“They’re coming,” Eddie said.
“Good,” I said. Vanderberg was up on his elbow but still spitting out bloody saliva. “It looks like you’re going to need a good dentist. I’ll see if I can convince my buddy Eddie to squeeze you in sometime. “That is, if I can convince him to start doing prison work pro bono.”
OCCAM’S RAZOR
BY MAYNARD F. THOMSON
The reporter, a large, middle-aged woman with an expression of perpetual concern, looked up from her notebook. “When I was on the crime beat I watched all your trials, you know. The Roberts kidnapping, the Hailsham Farm murders, Lonnie Burke, the Cannibal killings—all of them. I remember them vividly.”
Dr. Stork lifted his chin just enough to allow him to spread his tented fingers in a gesture of acknowledgment. “That was all a long time ago,” he said. His voice, which in court had held a rich, persuasive timbre, was high and cracked.
“People like reading about them, which is why I want to do a feature on you. Victor Marino said Lester Stork’s the dean, simply the man who invented the modern criminalist.”
“That’s very kind, but he exaggerates.”
Susan Bruce was increasingly frustrated; the old man seemed immune to flattery, and getting material was proving an ordeal. She wondered again if he’d slipped into senility.
“I was thinking about the Menendez case on my way over. I thought for sure his alibi witnesses would get him off, but you made it so clear he did it.”
She wondered if he’d remember but Stork, his face half hidden in the fading late afternoon light, nodded. “Those two—Perkins and . . . Seymour, wasn’t it? Not very credible, really.”
Christ, as though she remembered. Nothing wrong with the old man’s memory, then, it was more as though he found the topic of his career boring. His manner, too, was so far from what she remembered in the courtroom. There, he’d been everyone’s favorite uncle, imperturbably explaining the evidence until any verdict save “guilty” would have been absurd. Now he was just a tired old man.
Still, Ms. Bruce was not easily put off a story. “Enough for reasonable doubt, I thought, until you testified.”
“We had overwhelming physical evidence. The blood alone would have been sufficient. When an alibi conflicts with the physical evidence . . .” A wave of his thin hand completed the thought.
The reporter jotted a note. “And you made Dr. Danziger sound so—” she looked around, as though the word she wanted was on one of Stork’s bookshelves “—forced. You know, as though he was just reciting lines from a bad script.”
Stork nodded. “He was.”
“And you weren’t?” Perhaps she could needle him into becoming engaged.
Stork shrugged his thin shoulders. “The evidence pointed incontrovertibly to Mr. Menendez’s guilt. All I had to do was lay it out, as simply as possible. Danziger had to account for that which couldn’t be denied—the blood, for instance—while trying to supply a scenario that exculpated his client. Foolish to challenge Occam’s Razor.”
“Occam’s Razor?” Susan Bruce’s passage through journalism school hadn’t included medieval English scholasticism.
Stork looked at the woman, with her blank, expectant air of impenetrable ignorance, and sighed. He thought again how glad he was that he could measure the remainder of his life in months, if that.
“A philosophical concept. In essence, it says that the simplest explanation that fits all the known data is most likely to be correct. Sy Danziger challenged Occam every time he testified. Occam usually won.”
Ms. Bruce thought about this, wondering at the turn things had taken, then looked up abuptly. “Would you mind talking about how you got started?”
“How I got started?” He blinked uncertainly at the sudden shift in topic.
“Hmm. I know you became ME here in—” she flipped back through her notes “—fifty-nine, and that before that you were in Chicago, but I don’t have anything on your background. I mean, how does someone become the country’s leading medical examiner? When you were a little boy, did you say ‘When I grow up, I want to be a forensic pathologist’?”
The old man gave a wheezy sniff. “Hardly.”
“They do today, you know. Everybody wants to be a criminalist. Look,” she made a sweeping gesture, as though the little office were filled with applicants, “there’s a whole department here at the university.”
Stork shook his head. “They’re in for a disappointment. The glamour’s on television. Squalor and lies, that’s the reality. There’s rarely any mystery, you know. The obvious person did the crime, and a six-year-old could solve it.”
