THE FOURTH WATCH (11 page)

In the midst of all the commotion, the rest of
the family was waking up. His wife came down the stairs first,
asking what in God’s name was going on, and as he was telling her,
his sister, Carolyn, came down. Fernando came in babbling and
crying that he could not get his father out of the pool and it was
at this point, with the young Mr. Whorley screaming for Herrera to
get back out there, that Lt. Madigan showed up.

Wow, that was quick, I thought, and made a
note.

The statements of the three family members,
and Mrs. Herrera, who came hustling up to the house from the
servants quarters as the Lieutenant was trying to get everyone
settled and sorted out, were all the same. No one heard or saw
anything unusual during the night. The Herrera's retired at 10:00,
as they did every night after the news on the Spanish Channel. Mrs.
Herrera, it turns out, is the Whorley's cook and begins work every
morning at 6:30 am. She is usually at work a few minutes early. Mr.
Whorley, which is what she called Malcolm Whorley, the deceased -
referring to Edward Whorley, the son, as "Teddy" - was almost
always up in his chair reading and drinking coffee when she arrived
at work, she said. She must have been in the shower when her
husband made his discovery, she stated, because she didn't hear any
of the commotion until she came out of their house, which is a
cottage located on the property, ready for work.

None of the family members heard or saw
anything either. Teddy went to bed a little after eleven. He read
for a while and fell asleep. His wife went up after the news; maybe
it was 11:40 or so. Teddy was asleep, lights on, glasses on, book
open, the usual. She folded up his book and his glasses, put them
on the nightstand, snapped off the light and climbed into bed. She
guessed she was asleep before midnight. Malcolm Whorley was not
home.

I made a few more notes before turning to
Carolyn's statement. There was no mention in the reports or
statements that I had read so far about Samantha. I wondered where
she was? If she had been out with Red, she'd be home in bed when
they found him, right? Also I was wondering why a police Lieutenant
was the first cop on the scene.

Carolyn had been out that evening, arriving
home at 12:15 -12:30am. She wasn't sure who was in when she got
home. A friend had dropped her off at the door, so she didn't need
to park her car out back and didn't see what cars were or were not
there. She sat in the living room for a minute and drank a glass of
Diet Coke and flipped through a magazine. The house was quiet. She
didn't look at the clock, but thinks she was in bed before one. She
didn't know if her father was home when she got in or not. She
didn't see or hear anything until she came down the stairs the next
morning.

What friend? Where had she been? There were no
details because by this time everyone had figured that Red had
drowned in the pool and they were just going through the
motions.

Huh.

Two black and whites were the next to show up
at the scene. A rover with one cop in it, and a duty car that had
two. Madigan sent the partners down to the front gate to shut off
access to any unofficial visitors. He was sure that somebody
affiliated with the press was monitoring the police scanner, and
that that person was off checking on the address that the
dispatcher sent out over the air. Shortly they would know that it
was Red Whorley's house, and they would show up with cameras
rolling. There would be no footage of Ol' Red, piled poolside like
a gaffed tuna, on the news at noon. He had the rover take Mrs.
Herrera's statement. Her English was fine and she was very
cooperative.

Next came the interpreter, Morris Rosen. I
knew Morris. He was an amazing little fellow that spoke nine
languages and worked as a consultant to the Worcester PD in
situations such as these. Morris and Madigan then took Mr.
Herrera's statement. In rapid fire Spanish he told them that he got
out of bed, as is his routine, at about 5: 15. All was quiet. He
washed his face and brushed his teeth. Then got dressed and went
into the kitchen for breakfast. He had a bowl of cereal and some
fruit and he flipped through a Spanish language newspaper while he
ate. At about 5:45 he left the house and walked up the stone path
that leads to the mansion. He was going to the gardens that sat
between the patio area off the back deck of the house and the pool,
where he intended to do some weeding and pruning. He was carrying a
long handled hoe, a weed rake, and some pruning shears. Once into
the garden he started pruning. He went all the way through to the
walkway that runs between the patio area and the pool, planning to
work his way back out of the garden with the shears and then go
back in with the hoe and the rake. After a few moments he noticed
something through the hedges in the pool. He put down his shears
and walked around to the pool gate. That's when he saw Mr. Whorley.
He was face down in the water, partially submersed up against the
coping near the stairs. And he began to scream. He pulled open the
gate and ran to the stairs and down a few steps into the pool. He
grabbed Mr. Whorley by one arm and tried to pull him out, but he
was like a slab of stone and all he managed to do was dislodge him
from the coping and send him floating back out into the middle of
the pool. He ran around to the other side and grabbed the cleaning
basket, which was affixed to a long pole, and tried to hook the
basket onto Mr. Whorley's foot to pull him over to the stairs. At
that point Teddy came stumbling out onto the deck and called to
him. His story was the same as Teddy's from this point on. Fernando
Herrera, like his wife- and everyone else for that matter- neither
saw nor heard anything in the night.

And that was it as far as the police reports
went. There was no scene exit report. I could understand now why
Genetassio didn't want me to see his file. It was a piss poor
investigation, if you could call it an investigation at all. These
guys decided right away that Red had drowned in his pool and Matte
was embarrassed now that the daughter and her lawyer were talking
possible homicide.

Next I read the autopsy report. The report was
prepared pursuant to the Massachusetts State Death Act and
completed utilizing Federal Center for Disease Control recommended
guidelines. That all sounded good to me. I'd had zero experience
with this type of work, having never seen, let alone read, an
autopsy report in my life. I read this one through
carefully.

Red's death was attributed to accidental
drowning by submersion. This determination was arrived at despite
the fact that there was very little fluid found in the decedent's
lungs. The coroner's explanation for this was that, in his opinion,
the deceased had most likely experienced a laryngospasm which he
described as a reactive response of the larynx causing a reflexive
closing of the subjects airways to avoid the inhalation of fluid
into the lungs.

