by Tim Downs
There was a long silence that followed as the impact of the sheriff’s words sunk in. It was Nick who broke the silence.
“How long had Jim McAllister been using cocaine?”
Kathryn’s mouth dropped open, and she began to blurt out an angry and absolute denial—but she was instantly aware of the silence from the chair beside her. She turned to Peter, and one look at his face told her that the unthinkable was quite true. Even worse, it told her that Peter had probably known about it for quite some time—and for some reason had kept it from her.
Peter could not meet Kathryn’s eyes. He turned to Nick instead. “How did you—”
“Bubba told me,” Nick said, holding up a container with a single plump white maggot within—by far the largest of all the specimens. “Bubba is probably an ordinary blow fly or flesh fly larva, but he is not of ordinary size. An average larva at this stage of development should be about ten millimeters in length. Bubba is close to twenty. I removed him from the nasal septum. The only thing that can account for his accelerated growth is the presence of cocaine in the tissues where he was feeding. Your friend must have ingested within several hours of his death—and I think it’s safe to assume that it probably wasn’t the first time.”
Kathryn continued to stare at Peter, searching his face for some excuse, some explanation.
“It … started in the Gulf,” he stammered. “It wasn’t just Jimmy—it happened to a lot of boys going into combat for the first time. He thought it would stop after the war. It didn’t …”
His voice trailed off. He looked up into Kathryn’s eyes, but the intensity of her stare drove him away again. Even as a child her pale green eyes could burn like emerald fire when they were fueled by anger or injustice. In this case it was both.
Kathryn sat in stunned silence, feeling her face and neck grow redder by the minute. The entire reason for this investigation, which flew in the face of all the available evidence and expert opinion, was her unshakable conviction that Jimmy McAllister would never take his own life. But two minutes ago, it had also been her unshakable conviction that Jimmy would never have used cocaine. If she was so badly mistaken about one part of his character, could she be wrong about another? Her car, her clothes, her mortgage; the fear, the exhaustion, the utter humiliation—had it all been for nothing? Was she nothing more than a stupid schoolgirl acting on an emotional impulse, too simple and naive to accept how the world really works? The tears welling up within her made her feel all the more childish and silly, and she drove them back fiercely with anger and contempt.
“I need some time alone,” she said quietly, rising from her chair. The sheriff rose with her and reached out to put his hand on her shoulder, but she pulled away.
Nick watched until the door closed with a jingle behind her. The sheriff slowly sat down again to face him.
The waitress returned with a brown paper bag rolled down tight and sealed with a clothespin. She opened her mouth to speak, but noting the look on the sheriff’s face, she simply set the bag in the center of the table and backed away.
“That was cute, Doc. Real cute. You remind me of one of those psychic hotline people. You got nothing real to offer so you toss out a bone—that cocaine thing—just to keep her on the line, just to keep her believing—just to keep her paying.”
“You should have told her.”
“Why? What would it have proved? That Jimmy’s depression might have been chemically induced? That his suicide might have been encouraged by the drugs? Let me tell you, his weirdness started a long time before the coke.”
“You should have told her.”
“What do you know about it? Look”—he lowered his voice, glancing around for listening ears—“we all grew up here together—Jimmy, me, and Kath. We were family—about the only family any of us had. She loved Jim like a brother. What good would it do to drag his memory through the dirt by bringing up a drug problem? But I guess you took care of that.”
“So her ‘brother’ had a serious drug problem, and you kept it from her for almost a decade? That’s some family you’ve got there.”
The sheriff looked down at his coffee cup. “Jim made me swear. He would have died before he let her find out.”
“Looks like he did.”
“He thought he could beat it on his own—and he did, a couple of times. He went through rehab a couple of years after the Gulf. He was clean for a year, maybe two. Then he went on it again. He’d kick it for a while, then go back. After a while even I didn’t know how he was doing.”
“Now you know.”
“The point is”—the sheriff leaned in for emphasis—“I knew Jim McAllister since he was a kid. I knew him. He came from one suck-egg family—if you don’t believe me, go meet his twisted sister, Amy. Jim started showing signs of depression real early, and I’m telling you, his depression led to his drug problem and not the other way around. He was headed for a sudden stop anyway. Some of us saw it coming a long time ago.”
“But not Mrs. Guilford.”
“She only saw the good side. That’s all she wanted to see. It’s a bad habit of hers. I wanted to protect his memory for her, so … I kept the cocaine thing quiet.”
“And as a result, she believed that little Jimmy could never have done anything as nasty as suicide. And she hired me to prove it.”
“I guess I owe you an apology for that,” the sheriff conceded. “But at least we know that all this is no longer necessary.” He gestured to the pile of containers still scattered across the table.
“How so?”
The sheriff hesitated. “The cocaine. I told you that—”
“You told me that his depression led to his drug problem and not the other way around. That means that the cocaine had nothing to do with his death—so nothing new has been introduced into the equation. Mrs. Guilford will still want to know what happened to her friend.”
The sheriff stared blankly at Nick for a long time.
