By His Own Hand

by Neal Griffin

  She could tell she now had Livy’s interest, but the doctor was the one who spoke up. “Oh yes. I heard you managed to get things off to a pretty rough start.”

  “Yes, sir, I did. But turns out the campground up the road is hosting a retreat. Couple of hundred young people. I was hoping I might locate the person who made the nine-one-one call.”

  “And?”

  “It didn’t pan out as much as I hoped, but I did get a chance to speak to the entire group. We might still get a lead out of it.” Tia decided to leave it at that. “Anyway, I apologize for being late.”

  “Hm.” He looked down at the body, his gloved palms resting along the raised trough of the smooth, chrome table. “Well, as I said, Ms. Sorensen completed the inventory. I suppose she can catch you up.”

  Livy took the cue. “We cut the bag tag and broke him out. No issues there. I stripped him. I figured you’d want the shirt, so I photographed it and preserved it for you. It’s in the drying chamber.”

  Livy kept talking as she worked her way around to the other side of the long table, continuing with her photography. “I thoroughly searched all items of clothing. He’s got no ID but he did have a thousand dollars in his right front trouser pocket in a plain, stock white envelope, folded in half. Ten one-hundred-dollar bills. New, sequential, and uncirculated.”

  “Wow.” Tia was surprised. “So from a bank, then, right?”

  “Probably.” Livy went on, “I bagged the bills and the envelope as one item but separate from the clothing. There were no other items of personal property. I bagged the trousers, underwear, and shoes. I’ll impound everything in the ME’s evidence room. We can discuss further processing after the autopsy.”

  Livy took one last picture. The flash filled the large room, which was the size of a small auditorium. She looked up, sounding tired. “That’s where we’re at. You’re all caught up.”

  “So just the money?”

  “Like I said.” Livy was all business. “No other items of personal property.”

  Tia had hoped for a suicide note or at least some form of identification.

  Dr. Kowalski took a last, hard pull on his cigarette, then dropped it onto the floor, grinding it into the tile with his shoe. “Now, Detective, if you feel sufficiently updated, can we move along?”

  He pushed the “record” button, activating the microphone that hung above the table. After providing time, date, case number, and identifying himself, he turned to Tia. “Detective, your name and position.”

  “Detective Tia Suarez, badge number 4-5-6. Newberg Police Department.”

  Dr. Kowalski had Livy complete the same ritual and then moved on to the next procedural issue. “Ms. Sorensen, overall description, please.”

  Without further prompting, Livy pulled a measuring tape alongside the body and clicked on the scale built into the table. “Decedent male is currently a John Doe, five feet three and a half inches tall, weighing one hundred thirty-eight pounds. Complexion is brown, skin is relatively clear. I will now remove preservation measures that were applied on scene prior to taking custody of the body.”

  Livy used a pair of tactical scissors to slice the duct tape and remove the bags covering the hands and head. Tia saw that much of the head wound had crusted over and solidified, although there were still large areas of semi-coagulated blood with a syrup-like consistency. Dr. Kowalski pursed his lips and nodded—his only acknowledgment of a wound rare in its level of destructiveness. Livy continued with her on the record description.

  “The decedent has sustained a gunshot wound in the area of the head and neck. A twelve-gauge shotgun with an expended shell casing in the chamber was recovered from the scene. Trauma to the face, brain, and skull was severe. The entire frontal lobe and a significant portion of the temporal lobe are gone, as well as all facial features beginning at the lower mandible and extending past the supraorbital ridge. The remaining facial muscular structure, including the mentalis, septi nasi, and nasalis has been…”

  Livy paused, as if searching for the appropriate scientific term to describe what she was seeing, then settled for the obvious. “… shredded. Preliminary indications are that the wound was inflicted with a single round fired from the aforementioned firearm. It is highly probable this wound was instantaneously fatal. There are no other remarkable indicators of injury or illness.

  “Doctor?” Livy looked at Kowalski and nodded, signifying she was finished with the initial on-the-record assessment of the body.

