355: The Women of Washington's Spy Ring (Women Spies Book 1)

by Kit Sergeant

  I chose Sally for my 355, as it was not unlikely that Abraham Woodhull was acquainted with Culper Junior’s sister and both Simcoe and André were guests of the Townsends shortly before Arnold’s treason. While we may never know to whom Woodhull referred, it is clear that the women of this book, and countless others, played a crucial role in the fight for America’s freedom, and I have dedicated this book to them for that reason.

  Selected Bibliography

  Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence. Vintage Books, 2006.

  Ford, Corey. A Peculiar Service. Little, Brown and Company, 1965.

  Kilmeade, Brian, and Don Yaeger. George Washington's Secret Six: the Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution. Sentinal, 2016.

  McCollough, David. 1776. Simon and Schuster, 2005.

  Misencik, Paul R. Sally Townsend, George Washington's Teenage Spy. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016.

  McGee, Dorothy Horton. Sally Townsend, Patriot. Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1952.

  Moncrieffe, Margaret. Memoirs of Mrs. Coghlan. New York Times, 1971.

  Pennypacker, Morton. General Washington's Spies on Long Island and in New York. Scholar's Bookshelf, 2005.

  Rose, Alexander. Washington's Spies: the Story of America's First Spy Ring. Random House Inc, 2014.

  Schouler James. Americans of 1776. Corner House Historical Publications, 1999.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I’d like to thank folks at kboards.com and to all of the people who nominated this book during its Kindle Scout run.

  A special thanks to my critique partners: Ute Carbone, Theresa Munroe, and Karen Cino, for their comments and suggestions. Once again, I am eternally grateful to Rhonda Sergeant for being the best proofreader in the world.

  And as always, a special thank-you goes to my loving family, especially Tommy, Belle, and Thompson, for their love and support.

  Stay tuned for Women Spies Book 2!

  Join my mailing list to receive information on its release!

  Read on for a Sample of the Kindle Scout winner, What It Is

  WHAT IT IS by Kit Sergeant

  Chapter 1

  C ontrary to what my mother always taught me, it’s not really necessary to wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident. If you end up at the morgue, chances are said underwear will be soiled anyway. The brand name and type are much more important, something Mom would probably agree with.

  “You have to document everything,” Nikki declared. “The fact that this guy died wearing nothing but black BVDs will become public record when the autopsy report is released.”

  After she had finished noting his personal effects, Nikki set down her clipboard to pull off his briefs. She discarded them into a bin next to the autopsy table as I tried to focus my eyes somewhere other than where the BVDs used to be.

  “All of their clothing goes into that container,” Nikki stated. “It’s given to the next of kin by the funeral home. Be careful if you find any money—once I found several hundred dollars inside a patient’s bra. I always announce to the room when I find cash so that no one can accuse me later of stealing it.”

  Nikki, the experienced pathology tech who was training me, appeared to be in her late twenties, with short dyed-black hair. We met as I waited outside the fridge before my “trial autopsy,” standing nervously in my scrubs and slippers, my blonde locks encased in a hairnet.

  She had told me in a smoker’s voice, deep and gravelly, “Now listen. Before we go in there, I want you to be aware of something: what’s done is done, the past is the past; whatever you see in there already happened, and you had nothing to do with it.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?” She studied me over the top of her goggles.

  I nodded.

  “Did you eat a good breakfast this morning?”

  “Yes . . .” I couldn’t decide if she was making conversation or if a deeper meaning existed behind her inquiry.

  “You might not want to do that anymore—at least for a few days, until you’re used to it. You never know what you’ll see in there.”

  “OK,” I said. The eggs my mom had made me that morning suddenly felt heavy in my stomach.

  “I’m a coffee drinker myself, but you might want to hold back on that, too, for a few days. You’ll be nervous as is, and you don’t want your hands to be shaking so badly that you can’t wield a scalpel.”

