Dead of Winter

by Annelise Ryan

  Despite his cheery tone, he’s promising this will be an impressive storm, even by Wisconsin standards. And that’s saying something.

  I hope it’s not an omen for the day ahead of me.

  CHAPTER 2

  My job in the medical examiner’s office entails understanding how, when, where, and why people die. Sometimes the answers are straightforward and the result of a natural evolution of events. It doesn’t make the loss any easier for those left behind, but at least the inevitability of it all, and the knowledge that the deceased had a good life, helps to mitigate the pain. Other times, death comes in an untimely, cruel, and unexpected manner through accidents, diseases, suicides, and murders.

  I suspect today’s death is one of those latter types, a disheartening, sad, and avoidable event brought about by the brutality of another human being. It’s cases like this that make it hard for me to believe that we humans have evolved much because, at times, our capacity for cruelty toward one another seems to know no bounds.

  As I enter the ER, it feels as if I never left, even now, nearly ten years after I worked here. It’s a unique environment, a place of rushed urgency, endured suffering, and, hopefully, relief. The people who work in ERs are unique, too, medical personnel who often sacrifice their meal and bathroom breaks, activities with their families, and sometimes their own health and well-being so they can help others. It’s a demanding place and pace, one that can go from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye. You either love it or hate it, and, at times, it’s possible to experience both—not only in the same day, but in the same hour. The intrinsic high of successfully resuscitating someone who was literally dead on arrival is kept in check by the failures: people who don’t survive, people who are given a devastating diagnosis, and people who are gravely and chronically ill.

  My victim this morning, a girl whose medical record says she is eighteen, is one of the failures. I know from past experience that the knowledge of this fact will weigh heavily on everyone here. But the staffers have little time to dwell on it, or to deal with it, because the never-ending flow of misery continues, and the staff must put aside their own emotions long enough to care for those who are still living.

  I doubt other patients and family members are aware of the sorrow being carried on the shoulders of those who care for them, but I can see it clearly. There is the faintest hint of a droop behind those professional smiles, a certain dullness in their eyes, and a slight slump in their shoulders as they walk away. To me, the sadness is as palpable as the walls around me, because I’ve experienced it myself.

  I know the staff will talk about this case later when they hand off their patients to the next shift, and they’ll discuss it several more times in the days to come. It will likely be one of those cases that gets talked about for years, the memories carried in small recesses of the brains of those who were involved, destined to become part of the institution’s mythology. Each one of these cases takes a small part of you with it, and over the years they add up to a wound with the potential to erode one’s empathy, sympathy, and desire to help. The scarring left behind often leaves its victims a bit more jaded, a bit more cynical, and a bit less trusting of themselves, their power to heal, and of humanity as a whole. Turnover and burnout among ER staffers is high for this very reason.

  I check in with the unit clerk behind the desk to find out what room my victim is in.

  “Room four,” she says, and then she’s answering a phone, moving on to the next task.

  No one is in the dead girl’s room when I enter, and I stop beside her stretcher and stare down at her, wondering about the life she had prior to the tragedy that took it. Her face is battered and bruised, one eye swollen shut, one cheek abraded, her lower lip split. A breathing tube has been placed down her throat, one end of it protruding between her full, bloodied lips. Despite these flaws, it’s easy to see that she was very pretty. Her long strawberry-blond hair is thick, splayed out around her head. Her eyes are a dark, rich blue, which makes me think of Hurley, and despite the light color, her lashes are long and thick. Behind those full lips is a set of even white teeth, miraculously unbroken. She is pale—unnaturally so, because of death—but I can see that her complexion was blemish-free, her skin smooth and youthful.

  I set down the scene kit I brought with me—a tackle box filled with the tools of my trade—and retrieve a pair of gloves from a box on the wall in the room. I don the gloves, and remove a camera from my kit.

  There is a patient gown covering the girl’s body, but she isn’t wearing it. It is laid over her, an inadequate blanket, an attempt to provide her with some semblance of privacy and dignity in this last and most undignified moment of her too-short life. I snap some pictures of her as she is, and then after checking to make sure the room’s curtain is fully closed, I pull the gown down to expose the rest of her body. Her chest is adorned with monitor stickers and defibrillation pads, all of them placed around young, pert breasts. IV lines have been placed in both of her arms, and I note that there are other, older puncture marks on her arms as well. I reach down with my gloved hand and palpate the forearm closest to me, feeling the hard, rigid line of one of her veins. It looks like my victim was a user of IV drugs. Had she overdosed? Had the presence of drugs played a role in her death somehow? I log these questions into my brain for later consideration, snap some more pictures, and then continue my exam.

  Her belly is flat, and I see bruising in various spots, some of them the fresh purplish blue color of a new injury—which oddly enough makes me flash back on the giant cookie Matthew drew on his bedroom wall—while others are in varying shades of green and yellow, indicating injuries that occurred sometime in the past. I move down the body and see similar markings on her legs, and in her pubic area. I document them all with photos.

  The door behind me opens and I quickly pull the gown back into place before turning around to see who it is.