“Don’t take her money,” he said at last.
“Excuse me?”
“I assume she’s offered to pay you. How much? Five thousand? More?”
“That’s between me and my client.”
“Don’t take her money,” he said again. “No matter what you may think, Doc, she’s not a rich woman. She works at a bank, for crying out loud. If she’s offering you that kind of money, she’s putting her house in hock, I can tell you that. Don’t take it.”
Nick leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Ten minutes ago she couldn’t believe that Jimmy would kill himself, because she knew Jimmy. Now—thanks to you—she isn’t sure what she knows. Unless I miss my guess, she’ll still want to do everything in her power to find out anything she can.”
Nick began to carefully place each container back into the knapsack, followed by the wrinkled paper bag.
“You know”—the sheriff nodded toward the knapsack—“I could confiscate all this and put an end to it right now.”
“But you won’t,” Nick said, smiling, “because she might not forgive you for it. And I have a feeling that’s a risk you’re not willing to take.”
“I won’t let Kathryn be taken advantage of,” the sheriff said without emotion. “I will do everything in my power to protect her.”
“Are you sure it’s Kathryn you’re trying to protect?”
Nick slung the pack over one shoulder and stepped toward the door. He stopped and turned back to the sheriff.
“I intend to take her money,” he said. “And I intend to earn it.”
From each plastic container Nick selected two or three plump maggots, carefully avoiding both the largest and smallest specimens, and dropped them into a small vial of 70 percent isopropyl alcohol to preserve them. Each died almost instantly and floated softly to the bottom. He capped each vial tightly and labeled the victims exactly as he had designated their living counterparts: left ocular, right temporal, left temporal … He treated the hungry survivors in each plastic container to several str
ips of raw liver and transferred the lot to the wire shelves of the large chrome and glass unit in the corner of the room.
It was after midnight now, and Nick was still hard at work under the glaring blue fluorescent lights of his office lab. He sat down at the gray-and-white dissecting microscope and maneuvered a glass slide directly under the lens. No sooner had he reached for the focus knob than the exterior door to his left suddenly swung open. There in the darkness stood the exhausted figure of Kathryn Guilford.
“Close the door,” Nick said without looking up.
“Are you worried that I might let out some of your precious bugs?”
“I’m worried about the bugs you might let in—especially the dermestids. They’re dry-tissue eaters, and they’d love to make a snack out of my mounted specimens.”
Kathryn stood motionless in the open doorway until he finally glanced up reluctantly from his microscope.
“Pretty please?”
Nick studied the standing form of Kathryn Guilford. She was tall, he observed, about 175 centimeters—maybe more. She was wide in the shoulders, with a very lean body mass—perhaps an athletic background. The thorax tapered tightly toward the abdomen, producing a full, rounded curve of the hips. The legs were long and tanned and very lean. The face was equally lean; the zygomatic arch was prominent, producing a high cheekbone, and the nose was long and straight, ending almost in a chisel point. The eyes were wide and very green. The hair was a deep auburn, and she seemed to make less fuss about it than women typically do. Right now she wore it down, but he could imagine it pulled back in a thick ponytail. Green eyes, auburn hair, and a spray of freckles across the nose. Overall it was a pleasing figure, one that Nick imagined some men would find quite beautiful.
Kathryn stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind her. She rolled out a chair from under the table to her right and sat down across from Dr. Polchak. “You’re probably surprised to see me.”
“I’m surprised to see anyone at this hour. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“I have something for you.” She reached into her purse and handed him a folded slip of paper. “It’s a check.”
“Yes, I’ve seen one before.” He turned the check over and held it up to the light as if it might not be real. “One thousand dollars. That’s slightly less than the amount we agreed upon.”
“I think a thousand dollars is an adequate fee for a single day’s work,” she snapped. “I see no reason to continue this investigation after … after tonight.”
Without a word Nick turned back to his microscope. He carefully removed the glass specimen slide and slid the edge of Kathryn’s check under the chrome holding clips instead. He peered once again into the eyepiece. For several moments he studied it—focusing, shifting, then focusing again.
“For crying out loud,” Kathryn said, “it’s good.”
“Not good enough.” He looked at her again. “Give me one good reason why you should drop this investigation.”
“One good reason! The only reason I started all this is because I believed that Jimmy could never have taken his own life—and then tonight I learn that he was a user! I never thought that could be true of him either. Maybe I was wrong about him … maybe I was wrong about everything.”
“The sheriff believes that cocaine had nothing to do with your friend’s death—that his drug use was a symptom of his struggle, and not the cause. Do you agree?”
She thought carefully. “Yes,” she said slowly, and then with more confidence, “yes, I do.”
“Then the cocaine tells us only two things: one, that your friend was indeed troubled—which we already knew—and two, that your friend the sheriff is willing to withhold information from you.”
“He did it to protect me.”
“So he said.” Nick studied her eyes closely. “And you obviously believe him.”
Kathryn ignored the remark. “So you think there’s good reason to continue the investigation?”
