Three Can Keep a Secret

by Mayor, Archer

  Joe broke away so they could settle in, and resumed his greeting. “Anyhow, Lester’s wife was asking for photos of him, to remember what he looked like, so we came back for a quick visit. I thought it might be good to throw in a meeting, as well, to see where we all stood.”

  “That’s why we have phones and e-mail, boss,” Willy told him.

  Joe ignored him. “You getting anywhere on Rozanski?” he asked instead.

  “Slowly,” Willy said. “It’s basically a double missing persons case, involving Herb and his brother, Nate. Next stop is to interview the sister in Stamford. How you doin’ with Barber?”

  “About the same,” Joe admitted. “Only, when we went to interview Carolyn’s sister, she had Alzheimer’s and couldn’t talk to us. Her son didn’t have much, either, but at least he gave us an album with a newspaper clipping showing Carolyn with the same politician named Gorden Marshall that Sam discovered had died overnight.”

  There was silence in the room for the couple of seconds that it took Willy to grasp that this was beyond a simple catch-up meeting. “Killed?” he asked, realizing he’d never gotten an answer from Sammie about what she’d been doing.

  “They’re claiming natural causes,” Joe explained. “But we’ve sent him up for an autopsy with the local SA’s help.”

  “I found out a little about Carolyn,” Sam volunteered. “According to what I could locate, she worked for the legislative counsel in the statehouse, I guess typing up bills. Wasn’t married, no kids, didn’t own a house, made probably five grand a year. There’s a ton that’s not on computers from back then, so that’s a disadvantage.”

  Her expression showed how badly she felt that she couldn’t rattle off a detailed and revealing biography on command. Sammie openly regarded Joe as a quasi–father figure, since their history stretched back to when she was on patrol and he headed the detective squad downstairs. To have so little to report made her feel like a failure.

  But Joe simply shrugged. “Just a twenty-something office girl,” he said. “Socially invisible. God only knows what kind of shark pool that was back then.”

  Lester feigned surprise. “Really? In little old Vermont?”

  Joe smiled at him. “Ancient history now, but the legislators and their hangers-on used to drink like fish and act like sailors on leave. If you were a girl and valued your job, you either joined them or got out of town after hours.”

  “That what you think was behind the ‘Governor-for-a-Day’?” asked Sammie.

  “I have nothing to go on,” Joe conceded. “I’m just saying that the culture was different and that young women like Carolyn Barber were advised to watch their backs.”

  “‘Governor-for-a-Day’ seems to have been a flash in the pan,” Lester added. “You think that was because it was just a cover-up for a little hanky-panky?”

  “Maybe,” Joe agreed. “The Republicans were on the verge of losing power. The plan was probably a way to make them look friendlier to the electorate. I think that was the rumor. But there’s no saying that something darker wasn’t also at work.”

  “Does that make Marshall the guy who was doin’ her?” Willy asked. “Pretty convenient that he died now—if it was of natural causes.”

  “Yeah,” Sammie chimed in. “And not so convenient if someone headed us off at the pass.”

  “That scenario would mean,” Lester suggested, “that Marshall was not the guy doin’ her, but maybe the guy who knew that guy.”

  “Eloquent,” Willy sneered.

  “Duh…,” Lester responded.

  Joe cut them off. “Which means we better put Marshall under the proverbial magnifying lens, starting with the contents of his apartment, which we left under guard and seal, thanks to the converted Sergeant Carrier. Carolyn may have been invisible, but Marshall sure as hell made a wake in those days. Pro tem in the senate, head of several key committees. We ought to be able to find someone willing and able to rat him out.”

  “I don’t know, boss,” Willy said doubtfully. “Sounding a little harsh with the attitude there.”

  Sammie used her sweetest voice. “Don’t worry, honey-bunny. He could never challenge the King.”

  * * *

  The medical examiner’s office in Vermont had enjoyed a reasonably progressive ride into modernity over the years, thanks to a combination of well-intentioned people and a lack of attention from the rest of the world.

