Sarah's List

by Elizabeth Gunn

  Now as she stepped out of their bedroom in cool shorts and T-shirt, she saw Aggie coming across the patio, wearing rumpled jeans and carrying a pamphlet.

  ‘Ah, you’re home, good,’ Aggie said. ‘Have you got time to look at this catalog with me?’

  ‘Sure,’ Sarah said. ‘Is it something you want for the house?’ She and Will had always encouraged Aggie’s suggestions, but lately she’d seemed indifferent. Now she had one of the home-improvement catalogs they constantly got in the mail, open to a colorful page.

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about some kind of a barrier we might put up between our yard and the one behind us. As long as the Dietrichs lived back there I never thought about the fact that we really had nothing between us but an alley full of weeds. All right, wildflowers. But now we have this chatty neighbor who keeps being so friendly …’

  ‘He’s bothering you?’

  ‘Always waving and calling out the cheery hello.’ Aggie curled her lip. ‘Has lots to say about the weather.’

  Well, no wonder you’re upset. We certainly don’t want any loose talk about the weather. Then she thought, guiltily, it must be hard to be the one who stays home alone.

  ‘I count on sitting out on my patio.’ Aggie frowned at the pictures in the booklet. ‘And I want my privacy.’

  ‘Of course you do. Let me see what you’ve got there.’

  ‘Well … see these white building blocks? Like bricks only bigger, and you stack them up however you like. But if you think that’s too expensive we could always just put up a fence.’

  ‘A fence.’ Sarah tried to keep the horror out of her voice. ‘You mean wooden posts and …’

  ‘Could be wood, I guess. But you have to dig post holes for them, don’t you? I was thinking of the metal poles that you just pound into the dirt. And then you fasten the wire on with metal clips … of course I couldn’t do all that by myself, I’d need Will’s help with that. Whereas with these white blocks, I could stack them up myself, a little at a time …’

  ‘Well, if we have to have a barrier there I think I’d like a hedge better,’ Sarah said, hating the idea as soon as she said it, already dreading the need to water and clip. But at least it would look better than a fence. Then a smell of well-done beef reminded her she had a project in hand.

  ‘Hey, I think that meat loaf smells almost ready. Why don’t you come in and tell me some more about these building blocks while I dish up?’ she said. She walked into the kitchen with her arm around her mother, exclaiming how good the food smelled.

  Then she heard Will Dietz pull into the carport, the quiet sounds he made closing his car door, taking his badge and weapon out of the hatchback and walking across the patio to lock them in his shop. Her mother was sitting on a stool across from her, moving her hands to illustrate an idea for a barrier. Taking an interest in something for the first time in weeks, Sarah thought. Is it possible we ignored Aggie’s depression long enough, and it’s going away?

  Well then, maybe, to keep the momentum of her recovery going, it would be smart to take her complaint seriously, and see if they could help her fend off this pesky neighbor.

  FIVE

  Tuesday

  Sarah slid into her workspace a half-hour early Tuesday morning and went to work at once. She had been primary on the Fairweather Farms case for a whole day but had not had time to pull her scattered notes into the organized list she liked to work off as a case went along. She dug scraps of paper and small items out of her day pack and purse, spread them on her desk along with her tablet, and began to enter them in the random order in which she’d encountered them.

  The first half dozen items read:

  1.van stuck in garage door?

  2.Tammy hysterical – did she see anything besides blood?

  3.ammo in van – how much/what?

  4.dead driver – bio?

  5.window open – A/C working

  6.need interviews with Amanda, Henry, Mr Ames

  By the time the rest of her detective division came to work she had set up a folder marked ‘Fairweather’, entered the list in it, and sent a copy to her home computer. She would add to and amend it as long as she worked on the case. Everything went in – descriptions of the scene as she had first seen it; names of people as she encountered them; and items collected – name cards, interviews, clothing, money, the pictures on her phone. Also questions, comments, irritations, and insights.