“I don’t think there was ever good reason to begin—but then, this is not about reason, is it? You came to me because you had a hunch. Your friend could not have died by suicide, you said, because he was incapable of taking his own life. Nothing has changed about that. I just hate to see you give up a good hunch for a bad reason.”
Kathryn gazed at him in confusion, trying to make sense of this strange assortment of riddles. Suddenly it all became clear to her.
“This is all about money, isn’t it? Give me back my check!”
Nick reached into his breast pocket with two fingers and removed the folded paper. Straightening his arm, he dropped the paper to the floor in front of him and slowly slid it forward with his left foot. Kathryn snatched up the check and spread it out on the worktable beside her, furiously crossing out numbers and figures and writing new ones in their place.
“There!” She tossed the check back on the floor in front of him. “Five thousand! Now is there a good reason to call it off?”
Nick sat motionless, continuing to study Kathryn’s eyes.
“The body was moved,” he said quietly.
Kathryn was stunned. Jimmy’s body—moved? But who would move it? And why? Her mind raced with all the possible implications of this revelation—but all that came out of her mouth was an astonished, “What?”
“The blood that circulates in your body is red due to the presence of oxygen. When a body dies, the blood becomes purple—almost black—and it pools in the lowest parts of the body. The blood actually stains the surrounding tissues, and after six to eight hours the stain becomes permanent. This is a condition known as ‘fixed lividity.’”
Nick laid his right arm out flat on the table beside him, palm up. “I die. My body falls to the ground—like this.” He nodded to the arm. “The blood drains to the dorsal surface—down here—and eight hours later the bottom of my arm is permanently stained. Now if someone comes along after eight hours and flips me over, the blood will no longer pool to the bottom—the stain will stay on top. I died this way”—he flipped his arm over—“but my body was discovered this way. Guess what? I was moved.”
Kathryn squinted hard.
“At the funeral home, our two young body baggers told us that they found the body like this.” He leaned back in his chair and extended his arms and legs straight out. “Exactly like this. The sheriff seemed to concur. Flat on his back was the way he put it, I believe. But during our little examination I removed your friend’s shoes. The left foot was stained along the heel, continuing up the back of the leg—exactly as it should be if the leg lay flat for the first few hours after death. But the right foot was completely purple, top and bottom, with the stain ending just above the ankle. That means, Mrs. Guilford, that he may have been found ‘flat on his back’—but he didn’t die that way.”
Kathryn sat more and more erect as the full meaning of his words began to sink in.
“That means,” she said excitedly, “that when Jimmy died his leg must have been in a position more like … like …” She dropped to the floor and stretched out, then drew her right foot up tight against her buttock with her knee pointing toward the ceiling. “Something like this.”
“Very good, Mrs. Guilford.”
“And then later—six to eight hours later—someone must have laid it flat. But if someone was there within hours of his death, then someone may have been involved in his death. That means Jimmy didn’t kill himself!”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“But,” she said, snapping upright, “somebody moved the body!”
“Not necessarily. All we know is that somebody—or something—moved the leg. Suppose your friend shot himself, as the sheriff is convinced, and when he fell the leg was somehow propped up.”
“But what would keep the leg in that position?” She lay back again and experimented with her foot in different positions. Each time her leg swung outward and fell. “There’s no way,” she said. “It won’t stay like that.”
“Suppose something supported it.”
“Like what?”
“A rock. A branch. A bush.”
“Was there anything like that around?”
“I have no idea.”
“And even if something did support it,” she went on, “what would make it lie flat again?”
“The rock shifts. The branch breaks. The bush dies.”
“How likely is that?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then all we’re doing is guessing here. Isn’t there any way we can check this out? Can’t we go see the spot where the body was found? Can’t we look around for dead bushes and broken branches?”
Nick leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him. “You mean, can’t we investigate?”
Kathryn sat quietly for a moment, then picked herself up from the floor. She walked very slowly around the office, carefully considering the choice she was about to make. She came to the large, glass-doored unit in the corner of the room and stopped. Looking in, she saw the collection of plastic containers. Each contained three or four wiggling white maggots hungrily feeding on strips of raw chicken liver—all except for two containers. One contained the infamous Bubba, who was responsible for beginning the entire brouhaha earlier that evening. The other, containing a single specimen of ordinary size, bore the simple label “?”.
“What is this thing?” she asked, running her hand along the polished chrome trim.
“It’s a Biotronette—a breeding unit,” he said. “It allows us to simulate the precise environment in which the larvae were collected. It allows us to rear them to adult flies.”
“Why do we need to do that?”
“When they mature, we’ll be able to identify their different species.”
“And what will that prove?”
“Everything. Nothing. It all depends on what we find.”
Kathryn sat down again across from Dr. Polchak. She sat staring at his frosted glasses, trying somehow to connect with the elusive spheres behind them. It was impossible; they darted and evaded her gaze like startled minnows. She knew that she was at a decided disadvantage in this negotiation. He could peer into her thoughts, but she had no access to his.