  It was currently housed in the bowels of the mazelike Fletcher Allen Health Care Center in Burlington, which itself had been remodeled into something between the world’s largest Rubik’s Cube and a nonfunctioning Transformer action toy. Still, the so-called OCME—for Office of the Chief Medical Examiner—while tricky to locate, had blossomed into a lean, efficient, quiet organization overseeing why and how the residents of Vermont died.

  It was run—and had been for decades—by Beverly Hillstrom, a tall, slender, strikingly attractive blonde whom Joe had known, trusted, and collaborated with since his early days as an investigator. That shared high regard had extended to the physical—just once, years ago—when they’d spent the night together. That encounter, to their mutual relief, had only strengthened the fondness between them and reinforced the sense that they were friends first and foremost.

  Amusingly to Joe, however—whose job relied on picking up on life’s small, telling details—there had been one noticeable change that marked this very private evolution in his relationship with Hillstrom. In the past, she had referred to him—as she did all police officers—by his rank and last name. That had undergone an improvement.

  “Joe,” she said, greeting him with a hug in the hallway beyond the reception room. “It’s good to see you. When I saw Mr. Marshall arrive, I was hoping that you’d be close on his heels.”

  Joe laughed, as much at her greeting as in his own continued enjoyment of her perfect syntax. She was one of the best-spoken people he’d ever met.

  He gave her an appraising look. “You found something?” he asked.

  She squeezed his arm. “I haven’t even looked.” She led him down the hallway as she spoke further. “He is laid out and waiting for us, however, and he has been washed and had his blood drawn. So, if you care to change into a pair of scrubs, you know where to find me for the next phase.”

  He stepped into the tight-fitting locker room, at the rear of the equally small office area, changed out of his street clothes, and proceeded down a separate corridor to a wide door at the end. Beyond that he found Hillstrom in the spacious, modern autopsy room—complete with skylight—spreading out what she needed to examine a stark and naked Gorden Marshall.

  She looked up as he entered. “I take it the two of you have met?” she asked.

  “We have,” he answered, approaching the steel table and looking down at the corpulent ex-senator.

  “And Todd?” She gestured to a gowned and masked man who walked in from the refrigerated sample storage room, off to the side.

  Joe and the all-but-completely disguised diener nodded greetings to each other. The diener in an autopsy suite was like the bouncer at a well-run bar—he did the heavy lifting, to be sure, but was also attuned to everything that occurred around him, in particular the pathologist’s expectations and needs. The average autopsy could take several hours and involved quite a bit of effort, especially with a man the size of Mr. Marshall.

  “A well-wined-and-dined individual,” Hillstrom commented, back to sorting out her tools. “Who, on paper at least, paid the predictable price for most of his earthly vices.”

  “Meaning high cholesterol?” Joe asked.

  “Oh, much more than that,” she said. “We just received his medical record from The Woods. He was being treated for hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes, liver disease, cardiac problems, and deep vein thrombosis, among other things. He was also addicted to tobacco and alcohol. I’m not at all surprised that his personal physician was ready to sign him off as a natural. The miracle here is that he lasted so long.”

  “
You think I’m on a wild-goose chase,” Joe allowed.

  She looked up again, her eyes wide this time. “Good Lord, no. I would never presume such a thing.” She reached out with a gloved hand and gently stroked Marshall’s considerable belly. “We’ll let Mr. Marshall tell us what he knows before we get into that conversation.”

  Joe had attended many an autopsy. More, in fact, than were called for by his job. For years now, a police liaison had been assigned to the OCME, specifically to communicate with law enforcement, obviating the need for any officer to actually attend an autopsy as part of his or her investigation. That had been common practice in the old days, back when Joe had made it part of his routine, but he was one of the few who—albeit occasionally—still liked to witness the process. Watching the contents of a body being meticulously analyzed was not unlike carefully searching a house, after all. Each and every component had the potential of telling a tale of interest. The trick was in knowing what you were looking for.