  Delaney would set up a numbered case report with a coherent account of the crime and its investigation. All the detectives who worked on the case would have access and add to it as they went along. This list was her own, not meant to work for anybody else. When she had taken it as far as it could go today, she closed her computer and went back outside, got in her car and drove to the morgue.

  Swathed and slippered in pale blue plastic, Dr Cameron was already bending over the body in operating room five. Sarah saw him through the heavy glass door as she entered the building and hurried to robe up, thinking, Let’s hope we can make short work of this autopsy. The man was shot in the head, what more do we need to know?

  The first half hour made her think she was right, because the doctor, after cleaning up the discolored and misshapen head, went right to work with the bone saw. He was reversing the usual order of autopsy – usually, he’d open the body and inspect all the organs first. But today he made the cut across the cranium, from ear to ear, and folded down the flap of hair and forehead over the face. Then he made the cut across the eye ridge, lifted out a wedge of skull, and looked in at the brain.

  ‘Too much blood to see anything yet,’ the doctor said. ‘You ready, Josh?’ His assistant installed a pipette on a tiny hand vacuum, and soon the fractured brain lay revealed.

  ‘Just like the picture,’ Cameron said. Off a side table next to the gurney he lifted, carefully, by the edges, an X-ray photo.

  ‘What’s that?’ Sarah asked. It looked like a snowstorm filled with bits of gravel.

  ‘It’s this brain, filled with tiny pieces of the bullet that hit him,’ Cameron said. ‘It happens sometimes – a bullet travelling at high speed, it hits soft tissue, ricochets off the inside of the skull, fragments and the pieces fly all over the place. We’re going to have to be very careful lifting this brain out of there, Josh.’

  They spoke in little grunts and murmurs, communicating knowledge Sarah envied as she watched, and presently Enrique’s brain lay – mostly intact, with a few outliers – in a metal dish.

  ‘Brain cell pudding, that’s what we have left here,’ the doctor said, nudging a bit around the edges with a wooden paddle. ‘All the good thinking parts reduced to mush in about a second. But here at the bottom there’s a couple of things the bullet didn’t reach. Not every day you’re going to see a cross-section like this, Sarah – you might as well learn something. I haven’t seen this view for a while myself; let’s see if I can remember …’ He dropped the paddle, took up a pipette and pointed. ‘See this fat round part? That’s the cerebellum, where the messages come in from the body parts, lets you know if you’re cold, if you’re standing straight.’

  Sarah stood up straighter.

  ‘And here’s the medulla oblongata, that’s the piece that controls your breathing, all your automatic functions – helps you sneeze, fart, belch—’

  ‘What a splendid part.’

  ‘Try getting along without it. Now, if we were looking for a bullet in here, we’d be sorting more carefully, but no need for that today.’ He set the dishful of brains aside and turned back to the corpse. ‘Let’s get on with this.’ He picked up the biggest scalpel and began the big V-shaped incision to open the trunk.

  ‘You’re going to do the whole autopsy? I thought since we know what killed him, you’d probably skip the rest.’

  ‘I thought so too, but I asked for a quick-and-dirty on the blood work I sent in yesterday, and the report they sent back suggests a serious pre-existing disorder.’

  ‘What’s the difference if he’s d
ead?’

  ‘Maybe quite a bit. Delaney’s note said you wondered why he turned the A/C up to the max and then opened the window, and I have a hunch about that. Stand back now, there’s going to be some spillage.’

  In another flurry of muttering, sawing and four-handed cooperation, the doctor and his assistant removed a ribcage and liver, and cleaned out more fluid.

  ‘Now,’ Cameron said, ‘stand here so I can show you the kidneys. They look quite normal, but the tests show high calcium and creatinine levels, and now, see the ureters? Almost completely blocked. He must have been having trouble urinating – does anybody know if he said it was getting hard to piss?’

  ‘I can ask, but – why do I care?’

  ‘Because, see this section of skull?’ He held up the wedge of bone he had removed from the dead man’s head. ‘I’ll confirm this with X-rays of some of the long bones, but this is what I was expecting to see: bones that look moth-eaten and fragile. They’re full of holes and hairline fractures.’

