by Alec Peche
"Sad but true,” Jill agreed. “So I think I have the most travel experience around the United Kingdom of the four of us. Personally, I have a castle fetish and I have to think that I have viewed close to twenty castles throughout Wales, Scotland, and England. I would be more than happy to go on that same journey.”
"We could do a poetry and literature tour,” Angela proposed. “We could visit the regions of Shakespeare, Brontë, Austen, Chaucer, Dickens, and Keats. Read great stuff along the way.”
"Could we shop from the southern tip of England to the North of Scotland and West to Wales?" Marie asked. “I am a shopaholic and I'm sure I could find lots of things to buy."
"I don't like to have a very planned itinerary," Jo declared. “How about if each of us picks one place that we want to visit in each country? That would give us twelve things to see and do. We could pick our lodging around those twelve things and rent a car or take the train between these attractions."
The other three women smiled and nodded their agreement.
"One month from today, let's all share with each other the three places we want to go. That way I can build our lodging around these places. Let's all agree that no one has to name London as we all want to see that city. Perhaps we give it two days before heading out to the countryside?" Jill suggested.
Again they nodded their agreement and soon their group broke up to head for bed. With the thought and a prayer for a quiet night, they all relaxed into their respective beds. Their wish was granted as they awoke incident free the next morning. Jill stayed out of everyone's way while they got ready to go to work. She would grab a shower after they left as she had two hours before she needed to meet the coroner for the autopsy. She got hugs from everyone as they departed for the day, police escort in place as Dr. Lewis had still not been located, knowing that they would not see each other again until that fall vacation.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jill left the hotel with her police escort. It was a short drive to police headquarters where the medical examiner laboratory was located. Jill met the coroner from Cook County at the laboratory. She was a nurse by background with special forensic training. Deputy Payne had to return to Cook County and was unable to attend the autopsy as he had planned.
“Hello, Dr. Quint, it’s nice to meet you. The police received your autopsy suitcase and it's waiting in the lab for you along with Dr. Phillips. It's nice to meet you in person after the email introduction provided by Deputy Payne.”
“Hi Jane, it’s nice to meet you in person as well. Please call me Jill. As you know, I am not licensed in this state, so you will be the official of record for this case. You have seen the satellite feed of this death?”
“Yes I have and I’ll be searching for evidence in regards to the event.”
“How do you want to divide up the autopsy? We could do two completely separate examinations. Just before you close up the Y incision, I’ll follow in your shoes and perform a second autopsy. Or, if you don’t mind me serving as a supervisor, I could watch what you do and offer suggestions. A third approach we might take is, I could do the autopsy and have you supervise me.”
“Jill, I have never performed an autopsy on an exhumed body so I don’t know what to expect. If you don’t mind taking direction from a nurse, I would like to run with your last suggestion and supervise you. I will learn the most, Dr. Phillips will get the best autopsy, and I’ll be able to sign the death certificate as the coroner as long as I closely observe and agree with what you’re doing.”
“I don’t mind at all taking direction from a nurse. I went into the business of consulting to provide a second opinion on the cause of death just so families could get at the truth of a loved one’s death. I want the best autopsy with the least challengeable results because that is what the family wants.”
“Great let’s get started on this.”
After putting on protective gear, Jill and Jane wrestled Dr. Phillips out of his burial clothes. Having been embalmed and dead for about six months, his rigor mortis was long gone. He was well preserved as the ground had been frozen for most of the time he had been buried. Some bodies, based on temperature and the amount of embalming fluid, were well preserved upon exhumation; others had the skin beginning to decay. Jill began the autopsy. She spoke aloud for both Jane to hear and to record her findings.
“I am beginning with an examination of the skin. I am using a magnifying lens to view any imperfections. Normally, I start from the feet up, but given what we know, I am going to start with his back side beginning at the head.”
With Jane’s help, they turned Dr. Phillips onto his face, and began their search. Jane had her own micro-goggles and they both looked for and found the injection site suggested by the video feed on the snowmobile incident.
"Let's take pictures and sample the tissue around this injection site. I'd also like to take tissue samples from the leg muscles and the diaphragm to look for the presence of a paralytic agent. Since Dr. Lewis was a surgeon and would have access to certain drugs, I recommend doing a toxicology test for the paralytic agents of anesthesia,” Jill said.
"For all the autopsies that I have performed as the medical examiner for Cook County, I've never had a homicide discovered or confirmed as a result of my autopsy,” Jane noted. “Certainly, Dr. Lewis's willingness to declare Dr. Phillips’s cause of death from a witnessed heart attack greatly influenced my decision not to autopsy him at the time of his death. Even if I had performed an autopsy, I am not sure I would have discovered this injection site or collected any tissue samples for paralytic agents as it’s not routine.”
"Don't be too hard on yourself. Even if you had autopsied Dr. Phillips at the time of his death, you would probably look for evidence of a heart attack. We don't know what was in that injector that Dr. Lewis used on Dr. Phillips, but suppose it contained potassium? His death would look like a heart attack and again unless you were suspicious, you would not normally perform toxicology tests for the presence of excessive potassium."