  I nodded again. The way Nikki kept stressing the “few days” part made it seem like what I was about to see in there would only have a temporary effect, as if, after those few days, everything in my life would go back to normal. I certainly hoped that was true.

  “You’re lucky . . . this will be an easy one today. My first autopsy was liquefied, and I got it all over my scrubs. You haven’t lived until you’ve had decomp drip on you.” I swallowed audibly. Nikki continued unabated. “And Dr. Hart’s the path on this one. You’ll like him; he’s much easier than Dr. Duncan. Dr. Duncan will make you do the cutting”—she paused as she glanced at me—“eventually. When you’re more experienced. Speaking of which, have you ever been around a dead body?”

  “I watched a cadaver get cut open in college,” I said. I shoved the thought of how I’d nearly fainted when they unveiled the corpse out of my mind.

  “That’s good. Although the goal of a cadaver cutting is to see the gross anatomy of a human, whereas the goal for an autopsy is to decide on a COD: cause of death. This one is a forty-something John who probably died of a drug overdose.”

  “His name is—was—John?”

  She furrowed her brow. “As in John Doe. Unidentified. As of yet. But that’s part of our job: we give them a COD, and if need be, a name and a family that will take care of them after we do.”

  “Take care?” I hated how tiny my voice sounded. Wouldn’t it be a bit too late for that?

  “You know, provide a proper resting place, whether it’s a burial or cremation. Wrap up their affairs. That sort of thing.”

  “Right.” My fingers fumbled as I tried to tie the back of my apron.

  Nikki walked behind me and yanked the ribbons from my hands. “If you get upset in there at any time, remember that it’s your job to speak for the deceased: you have to answer the questions that they can’t. That’s our job.” She finished off the knot.

  “OK.” I turned back toward her and smoothed down a wrinkle in the paper garment.

  She tilted her head and gave me a long look. It was almost as if her gaze penetrated beneath my scrubs and under my skin to take stock of my innards. My fingers itched to continue fidgeting with my apron, but I held them tightly at my side. After what seemed like an hour, Nikki finally gave me a nod.

  “You’ll be all right.”

  Walking into the autopsy room the first time was an assault on my senses. At first, when the body still lay sealed in the black plastic bag, the scent of cleaning solution, tinged with another chemical smell, which I learned later was a preservation fluid, overwhelmed the vast room. As Nikki unzipped the bag, another, more unpleasant odor that I could only describe as a “musty locker-room smell” filled my nostrils. I steeled my knees, which were threatening to become rubber bands, and reminded myself of my rudimentary medical training and how cool I’d thought the cadaver was back then. After I’d gotten over my initial fear of fainting, of course.

  The decedent was a large man with a red beard. Gravity had pooled the blood beneath him so that his upper body was light yellowish and his hips and the sides of his thighs were reddish-purple. A cloud of foam, frozen in time, extended from his open mouth. I’d learn later that this “foam cone” was characteristic of an opiate overdose.

  A forensic photographer squeezed past me, snapping photos of the remains from every angle. “How’s it going?” he asked me in between shots. “First day?”

  I nodded, stepping back while Dr. Hart walked the length of the body, completing his initial observations as the photographer chat
ted with Nikki about their plans for the weekend. Dr. Hart lifted up the corpse’s arms as if trying to shake hands and then opened the eyelids and peered into them before wiping his gloved hands on the sheet. He grabbed a towel and rubbed the decedent’s face so that it no longer looked like he was crying. He nodded at Nikki, who stuck a syringe in each eye for a fluid sample. The eyes, waterless now, were locked in an open stare.

  Because the decedent was nearly three hundred pounds, it took both Nikki and Dr. Hart to lift him halfway up so that the forensic photographer could take pictures of his back. Nikki tilted her head toward a gray rectangle no bigger than a brick. “Lexi, can you grab that block over there?”

  Relieved to have a duty to fulfill, I placed it on the autopsy table so that when they eased the body down, his head was elevated.