  ‘Why were you expecting to see that?’

  ‘The blood tests showed high levels of creatinine and calcium. His symptoms are about what that would indicate.’

  ‘Symptoms? The man had his brain blown apart.’

  ‘Yes, he did. But in addition to that, I’m quite certain he had multiple myeloma. And the symptoms include fatigue, confusion, nausea, dizziness – he should not have been driving the company van.’

  ‘And you think that’s why he opened the window?’

  ‘Probably. Got dizzy, opened the window to get some fresh air, just in time for these merry bandits to come along and shoot him in the head.’

  ‘Of course, the window wouldn’t have prevented that if it had been up – but with the window down their ammo went right through the windshield.’

  ‘So I heard. Oh, speaking of that’ – he reached under his operating table, pulled out an evidence bag – ‘I promised that amazing photographer of yours that I’d save this victim’s clothes and not let them get thrown in the trash. So why don’t you take possession now before I forget them again.’

  ‘Oh, thanks. Let’s see, I have to fill out a transfer form to keep the chain of evidence clear and unbroken.’ She dug through her day pack for the tag as Cameron issued a passionate denunciation of the bureaucracy that dogged the criminal justice workplace.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Sarah said, ‘it’s like what you said about that medulla whatchadiddy – try getting along without it. Gloria Jackson isn’t my scientist, by the way – she works at the crime lab. Why do you think she’s amazing?’ she asked him as she signed the tag and handed it to him.

  ‘She looks like she belongs in a Hollywood musical but she has rigorous standards; she really does very solid forensic work.’

  ‘Good-looking women aren’t supposed to have rigorous work standards? Dear me, what primitive bias is this?’

  ‘All right, all right. You think she’s amazing too – I’ve seen how you look at her.’

  Sarah smiled and said, ‘Well, she makes me feel optimistic.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The human race – she’s so enterprising.’

  ‘She makes me feel prurient,’ the doctor said. ‘She’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.’

  Sarah stared at him, speechless with surprise for a couple of seconds, then quickly said, ‘She admires your work too.’

  Cameron blushed with pleasure, then scowled and said, ‘How’d we get on this ridiculous subject? Any word on the shooters yet?’

  ‘Not a sign of them since they drove away from Fairweather Farms. They’re probably across the border by now – they’ve had time to get all the way to Chiapis if they want to.’

  ‘I wish I shared your optimism about that,’ the doctor said. ‘What worries me is that a lot of these hoodlums, lately, seem to want to stick around Tucson.’

  ‘Oy vey, let’s not get into border issues, we’ll be here all day. How do you get along so well with all this standing on cold stone floors?’ Getting ready to change into street shoes, Sarah sat cradling one foot in her hand, ‘My feet hurt for three days after every autopsy I watch in here.’

  ‘Who says I get along so well?’ Cameron said. ‘I have ridiculous bills with my podiatrist – if only he gave bonus gas points like my grocer I could be driving for free.’ He looked cheered up, though. It must please him to know someone admired his work.

  Sarah pondered the conversation with Cameron as she drove back to Fairweather Farms. Gloria evidently had something going with the good doctor, but didn’t realize it – all she’d ever expressed about him was admiration for his expertise.

  Sarah told herself to steer clear of that puzzle, and turned her mind to Cameron’s autopsy report. The shooters had gone to a lot of trouble to kill a man who was already dying – if indeed he was the target and not DeShawn. They could hardly have known his medical condition, but did the victim know it? If he did, had he shared the information with his colleagues? Had Henry been helping him cover up his illness? Thinking she already had more leads than she could decide how to follow, Sarah nevertheless went back to the senior living home to find the elusive Amanda.

  The two gardeners were once again working in front of the building. The gravel was all smooth again, and they were replacing the last of the plants that had been damaged yesterday. Jacob gave her a cheery wave, but Henry went on tamping down dirt around a bush and did not look up. He seemed to have developed some lasting grudge against her – or was it fear? Her impulse was there was something he was holding back and to confront him about it. But her watch said three-thirty, so she decided to stick to the errand she’d come to do. She wanted to speak to Amanda first, and then Tammy, and Mr Ames if there was still time.

