A Dirty Shame (11 page)

There was a knock at the door, and we all turned to face Detective Lewis as he stepped inside. His face was grim as he leaned down and whispered in Jack’s ear, but I couldn’t hear what was being said. I watched Doctor Vance instead and saw the smile curl at the corner of his lips.

Detective Lewis left, and Jack stood up, gathering the photographs in front of Vance and slipping them back in the folder.

He hit the stop button on the recorder. “We appreciate your cooperation, Doctor Vance. We’ll talk again soon.” He motioned to me and opened the door before he turned back and added, “Don’t plan any trips out of the state.”

I followed Jack at a fast clip down the hallway to where Detective Lewis was waiting. “What’s happened?” I asked, all but running to keep up with Jack’s longer strides.

“I found George Murphy,” Lewis said.

“Did you bring him in for questioning?” I asked.

“I’m going to leave that to you, Doc Graves. I found him down in Newcastle in his pickup truck. Had a bullet in the side of his head. I don’t think he’s going to do us much good in interview.”

By the time Jack and I arrived, the area had already been cordoned off and the crime scene team had finished documenting the scene surrounding the truck. But they’d left the inside intact for me.

I recognized George Murphy’s truck immediately. To think I’d ridden in it only a few short hours before gave me the creeps. Especially now that the inside was decorated with George’s blood.

A scene like this was going to get messier the more I waded in, so I pulled my kit and a pair of coveralls out of the back of the Suburban. I snapped on a pair of blue latex gloves and watched Jack out of the corner of my eye, tossing his leather jacket into the trunk so it wouldn’t get ruined, and donning his own coveralls. I slung my camera around my neck and headed to the truck.

“Made a hell of a mess,” Jack said. “I didn’t realize George had that many brains.”

I snorted out a laugh, but quickly turned it into a cough when heads turned our way. We circled the truck, and I took a dozen or so pictures of the blood spatter.

“Looks like a bullet up close and personal to the left temple,” I said. “No chance of missing when you’re that close. Anyone been inside the truck yet?

“I had them save it just for you.”

“Must be my lucky day. Let’s open it up.”

Jack did the honors of opening the driver’s side door. The side of George’s body that faced us looked exactly the way I remembered him from earlier. Same white t-shirt and stained jeans. The only thing different was the tiny round hole in his temple.

“It’s pretty handy how the gun ended up still in his hand after he fired the shot,” Jack said. “Looks like a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver.”

“Yeah, crazy how that works. Especially since he was right handed.” I remembered George writing the ticket out for the Suburban repair. Definitely right handed. I took a photograph of the entry wound and swabbed a sample of the powder residue left around the wound.

“The killer held it right up to the skin. See the tattooing of the powder around the entry hole?”

Jack moved in closer so he could take a look. “Whoever did it didn’t bother to try very hard to cover it up. ”

“He’s still in primary flaccidity.” George’s muscles had relaxed completely, making his jaw hang open and his eyelids droop closed. His hand was so limp I was amazed they’d managed to get his fingers wrapped around the gun.

I pulled it out of his hand, and Jack held up an evidence bag so I could drop the gun inside. “I don’t see powder marks on his hand. At least not enough that would indicate he’s the shooter.” I took measurements of the entrance wound and called out numbers to Jack. “You know, something’s been bothering me ever since I asked George about that tattoo.”

“Christ, Jaye. You actually talked to him about it?” Jack put the gun away in an evidence box, and then put his hands on his hips as he paced back and forth beside the truck. He stopped and glared at me. “Do you have a death wish?”

I narrowed my eyes and turned to face him. “Like I said before, I was in a public place. And no one else was listening. Now do you want me to tell you what he said, or are you going to bitch some more?”

“It’s a good thing I love you,” he said, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest.

Panic swarmed through my body like angry bees, and I looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Cut it out, Jack. You’re just trying to stir up trouble.”