“Oh, that Occam thing.” The reporter was momentarily flummoxed, then decided to approach it from a different direction. “Won’t you tell me about your first case? I’m sure that would be interesting.”
“My first case? That would be—” he pointed at her notepad “—the Barton matter. Didn’t we already talk about that?”
“No, not your first case here, your first case ever.”
“Well, I had cases as an assistant, in Chicago, but that was a long time ago. Let’s see . . .”
“No. I mean, the case that got you started. Back in Minnesota, I think it was.”
“Minnesota.” He stopped, seeming struck by the name. “Yes, but there was nothing interesting, really. Just one thing led to another, I suppose.” That was the way it had always seemed to him, anyway, when he thought about it. Which he hadn’t, for years.
“Isn’t that where you began your career? I was sure I read somewhere . . .”
“Maddie.”
Ms. Bruce stopped, unsure whether Stork had said something, or if it had been a noise out in the hall. “Were you speaking to me, Dr. Stork?”
Now the yellow light from the window fell on his white head, and she saw him in profile. “Maddie, that was her name. Madelaine Birney, but I called her Maddie.”
“What about her, Dr. Stork? Was she involved in your first case?” He suddenly seemed very, very far away.
“Involved.” He turned to face her. “Yes, she was involved in my first case.”
Something in his manner made her hesitate. “Would you like to talk about it?”
He looked away again. “You won’t have heard of her, of course. Of her murder.”
“I’m sorry, no.”
“I haven’t thought about the case in many years. I used to, but not for a long while. Odd.” He blinked uncertainly. “I used to be able to see her. See her, lying there. But now . . .”
“Maybe it would be better if . . .” The reporter leaned forward, as though to rise, but Stork held his hand up and she sank back into the chair.
“She was what got me started, what you wanted to hear about. My career as ‘the dean of American criminologists’ started with Maddie Birney, in Sioux Junction, Minnesota, in nineteen fifty-four. I thought you wanted to hear how I got started?”
“I did, but . . . are you sure you want to tell me?”
There was a long pause, and she thought he was going to withdraw again, but then he said, “If you would be kind enough to pour us some more tea, I’ll get the file.”
“I never wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a singer, if you can imagine that. But my father was a doctor, and his father before him, and he made it clear there’d be no money for anything as ‘useless,’ as he put it, as music school. He also told me I wasn’t good enough to even think of it, and I dare-say he was right. In any case, I wasn’t one to defy him. So I went to medical school, and at first it wasn’t so bad. I found I rather enjoyed the technical side of it, the lab work, anatomy, that sort of thing. And I had a good memory, and enjoyed learning all the obscure names and facts, then regurgitating them on exams. It was only when I got into my third year and had to start dealing with living people, the part my classmates couldn’t wait for, that I knew how big a mistake I was making.”
He looked away. “I didn’t care for it, not a bit. It seemed to me a dreadful responsibility, and there was
the, the . . .”
She thought he seemed embarrassed as he sought the words. “It wasn’t just seeing people the way I wasn’t used to seeing them, but having them tell me the most private things. It made me extremely uncomfortable.”
He swiveled in his chair and looked straight at her. “I’ve always been shy, you see. Psychiatrists would say I have a fear of intimacy. God knows my parents did nothing to make me welcome it.”
She felt unaccustomedly uncomfortable in the presence of this old man’s emotional exposure. “I wouldn’t have guessed. In the courtroom . . .”
“That’s different. When I got into the courtroom the first time, in the case I’m telling you about, I felt comfortable. I knew then I wanted to be there, doing my utmost to win justice for the victims, to see the guilty punished. I know what I’ve seen, and what it means, and to me it’s the most important thing in the world. But actually . . . caring . . . for living people . . .”
His voice trailed off and she wondered if he had lost his thread. She was about to prompt him when he resumed.
