by Linda Ladd
Charlie looked at us, expecting answers or else. He was an honest man, a man who did his job efficiently and by the letter of the law, and he insisted we do the same. He hated criminals but treated them fairly, and when some innocent victim got killed on his turf, he took it as a personal affront. Gruff and profane, he’d won every election he’d been in in the last twenty years and would continue to as long as he wanted the aggravation. He’d given me a job when nobody else would, and I never forgot it.
Bud pulled out his notebook and flipped over the first page. “911 got a homicide call at 5:32 A.M., July second, and the first unit arrived at approximately 5:37. Deputy O’Hara secured the scene.”
“Hell, Jacqee told me that much over the dinner table. Has Buckeye finished the autopsy?” He looked pointedly at me, and I felt his gaze on my swollen eye. It hurt pretty bad, but I was gobbling up Excedrins like candy.
“No, sir. We’re scheduled to observe as soon as we’re done here. Buckeye wants all three of us there, and he wants it videotaped. This is a difficult one, sir.”
Charlie grimaced and made a growling sound deep in his throat. Then he belched behind his fist and seemed to feel better. Ulcers were hell. He glared at me, and I tried to look as pleasant as I could with a black eye and swollen jaw. Charlie ran his hands through hair that was graying at the temples and thinning in back. He hid the impending baldness with a severe military cut he’d worn since he served in Vietnam years ago. Some of us called him W. C.—behind his back, as we wanted to remain in the land of the living—because of his Winston Churchill bulldog jowls and the way he had of lowering his head when he glared at subordinates. Sort of like right now. His eyes were blue, slightly bloodshot, and at the moment, alive with tension. “Why the hell don’t you run off those media assholes hanging around outside, detectives? They chased my car into the fucking parking garage like rabid jackals.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it.” I am prudent. I didn’t remind him that he okayed Hastings’s request to ride patrol and film everything he saw. “As you know, sir, the victim is a celebrity. Peter Hastings knew it before I got to the crime scene.”
“Shit, this is a circus. And Black announcin’ it on CNN made it worse.” I knew for a fact that Black was one of Charlie’s major campaign contributors, so he wouldn’t get down on the doctor until he was sure he was guilty. He mumbled something that Bud and I couldn’t hear, which was probably a good thing.
“Okay, what else?” Charlie scowled, his face flushed redder than usual. He snatched off his black glasses and started rubbing the thick lenses violently on the end of his black tie, another sure sign he was about to blow.
“The victim was Sylvie Border, sir. She’s a soap opera star.”
“Hell, I know that,” Charlie snapped. “I’ve seen Vicky’s pictures of her taped to that damn chair. And I better not see any of them in the damned Enquirer, or heads are going to roll.”
“Yes, sir.” I filled him in on what we’d done so far. He did not seem overly impressed with our investigative prowess.
“So you’re telling me that your only suspects so far are my good friend Nick Black and some junkie wife beater who doesn’t have the imagination to set up a victim like this.”
“Yes, sir.” Bud was not exactly sheepish, but he was close.
“Well, get the hell out there and find out who did it. If Buckeye’s going to videotape the autopsy, then I’ll watch it later. I’ve got a meeting with the lake’s Chamber of Commerce, who’s been calling me all night about what the national press is doing to tourism around here. Shit.”
Thus ended our interview, and we slunk out. He’d be in a better mood later. Maybe. No, probably not.
I met Bud at the coroner’s office fifteen minutes later. Autopsies were not my favorite pastime, especially right after breakfast. Luckily, I forgot to eat breakfast and sure wouldn’t want to afterward.
“Mornin’,” Buckeye said as I entered the lab, the cheerful coroner ready to dissect. The smell always hit me first, antiseptic, chemicals, and cold death. Sylvie was still sitting upright in her chair, still taped up, still beaten and ravaged by marine life. Bud was leaning against the next steel table, arms crossed, eating a jelly donut. He didn’t seem to mind autopsies as much as I did. I put on my surgical mask and gown. I’d already donned latex gloves and paper booties in the corridor. Bud was similarly attired and holding his donut with a paper towel now. You’d think he could put it down.