  “Right. Let’s get at it, then.” Dr. Hart grabbed one of the many tools that lay on a silver tray as Nikki pressed “Play” on the nearby stereo. The soothing melodies of Enya emanated from the plastic-covered speakers as Dr. Hart began. He placed the scalpel at John Doe’s right shoulder and cut a deep incision toward the center of his chest. He did the same on the other side and then extended the line down to his belly button. There was barely any blood, as John’s heart had ceased to pump. “Shears.”

  I scrutinized the equipment next to the sink, noting a tool similar to the one my dad used to prune the boxwood in front of our house. I gingerly picked the shears up and handed them to Dr. Hart, who then used them to open the breastplate, cracking each rib in turn. The sound of snapping ribs is not much different from the crunch a branch makes under your foot, but the echo it made in the cavernous autopsy room would take some getting used to.

  Nikki must have noticed me cringe because she edged a bit closer to say, “You have to be a little forceful: a dead body is literally stiff and very unyielding.”

  I nodded.

  “Bowls.” Dr. Hart, I was beginning to learn, was a man of few words.

  Nikki gestured toward a stack of stainless steel basins sitting beside the sink. “Your job is to hold out an appropriate-size bowl for each organ. These bigger ones are for the liver, the medium size for the kidneys, the smaller for the heart.” As an example, she grabbed a small one, and Dr. Hart placed the heart inside. Nikki then took the contents from the bowl and put them on the scale, a hanging one similar to a grocery store’s. In fact, as I glanced around the room—in lieu of staring into John Doe’s open cavity—a lot of the equipment seemed rather mundane, like something I’d see in my mom’s kitchen: the bright yellow colander placed in the sink for draining the organs, the ladle on the countertop that Nikki used to scoop out some of Mr. Doe’s more liquefied remains, the assortment of bread knives on the silver tray at Dr. Hart’s workstation. The same brand of dishwasher that we had at home sat in between the autopsy table where we were stationed and the empty one next to us.

  “Are you going to slice it open?” Nikki asked Dr. Hart. I nearly cringed at the use of it in regard to Mr. Doe, but then I realized that they couldn’t be referring to him. After all, he’d already been “sliced open.” Nikki held out the heart toward Dr. Hart. I stifled an inappropriate giggle as I realized the pathologist’s last name and the organ Nikki was holding were homonyms.

  Did I really almost laugh in the middle of an autopsy?

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Dr. Hart replied. To my relief, he was not looking at me but replying to Nikki’s inquiry. “Just take some samples of the organs.”

  For the next hour, as Dr. Hart extracted the internal vitals one by one, Nikki showed me how to take them to the scale and record the weight of each in John Doe’s chart. Finally, Dr. Hart removed the last organ, the bladder. In John Doe’s case, it was full when he left this world.

  “Feel this,” Nikki said, holding it out to me.

  It resembled—and felt like—an overfilled water balloon. “Cool,” I stated involuntarily.

  I could see Nikki’s eyes crinkle in the outer corners as a smile formed beneath her mask.

  “I’m thinking it’s a pretty clear overdose at this point,” Dr. Hart said. He held up John Doe’s arm. “Look at these track marks.” Both Nikki and I obligingly bent forward. Having never seen the evidence of severe drug use before, I reached out with a latex-covered hand to touch one of the small holes crisscrossing Mr. Doe’s forearm. Dr. Hart nodded at me before dropping the arm. “But of course we’ll have to wait for the toxicology results.”

  The photographer raised his camera and took one last picture of Mr. Doe’s arms. He put his equipment away and then tossed a paper towel at the garbage, exclaiming, “Darn,” loudly after he missed.

  “Autopsy concluded, four thirty p.m.” Dr. Hart snapped off his gloves. “Can you handle the closing?” he asked Nikki before walking over to the sink.

  “Of course,” Nikki said. “I’ll show Lexi here how to do it.”

  Dr. Hart undid the ties on his mask as he turned to me, revealing five o’clock shadow on the lower half of his face. “Good job today, Alexandra. You can head out when you’re done in here.” He held my gaze for a moment before asking, “I’ll see you Monday morning?”

