Blind Justice (11 page)

THE HINTON COUNTY medical examiner, Chet Riordan, was a portly man with a bristle-brush mustache. He looked like he’d be some kid’s favorite uncle, not someone who spent his days around dead people. But it was clear that this guy loved his work.

“Your drownings, you see, can’t be proven by positive evidence,” Riordan said. We were sitting near his desk, which was in a cubicle in a small office a short walk from the courthouse. The ME munched Rye Krisp crackers as he spoke. “You eliminate other options, see, and then you look at the circumstances, and if they involve a lot of water, you got your drowning.”

“And that’s what we’ve got here?” I asked.

“More’n likely. You got your surfer out there a little too long, gets a little too tired. The others have gone in for the day. It’s happened before. You mix in some beer, some marijuana, you got yourself the big dive.”

“Big dive?” Trip said.

“That’s what I call a drowning. The big dive. I made that up myself.” His mustache moved, making me believe he smiled. Trip looked at me like he couldn’t believe this guy’s rap.

“What other details can you give us?” I asked.

“Well, you got your wet drownings and your dry drownings, and then you got—”

“Excuse me,” I said putting my hand up. “I mean about the victim. What about the victim?”

“He’s dead.”

I started to fantasize about pulling the guy’s mustache out hair by hair. Riordan laughed at his little joke, then continued. “Here’s the deal. I looked him over real good, and there was no sign of foul play. No cuts or abrasions, and no blows to the head, nothing like that. The guy looked in pretty good shape, so I doubt he had a heart attack or a stroke. The guy probably got out a little too far or got a little too tired. Then he fell off his board, and a wave took him down.”

Riordan took a bite of Rye Krisp. A few crumbs jumped into his mustache and held on for dear life. “When a drowning victim goes under, you see, he reaches a point where his body tells him to take a breath, or it’s bye-bye. He instinctively sucks in, but instead of air, he gets water. And then he gets desperate, sucks some more, gets more water, and his respiration stops. Cerebral anoxia sets in. And that’s the big dive, gentlemen.”

“So, you’re treating this as an accident?” Trip asked.

“I’m just your humble ME,” Riordan said. “I report the facts. The police do what they want. If they want my opinion, I’ll give it to them.” He held up a one-page report sheet in his hand.

“May I see that?” Trip asked.

Riordan shrugged and handed him the sheet. I said, “Did anybody find his surfboard?”

For a moment Riordan seemed surprised, as if he would never have considered such a question important. After all, surfboards don’t take the big dive. Then he said, “Yes, I believe the officer said his board was found on the beach.”

“Which officer would that be?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

Trip handed the report back to Riordan and gave me a little slap on the shoulder. “Let’s let Mr. Riordan get back to work,” he said.

That was a signal. Trip wanted to talk. I stood and thanked Riordan. He seemed a little disappointed we were leaving. He probably had lots more to tell us about causes of death.

We got in Trip’s car and just sat. “What’s up?” I asked.

“I got a hunch.”

“About what?”

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

“You mean Hinton.”

“Same thing.”

“And that rotten thing is?”

“If I tell you now, and it doesn’t turn out, that might make you disappointed.”

“Come on!”

Trip smiled his wide, teasing smile. “Steady, knave. You remember the first time you saw Delliplane?”

“Yeah, I was with you.”

“On the beach.”

“Right.”

“What was he doing?”

“Surfing.”

“And what was he doing when we talked to him?”

“Not surfing?”

“Think.”

“Come on, man, I’m tired.” But I knew my protests were in vain. Triple C liked the Socratic method.

“Think back. What was Delliplane doing?”

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene again. I got bits and pieces. I saw Chip Delliplane stick his surfboard, nose down, into the sand. “He stuck his surfboard in the sand,” I said.

“And then what?”

Eyes still closed, I looked again. And then I saw it. I opened my eyes and sat straight up. “His wet suit!”

“You’re warm.”

“He was getting out of his wet suit. Don’t wet suits make you buoyant?”

“Good guess, but no. Stuff they use now’s too thin. Keep looking.”

I was out of images and ideas. “That’s enough. Just tell me.”

“This is why you’re the lawyer, and I’m the gumshoe. It’s the little things. Like that little detail Riordan gave us. He said they found the board on the beach, you remember that?”

“Yeah.”

“When we talked to Delliplane, did you notice the little dangling thing on his surfboard?”

I thought back again and did see it. It was what surfers call a leash, which attaches to the board on one end and to the surfer’s ankle on the other. “So, if the board was supposed to be attached, why’d they find it on the beach instead of on his ankle?”

“You’ll make it yet, Einstein,” Trip said. “It’s possible the thing came off, but unlikely. I’m thinking there’s a good chance our boy was knocked off.”

“Because?”

“Because he talked to us.”

My case was getting stranger, but the next day things went nuts.

I took Dr. Hendrick Brown to see Howie.

Dr. Brown was in his sixties, his closely cropped black hair flecked with gray. He was tall and trim, with a salt-and-pepper mustache setting off sparkling eyes. He looked more like a storyteller than a psychiatrist, someone you could imagine sitting lankily around a pot-bellied stove telling tales about frogs and hound dogs.

I knew Brown from my days in the public defender’s office. He’d been employed as an expert a number of times by our office, because his price was right, and, as an African American, he had a natural affinity with our minority clients. His practice was aimed primarily at the poorer demographic areas of our fair city. He viewed his calling as a mission as much as a profession. Because he was not one of those fancy, Westside practitioners, he was treated with some disdain by others in his trade and by the prosecutors who had to cross-examine him.

But juries loved him.

When we were about twenty miles from Hinton, Brown asked, “So, do you want a theory, or do you want an explanation?”

“What’s the difference?” I said.

“It’s what you want out of this exam. I can question him about it and then try to figure out a theory of his mental state at the time, or we can go deep and try to get him to remember every detail of what happened.”

“I want to know as much as possible. Howie thinks he saw the devil. I want to know if that was something in his own mind, or if there was another person present. Is there any way we can get to that?”

“Hypnosis would be my first preference, but we won’t have the time or conditions for that.”

“What’s your second preference?”

“Bend the rules a little.”

I shot him a quick glance. He was smiling at me like a boy who was suggesting some mischief. “What, exactly, do you mean?” I asked.

Brown patted the medical bag he’d brought with him. “Sodium pentathol.”

“You want to shoot him up?”

“That’s an option.”

“But where? At the jail?”

“Unless they’re going to release him.”

“But we can’t. I think we have to give notice.”

“That’s why I said we bend the rules. Not break, bend. We make the exam, make a report, then give it to the prosecution in discovery. That’s notice.”

“After the fact.”

“But you’ll have an idea about what really happened that night.”

Another possibility was that I could be facing the wrong end of an ethics charge if the prosecutors got angry enough. But I was running out of time. I had to know what happened. It was as much my own curiosity as it was anything else now.

“Let’s do it,” I said.