The two women continued with the autopsy for another hour and a half. They looked for evidence of death by asphyxiation. If the diaphragm was paralyzed, then the lungs could not move air in and out. This would lead to death by asphyxiation or the lack of oxygen for the major organs of the body such as the heart and brain. Jane duplicated every sample that Jill collected to analyze in her own lab in California. Jane would send her specimens to the contract lab of Cook County for analysis. Until they got results back, all the two women could conclude is that it was a suspicious death. Soon they were finished with the autopsy and they contacted the funeral director for preparation and reburial of Dr. Phillips’s remains.
After Jill cleaned up and was back in her street clothes, she and Jane had a conversation about her decision not to perform the autopsy at the time of death. Jill was convinced that Jane wanted to do a good job as her county’s coroner. It was an once-in-a-lifetime snap decision heavily influenced by Dr. Lewis. She would never make that mistake again – trusting a fellow member of the medical profession while carrying out her duties as coroner.
Since she had time, Jill contacted Dr. Phillips’s widow Emily, to see if she was available to meet. Emily was pleased to be able to meet Dr. Quint in person. She lived in Ashwaubenon and thus Jill could visit her on her way to the airport. The police weren’t taking any chances though and stood guard inside Emily’s house while they spoke.
“Hello, Dr. Quint. Thank you so much for stopping by on your way to the airport. What can you tell me about Randy’s death?”
“Please call me Jill. Let me tell you what we did today first so you understand my credentials and the legal proceedings of this case. As you know I am a licensed and trained forensic pathologist. My license to practice medicine is for the state of California therefore any autopsy that I render an opinion on anywhere in the nation fails to meet the legal standard of the medical examiner outside of California. Therefore I must work in tandem with the coroner of the jurisdiction that t
he death occurred in. So in this case I performed an autopsy under the supervision and approval of the Cook County coroner. She must sign off on your husband’s death certificate. I do not have that privilege in this state.
“The Cook County coroner issued a death certificate for your husband based on the witnessed medical event that your husband suffered while snowmobiling. She was within the letter of the law to do that. She will be revising the cause of death on the original death certificate to ‘deferred pending further investigation’.”
“I thought you were doing this autopsy to determine Randy's cause of death; why are you now saying that it's deferred?"
"Unfortunately until we have all evidence in front of us, and that includes test results from specimens that were sent out to Wisconsin labs today, we can't label Randy's cause of death to anything but ‘deferred’. Once all the lab tests are completed, I would expect that we will change Dr. Phillips’s cause of death to homicide. I have duplicate specimens that I’ll be processing in my lab in California, but the results must be confirmed by the Wisconsin lab.”
“What test results are you looking for specifically? How will they tell whether Randy was murdered? Hasn’t it been too long since his death to find something and does embalming fluid change test results?"
“Emily, those are all really good questions. Let me answer the last two first. Embalming fluid does impact test results. If I wanted to detect if someone had been injected with excessive insulin and that caused this person’s death, then I would find insulin in the tissues. The embalming fluid might dilute it, but it would still be measureable. In regards to your first question, did the police talk to you about the evidence they had that caused them to want to exhume Dr. Phillips?”
“They told me they had new information from where they found Randy that was suspicious, and therefore they wanted to do another autopsy. Since I had never believed that Randy had a heart attack, I readily agreed.”
Jill thought for a few moments about what to say to the widow. She was surprised somewhat that they hadn’t provided a better explanation and no one seemed to have interviewed her yet about her husband and Dr. Lewis. Well, they had their opportunity, and now it was hers. She wouldn’t hesitate to question the widow about Dr. Lewis.
“Emily, I was visiting friends in Green Bay when Dr. Easley was shot. My team and I began work on that murder investigation and in doing so came across the fact that Dr. Easley and Dr. Phillips had occupied the same leadership positions at Our Lady of Guadalupe. That was too much of a coincidence for me, so we briefly looked into the circumstance of your husband’s death.
“We really didn’t do any more work on it than that. One of the clues we were looking at in the case of Dr. Easley’s murder was satellite video feed. There are companies around the world that have placed satellites in orbit around the Earth. They are used for entertainment and surveillance. The American military uses them to spy on other countries and I assume that other countries spy on us as well. I contacted one of those companies to see if we could get the footage of the woods around the golf course where Dr. Easley was murdered. We were provided with footage that gave us some clues about the shooter but no solid evidence.
“We had pretty much run out of clues, when I thought of your husband’s death last winter and so I worked with the Cook County Sheriff to get the geographical coordinates of where he was found next to his snowmobile. In watching that video, you can see some behavior that might lead you to believe that this was not a heart attack.”
“Do you have it with you? You obtained it so you must have a copy in your possession,” Emily urged.
Again Jill paused to think before saying something hurtful to this widow.
“I do have it with me on my laptop. Let me send one of the officers out to my car to fetch it.”