  Inside, she asked the first uniformed woman she met how to find Amanda. ‘Look down the hall there past Letitia’s office,’ the woman said, pointing. ‘It’s the door with a sign that says Supplies.’

  Sarah turned left and padded along the dim, quiet hall. As she passed the open doorway of a room marked Library, a crackling elderly voice from inside called, ‘Hold up there, you – policewoman!’

  Sarah stopped and looked inside. Half a dozen couches and deep chairs with tables and lamps sat in front of bookshelves less than half full of books. Across the room, a white-haired man in rimless spectacles beckoned and said, ‘Come in here, girlie.’

  Standing her ground, she said, ‘Are you Mr Ames?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and fixed her with a flinty stare. ‘You the policewoman that’s been asking about me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She came into the room, pulled a card out of the holder clipped to her belt and handed it to him. ‘Detective Sarah Burke, how do you do?’

  ‘Well, what do you want? I don’t like to have people asking about me in public, drawing attention like this. What in blazes do you want?’

  ‘I need to ask you a few questions about the attack on the van you were riding in on Monday.’

  ‘Yes, what about it? Damn disgrace if you want to know – it was even in the paper! And the name of this place, very bad publicity. I don’t like that at all. I’ve spoken to the manager, made it clear I expect better performance from now on. I pay top dollar and the least I expect to get is peace and quiet.’

  She decided to ignore his ridiculous complaint and asked him, ‘Why did the driver open the window?’

  ‘What? Oh, the window – damn foolishness. It was when they first started chasing us. He thought he knew them. I think he recognized the old pickup. Ricky had friends all over the south end of town; he grew up here and he was always joshing with somebody. So when the first bullets hit the van he thought they were paintballs or something. He rolled the window down and shouted something in Spanish. Laughing!’

  ‘He thought it was all in fun?’

  ‘These people are so childlike, aren’t they? Then one of the bullets came in through the window and hit above the windshield just in front of his face. I saw his eyes in the mirror, sud
denly terrified – he stamped on the gas then and I realized we were running for our lives.’ He sighed. ‘Poor Ricky almost made it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell this to the police when they took you out of the van?’

  ‘I couldn’t breathe! Thought I was having a heart attack. I finally got the attention of that young simpleton on the yard crew, and he got me hooked up to the oxygen tank. Saved my life! Should have tipped him, I suppose. Ah well, another time.’

  ‘How do you imagine that management might have prevented this incident, Mr Ames?’

  ‘They should be more careful whom they hire! That DeShawn – it’s all very well his helping with the smokes and the great wines, and you can’t fault his work ethic, but some of his friends won’t bear scrutiny.’ Ames stretched suddenly, self-indulgent as a cat, and said, ‘Go away now, dear. I’m tired; I need to rest.’

  Feeling grateful that she didn’t have to deal with Mr Ames every day, Sarah walked further along the paneled hall until she found a half-open door marked Supplies. The space she could see was brightly lit and smelled like ink. She tapped on the door and walked in.

  The room was smaller and plainer than the manager’s quarters and had no easy chairs. Every inch was crammed with useful items. One wall was all shelves full of paper and printed forms, plus a counter that held two printers and a fax machine. Another wall was floor-to-ceiling pegboard hung with menus, calendars, weekly schedules of events, and samples of fabric, paint, and tableware. Most of the floor space was occupied by a big well-organized desk filled with two computer monitors, another printer and labelled baskets of correspondence.

  Alone in the middle of this businesslike clutter, in the only padded chair, sat Amanda, a small, pretty girl with soft brown eyes and a dimple. Sarah shook hands and sat down on the well-worn folding chair in front of the desk. She pushed a stack of paper aside to make room for her tablet and went right to work – the room did not encourage small talk.

  Amanda said her last name was Petty, and reeled off relevant numbers for phones and email – no fancy printed card for her.