  That had marked the foundation of Joe’s and Beverly’s friendship: this passion for clinical scrutiny, not to mention the emotionally charged satisfaction of being on the hunt for clues.

  In this case, however, the hunt did not need to extend to Gorden Marshall’s organs, or the inside of his skull. It turned out to be surprisingly easier and more readily available than that.

  The beginning of any proper autopsy amounted to simply studying the body in detail, including photographing it up close like a mapmaker documenting the lay of the land. As was her routine, therefore, following this, Hillstrom moved to the man’s mouth, gently eased his lips apart, and exposed his teeth and gums.

  “Ah,” she then said.

  Joe had learned enough of her ways to immediately sidle up alongside her, so that they looked as if they were praying over Marshall’s head. “What?” he asked, peering down.

  She had peeled Marshall’s upper lip completely back. “The frenulum labii superioris has been stressed,” she said, virtually to herself.

  “Of course it has,” he agreed in a similar tone.

  She turned her head slightly to catch his eye, their noses almost touching. “Okay. I get it,” she said, and pointed to what she meant. “The frenulum is that fragile stretch of skin connecting the lip to the gum. You can feel your own with your tongue right now. You have an upper frenulum and a lower one.”

  Joe did as instructed and felt the tiny tautness where she’d advised it would be. “Always wondered what that was there for.”

  “To help us here and now,” she answered simply. “You see where it appears reddened and slightly torn?”

  He did, although it didn’t leap out at him.

  “And here,” she continued. “You can see what appear to be slight impressions across the surface of the lip’s inner aspect.”

  “Okay,” Joe said in a neutral tone.

  “It could be argued,” Beverly said, leaving her hands in place but stepping back so that Todd could move in and take photographs of the site, “that such damage can result only if pressure is applied to this area just before death—at least damage with this type of coloring and degree of inflammation.”

  Joe understood where she was headed. “He was smothered?”

  She raised her eyebrows, as she often did when he stretched a finding of hers to satisfy his needs. “This is consistent with that mechanism. Pressure is applied over the mouth—say, of a sleeping man, given that he was dressed in pajamas and found in bed and his apartment not disrupted—resulting in the interior surface of the lip being crushed against the teeth.

  “But—” She raised the index finger of her free hand. “—the victim awakens as his oxygen needs reach criticality, and he begins to struggle.” She shook her head violently from side to side. “Making his head toss back and forth. That action, combined with the pressure on his mouth, stresses the frenulum, often damaging it, as it did here.”

  She backed away as Todd finished. “It’s not a given that a suffocation always results in such a finding, any more than it is that the hyoid bone is crushed in a hanging or that petechiae have to result from strangulation. But if you find what we did here, the question has to be: How did those injuries get there otherwise?”

  Joe was nodding, pleased with his instinct to have sent Marshall here in the first place. “But there must be other findings you can use to back that up, now that you know what to look for? Brain or blood tests?”

  She gave him a sad expression. “Not necessarily. If this is a suffocation, that may be it, especially if his heart went into atrial fib quickly. But I do have an ancillary notion. Given that Mr. Marshall was an alcoholic, he may have been drinking before going to bed. That might—and I stress ‘might’—have impaired him enough to explain why the frenular damage is as slight as it is. Because this—” And she tapped the man’s lip with her gloved finger.—“is relatively subtle.”

  “You’re thinking he may not have put up much of a fight,” Joe suggested.

  “Something else supports that theory,” she answered indirectly. “The responding personnel at The Woods routinely document their actions. It’s part of their corporate protocol, and one that I greatly appreciate. They faxed me that report, and there is specific mention of the decedent’s being supine, in bed, with his arms under the covers. To me, that either indicates that they were pinned in place while he was being suffocated—possibly by an accomplice—or that the attack was sudden and lethal enough that his own enfeebled constitution simply collapsed under the strain.”

