Frozen Stiff (3 page)

Chapter 3

I
make it out of the store without any further gropes from Lucien or attacks from the red-vested meanies, and arrive back at the body dump site about ten minutes later. Richmond is still there, wedged behind his steering wheel, his car showing a definite tilt toward the driver’s side. As I haul my buckets and trowels out of the back of the hearse, he rolls down his window and hollers out to me, “Did you get me something to eat?”

“Sorry,” I say, flashing him a fake smile. “The closest thing they had to anything edible at the hardware store was a package of tulip bulbs.”

“Shit,” I hear him mutter. The window goes back up and his door opens. I hear a series of grunts and groans as he tries to climb out of the car, and I consider offering him my jack to make it easier. Instead I leave him to his struggles and make my way back down to the body dump site. By the time I get there Richmond is standing by the snow berm above us, talking on his cell phone.

The body has been removed and though Izzy and Junior are gone, Ron Colbert is still here, standing guard over the site and trying to stay warm—newbies always get the dreck work.

I hand him a couple of buckets and a trowel. “I think all we need is the top, skim layer,” I tell him. “If you can start collecting the surface snow from here up to the berm along the killer’s trail, I’ll do the body site.”

Colbert nods and the two of us go about collecting our samples like two kids at the beach digging for clams. Fortunately the snow is the light, powdery kind so it’s not difficult to collect, or very heavy once we do. By the time we’re done, we have eight buckets of snow to haul up to my car.

As I grab two of them and slog my way along the circuitous trail back to the road, another car drives up. Richmond approaches the driver, hands over some money, and takes a pizza in return.

“Are you kidding me?” I say as the car drives off. “You ordered a pizza to be delivered out here?”

“Jealous?” he says, setting the box on the hood of his car and opening it.

As the smells of melted mozzarella, pepperoni, and sausage waft my way, I find that I am. I haven’t had breakfast and it’s now almost lunchtime. And that pizza is making my mouth water.

“A little,” I confess.

“Then have a slice.”

I consider his offer, arguing with myself that I should refuse simply to make a point. But it seems like biting off my nose to spite my face, or biting off some pizza to spite my hips. In the end, my stomach can’t resist the smell and I toss my buckets into the back of the hearse and head back to Richmond’s car. Colbert, who has deposited his buckets next to Richmond’s car for now, has already swiped a slice for himself without asking, a severe breach of rookie etiquette. If looks could kill, Colbert would be as dead as our victim, judging from the expression on Richmond’s face.

“Find anything?” Richmond asks as I take my first bite, giving my taste buds a mini orgasm.

Colbert and I both shake our heads. Once I’ve swallowed I say, “Nothing obvious, but once we get back to the lab, who knows?”

“Wouldn’t count on it,” Richmond grumbles. “The frigging criminals are getting way too smart these days. They watch all those forensic shows on TV and it’s like giving ’em a primer on how to commit the perfect crime.”

I finish scarfing down my slice of pizza ahead of Colbert and eye what’s left in the box. But Richmond has a go-ahead-make-my-day look on his face that tells me he’s shared all he’s going to.

“We have four more buckets of snow to bring up,” I tell him. “Want to give us a hand?”

He shoves a half-eaten slice of pizza in his mouth and lets it hang there while he claps his hands.

“Very funny,” I grumble.

He shrugs and takes the slice out of his mouth, tearing off a large bite as he does so. “I’m here in a supervisory capacity only,” he mumbles around a mouthful of pizza.

“Come on,” I urge. “The exercise will do you good.”

Judging from the look Richmond gives me, the word
exercise
is akin to the Antichrist. His smug laziness pisses me off, but rather than show it, I shrug to feign indifference and turn like I’m going back down to the crime scene. Then I accidentally on purpose nudge the pizza box, causing it to slide off the hood of the car. I make a half-assed attempt to catch it, ensuring that it tips upside down, dumping its contents onto the road.

“Oops,” I say. “Sorry about that.”

“Goddammittohell!” Richmond slurs past another mouthful of pizza. With a grunt and a groan he bends down and starts picking the slices up from the ground, placing them back in the box. If I think I’ve saved him from himself, I quickly realize otherwise as I watch him flick some gravel off one of the slices and then proceed to eat it.

Muttering to myself, I head back to the body site and trudge two more buckets up, passing Colbert along the way. I wait for him to bring the final two up and place them in the back of the hearse.

“Thanks, I appreciate the help,” I say loudly for Richmond’s benefit. I slam the tailgate door closed and glare at Richmond, who is still stone-picking his slices. “I’m ready to head back to the morgue,” I tell him.

“I’m not,” he says, shoving more pizza into his maw of a mouth.

“Guess I’ll see you back there then.”

He shakes his head at me and swallows down his food. “I should go with you, to ensure the chain of evidence.”

