-“he’d want you to have everything in it. His books, the bones and skulls, all those autopsy photos, God knows what else. You could take what you want when you go up there and leave the rest for a university or museum. Will you do it?”

  He had no desire to see the place ever again. “Sure,” he said. “I’d be glad to.”

  ***

  Jake knew he couldn’t handle the job alone, and he needed Wally in the office to cover for him, so he conscripted his brother. Sam, Jake’s only sibling, was seven years younger, but psychologically he remained a hippie; he lived in Greenwich Village, went to gallery openings and performance pieces, drank latte in cafйs. He managed to hold on to a rent-stabilized apartment and a gaggle of artistic friends, though he was no artist himself. Unlike his friends, he didn’t drink, smoke, or take dope, and he exercised religiously. On Saturday nights, a woman with a body by Dow Chemical slept by his side; Jake had never met the same one twice.

  Sam had long prematurely gray hair and a body kept slender by years of yoga and tai chi. For a while, he’d returned to his Jewish roots, wearing a yarmulke and refusing to watch TV on the sabbath, but that had only lasted a matter of weeks. According to Jake, he never met a guru he didn’t like. Whatever philosophy he had most recently latched on to was, he was convinced, the One True Way.

  “What does he do?” people asked. This remained a mystery: Jake had no answer and Sam never told him. When Jake asked if they could drive upstate together, Sam was of course free. “It’ll be centering,” he said enthusiastically.

  ***

  They got to the cottage around ten in the morning. There was a FOR SALE sign out front, the front door was open, and the curtains and much of the furniture were gone. “Mrs. Alessis,” Jake called, “it’s Jake Rosen. We spoke on the phone.”

  She came out of the bedroom, a woman in her sixties wearing a kerchief on her head and forty unnecessary pounds around the middle. Sam smiled at her as if she were a hot fudge sundae and he was the spoon. He looked at every female like that, Jake knew, whether she was nineteen or ninety-two.

  “It’s nice to meet you in person,” Jake said. “I’m Jake Rosen, and this is my brother, Sam.”

  Sam tossed his ponytail. “Enchanted.”

  She smiled. “Can I get you boys some coffee?”

  “We should get right to work,” Jake said.

  “Love some,” said Sam. He was wearing a Diesel T-shirt and cargo pants.

  Sam and Mrs. Alessis disappeared into the kitchen, and Jake retreated to the study. Melancholy overtook him as soon as he entered. Pete loved this room. Nothing seemed changed since the night he had found Pete’s body; there were no telltale signs of the break-in. He swore Pete’s spirit was there.

  Shaking off gloom, Jake decided to tackle the books first, separating them into piles for himself, a university, the medical examiner’s library, and the dump. His own pile grew rapidly. He had no idea where he was going to put everything.

  “Sam,” he called after an hour’s work, “what are you doing out there?”

  “Helping Theresa clean out the kitchen.”

  Theresa? “You’re supposed to be helping me.”

  Sam stuck his head in the study door. “Chivalry is good karma.”

  Jake squinted at him. The dust from the books was starting to bother his eyes. “Do you ever listen to yourself talk?”

  “All day long. What is it you want me to do?”

  “You can start by getting me some boxes. As many as you can find.”

  Sam shrugged. “I’ll go down to the liquor store. They always have boxes, right? We can treat Theresa to a glass of wine.”

  “You don’t know where it is.”

  He looked hurt. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Jake went back to work, feeling increasingly depressed. It wasn’t just that it was hard to be surrounded by Harrigan’s things, but he had barely made a dent in the books- he had found texts stretching back to Pete’s high school science classes- much less the rest of the study. There had to be a dozen boxes filled with autopsy Kodachrome slides alone- and one, also containing jars and containers, had his name on it; he figured it dated back to the time the two had worked together- and there were the bones, the antique lab glass, the biological specimens in jars of formaldehyde. He’d just have to pile everything into boxes and go through it at home.

  His own study in New York wasn’t as cluttered as Pete’s, but only because Jake had allowed it to spill over into the rest of the brownstone. Even his own bedroom was filled with books and files. If something happened to him, the job of clearing it would go to Sam. The thought terrified him.

  Be careful you don’t wake up in the morning, alone at the age of sixty, and regret the choices you made.

  Harrigan’s words. Did he have regrets when he died? Jake wondered. Probably.

  There was a knock on the front door. “Mrs. Alessis? Can you get that?” No answer. He heard her vacuuming in one of the bedrooms.

  Grumpily, he went to the door and opened it. Facing him was a woman in her fifties wearing black stretch pants and an embroidered floral sweater. She was painfully thin. Her timid smile revealed yellowed teeth; her hand, when she extended it, reminded him of a cat’s claw. Fatigue lay deep in her sunken eyes, and her brunette hair was dyed and disheveled.

  “Dr. Harrigan?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said. “I’m Dr. Rosen.”

  “Is Dr. Harrigan in?”

  “No.”

  “I guess I should have called first. I’ll wait. It’s urgent.”

  “Was Dr. Harrigan a friend of yours?”

  The question seemed to startle her. “No. I never met him before in my life.”

  A mystery. “I’m afraid he died recently.”

  She blinked at him. Jake thought she was going to cry. “Oh, no!” she wailed. “I need to talk to him about my father!”

  Mystery no longer. “I see. Your father passed away. Dr. Harrigan did the postmortem?”

  “I don’t know what you call it,” the woman said sullenly, as though blaming Jake for Harrigan’s absence.

  “Dr. Harrigan and I used to work together.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Then maybe you know
what happened to my father. All I know is Dr. Harrigan found him- found his body.”

  “Found him?”

  “Buried,” she said, “in an unmarked grave.”

  ***

  “I’m Patrice Perez. My maiden name was Patrice Lyons. Daughter of James Albert Lyons.”

  With a shock, Jake remembered: Skeleton Three. Patient number 631217. Pete had located her. “Yes,” he said, “I was with Dr. Harrigan when he found the remains.” He led her to the kitchen and poured her a cup of coffee. “You hadn’t seen your father, then, for several decades.”

  “I didn’t know where he was. Dr. Harrigan’s call was a thunderbolt. He told me I could stop by anytime and talk… about my dad… here or at the hospital. I came here first.” She fiddled with the handle of her coffee mug. “I don’t like hospitals.”

  There was steel underneath the frail faзade, Jake realized. He was starting to like Patrice Perez. “How did Dr. Harrigan find you?”

  “Through the Veterans Administration.”

  “Your father was in the military?”

  “In Korea. He was an officer, a lieutenant,” she said proudly. “Married Mom just before he went overseas. That’s why he ended up in the looney bin.”

  Jake winced; he hated that term. “He suffered from post-traumatic stress?”

  “Back then they called it shell shock. He saw his two best friends blown apart in front of him. Happened at a place called Heartbreak Ridge. I always thought that was a good name for it.”

  Heartbreak Ridge, Jake knew, was one of the bloodiest battles of the Korean War. “How long was he a patient?”

  “Almost from the time he got back. He used to sleep with his helmet as a pillow. Had terrible headaches, sometimes violent seizures. I was about five. I remember him hitting his head against the wall and screaming.”

  Classic signs of epilepsy, Jake thought. She seems more composed now; it’s helping her to talk.

  “Mom had him hospitalized in December of sixty-three. He asked us not to come see him until he was better. We got letters from him from time to time. The last one was for me. He wrote that he’d had some type of surgery and was feeling better. But he didn’t sign it like he did the rest: You are my very own Pipsqueak, Love, Daddy. Instead it was Your father, Lieutenant James A. Lyons.