“Okay, let’s get started.” Buckeye looked around, then let out a yell that made me jump. “Shag, get your butt in here! We’re ready to go!”
Shag rushed in with the video camera. He was eating a donut, too. What was the matter with these guys?
“Okay, okay, I’m here. No need to bust my ass.” Shag stuffed the rest of the donut in his mouth, pulled on gloves, then grinned at me as he positioned the camera on the corpse, still in a sitting position. Which in itself was a rarity, I’d say.
Buckeye ignored all that. As I said, Shag was so good at his job that he got away with murder. Not exactly the best term at the moment. Sorry.
Buckeye began to speak into the microphone he wore on a headset attached to a tape recorder clamped to the breast pocket of his shirt. “This is a female Caucasian, age twenty-five. Name is Sylvie Anne Border. I’ll get her weight and height after I remove her from the chair to which she’s been secured with silver duct tape.”
We all gathered around for the show. The bright light hanging over the table poured down on the body as in a theatrical production. Buckeye knelt and started at the feet. “Skin and muscle are showing deterioration from being submerged in water, with more degradation appearing from the neck up. She is taped with wide silver duct tape at the ankles, calves, wrists, and throat. The body has not been touched since removal from the lake. Observing this procedure are Canton County Detectives Claire Morgan and Bud Davis, and my assistant, John Becker. I’ll start by removing the tape binding the victim’s ankles.”
Buckeye picked up a tool off the table beside him that looked like a grocery store box cutter. Maybe it was. He knelt and carefully split the tape down the back. We all watched silently as he removed it with industrial-strength tweezers. It came loose slowly, and I tried not to notice that some skin came away with it. I was praying for fingerprints, but I had a feeling the perp knew and loved gloves for acts of murder.
The tape around the calves was removed next and placed on a clean sheet of white evidence paper. Buckeye picked up a pen and wrote where the tape had come from. Shag would run the tests on it after the autopsy was completed. Everything took a long time because Buckeye was experienced and did not make mistakes that would compromise the investigation. He was as good as any forensic pathologist I’d worked with in L.A., and I’d worked with some of the best.
Buckeye was slowly making his way to the head.
“I am now ready to remove the duct tape from the victim’s throat. It appears to encircle the neck and back of the chair at least a dozen times, running from clavicle to earlobe.” Buckeye moved around to the back of the chair and pulled a gooseneck lamp to angle directly at the neck. He pulled the long blond hair away from the nape, looking for the best place to slit through the tape without disturbing possible trace evidence. I waited patiently. Well, not exactly patiently. I wanted to be anywhere but here, but what can you do? I shifted my stance but kept my eyes on Buckeye. Bud leaned close as Buckeye began to peel away the final length of tape.
“The tape is thicker at the middle of the neck,” Buckeye was reciting into the recorder, eyes intent on the back of Sylvie Border’s neck. When he suddenly stopped and frowned, instrument still in hand, we all leaned forward to get a better look, even me. “There appears to be a lateral wound under the tape at about the fifth vertebra. Uh-oh, it appears the head is coming off.”
I jumped back about the time the head tipped forward and ripped free from the remaining tape. Buckeye caught it by the hair, and my stomach did a forward somersault. We s
tared at Buckeye in disbelief as he stood and held the head in one hand by a shank of long blond hair. He looked like some Viking marauder of old, presenting a trophy of war.
“Oh, my God,” I said.
“It appears the victim was decapitated before being taped to the chair,” Buckeye announced uncertainly. I was glad I had not eaten a jelly donut. Shag filmed on unfazed, but Bud looked sickly green, and Buckeye continued, uninterrupted by the unexpected surprise. “The head appears to have been placed on what seems to be a paint stirrer, then taped tightly to the body and the back of the chair to hold it in place.”
“Holy shit,” said Bud.
My feelings in a nutshell.
I watched Buckeye place the head carefully on the steel table, and I thought of Nicholas Black and the pain I’d seen in his eyes when he talked about Sylvie suffering. This was going to hit him hard. Oh, God, and the family would be devastated.