“As a deputy coroner, I can do that alone. But if you want to come with me, you better do it now because, ready or not, I’m leaving.” I climb in my car, start the engine, and have the satisfaction of seeing Richmond’s face flush nearly purple as he grabs his pizza box, throws it into the passenger seat of his car, and then dashes—if that lumbering gait can be called a dash—to the driver’s side of the car. As he squeezes in behind the steering wheel his car dips heavily to one side, and as I pull out I see him start his car with one hand as he shoves another piece of pizza into his mouth with the other.

Chapter 4

R
ichmond follows me back to the morgue, steering with one hand while he shovels food into his mouth with the other. I want to be disgusted by him, but truth is, I’m envious. My love affair with food rivals his, and his who-gives-a-shit attitude about his physique is one I wish I could adopt. Maintaining my weight has always been a battle, and lately it’s become more like a war. Just being within breathing distance of food makes me gain.

Plus I have a theory about weight ups and downs. I’m convinced there are set amounts of fat that exist in the universe, as well as within every little microcosm of society, be it a work group, or a family, or a set of friends. Like other forms of mass, fat can’t just disappear, and it tries to maintain a state of equilibrium. So if one person in a given microcosm loses weight, someone else in the same group has to gain. It’s the basic physics of fat and, unfortunately, my little niche of the universe seems to be populated with a bunch of persistent, consistent losers who keep trying to shift their share of the fat onto me. If I ever figure out who they are, I’m going to start spiking their meals with Ensure.

I realize then that I should be nicer to Richmond. Since he’s now within my circle of acquaintances, he may be the only thing keeping the local animal advocates groups from thinking I need to be pushed back into the ocean. Well, that and the fact that there’s no ocean within a thousand miles of here.

By the time I pull into the morgue garage, some of the snow in my buckets has started to melt and the weight of them seems to have tripled. I struggle to lug two of them inside and then commandeer Izzy and our lab assistant, Arnie, to help with the rest. Richmond, who followed me inside with the first batch, stands by watching as the rest of us do all the work. We store the buckets in a utility room where Arnie will oversee the straining of the resultant water to look for trace evidence.

After taking off my coat and boots, I change into scrubs and make my way into the autopsy area, where I find our victim already laid out on one of the tables. Someone, Izzy I assume, has removed her body bag and plastic shroud, leaving her exposed to the room air so she can thaw out. As I look at her, I’m struck once again by how lovely she is, even in death.

Within minutes Izzy joins me, followed by Richmond, who has managed to dig up a jelly doughnut from somewhere. I watch as he bites into the pastry on one end and a huge glob of strawberry jam oozes out the other, landing on his shirtfront.

“Sorry, there’s no food allowed in here,” Izzy tells him.

Richmond shrugs, crams the rest of the doughnut into his mouth, scrapes the jelly from his shirt with a finger, and then shoves that in his mouth, too, leaving a huge, red stain on the shirt. It reminds me of the frozen smear of blood on the victim’s chest and I turn to look at it. The blood doesn’t look frosted anymore, leading me to think it may have thawed, but it is still mostly solidified from clotting.

“Mind if I watch?” says a male voice.

I look up and see Colbert has joined the fray.

“The chief said I could since I’ve never seen an autopsy before.”

Izzy and I exchange looks. One’s first autopsy is always a dicey experience and about half of the people who watch them either recycle their last meal or pass out. Sometimes they do both.

Izzy says, “Sure, but stand over there by the chair and if you start to feel light-headed, sit down immediately. If you think you’re going to puke, the bathroom is right down the hall.”

Colbert nods his understanding and waves away Izzy’s concerns. “I’ll be fine,” he says.

Izzy walks over to the X-ray viewer and slides a film onto it. After studying it a minute, he frowns and says, “The knife pierced her left ventricle, which should have caused fibrillation and instantaneous death. But if it had, there should have been very little blood loss since her heart wasn’t beating and the knife would have served as a tamponade. Clearly that’s not the case, which makes me think there’s another stab wound under all that blood.”

Izzy and I don special goggles and turn on an overhead black light, and then carefully start washing away the clotted blood. The resultant maroon-colored water makes its way into channels that run the length of the stretcher and empty into a sieved drain that will collect any trace particles that might be in the water. After a minute or so of this, a second stab wound is revealed nearer the center of the victim’s chest. “I’m betting that one hit the aorta,” Izzy says. “That’s why she bled out.”

One of the overhead fluorescent bulbs flickers off, then on again, and in the resultant flash something catches my eye.

“I see something sticking out of the blood here,” I say, picking up a pair of forceps. “It looks like a hair.” I grab the end I can see with my instrument and tug. It comes free with a little resistance, revealing a short, black hair about an inch and a half in length. “I don’t see any root,” I say, examining the ends closely. “So no DNA.”

Izzy holds out an envelope for me and I drop the hair inside. “It still may help narrow down suspects,” he says.

Richmond snorts. “If we ever get any. It would help if we knew who she was. The fact that no one locally has been reported missing confirms my suspicion that she’s not from around here.”

The door to the autopsy room opens and a young lad dressed like an early twentieth-century newsboy walks in.