  “How was his pillow situated?” Joe asked.

  “There were two of them. His head was resting on one. The other was found on the floor beside the bed.”

  Joe’s cell phone began to vibrate where he’d clipped it to the waistband of his scrubs. He checked the caller’s ID. It was Sammie, who knew where he was, what he was doing, and that he’d be poorly disposed to being disturbed for anything shy of an emergency.

  He looked up at Beverly. “I better take this,” he said apologetically, as she was already encouraging him to do so with a hand gesture.

  “Joe,” he answered.

  “Sorry,” Sam began, “but I knew you’d want to know this right off. There was a fire at the house where you and Les went to see Barb Barber and her son, in Shelburne. They’re both dead.”

  “Arson?” he asked.

  “Don’t know yet. I just got it.”

  “Okay. I’ll head there right now. Thanks.”

  He snapped the phone closed and looked up at Beverly. “It appears you’re about to get two more customers. House fire in Shelburne.”

  She gave him a world-weary smile and said, “It was nice seeing you again, Joe. Try to fit in dinner next time.” She nodded toward Marshall. “I’ll send you my findings on him as quickly as I can.”

  “Thanks, Beverly,” he replied, already retreating toward the door. He stopped there to cast her a more measured look, and added, “And I’d enjoy dinner very much.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hillside Terrace this time was a far cry from the near-empty street that Joe and Les encountered on the night they’d met William Friel and his mother. Despite the time taken for the news of the fire to reach police channels, for Sammie to contact Joe, and for him to leave Burlington and reach the center of Shelburne Village, the street was still jammed with fire department apparatus, pickup trucks, and police cruisers, along with coils of fire hose as crisscrossed as a plate of spaghetti.

  He settled for a space by the curb two blocks away and walked to where a group of men stood across from the charred remains of the modest home Joe had barely left. Clouds of steam and smoke drifted into the afternoon sky from a blackened pyre of collapsed wall studs and roofing material. The air was thick with an eye-watering pungency and the sounds of radio chatter and idling diesel engines.

  Joe approached a firefighter dressed in the white helmet and coat of an officer, pulling out his credentials as he drew near. He waited for the man to stop talking into his port
able radio, aware of the others in the group all staring at him, and showed them his badge.

  “Chief?”

  The man’s eyes traveled from badge to face. “Yeah?”

  “Joe Gunther. Sorry to bug you when you’re knee deep, but the people living here are part of an investigation I’m running.”

  “Guess that makes you out of luck, then. They didn’t make it.”

  Joe pocketed his shield. “So I heard. Anything you can tell me?”

  The chief shook his head. “VSP arson guy is on his way. You’d do better to talk to him.” He pretended to see something in the distance, invisible to the rest of them, and abruptly said, “I gotta go.”

  He shouldered through two people opposite and went diagonally across the street without another word.

  An awkward silence among the others ended with one of them saying, “He doesn’t like cops.”

  Joe merely nodded at that. “Any of you know anything?”

  “Yeah,” the same one said. “The call came in about ninety minutes ago. I was on the first truck. Place was fully involved, right through the roof, like it had been cooking for hours. Hadn’t been, though, not according to the neighbors. It just looked that way.”

  “Why would that be?” Joe asked them all.

  “Looked like a gas fire to me,” another of them said. “Fast and hot. Plus, it was an older building, like a match head.”

  “Anyone see anything suspicious beforehand?”

  A third man answered, “I work part-time for the PD here, and volunteer for the fire department,” he added, explaining his being in turnout gear. “Our people asked up and down the street, but nobody saw anything out of place. No strange cars or people hanging around. We asked if there’d been any comings or goings to the house. Did you come with a real tall, skinny guy when you did your interview a while ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were seen, then, but nobody else. These people apparently didn’t socialize much.”

  “Did you know them?” Joe asked, taking them all in. “Any of you?”