So saying Jill stood up, walked to the living room door and asked the officer if he would retrieve her laptop from a carry-on bag in the trunk of her car. A few moments later he returned with the computer. Jill powered it up, glancing at the time, as she walked over to sit down next to the widow.
“I need to head to the airport in about ten minutes,” Jill observed. “If I don’t answer all your questions by then, we’ll have to talk by phone later. Let me caution you, I’m about to show you footage of your husband's death. Is there someone close-by that you would like to have come over and view with you?”
“No, let’s just get this over with.”
Jill shrugged and hit play on the video and Jill narrated the events as they unfolded on the video, she could sense the sadness, disbelief and finally, anger, emanating from Emily.
Other than the sound of Emily’s tear splashing on the laptop keyboard, there was no sound in the room. Jill moved the laptop out of harm’s way and began to power it down, wanting to give Emily a little time to her thoughts.
“Is this why there is an all-points bulletin out for Dr. Lewis?”
“No, not for your husband’s murder yet. That was why we needed to exhume the body. He was questioned yesterday morning, shown this video, then he said he had no changes to his original statement. The bulletin is because he tried to murder my friends and me at Coyote Creek Golf Course yesterday. We believe he has a role in the deaths of Drs. Phillips and Easley, as well as the attempted murder of Angela Weber, a member of my team.”
“Why would he do anything like this? He is a respected surgeon and father.”
Jill thought she had dumped enough information on the woman, so she would leave the murder’s motive for the law enforcement to discuss with her.
“I don’t know and I need to get going to the airport in a few minutes. Is there someone I can call for you to come over and keep you company?”
“No, despite the tears, I’ll be fine. I’d like to have a gun to go after Dr. Lewis myself. Randy felt badgered to go on that snowmobile trip by Dr. Lewis. He had mentioned once in passing that he would never allow his family to be cared for by Dr. Lewis. When I asked him why, he said the guy had problems in the OR. I think over our twenty year marriage that was the only criticism of a fellow physician that I heard Randy make and at that he didn’t elaborate.”
Emily had given Jill valuable information that she could use to pass on to the detectives. Maybe Emily's comments could be used to direct the detectives to get a subpoena for those hospital records. Still she thought it might be better to use the comment on Dr. Lewis during an interview, and see if his temper might cause him to give up information.
“Emily, if you don’t mind, I am going to pass your comments on to the detectives, I think that once I get some definitive test results that they will be on your doorstep with questions for you about Dr. Phillips’s relationship with Dr. Lewis. Use this next twenty-four hours to think about any comments over the years that your husband may have made about Dr. Lewis.”
“Would you call me tomorrow, once you have some test results back? I understand that they are not official, but it will give me a preview of what is coming. Thanks for stopping to talk with me, I really appreciate it. If I can ever provide you some assistance, please let me know.”
Jill was soon out the door and on her way to the airport, her police escort tailing her. She dropped the rental car off at the agency and proceeded inside the airport. They stayed with her until she boarded. The airline was made aware of her situation, and boarded her first, the police escort took once last look at the departure lounge and left. Thirty minutes later the plane taxied to the runway and took off. Jill heaved a sigh of relief and then felt guilty. She was out of harm’s way but her friends were not. At least they were being protected by a solid law enforcement agency. Jill had been impressed with the way they had protected her during her visit to Emily’s house. After a change of planes in Minneapolis, she flew home to California. She arrived at Nathan’s house at eleven in the evening. Fortunately, he was a night person and was wide awake. Trixie was overjoyed to be reunited with Jill.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After a
long embrace, equally long kisses, and a very pleasurable hour spent in Nathan’s bed, they were laying naked, covers over them, glass of wine in hand. Arthur was curled up on a chair near Nathan’s side of the bed while Trixie was asleep on the floor near Jill.
“It’s nice to have you home where you’re safe,” Nathan said. “Why are the murderers after you now, when you had four peaceful years as a consultant?”
“I’ve had a few cases in the past year that weren’t dangerous,” Jill replied. “I think the dangerous cases are when I am dealing with someone who thinks they got away with murder. In their mind, they planned the perfect murder and I come along and spoil that opinion of themselves. Rather than agreeing that they didn’t plan the perfect murder, they try to stop my voice saying they failed. That would be my pop psychology explanation for what has occurred.”
“Hmmm, so what are your plans for the next few days?”
“Since I just came back from vacation, I won’t be going anywhere for a while. I have a bunch of tests to do in my lab tomorrow and several discussions with the team, the detectives, and Dr. Phillips’s widow. When I get through all of that, then I’ll be concentrating on the vineyard. I probably have some grape bunches that need thinning out. I hate to remove fruit, but then I can’t have broken branches or small grapes as we march towards harvest time. How about you?”
“I need to drive over to a client vineyard in St Helena.”
“The wine glass dude?”
“Yes, exactly. I have a few designs to show him. I just love the 3D printer. For those customers unable to envision the true genius of my design, they can see it with their own eyes to help them make a decision. I don’t know Andrew well enough yet to know how good he is at imagining things.”
“Are you going tomorrow?”
“I was going to. Why? Do you want to join me?”