“This does not leave this room. Is that understood?” I sounded breathless. I was breathless. I was sick. “This cannot get out to the media.”
Everyone looked at me and nodded. Reluctantly, I dragged my gaze back to the table. I prided myself on my ability to face the worst crimes without flinching, but I sure as hell had never seen a decapitated head fall off in an autopsy. I tried for professionalism. I tried to think like a hardened detective would think under these circumstances. There was no blood around the head. She’d obviously bled out in the water.
I watched silently as Bud helped Buckeye move the headless body to the table, placing it just below the severed head. I stared at the Tinkerbell tattoo and wondered about the daisy one. A sense of unreality flooded me. Again, I thought of Black. Why did I keep thinking about him? And not as the murderer but as someone who had loved this person. His affection for the girl had seemed real to me. But that didn’t preclude him from offing her. Look at O.J. and Nicole. I wondered if Sylvie was alive when the killer did it; then I wished I hadn’t wondered.
“I need some air,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay,” said Buckeye. “Stop the camera, Shag.”
I walked across the room to a lab sink, took off my mask, and splashed cold water on my face. I had never interrupted an autopsy before, and I wasn’t really sick. Horrified was more like it. Sylvie had been so young. I don’t know how innocent she’d been, but she sure as hell didn’t deserve having this done to her.
“You okay?” Bud asked a moment later.
“Yeah, let’s get this over with.”
The rest of the procedure was not so dramatic. Sad but routine. Buckeye noted every bruise and abrasion, weighed internal organs, and took tissue and blood samples for the laboratory. All necessary, all important in finding the killer, but none of that made me feel any better. As long as I lived, I’d never watch another soap opera without seeing Sylvie Border’s head fall off her body. Unfortunately, I’d have to be the one to tell Nicholas Black about it. Like it or not, I had to see his reaction.
LIFE WITH FATHER
For the first few months, the child was afraid of the dead people in the cold room. The father said they wouldn’t hurt anybody, and it was nice for children to visit their mother. The father had fixed a nice cot in the cold room for the mother instead of storing her on one of the steel shelves along the walls, where the other corpses were wrapped in plastic. Sometimes Brat lay beside her and covered them both up with blankets. Brat brought her red roses and other flowers, too, sometimes, and put them in a vase made out of a Coke bottle beside the cot, but it was too cold in the room, and the blossoms always shriveled and turned black.
As time passed, the child’s fear of the dead people receded. Lonely in the big house without the mother, Brat began to spend more and more time in the cold room with the mother and her friends. The embalmer left the door to the cellar unlocked now and seemed pleased that the child enjoyed watching him work. He took over the school lessons that the child’s mother had always taught, and he carried Brat’s red winter parka and green sock hat downstairs and hung them on hooks outside the cold room and told Brat not to forget to wear mittens when visiting mother.
But Brat was happiest with the mother. She looked so peaceful now, not sad at all, and the father treated her gently and with respect when he came to see her. Brat grew to consider the dead people as friends. When the heavy steel door to the cold room was shut, and the father couldn’t hear, the child would talk to them. Brat would read the tiny paper tag tied to their big toes and then call them by name and make up stories about where they lived and who was in their family. In time, they would get used to the child’s chatter, and they would open up and tell Brat all sorts of interesting stories. The child would make up songs to sing to them and sometimes hold their hands and try to make them dance.
When a new corpse came, it was like making a new friend, and it was always so sad when one had to go off and be buried. But the mother never left, and the child stayed near her most of the time. The father was very pleased and said the child was a good child now and knew how to obey the rules.
Then one night the father came into the cold room when the child was having an imaginary tea party with his mother and her friends. The father smiled, and the child thought he looked strange and unlike himself. His breath smelled like the bottle of whiskey he kept on his nightstand.
“Come sleep with me, Brat. I’m lonely without your mother.”
The child backed away and hid under the mother’s cot. The father knelt down on one knee and jerked Brat out and said sternly, “If you don’t obey me, I will take your mother and bury her out in the woods where you can’t find her. You’ll never see her again.”