The autopsy findings indicated that the
decedent was a 57-year-old white male that by all appearances was
in good physical health. He had reportedly died in a drowning
incident in the swimming pool at his residence. The report
indicated that additional details were contained in investigative
reports on file with the City of Worcester Police Department. (As I
had already discovered, the promise of details in the police report
was an empty promise indeed.) The body arrived at the morgue in a
brown, plastic body bag and was clad in a green T-shirt and gray,
elastic-waist sweat-shorts, over white BVD underwear briefs. The
garments were cut away with surgical scissors and sealed into a
white plastic evidence bag. (What do you know, I thought, somebody
kept some evidence!) A detailed external examination of the body
showed that there was significant cutis anserina (goose flesh) on
top of the decedent’s pink and waterlogged skin. The penis and
scrotum were retracted the testicles normal. The ano-rectal area
showed evidence of external hemorrhoids. The hair on the decedents
head, chest and pubic areas was reddish-gray and coarse, the hair
on the scalp was full. The skin on the scalp and face, as well as
the lips, tongue and gums were bloated but unremarkable, as was the
skin on the rest of the body. There were no scars or tattoos
anywhere. The abdomen was distended, most likely by postmortem
gas.

The internal examination determined that all
organs were normal in appearance and weight when the effects of
submersion were taken into consideration. White and pink pulmonary
foam was detected in the airways and around the nose and mouth.
There was some water in the stomach, possibly by virtue of
diffusion after death and diatoms were found in what little water
was detected in the lungs. I didn't have a clue what any of this
meant. I followed the last part a little better. There was blunt
trauma at the base of the skull manifest by a deep antemortem bone
bruise. A rounded object, the makeup of which was indeterminate,
inflicted the trauma. A urine drug screen detected alcohol to be
present in the deceased system, but the pathologist could not say
for certain how much he had had to drink before he ended up in the
pool. The time of death was estimated at between 10:00PM and
2:00AM.

Next I turned to the photos. They were the
type of pictures that I hope no one ever takes of me. The first
package contained photos of the scene taken by the police
photographer. Considering that no scene photographer had signed the
log that day, I now didn't know how many people were wandering
around up there that morning. I made a note on my legal pad. I
realized that I was up to number 12. That meant that if I found
anything else to write down, it would have to be number 14. My
triskaidekaphobia would never allow me to write down the
unmentionable number that comes between those two. I was hoping the
problem wouldn't present itself. The first several photographs were
of Red Whorley's body in the pool. He was face down; doing the dead
man’s float for real. He was mostly submerged, but only just, and
the top and back of his head, the tops of his shoulders and his
knuckles were above the surface of the water. Next were close ups
of him, still in the water but in the stairwell of the pool. I
could see the ugly weal across the back of his head, almost even
with the center of his ears. It was a red lump with a gash in it. I
didn't see any blood. Next were pictures of Red on the concrete
slab beside the pool, face up, eyes closed, skin white like the
belly of a fish, beard and hair wet and plastered this way and that
around his face and head. There were close-ups of his face. He
seemed ... well…dead. He did not appear to be asleep or resting in
peace. He looked like a corpse, uncomfortable and unhappy. More
close-ups of the back of the head. The welt was an ugly, gnarled
mound, and the gash in it was not so much a cut as a split. Finally
there were pictures of the wet concrete with Red removed, and a
goodbye shot of him in the body bag before it was zipped
shut.

The autopsy photos were less
flattering.

A nude and bloated Red took center stage on a
stainless steel table in the operating theater. The table was
slightly pitched toward a large sink basin so as to accommodate
body fluid runoff during exploratory carnage. There was also a
four-inch wide two-inch deep steel moat around the three sides that
weren't the sink. Red, with mouth pried open as if wailing. Red,
with eyes pried open in witness to the atrocities of the skull saw
and organ shears. Body cavity shots in gruesome color. I skimmed
through this package quickly. There was nothing here to help me,
and nothing here I wanted to see. The indignity of the dead made my
skin crawl with cutis anserina.

The death certificate indicated that the
decedent had died of asphyxia due to drowning, and contained lots
of long words that were wasted on me. There were no long words in
Lt. Madigan's summary report however. What there was of it, stated
simply that Red Whorley had apparently had too much to drink and
drowned after stumbling and cracking his head on the edge of his
swimming pool.

*****

MY COFFEE HAD LONG GONE
COLD
, but I sipped at it anyhow. I looked
at my watch. It was a little after eleven. I repacked the file and
drummed my fingers on the top of it and thought about what I knew
now that I didn't know coming in. Not much, I decided. Seemed like
Red whacked his head on the side of his pool and drowned. Maybe I
should go into detective work full time.

I looked at my legal pad. It said:

POLICE FILE NOTES

1. Evidence Inventory, Chain of Custody Report
- where are they?

2. What's Rick Wall doing there?

3. Red not home at midnight - Ellen
Whorley.

4. Teddy bed @ 11:00ish

5. Where's Red's wife?

6. Madigan first on scene - how come? Who is
he?

7. Where was Carolyn? Who's the
Friend?

8. Ellen Whorley upstairs @ 11:40, Carolyn home
12:15 - 12:30.

9. Did any press ever show? Ask
Walter.

10. Talk to Morris Rosen.

11. Herrera finds body: 5:45 - 6:00.

12. Crime scene photographer didn't sign log.
How come? Who else?

I looked the list over a couple of times and
drummed my fingers on the file some more. I was hoping that, if
anyone was watching me from behind a two-way mirror, I looked like
a sleuth deep in thought.

*****