  Dr. Kowalski lowered his plastic face shield and rolled the instrument tray to within easy reach. The array of tools included a bone saw and forceps alongside such common household objects as a baster and soup ladle. He picked up a scalpel that gleamed under the bright light hanging above the table.

  “All right, Ms. Sorenson, let’s get started. Detective, your role is strictly to observe. Please remember that.”

  Tia stepped back and watched as the doctor leaned in over the body. He centered his blade between the nipples, stretched back the skin with two fingers, and began the initial incision.

  EIGHT

  Bleary-eyed, Tia watched as Livy used both gloved hands to scoop and lift the large intestines out of the bowl of the hanging scale. Long tubular sections slipped from the tall woman’s grip, forcing her to raise the mass higher to get it clear of the scale before dropping it into the five-gallon orange bucket positioned at the end of the examination table, where it landed on top of the heart, stomach, and spleen.

  The digital clock on the nearby wall read 1:12 P.M. Doing the math in her head, Tia figured out she’d been awake for most of the last twenty-four hours. She’d spent the last three on her feet, watching the slow dismemberment of her John Doe. The haze of exhaustion felt a bit like getting a good load on, minus the euphoria … and the guilt and self-loathing that inevitably followed.

  Kowalski had cut out each organ and examined the tissue for signs of injury or disease. After slicing off a small section for toxicology testing, he’d handed the body parts to Livy for weighing and disposal. Kowalski prattled on as he used a chrome soup ladle to scoop the puddle of fluids from the hollowed-out torso that had taken on the look of something like a human canoe.

  “I’m not sure what it is you have in mind here, Ms. Sorensen. There are no indications of a struggle. Fingernails are clean. No defensive wounds of any sort. The fatal wound pattern is consistent with a self-inflicted and quite intentional discharge from a shotgun. Lividity strongly suggests that the body was not moved or tampered with. A shotgun was recovered from the scene. There are no indicators of second-party involvement. Is that your assessment, Detective?”

  Tia looked down at the head. What was left of the traumatically damaged brain had been removed and made its way to the chum bucket. All loose organic material had been washed off, revealing the top and back of the empty, bowl-like skull, scrubbed clean and smooth.

  The last thing Tia wanted was to side against Livy, but the autopsy had not changed her opinion. In fact, she was now convinced. She didn’t look up when she answered, “Yes, Doctor. I’m comfortable with suicide.”

  “All right, then.” Kowalski stepped back, seeming to signal his mind was made up. “Let’s close him up, shall we?”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Livy lifted the plastic trash bag liner from the bucket and shook it, settling the contents to the bottom. She gave the fattest part of the bag a slap of her hand to twirl it shut, then tied a knot at the top. Livy nestled the bag down into the empty chest cavity, a standard procedure that always left Tia thinking of a gizzard bag in a Thanksgiving turkey.

  Flattening the bag, Livy retrieved the two sections of rib cage that had been cut away early in the autopsy. She fit the skinless ribs back into position as if they were a matching set of giant puzzle pieces. Kowalski picked up his Hagedorn needle and loaded it with a thick black thread. He pulled the flaps of skin over the rib cage, like he was closing a set of drapes, then went to work sewing up the Y-shaped incision that ran from both shoul
ders clear down to the pubic bone. His work was sloppy and inexact but the patient was unlikely to complain. The fast movement of his hands matched the cadence of his speech.

  “In the future, Ms. Sorensen, if you intend to be taken seriously in this field, I would suggest you put more effort into the fundamentals. In this case, that would be protecting and preserving your death scene and then documenting your observations in a manner that can be independently verified by a higher authority.”

  Livy ignored him in her response. “Am I clear to print him, Doctor?”

  Kowalski snipped off the thread and stepped away. “I’m finished. Go ahead.”

  Livy reached out and gripped the cadaver by the right hand as if she were about to introduce herself. It was coming up on ten hours since time of death and rigor was advanced. Setting her other hand at the shoulder joint to brace the body, she lifted the board-like arm straight up, then out and away from the torso.