Terrified at the thought of losing the mother, Brat took the embalmer’s hand and was led upstairs to the turret bedroom. The father undressed them both and snuggled up with the child under the covers. When the child was warm, he began to touch Brat’s body and do things that hurt. Brat hated it, and when the father rolled away and lay still, Brat slipped out from under the blankets. The father stirred and said sleepily, “If you’re going down to visit Mother, don’t forget to put on your coat and hat.”
The child crept back down to the cellar, holding the places that hurt from what the father had done. Brat took the parka and hat and mittens off their hooks and put them on, then told the mother and the others what had happened in the bed. They all agreed the father was a bad man and should be punished. The mother said the father deserved to die for what he’d done to Brat. The child nodded and snuggled up against her, shivering with cold, and now hatred.
The child was nine years old.
10
“Dadgummit, can anything worse happen?”
I didn’t answer Charlie’s question. I wasn’t sure if it was rhetorical, but I treated it as such. Things seemed to be proceeding down a really rocky road, and who was I to say there weren’t more potholes for us to plunge headfirst into? Bud must’ve felt the same, because he just chewed on his Juicy Fruit and volunteered nothing.
“The head just fell off, just like that, right in the middle of the autopsy?” Charlie said as if he were incredulous. Of course, he was incredulous. I was incredulous.
“Luckily, Buckeye caught it.”
“Yeah, Bud. Lucky Buck.” Charlie was not above sarcasm, either. “Okay, Claire, where do we go from here?”
I wasn’t expecting the question, but I was prepared. “I think I oughta interview Black again, maybe show him the autopsy pictures and see his reaction. They’re awful enough that he shouldn’t be able to fake it if he’s guilty. He said he’d be available any time. If he’s innocent, I’d like to rule him out.”
Charlie looked at Bud. “What about you?”
“I think I oughta fly up to New York and interview Black’s ex-wife.”
“The model?”
“Yeah. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.”
“You’re really funny, aren’t you, Davis?” said Charlie. “What do you say about that, Claire?”
Charlie looked at me, and behind him, Bud put his hands together in prayer mode and mouthed “please.” The truth was that it was necessary to see if the woman could tell them when and if she’d seen Black on the night of the murder and how he’d acted. “Yes, I think her statement could be helpful in clearing Black. And somebody needs to interview the cast of Sylvie’s soap. They might know something about a stalker or obsessed fan. And I think I should go to New Orleans for Sylvie Border’s funeral. I want permission to put in a request for the NOPD to videotape the service and see if we can catch the killer admiring his handiwork. Seems to me he’s the type. I also want to interview her family and friends, especially Gil Serna, if he shows up.”
Charlie shook his head. “There goes a year’s budget worth of travel expenses.” He considered their game plans, filling his black pipe with some kind of tobacco that didn’t smell too horrible. The smokeless premises did not apply to the sheriff. Nobody even mentioned it; they just took their cigarettes outside and did the sidewalk thing. “Okay, but don’t be puttin’ yourself up at the Ritz. And fly coach, dammit.”
The minute they gained the hall outside Charlie’s office, Bud said, “I’m a travelin’ man, goin’ to NYC. Gonna see a pretty woman and pick myself up a couple of tailored suits.”
“You better pick up enough clues to clear Black, or Charlie’s going to lose his biggest campaign contributor.”
“Maybe I can catch a show on Broadway while I’m there.”
“From what I hear, there’s a lot you can catch on Broadway.”
Bud laughed as we braced ourselves for the reporters camped outside the front door. He said, “Same goes for some of those dives down in the French Quarter. I wouldn’t drink the water.”
Sylvie Border’s family had to wait until the body was released before the funeral could be scheduled, and that wouldn’t come until after Buckeye had all the blood and tissue samples he needed for testing purposes. I wanted to get a hair and saliva sample from Black, too, just in case, before he lawyered up and refused to cooperate. It was nearly seven, but I didn’t want to wait to confront Black.