Dead Calm

by Annelise Ryan

  “I’m surviving,” I say, “but I’ll be glad when there’s someone else to share the load.”

  “Why don’t you sit in on the interviews with me, give me your take on them since you’ll be job-sharing with whomever I hire.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’d like that.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we have removed, bagged, and labeled all of Craig’s clothing, and his body is laying naked and exposed on our autopsy table. I’m conducting tests for gunshot residue on his hands; while we had a positive result on the right hand at the motel, I want to retest it here.

  Izzy examines the bullet’s entry wound more closely. “The stellate tears in the wound are consistent with a contact injury,” he says.

  “And we’re positive again for gunshot residue on his right hand,” I say. “Negative on the left.”

  “Whoever staged this did a good job of making it look like a suicide,” Izzy observes.

  “Except for the hand thing,” I say.

  Izzy gives a half-hearted nod, but then appears to capitulate. “Discovering that he’s left-handed was a lucky break for us,” he says. “Although I suppose one could argue that the man was ambidextrous and we misinterpreted things. Hopefully, we can find some other evidence beside the hand thing to support our theory.”

  “Speaking of misinterpretations, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re ever going to be able to prove that Tomas Wyzinski didn’t kill Marla Weber. The case seems to be stagnant, and my guilt increases with each passing day.”

  Izzy shoots me a look. “You have no reason to feel guilty. All you did was recite the facts. How they were interpreted wasn’t up to you.”

  “Perhaps not, but I did interpret them, pretty much the same way the prosecution and the jury did. I can’t help but feel like I’ve contributed to an injustice.”

  “Has Hurley made any progress with the investigation?”

  “A little,” I say in a frustrated tone. “Not as much as I’d like, and what he has uncovered is a little unsettling.”

  “Fill me in,” Izzy says.

  “Well, he figured out a possible meaning for some of the items on that cryptic list Hal left behind on his thumb drive.” I share Hurley’s theory about the Kupper family.

  Izzy lets out a low whistle. “A judge, a congressman, and a lawyer? That’s a big can of worms.”

  “No kidding.”

  “So what is he going to do now?”

  “We’re going to look into the people who live in the Kenilworth area near the cell tower that picked up calls both Hal and Carolyn Abernathy made while they were in Chicago. Maybe it’s a coincidence they were both there not long before they were killed, but you know how Hurley feels about coincidences.”

  “The same as I do. But that’s a rather large field to search. How is he going to narrow it down?”

  “For now, we’re going to look to see if any familiar names or titles pop up. Maybe we can find someone with a connection to the pharmaceutical industry.”

  “It sounds like a long shot,” Izzy says with a grimace.

  “It probably is, but it’s the best we have for now. We’re going to put Laura on it. She’s good at mining information like that, and it ought to keep her busy for a while. I told Hurley I thought we should make a run at Tomas Wyzinski, too, to try to get him to talk. But Hurley doesn’t think we’ll get anywhere.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with him,” Izzy says in a grudging tone. “If the man is willing to spend the rest of his life in prison to stay quiet, I doubt he’s going to open up simply in the name of justice.”

  We work in silence for several minutes as we finish undressing, washing, and scouring Craig Knowlton’s body for clues. When we turn him over, Izzy’s face takes on an “Aha!” expression.

  CHAPTER 11

  “What?” I ask Izzy, knowing he’s hit on something important.

  “I thought it seemed odd that these two victims were laid out so peacefully in that motel room. Look at the lividity here.” He points to Craig’s backside. “What does it tell you?”

  I examine the dark purple coloring in Craig’s back, which is consistent with the blood in his body settling in the most downward spots, pulled there by gravity. Except there is a greater amount of the purplish hue in the upper part of his buttocks and his lower back, and almost none along the bottoms of his butt cheeks. And there is also a blanched line that runs across his upper thighs, indicating that something linear applied pressure there after he died. I point to this line first. “Anything on the bed that would have caused this mark?” I ask.

  Izzy shakes his head, the start of a smile creeping over his lips.