  In walks a woman who looks to be about my own age—mid- to late thirties—with shoulder-length blond hair, blue eyes, and a slightly portly figure.

  “Hello,” she says, showing a tentative smile. Except for the fact that I am significantly taller than she is, since she looks to be about five feet tall and I’m six feet even, we could be twins.

  “Can I help you?” I ask in a slightly annoyed tone, irritated by the unexpected interruption. I see that the woman is wearing a hospital ID badge that displays the name HILDY. Beneath that is her title: SOCIAL WORKER.

  “You’re from the medical examiner’s office?” she says, her eyes briefly flitting toward the victim and then back at me.

  “I am,” I say. “I’m Mattie Winston.” I start to extend my hand as an offer to shake, but then withdraw it when I see my gloves.

  She acknowledges the withdrawal with a little nod and a smile. “Oh . . . yes. I’ve heard about you,” she says. “You used to work here, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you were married to Dr. Winston.”

  “Yes, I was,” I say with an awkward but resigned smile. You’d think that after three years the story of my ex and me would have faded into the past. But I can tell from Hildy’s slightly embarrassed look that this isn’t the case. I fear that our sordid tale is one of those that will live on in hospital history, becoming part of the overall legend of the place. In a small-town hospital, the value of health insurance has nothing over the value of juicy gossip.

  “I’m Hildy Schneider,” the woman says. “I was involved in this case.”

  “I see,” I say, wondering why. From what I’ve gleaned so far about the situation, the patient arrived in critical condition and deteriorated rapidly into cardiac arrest. “Is there family here?” I ask, thinking that a social worker might’ve been called in to help with grieving relatives.

  Hildy shakes her head. “No, in fact, that’s why I got involved. I think this girl might have been a victim of human trafficking.”

  “Human trafficking?” I say, surprised but curious. “What makes yo
u think that?”

  “Well, she was registered here in the ER as Jane Smith, and the man who brought her in said he was her brother, John Smith.” She rolls her eyes at this. “He claimed that she fell out of his car while he was driving, and that’s how she sustained her injuries. The staff became suspicious right away and they called me.”

  “I see,” I say, realizing that if the victim is here under an alias, coming up with a conclusive identification for her might be difficult. While I suppose it’s possible that her name really is Jane Smith, given all the other suspicious circumstances surrounding her death, it seems unlikely. “Did you talk with the man who brought her in?”

  “No. I wish I had, but he disappeared soon after dropping her off, right around the time she started to tank. I did see him, though, so I know what he looks like. And we should have some footage of him on the security cameras. He conveniently forgot to bring any sort of ID with him, or so he said when he was asked. But I’d be willing to bet his name isn’t John Smith any more than hers is Jane Smith.”

  I frown.

  “And there’s something else,” Hildy adds, her eyes looking sad. “I was in the room with the patient right before she coded, and she said something to me.” She pauses, and her gaze shifts toward the stretcher. After a moment, she reaches over and straightens one corner of the gown, which had been folded up, revealing part of the victim’s upper thigh.

  “Please don’t touch anything,” I say.

  Hildy pulls back, flushes beet red, and clasps her hands in front of her. “Sorry,” she says. She gives me an apologetic grin that looks more like a grimace. “I have a touch of OCD.”

  “What did she say to you?” I ask in an attempt to redirect her back to the topic at hand.

  In a hushed tone, she answers me. “She begged me to help her little sister, saying he has her, too.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Did anyone notify the police?” I ask Hildy, irritated that I’m just now learning this information. The police should have been involved by now. Valuable time has been lost.

  In a perfectly timed answer to my question, the door to the room opens, and the curtain is pushed aside. In walks Bob Richmond, one of the detectives for the Sorenson PD. Bob and I have worked together for a couple of years now, and we get along very well—amazing when you consider that I once shot him. He and Hurley share their investigative duties and an office at the police department.

  Hildy tilts her head toward Richmond. “I guess that answers that question,” she says with a nervous titter. Then she bestows a beatific smile on Richmond: radiant, eager, and . . . could it be . . . flirtatious? I log this observation away in my head for later.

  “Hey, Bob,” I say. “Are you just getting here?”

  “Hell, no. The staff called shortly after the girl got here, right after the guy that brought her in disappeared. A couple of unis responded at first, because it sounded like a domestic violence case. Then, when the girl died, they called me. I’ve been here for nearly an hour already, trying to get a handle on who she is and the man who brought her in.”

  “Any luck?” I ask, realizing that Richmond finds the circumstances of this girl’s death as suspicious as Hildy does.

  He frowns. “Naw, the names, date of birth, and other info he gave for both him and her”—he nods toward the dead girl—“were phony. No big surprise there. And I just looked at the hospital security footage. The image is kind of grainy, and it was dark outside, but we have a basic description of the guy from various staff members here, and we know what kind of car he was driving. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get an image of the plate, though I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that whatever plate was on the car was stolen. This reeks of a professional.”

  “What about the story the guy told the ER staff about her falling from a moving car? Any truth to that, as far as you can tell?”