  The crack of the now-stiffened muscles echoed through the exam room, like the dry trunk of a long dead tree as it falls to the ground. Livy began to work the whole arm, back and forth and up and down, until she had completely broken down the rigor-hardened muscle enzymes. Shifting to the elbow, she applied the same technique, and when it was flexible, she moved on to the wrist, where she spent extra time getting the joint good and loose. Once the entire arm was completely pliable, she twisted and broke each finger one at a time in her fist.

  Livy talked as she pressed the first limp finger against a black ink pad. “As I said before the autopsy, Doctor, I consider the lack of any blood spatter on either arm or hand to be an issue.”

  “Oh, do you now?” Dr. Kowalski stripped off his smock and dumped it into the nearby linen basket. He pulled off his latex gloves—originally blue, now bright red with blood—and tossed them into the wastebasket marked BIOHAZARD. His voice was dismissive. “I know you love to show off your extensive vocational training, but the lack of a splatter pattern is not unusual.”

  Livy rolled the last fingerprint onto an index card and spoke without looking up. “It’s ‘spatter.’”

  “Excuse me?” The doctor was already fumbling for a cigarette.

  “You said ‘splatter.’” It was Livy’s turn to be condescending. “The blood pattern is referred to as ‘spatter.’”

  “Whichever, it isn’t significant under these circumstances. Once you allowed the entire body to be exposed to the elements, you created a perfectly plausible and, I might add, non-criminal explanation for why there’s no blood on the hands.” Kowalski sounded like he enjoyed pointing out the obvious screw-up. “Any blood was probably washed away by the rain.”

  Dr. Kowalski lit his cigarette and took what looked to be a long-awaited drag. He leaned his head back and blew a cloud of smoke toward the high ceiling. “But we’ll never know for certain, will we?”

  Tia spoke up. Agree or disagree, she wasn’t going to stand by while Kowalski heaped all the blame on her friend. “That’s on me, sir. I was responsible for protecting the crime scene. But Livy did make her observation prior to the rain.”

  “Too bad I wasn’t there to see it for myself.” Kowalski, short and round in stature, held his cigarette by his face, reminding Tia of Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Capote. “Unless of course, Ms. Sorensen, all your community college training qualifies you to sign a death certificate?”

  Rounding the body, Livy looked directly at her boss and jerked hard on the left arm. A resounding thwack filled the air and Tia was pretty sure it wasn’t the sound of hardened muscle fibers breaking, but bone cracking. “No, sir. That calls for your expertise.”

  “Precisely.” He walked to the door leading to his office. “Finish up here and vault him. Detective, you’ll have my report in seven to ten days.”

  When the door shut behind him, Tia waited a moment before speaking up. “What a dick.”

  Livy said nothing, but just continued to work the second arm, her gaze locked on the door.

  “So, Liv.” Tia felt a bit sheepish, realizing she had played a major role in the problem Livy was having with her boss. “Anything I can do to help finish up?”

  “No, I’m good.” Livy didn’t look up from her work. “I’ll get the prints in the system for you. The evidence will be booked here in our locker.”

  “Cool. I appreciate it. I’m going back to the station right now. You’ll have the pictures by two o’clock.”

  Livy pressed her lips into a straight, thin line and shook her head. She started to roll the second thumb. “Don’t bother. I won’t need them.”

  “Look, Livy. This call has been a cluster-fuck from the minute Youngblood got his fat ass on scene. But I didn’t do much better.

  “Good thing is,” she continued, “turns out it is a suicide and we can just chalk it up as a learning opportunity, right? Kind of like a training exercise.”

  Tia waited for a reply but none came. “Right, Liv?”

  Livy took the four fingers on the left hand and held them flat against the bottom of the card, the last step in the printing. “You must be beat. Go on and get out of here.”

  “Yeah, okay then.” Tia pulled off her latex gloves. They were barely flecked with blood, showing that her involvement in the almost-four-hour process had been limited to the sidelines. “Let’s grab lunch this week, all right?”

  Livy laid the hand gently down on the table and finally looked up, her eyes moist behind the plastic face shield. “Yeah. That’d be nice. Call me.”

  She turned and walked away, leaving Tia with the body of a dead boy who had most definitely come between them.