“You do that perfectly fine on your own. I was just stating a fact. One which obviously makes you nervous. That’s okay. I figure if I keep saying it, you’ll eventually believe me.”

“Can we please get back to the dead body?”

“By all means,” he said, waving a hand towards me. “What bothered you during this brief period of bad judgment where you felt it was a good idea to question George about his tattoo?”

The growl erupted before I could control it, and I had to close my eyes and count to ten before I could speak.

“George kept saying,
They
,” I said. “That if we kept digging,
they’d
come for us. That if someone tried to leave the organization,
they’d
taunt you. As if he knew from experience. But the way he kept saying
they
made me think he wasn’t a part of it any longer.”

“Well, he’s certainly not now,” Jack said, rubbing his hand over the short length of his hair in what I knew to be a gesture of frustration. “What we have to figure out is who saw you and George talking. Someone knew what was happening, and they acted quickly.”

“The man in the white Cadillac?” I asked.

“Maybe. Or maybe someone else at the auto shop. Maybe George had a partner.”

I went around the other side of the truck and took a deep breath before opening the door. This side of George looked nothing like the man I’d seen this morning. The entry hole of a bullet wound was nice and neat, but it had to come out somewhere. And a .38 wasn’t the kind of gun to leave a pretty exit wound. The whole right side of his face was gone.

I blanked my mind to the carnage and smell, and started gathering brain matter and tissue from the seats and windows. I felt Jack’s hand squeeze my shoulder for comfort just before I climbed inside and got a better look. It was a godawful job.

“George left the garage about ten o’clock,” I said. “And he’s still warm, so he had time to make a stop or two before they caught up to him.”

I reached back and Jack handed me the thermometer from my bag without me having to ask for it. I ran George’s temp just to make sure, and then I pulled back his eyelid and studied the surface of the eyeball. “Eyes are just starting to cloud over. The killer cut it close. Lewis could’ve witnessed the whole thing if he’d been a few minutes sooner. Between the flaccidity of the body, his temp, and the eyes, I’d say George has been dead just over an hour.”

“No chance of self-termination?” Jack asked.

“No. It’s definitely homicide.” I got out of the truck and sucked in a huge breath of fresh air.

“I guess it’s my turn,” he said. “This is the one part of the job I didn’t miss when I moved from the city back to Bloody Mary.” He started his search in the glove box. “Insurance papers and a hundred bucks in cash.” He bagged it all and then ran his hands under the passenger seat. He then crawled inside and did the same beneath the driver’s side. Jack pulled out another gun, and I held out the evidence bag for him this time. There was no way to go about the process of collecting evidence neatly.

“Another .38,” Jack said. “This one will be registered to George.” He moved back out of the truck and popped the lever to lower the passenger seat so he could reach into the back. “A .22 rifle back here and a tool box. Nothing out of the ordinary around this area. We’ll impound it and do a more thorough search, but on the surface it looks pretty clean. I’ll head over with the team and start the search through his house.”

We were both covered in things I didn’t care to think about. Even with the coveralls, I’d be hitting the showers the first chance I got. I called out to the officers who had drawn the short straw to pack up the body. “Let’s get him loaded up and back to the funeral home.”

Jack and I stepped back a few feet and let them go about the messy task.

“You going to tell his parents?” I asked.

George’s parents and grandparents both still lived in Bloody Mary, and if Jack didn’t get over there soon, they’d hear the news of their son’s death from someone else.

Jack winced and said, “Yeah, I’ll swing by there first. I’ll bet you twenty someone has already spilled the news.”

“That’s a sucker’s bet. And I’m no sucker.”

“I’m so proud.” He slapped me on the back and then headed to his cruiser. “I’ll be by later for the autopsy results,” he said, snapping off his gloves and stripping out of his coveralls. He tossed everything in a yellow plastic hazardous waste bag and locked it back in the trunk.