  “And the lividity seems more in keeping with a body that was in a sitting position, at least part of the time,” I say.

  Izzy’s hint of a smile breaks into a full-fledged grin. “Bingo,” he says with a touch of pride.

  I shift my gaze from Craig Knowlton’s backside to Izzy. “He didn’t die in the bed,” I say. I flash back to the motel room, envisioning the other furnishings and the scene in the bed, and frown. “But there was blood and brain matter splattered on the bed and pillow, and on Meredith Lansing, if I remember correctly.”

  Izzy nods. “He was shot in the bed, there’s no doubt about that. I’m guessing someone held the gun in his hand, put it to his head, and pulled the trigger. But he was already dead when it happened. Not long dead, however. Just long enough to give us that flawed lividity pattern, which I think is likely from him being sat up in a car seat.”

  “If we can find the car with a line on the seat that matches the one on his thighs . . .”

  Izzy nods.

  “So what killed him?”

  “I’m guessing he was sedated with something, and whatever it was turned out to be too much for him. It will be interesting to see if we find any similar evidence on Meredith’s body. In the meantime, we’ll likely have to wait for the tox screen. We should analyze the stomach contents and take a close look at his skin to see if we can find any puncture wounds.”

  We do so, hunting for any tiny bruises or pinpricks, but if there are any, we can’t find them. Once that is done, we proceed with the rest of the autopsy. We find nothing unusual in the body itself, and when we empty his stomach, we find what appears to be some sort of pasta with a red sauce and, judging from the smell, a good amount of alcohol. We package it up to send off to Madison along with the vitreous fluid from the eye, blood, and the small amount of urine that is in his bladder. We keep samples of each here, as well. Arnie can analyze all the fluids, but he is essentially a one-man show, even though Laura Kingston kicks in to help him at times. Laura isn’t trained or certified to run the various diagnostic and analytic equipment. She has some very useful other talents, however, thanks to her past indecisiveness when it came to career choices. She had an MBA before she decided it was too boring and switched her focus to forensic science, where she specialized in forensic botany and toxicology. For this particular case, she might be able to help Arnie analyze the bodily fluids, and she’ll also be able to help Jonas with the forensic accounting, thanks to her MBA. This thought gives me an idea, and I make a mental note to mention it to Hurley, assuming I ever speak to him again.

  As if he is reading my mind, Izzy says, “How is wedded bliss treating you?”

  I flash back to the comments Hurley made earlier and suppress a shudder. “It’s okay,” I say.

  “Just okay?” Izzy narrows his eyes at me. “You’re married less than a month, and already the glow has worn off?” He arches his eyebrows at me as he finishes making an incision around the sides and top of Craig’s scalp.

  “Things have been a little tense lately,” I say, proving my astounding talent at understatement. “We’re breaking ground on the new house, and I think once we get it built and our work schedules settle down a little, it will be better.”

  “Any plans for a honeymoon?” Izzy asks as he dissects Craig’s scalp away from the skull, peeling it forward so that it ends
up lying inside out over the man’s face.

  “Sure,” I say in a highly sarcastic tone. “Just as soon as Matthew grows up, our work schedules calm down, and Hurley gets his head out of his ass.”

  Izzy arches his eyebrows again. He has picked up the bone saw in preparation for opening the skull, but he pauses, the saw held in one hand. “Uh-oh,” he says. “What has the heathen done now?”

  I reiterate the conversation Hurley and I had earlier, finishing it off with the snide comment Hurley made right before I stalked off. When I’m done, Izzy turns the saw on, and the noise he makes snuffs out any chance to continue our conversation until he finishes.

  “Give Hurley a pass on this one,” Izzy says, once he’s done with the saw. “I’m sure he said it out of frustration and fatigue. It can’t be easy for him adjusting to fatherhood the way he’s had to, and I can promise you he didn’t marry you just because of Matthew.”

  “I didn’t say he did,” I say, annoyed at Izzy’s ability to read my mind.

  “No, but you were thinking it.”