  NINE

  Tia paused in the entrance to the cramped office, knuckles ready to rap on the doorframe. Instead she stood straight up and said, sarcastically, “Well, take a look at you. Is that the big mystery? Sawyer kicked your ass back to patrol?”

  Travis was wearing his full dress uniform complete with a clip-on necktie, basket-weave duty belt, and well-polished boots. Tia had to admit that even after two years of riding a desk as a detective sergeant, the man still looked great in uniform.

  Maneuvering around the gray metal desk that dominated the small space, Travis brushed past her and headed out the door. “I told you I had a thing. You ready to brief Sawyer? He’s waiting in his office.”

  “What kind of thing?” Tia continued to pester him as he walked by. “Let me guess. Guest speaker at the Senior Citizen Center? Or, no, wait. You’re the Culver’s Officer of the Month again. They’re going to name a flavor after you, right?”

  Her levity was wasted on an empty room and she followed him across the hallway into the administration wing of Newberg PD, where the Chief kept an office just past a small reception area. Tia nodded as they passed the Chief’s secretary.

  “Sorry to barge in, Carrie. Sarge here tells me we got an appointment.”

  “No problem, Tia.” The young woman smiled. “The Chief’s waiting for you.”

  By the time Tia got into the office, Travis was already taking a seat at one end of the couch. Chief of Police Ben Sawyer got to his feet, behind his desk.

  “Hey, Tia. How you been?”

  “Hello, sir. I’m good, thanks.”

  It had been a week or so since they’d last crossed paths, but Tia made sure to speak with formality, mindful of the fact she and the Chief were not alone. She and Ben Sawyer had a relationship that went far beyond the typical boss-subordinate dynamic. Both had grown up in Newberg, but fifteen years and a couple of social worlds apart. A shared wanderlust had sent each on their own worldly adventures and put Newberg in the rearview mirror.

  A month after graduating from Newberg High School, Tia joined the Marines, where it was discovered she was a genius when it came to languages. The Department of Defense put her through a twenty-four-week crash course in Farsi, followed by a three-month immersion in Saudi Arabia. After two tours in Afghanistan as an interrogator/translator with a counterintelligence unit, Tia had been ready to come back to the much more predictabl
e and less chaotic world of Newberg. She applied for the local PD on a whim and soon came to realize it was the work she’d been born to do. Her first boss had been Sergeant Ben Sawyer.

  When Tia met Ben he had just returned from fifteen years with the Oakland PD in California. He was a celebrity of sorts, but not the kind any cop wanted to be. Ben had been forced to resign from Oakland after cell-phone video footage of him shoving the barrel of his gun into the mouth of a wanted felon went viral. Even though the action had been out of character, it had—rightfully—ended Ben’s career in California.

  The road to redemption hadn’t been easy, but through the darkest days of his tribulation until he pinned on his stars as Newberg police chief, Tia Suarez had stood by his side. Their friendship was a bond as strong as blood but Tia tried not to flaunt it when other cops were around.

  “Grab a seat.” Ben looked relaxed, dressed in his dark blue, command BDU’s. The cotton material of the battle dress uniform was embroidered with cloth stars, a badge, and a name tag, allowing for a more casual look than that of the traditional uniform. Instead of a fully kitted gun belt, he wore a belt holster with just his sidearm and cuffs. Like Travis, Ben had stayed fit, but he couldn’t stop the graying of his close-cropped hair. The well-earned scar that ran jagged across his face stood out as his most defining feature.

  Ben turned to Travis. “You’re looking sharp, TJ. Everything go well? Still on track?”

  Sawyer’s in on it? Tia kept quiet.

  “Uh, yes, sir,” Travis said, looking at Tia out of the corner of his eye then back to his boss. It came to her like an epiphany, but before she could give it any more thought, Ben turned her way.

  “TJ told me about your callout last night. A body in Skeel’s Woods?”

  Tia took a seat at the opposite end of the couch from Travis. She couldn’t help but feel a bit self-conscious in her blue jeans and coffee-stained windbreaker. “Yes, sir. Victim took a shotgun round to the head. Fatal. Still no ID. Weapon recovered on scene.”