  Richmond shakes his head, looking frustrated. I notice he keeps looking and then quickly averting his gaze from the victim, something he doesn’t usually do. “The guy claimed it happened over on Williams Street, near the corner of Filbert. I sent some guys over there to check it out and there’s no obvious evidence of any accident like that—no skid marks, no evidence of any disturbances on the shoulder, no blood, no damaged bushes along the side of the road. There are only two single-family houses nearby, and no one in either of them was awake or heard a thing. The only other buildings in that area are the Safe Harbor house, and that old folks home for Alzheimer’s patients. I doubt anyone in either of those is likely to be of any help.”

  I’m familiar with the area of town he’s talking about. Williams Street is a thoroughfare that runs through the middle of town, beginning at one end and ending at the other. Filbert Street is one of a series of crossroads on the north end of town, all of them named after nuts of some sort: Walnut, Acorn, Pecan, and Almond. Oddly enough, this seems somewhat appropriate. I’ve overheard dozens of times what the cops remark when they get calls to that part of town, calls that generate irreverent comments along the lines of “One of the nuts has escaped its shell again” or “There’s a bad peanut in with the mixed nuts.”

  “Well, I can tell his story is bogus even without your findings,” I say to Richmond. “This girl has been physically abused. Her injuries aren’t consistent with a fall from a car. She does have a lot of blunt-force-trauma-type injuries, but not all of them are new, and she has bruising around her genital area. There’s also evidence of long-term IV drug use. Her veins are severely scarred, and there are numerous puncture wounds, both fresh and old.”

  There are other reasons why I’m certain the story is bogus. Despite the very chilly weather we are currently experiencing, there isn’t much snow on the ground right now. A recent warm spell melted most of it, leaving dirty patches of partially melted snow where the plows and snowblowers had stacked it up. The roads are, for the most part, bare right now, though tomorrow’s storm will certainly change that. Without the cushion of snow or even ice, a person hitting the road with any kind of force should have a fair amount of road rash on her body. Our victim has none.

  “IV drug use is common with human traffickers,” Hildy says. “Sometimes they talk their victims into trying the drugs, sometimes they force it on them. They repeat their efforts until the victims are addicted and easily pliable.”

  Once again, I see Richmond glance at the girl, but then quickly avert his gaze. Hildy sees it, too.

  “Are you okay, Detective Richmond?” she asks in a soothing but somewhat coddling tone. She takes a step closer to him and places a concerned hand on his arm, though I suspect concern isn’t the primary emotion behind her actions. She looks at him a bit doe-eyed. “These sorts of things are very difficult, aren’t they?” she says. “I’d be happy to talk you through some of your feelings. I do a lot of counseling, you know.”

  Richmond shudders, though I can’t tell if it’s from the idea of being counseled, or the situation before us. Or Hildy’s touch, perhaps? Clearly, Hildy is interested in Richmond, but I’m not sure the feeling is mutual. Not to mention that the scene doesn’t exactly set the stage for building new romantic relationships.

  “I’m fine,” Richmond grumbles. “It’s just that it pisses me off when stuff like this happens.” Hildy nods and continues staring up at him. I imagine it’s a bit of a strain on her neck, seeing as how Richmond stands a bit over six feet tall. “That girl is so young and innocent,” Richmond goes on. “She had her whole life ahead of her. And some scumbag stole it from her.”

  In an effort to get Richmond to shake off his emotional slump and refocus on the case, I say, “It’s too late to do anything for her, other than find the creep who did this. But it might not be too late for her sister.”

  Richmond shoots me a puzzled look. “Her sister?”

  I give Hildy a questioning look, and she blushes, looking guilty. She pulls her hand from Richmond’s arm. “I, um, didn’t mention that part to the detective,” she says, dropping her hand and balling i
t into a fist.

  “Didn’t mention what?” Richmond says, his eyes narrowing.

  Hildy gives him an apologetic look. “I’m so sorry. When you first got here, I started to tell you, but then the security guard came up, saying he had the video footage cued up. You went with him and I never got to finish.”

  Richmond lets out an impatient sigh, the muscles in his cheeks jumping. “Tell me now,” he says through gritted teeth.

  A split second later, Hildy spits the words out, as if saying them quickly now will somehow make up for not sharing them in the first place. “Right before she lost consciousness, she asked me to help her sister . . . said the guy had her, too.”

  “Crap,” Richmond says, squeezing his eyes closed and running a hand through his hair.

  “Do we have any idea at all who this girl really is?” I ask.

  Richmond shakes his head slowly, woefully. “If this is a human-trafficking case, she might not even be from this area,” he says. “I’ve already got someone at the station going through missing persons reports to see if they can find anyone who fits this girl’s description. I’ll call him and amend the search to include a sister.” He takes out his cell phone and punches in a number. As he puts the phone to his ear, he looks at me and his expression brightens. “You know,” he says, “the sister’s involvement might actually help us.”

  His call is answered, and he steps out of the room. I half expect Hildy to trail after him, but she remains behind, sighing wistfully as she stares at his retreating form.