  I nodded.

  “Excellent.” He clasped me on the shoulder with his ungloved hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Lexi,” the photographer called as he and Dr. Hart exited the autopsy suite. I felt bad that I’d never caught his name.

  “So now we take samples from the organs.” Nikki placed John Doe’s heart on a cutting board. She picked up one of the knives and sliced a piece off the heart, plunking it into a labeled jar of formalin. She did the same to the kidney and then held the knife toward me. “Wanna do the liver? This one’s easy. Sometimes you get ones that are super fatty—especially if the person was a drinker.”

  “Umm, no, that’s OK. I’ll just watch you this time.”

  She shrugged and then began to hack at the liver.

  After she’d taken a chunk from each body part, she handed them to me. I placed the organs back into John Doe using my knowledge of fetal pigs as a guide to figure out what part went where.

  “What about these?” I asked when there were no more parts to hand over, gesturing toward the various remains to the side of the cutting board.

  Nikki grabbed a black garbage bag. “They go in here.”

  I assumed it would end up in a biohazard container, but to my surprise, after we placed the leftovers into the trash bag, Nikki put it inside John Doe before sewing his chest back together with a giant needle.

  I eyed the body critically. Because his ribs were broken, the chest part stuck out a bit. “Does this happen to everybody?” I had pictured something . . . different at the end of the autopsy, something more dignified than a Frankenstein stitch stretching across his torso, concealing the trash bag lodged in his abdominal cavity.

  “Pretty much. It’s the funeral home’s job to make him look presentable,” Nikki stated matter-of-factly. “We’ll keep those jars”—she nodded toward them—“for a couple of years, just in case a question comes up, but as for John Doe, we’re done now.” She rolled a silver gurney next to Mr. Doe and then turned to a black man who was now at the sink in the autopsy station adjacent to ours. “Hey, Elijah, will you help us with this one?”

  He came over to stand beside Nikki. He was quite tall, with long, thin arms peeking out from under his scrub top. He gave off a calm air—although I guessed he was only a couple of years older than me, he seemed more self-assured than a typical mid-20s guy. “A heavy one, huh? Man, take a look at those track marks.”

  “Yeah. Hey, have you met Lexi?”

  Elijah extended his hand toward me. His eyes beneath the trendy black frames of his glasses seemed kind. “Welcome, Lexi.” He gave me the once-over after we shook hands. “First day, huh?”

  “Is it that easy to tell?” I replied.

  “Yeah. Newbies around here are literally greenies. Get it? Green?”

  I nodded.

  Elijah positioned h
imself on Mr. Doe’s left side. “Lexi, can you lift his legs?”

  I got behind Mr. Doe, and Nikki placed her hands underneath his shoulders. “On the count of three, we’re going to move him to the gurney. One”—I grasped the body’s ankles; they felt smooth and cold underneath my gloves—“two, three . . .”

  I tried picking up the hefty Mr. Doe as Nikki and Elijah both put their hands in the air. I let go of his legs; they thudded against the steel of the autopsy table, and then my companions’ laughter filled the room.

  “We’re just messin’ with you—you don’t really have to pick him up . . . watch this.” Nikki put the silver gurney behind the table and then pushed a button. The slender silver tray that John Doe was on slid off the table and onto the gurney with only little guidance from Elijah.

  “Just a little initiation we do around here sometimes,” Elijah said as I wiped my gloved hands on my apron.

  “I see,” I said, for lack of anything else to say.

  “At least we didn’t do what they did to me for my first one,” Nikki said as she straightened the white plastic cover over Mr. Doe.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “A resident was actually in the body bag, lying in wait.” Nikki gestured at the autopsy table. “When I unzipped it, he sat up. I was scared shitless.”

  “What did you do?” I could see myself running straight for the locker room and then out the main door.

  Elijah grinned. “What else? She punched him in the face.”

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