“Hey, Cass,” Izzy says.

I do a double take and remove my goggles. This isn’t the first time I’ve been surprised by Cass Zigler’s appearance. In addition to being our file clerk-slash-secretary-slash-receptionist, she also spends time acting with our local thespian group. As a result, she often tries out her characters by dressing and playing the parts at work. I’ve never seen Cass as Cass, and I’m not sure I’d recognize her if I ran into her on the street.

“Cass?” Richmond says, his eyebrows arched. “You’re a woman?”

“Not today. Today I’m Henry,” she says, adopting a cockney accent and dropping the
H
on the name. “I’m your local newsboy, which seems appropriate at the moment because Alison Miller is out front asking if she can come back and get some information on your latest victim.”

Alison Miller is Sorenson’s ace reporter and photographer, and she and I share a long, and recently turbulent history. I’ve known her since high school and over the past month or so she has also been my chief competition for Hurley’s affections. Fortunately she seems to have given up on this latest pursuit. When Hurley was injured and on his way to the OR drugged up on morphine with Alison at his side, he kept mumbling my name. Alison didn’t take it very well and as a result she has quit hound-dogging Hurley and speaking to me.

“Let her come back,” Izzy tells Cass. “Maybe she can help us identify our victim.”

“What are you going to do?” Richmond says as Cass leaves the room. “Put a dead woman’s picture in the paper?”

“No,” Izzy says with an admirable degree of patience. “But the handle on this knife is quite unique and a picture of it might give us some leads. As might a picture of this tattoo on her ankle,” he adds, pushing one of the woman’s trouser legs up and revealing a colorful butterfly.

Not one to tolerate a public reprimand very well, Richmond tries to save pride by going on the offensive. “You have cross-dressers working your front desk?” he says, shaking his head with dismay. “What the hell is this office coming to, anyway?”

Colbert gives Richmond a wary look and does a little sidestep, as if to separate himself from the other man’s insanity.

“Cass isn’t a cross-dresser,” Izzy says, his voice tight. “But if she was I would still hire her, as long as she did her job.”

Richmond clucks his tongue and shakes his head woefully. “What a fine impression she must make on the public.”

Since most of our “public” is dead on arrival, I’m with Izzy; I don’t see what the big deal is. I start to say so but Izzy speaks before I can.

“Cass is an actor,” he says. “And I see no harm in letting her practice some of her roles while she’s working.”

“An actor,” Richmond harrumphs. “
That
explains a lot.”

“Yes, an actor,” Izzy repeats. His eyes have narrowed and I can tell he’s starting to lose his patience. “She works with the same thespian group my partner, Dom, does. He’s an actor, too. And gay. As am I. Do you have a problem with any of that?”

Despite the fact that Izzy is shorter than most twelve-year-olds and you could fit at least three of him into Richmond’s mass, he looks quite intimidating. The two men have a little stare down—quite literally down, in Richmond’s case since Izzy is only chest high to him—before the bigger man backs off.

“No,” Richmond mutters finally, looking down at his feet. “No problem.”

A long, tension-filled moment follows, during which I can hear water dripping from the faucet in one of the sinks. Everyone finally breathes again when Alison breezes into the room, her ubiquitous camera hanging around her neck. She glares briefly in my direction, then dismisses me and addresses Izzy.

“Whatcha got?” she asks. She walks toward the table, stopping when she’s about a foot away. “Oh, my,” she says, paling. “That’s Callie Dunkirk.”

“You know her?” Izzy says.

“Know her? Hell, I want to
be
her,” Alison says. Then she winces and adds, “Well, except for the dead part.”

“Are you sure it’s her?” Izzy asks.

“Oh yeah,” Alison says with a definitive nod. “I’d know her anywhere. Aside from her obvious physical attributes, the woman is . . . was one of the best investigative reporters in Chicago. She used to do a beat for the
Trib,
but about a year ago she got hired by that TV news show,
Behind the Scenes.
What is she doing up here?”

“We have no idea,” Izzy says. “Until you got here, we didn’t even know who she was.”

Alison’s eyes grow wide. “She must have been onto something big, something that got her killed.”

“We don’t know that,” I caution. “For all we know she might have been just traveling through town, or meeting a boyfriend, or maybe she has family up here.”

Alison shakes her head vehemently, her eyes bright with excitement. “Nope, she was here for a story. I just know it. All I have to do is figure out what it was.”

“That might not be a wise avenue to pursue,” Richmond says.

Alison turns to look at him and blinks her eyes several times. “Bob Richmond? I thought you were retired?”

He shrugs. “I still do some part-time stuff.”

“Where’s Hurley?” Alison asks, looking over at me.

“Sick. A stomach bug or something,” I tell her, despite my knowledge to the contrary. “Richmond is going to handle this one.”

Alison turns back to Richmond. “You might want to be careful yourself then,” she tells him. “People who work with Mattie have an uncanny way of ending up injured or dead.”