“So I didn’t do so well in my final years in medical school, and when I graduated the only internship I was offered was in a community hospital in Hibbing, Minnesota, where I had to deal with sick people twenty-four hours a day. That was a miserable experience for me and quite unsatisfactory to the hospital, but it led me to accepting a job as medical officer for the Taconite Mining Company, in Sioux Junction, in the iron ore belt north of Hibbing. My father wanted me to return to Minneapolis and join him, but I had just enough spine to stand up to the old man this time, and the Taconite post was the only other thing on offer.”
He shook his head. “Sioux Junction, Minnesota, the back of the beyond. Just a huge crater a mile deep, and ten thousand people, most of them miners and their families, living on the edge of it. And it suited me just fine.”
“It sounds rather bleak.”
“You can’t imagine. But as soon as I interviewed, I saw that they’d only created the position as a sop to the union. They wanted a medic on the payroll, to patch up any bumps and scrapes, and keep the more seriously injured miners alive long enough to send them to the hospital in Hibbing. Glorified school nurse was what I was. But it left me plenty of time to collect and analyze data on mining-related disease, which had come to interest me, and God knows the men weren’t looking to me to share their life’s secrets. I had a paycheck, my record collection, and a decent apartment. And as long as I had the title ‘Doctor’ my father couldn’t complain too much. So all in all, I was content enough. For eighteen months I was reasonably happy, happier than I’d ever expected to be, at least as a doctor. And then it happened.
“The call came at about four in the afternoon, while I was in the company dispensary. October seventeen, nineteen fifty-four, a fine, crisp day. I should have been reviewing the results of the blood drive, but I had a record player there, and I remember I was listening to Schubert’s String Quartet Number Fourteen as I picked up the receiver.”
Stork’s eyes lost their focus and he was gone in thought for a moment, before making a soft, wondering noise. “Strange, how a stray fact like that stays with you, all these years later. ‘Death And The Maiden,’ the piece is called. Ironic. Anyway,” he brought his attention back to her, “at first it simply didn’t register. It was the sheriff ’s office, but I couldn’t understand why they were calling me.
“Then my mind cleared and of course it made perfect sense. Shortly after I’d arrived in Sioux Junction the local GP who served as county medical examiner, Dr. Latham, had retired and moved away. The other physicians in town had family practices and neither the time nor the taste for the job, so I’d agreed to take it on. The call was from the dispatcher, saying the sheriff wanted me to get over to Lakota Street right away, there’d been an accident. That was his term, ‘an accident,’ but I remember I felt a strange foreboding as I arrived.
“It was a two-family house, one unit above another, and a patrolman was just coming out of a side door. He saw me and pointed to the second floor. On the front porch of the house next door I saw a large, gray-haired woman standing with her arms crossed and a disapproving scowl on her red face, and on the sidewalk another patrolman was holding half a dozen gawking neighbors at bay. I was glad to slip through the screen door and hasten up the stairs, bag in hand, steeling myself for what I might find.
“Sheriff Coomer was a large, florid man. I suspected he drank more than was good for him. He was standing in the corner of the sitting room, watching as Harold Elkins, the town photographer, snapped pictures of the small figure lying on the floor. A deputy sheriff named Tongren had his back to us, staring out the window. I just had time to take it in before a flash bulb went off and I was momentarily blind.
“‘That’s it, Sheriff,’ I heard Elkins say, as my vision cleared. Sheriff Coomer nodded to me. ‘Then she’s all yours, Doc.’ He walked over and stood looking down at the body. ‘Place downstairs is vacant, and the windows were closed, so nobody heard nothing, but the nosy old battleax next door got to wondering, saw the girl’s car still here. Thought she might be sick, so when she didn’t answer, came up and found her.’
“The sheriff pursed his lips. ‘My take, she tripped and hit her head on that table.’ His big chin indicated the marble-topped coffee table a foot from the body. It had been pushed askew from the settee behind it. ‘Accident, I’d say. Sad, girl that age.’
“I felt horror as I stared at the still figure. This gave way to outrage as I digested the Sheriff ’s words, but I forced myself to remain calm. Any fool could see this had been no ‘accident,’ but that could wait. ‘I’ll look at her,’ was all I said.