  “You men all stick together,” I mutter irritably.

  Izzy cocks his head to one side and gives me a sardonic look. “I’m not saying that what Hurley said was right or even justified. But sometimes, when things get really stressful, we lose our filters and say things to the ones we love that are meant to hurt. It’s not nice, it’s not pretty, but we all do it. I’ve done it to Dom, you’ve done it to Hurley, Dom’s done it to me . . .” He pauses and winces before continuing. “Though I have to admit I’ve been the more frequent offender between the two of us.” He shrugs this off. “Mostly it’s a defensive move, or a way to postpone talking about difficult topics. Hurley is a smart guy, and he’s in love with you, Mattie. I’m willing to bet he’ll come around and apologize.”

  “Indeed I will,” says a voice behind me, and both Izzy and I look toward the door to the suite and see Hurley standing there. “I had to come anyway to see what, if anything, you’ve turned up on the autopsies, but I’m also here because you didn’t answer my call.” He is looking directly at me when he says this.

  “I was in a hurry,” I say, looking away from him. Izzy rolls his eyes. “And I admit I was angry, and a little hurt by what you said.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” He sounds genuinely remorseful. “I’m tired and frustrated by these unsolved cases, and trying to balance work with family. And I feel like I’m failing at both. That’s not an excuse for what I said; there is no excuse for that except to say that I can be an ass at times. And while I have to admit that the way everything happened in my acquiring a family wasn’t the way I would have liked for it to go down, I can honestly say that you, Emily, and Matthew are the best things that have ever happened in my life, and the most important.”

  He has walked over to the head of the autopsy table while talking, and he stands there now and calls my name.

  “Mattie? Please look at me.”

  I do so.

  “I love you. I love our family. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.” He shoots me an air-kiss, and at that very second, Izzy opens Craig’s skullcap, exposing the brain. The bone comes loose with a sucking noise, followed by a distinct pop that is perfectly timed with the kiss.

  Someone’s exposed brain is not the most romantic setting for exchanging air-kisses, I’ll grant you, but my heart does a little flip-flop anyway, much the same way Craig’s heart did not too long ago when I almost dropped it before getting it onto the scale. When you have the kinds of jobs and hours we do, you take your intimate moments however you can get them.

  “I don’t know what I’d do if something ever happened to you,” Hurley continues.

  “Most likely twenty-five to life.”

  Izzy lets out a little huff, and I can’t tell if he’s amused or dismayed. But Hurley’s eyes take on a twinkle, and I see the corners of his mouth twitch. That’s why I love this man. He gets me. He gets me in a way no other person on earth does.

  “So are we okay?” he asks me.

  “We’re better than okay,” I say. “That sweet little apology of yours is going to get you something special tonight.” I give him a wink and hear Izzy huff again, louder this time. The blue in Hurley’s eyes darkens, a wicked grin curls his lips, and it’s all I can do to keep my mind on the job at hand.

  “You guys have dirty minds,” I say in a chastising tone, focusing on tissue and bone. “I’m referring to Matthew’s bath. You haven’t done one with him in a long time, and since you’re in this loving family mode today, I figured I’d let you have that fun experience all to yourself tonight.”

  Hurley’s wicked smile fades, and his mouth forms into a pout. Izzy snorts back a laugh. A few seconds of rebooting silence follows, and then Hurley gets back to business.

  “Got anything of interest for me yet?” he asks.

  “We found GSR on Craig’s right hand—no surprise—and there is stippling around the entry wound consistent with a contact wound like you’d find in a suicide,” Izzy says. “However, I don’t think the head wound is what killed him.”

  “What?” Hurley says, sounding shocked.

  “Hold on,” Izzy says. He removes Craig’s brain and examines it. “Yep, this confirms it,” he says. He points to the damaged tissue where the bullet entered and exited. “There is hardly any bleeding here. This wound was delivered post-mortem.”

  “He was already dead when he was shot?” Hurley says, still sounding like he thinks he isn’t hearing things right.

  “He was,” Izzy says with a definitive nod. “I suspected something was off at the motel when I saw how little bleeding there was from the wound. Head wounds typically bleed very heavily. Once I got Mr. Knowlton back here and was able to look at his body more closely, I noticed that the lividity suggests he died in a sitting position. What’s more, I don’t think he died in that motel room.”

  Hurley blinks hard and scratches his head. “Explain that to me more,” he says, and Izzy does, reiterating the evidence he and I discovered earlier, including our theory that the man was drugged with something, and that he died in a car on the way to the motel. “Based on his stomach contents, he had consumed a lot of alcohol,” Izzy says. “It, combined with whatever was used to drug him, may have been fatal.”

  I think about Laura’s comment regarding how lefties tend to drink more than righties, and wonder if that held true for Craig.

  Hurley takes a moment to digest things as Izzy starts slicing sections of Craig Knowlton’s brain. He then takes out his phone and calls Jonas, telling him to take pictures of all the seats in both of the cars we confiscated and swab them for DNA evidence. After disconnecting the call, he looks at Izzy and asks, “What about Meredith Lansing? Did the bullet wound kill her?”

  “I don’t know,” Izzy says. “We haven’t gotten to her yet.”

  “How long do you think it will be?” Hurley asks.

  “We’re almost done with Mr. Knowlton here,” Izzy says. “Give me half an hour to record some notes on our findings, and then we’ll get started on Mrs. Lansing. Give me two hours for that one.”

  Hurley nods, takes out his ever-present notebook, and starts writing things down.

  “Any progress on your end?” Izzy asks.

  “Some,” Hurley says. “Jonas was able to run a forensic analysis on the victims’ cell phones. I don’t know if Mattie told you this or not, but we found four phones total, two burners—one for each of them—and two others that appear to be their day-to-day phones. They definitely had contact with one another through calls and text messages on the burner phones, going back about a month. And the most recent text messages suggest that Meredith was having second thoughts about the affair and wanted to end it. Craig, on the other hand, wanted to move things along, so much so that he claimed he was willing to leave his wife.”

  “So they were having an affair, and one of the spouses found out about it and decided to kill them, not knowing that Meredith was trying to end things?�
� I suggest.

  “Maybe,” Hurley says. “Your theory answers one thing that was bothering me. I couldn’t figure out how the killer managed to get the drop on the two of them so easily. There’s no hint of any struggle or resistance from either of the victims. But if they were drugged, that explains it.”

  “We’ll run a full tox report on them both, including the stomach contents,” Izzy says. “But it will take some time to get the results back. Depending on how obscure the drug is, it might take a week or more.”

  “I understand,” Hurley says, sounding resigned but unhappy. “Give me what you got when you got it.” His phone dings with a text message, and he looks at it, swiping at his screen. After a moment, he holds it up so we can see it and swipes through a series of pictures Jonas sent him of the car seats.

  Izzy studies the pictures and shakes his head. “I don’t see anything in either car that would have caused that mark on Knowlton’s legs,” he says. “Maybe it was a piece of furniture somewhere.”

  “We’ll keep looking,” Hurley says.

  “We should let Laura have a run at the finances of both couples,” I say. “Jonas is capable, but Laura has more knowledge in that area. While it seems likely that jealousy was a primary motive here, there might have been others. So I’d like to dig a little deeper into the insurance policies that were in place. We know the one policy on Meredith wasn’t for that much money, but combined with the work one and the retirement money, it is more than enough to give her husband a new start. And the fact that Craig was killed one day after the suicide clause expired seems like too much of a coincidence. We could chat with the agents who issued the policies, see if they recall any conversations that might have taken place when the policies were taken out.”

  “Agreed,” Hurley says. “I suppose I can put Laura on that, too.”

  “I’ll do it,” I say. Technically such inquiries fall within the realm of my job as a medicolegal death investigator, but I also know I’m motivated as much by personal curiosity as I am our case, given that Patty Volker is the agent on both policies. But I keep this to myself.