“‘You do that, Doc,’ the Sheriff said. ‘I’m going down to call for the meat wagon.’
“Coomer and Elkins went out, and I waited until I heard the screen door slam to let out my pent-up breath. ‘Some “accident,” eh, Doc?’ Deputy Tongren was standing next to me, looking down at the broken figure. I noticed dark blood had pooled next to her head, soaking the carpet. I felt myself sway, and forced myself not to think about anything but the job I had to do.
“‘He’s an idiot,’ I said, stepping forward and sinking to my knees. ‘This was murder.’
“‘Think so?’ Tongren, a big Swede, didn’t sound the least surprised. ‘Nothing to trip on, her housecoat’s come loose, and she didn’t just bump her head, push that heavy table back like that. Figure she was shoved, and hard. Course I could be wrong.’
“I looked up. There was nothing to betray Tongren’s thoughts on that impassive face, but it occured to me that he was no fool. I’d missed the significance of the knotted robe, open enough to reveal her nakedness underneath it. I nodded and turned my full attention back to the pathetic form, lying just inches before me.
“I’d seen my share of dead bodies, but never one that affected me like this one. She was lying on her side, so that her right cheek was on the carpet, sightless eyes staring down her extended right arm, the fingers curled in a cadaveric spasm. Her lilac robe splayed on either side of her, like butterfly wings, her skin white except where her body pressed the floor and internal blood had pooled in a ghastly lividity. Tongren was right, the sash on the robe was still knotted, so she hadn’t come into the room with it hanging open. It had been wrenched, probably when she was pushed. And even as my fingers touched the ringlets of light brown hair turned black with congealed blood, I knew that only a brutal force could have driven her head into the marble table-top hard enough to have produced the awful concavity they found.
“I completed my examination swiftly, repressing all extraneous thought as I jotted my findings in a notebook. There was no pulse, obviously, and her temperature was that of the ambient air. From that, the lividity, and the state of rigor mortis, I began to think about the time of death.
“While I was examining the body I was relatively calm, but as soon as I completed my initial examination the fact that she was lying that way, exposed and naked, horrified
me, and I tried to draw the folds of her robe over her. As I did, my eye caught a scrap of paper wedged beneath her leg. I looked around for the deputy, but he’d disappeared, and I picked up the scrap, an irregularly-shaped piece of cream linen stationery perhaps two inches by three.
“I looked at it just long enough to see that it was covered with several lines of script in blue ink before thrusting it in my suit pocket. Perhaps I’d already formed a concern that the sheriff had no intention of handling this hideous crime seriously, and wanted to be sure the evidence was properly treated. My impression was only reinforced when the sheriff returned a minute later, as I was putting away my instruments.
“‘Well, what do you think, Doc?’ He stood, hands on hips, staring down at me with a look of dumb hope on his face. ‘Fell and hit her head?’
“I glared up at him. ‘It was no accident, I can tell you that. She was murdered. Some time last night, I’d say, though I can’t be sure until the autopsy.’
“The sheriff screwed up his lips in a perplexed scowl. ‘You sure about that?’
“‘Absolutely. In my opinion, there is no possibility it was anything else. She was thrown into that table top with enough force to collapse her skull. No fall could have done that, even if there were anything to cause it, which there wasn’t.’
“The sheriff grunted, then nodded resignedly. ‘Coulda been a client, then. Happens. Didn’t want to pay for it, most likely.’
“It took a second to sink in, then I sprang to my feet, overcome with sudden, murderous rage at this insensate fool’s impenetrable stupidity. I must have appeared genuinely threatening, because Deputy Tongren, who’d returned with the sheriff, interposed a restraining arm between us. ‘Easy,’ he muttered.
“I had to fight to control my voice, and my fury. ‘Her name is Madelaine Birney, and she teaches at the Indian school. She did, I mean.’ Then, my emotions still gyrating wildly, I added: ‘She was a lady.’ It sounded ridiculous, even as I said it.
“The sheriff gaped at me. ‘You knew her?’
At the Scene of the Crime Page 23