“It’s going to be a few hours,” I called out. “I still have to pick up Mrs. Perry.” I discarded my own coveralls and gloves. “She’s been on ice at the hospital morgue a while. It’s going to be hell rubbing out the rigor.”

“10-4, Kemo Sabe. See you tonight.”

***

I put in a call to Vaughn after I’d deposited George Murphy in my refrigeration unit, and it went directly to voicemail. I left a quick message telling him to get back in touch, and then went to deal with Mrs. Perry at the morgue.

By the time I made it back to the funeral home, Mrs. Perry was tucked comfortably next to Reverend Oglesby, and her daughter was drinking hot tea in my office. Mrs. Perry had been ninety-six years old at the time of her death, so her daughter wasn’t exactly a spring chicken, but she’d made the decisions for her mother’s interment with an efficient decisiveness I had to admire. We were done with the paperwork within half an hour, and I was left alone with my bodies, a full pot of coffee, and a hefty check for services. I tried calling Vaughn one more time, but it went to voicemail again, so I sent him a text.

Call me ASAP.

It was going on five o’clock by the time I started preparing Mrs. Perry’s body. It was cold down in the lab, and I shivered as I donned a white surgical gown and blue gloves. I pulled her out of the refrigeration unit and got her transferred over to the special table I used for embalming with no problems. Mrs. Perry had shrunken with age, and she looked almost childlike under the white sheet I’d placed over her, but when I pulled it back there was nothing but the frail remains of a ninety-six year old woman—sagging skin and liver spots included.

I spritzed the body with disinfectant and wiped her down. The quiet hum of the ventilator was starting to get to me, so I went and turned on the radio. I figured the dead had an eternity to listen to Bach or harp song, so I cranked Soundgarden and went back to my work.

There are a lot of steps that go into preparing a body so it can be seen by friends and family. Death causes all sorts of abnormalities to occur—especially with the eyelids and joints and mouth. Most people don’t know that I have to staple a person’s gums together to keep the mouth closed. They probably don’t want to know. I did quick work with the staple gun and stuffed Mrs. Perry’s mouth with cotton before stepping back to check my work.

I’d gotten much faster at embalming over the last two years. Even being gone the last few months hadn’t taken away the skill. I mixed the embalming chemicals together, and the smell that made Jack heave filled the air. I’d have to take a shower—
another
shower—before I met with him again. It was a smell that clung to everything like thick syrup. It’s the reason I always used lemon soap. The acid cut through the layers.

I sliced open the skin above Mrs. Perry’s clavicle and again at the neck and hunted for the carotid artery so I could tie it off and start the embalming process. It was messy work, preparing the dead for burial, but everything went smoothly and the body drained and filled as it was supposed to, the proper fluids filling the wells built into each side of the table.

Embalming someone isn’t a terribly long process, so I let the machine run its course, and then I sewed her back up and slathered her in lotion so her skin wouldn’t be dry when it was time to put on makeup. I rolled her back into the refrigeration unit and pulled out George Murphy.

I changed my gown and gloves, and then went over to refresh my coffee cup. The stacks of boxes I’d brought in from the Suburban taunted me from the corner of the room. I needed to burn them. But part of me knew I couldn’t do that until I’d been through every scrap of paper and evidence in those boxes. I had a right to know exactly who my parents had been. And I had a right to give myself some kind of closure, even if it was finding out things I didn’t particularly want to know.

I cut off George’s clothes and went through all his pockets, documenting the contents as I went. It was all very routine, but then I came to his front right pocket and I froze as I pulled out a gold wedding band. My job required me to compartmentalize the things I saw in my job—to put away the atrocities and the carnage and focus only on the job. But something inside me broke as I held that small ring of precious metal in the palm of my hand.

George had kept that symbol with him always, even after his wife had left him for someone else and died as she’d made her escape. It was a heartbreaking reminder of the frailty of human life, and that the person laying in front of me had been real—with real thoughts and emotions—and at the end, real suffering.

I carefully placed the gold band in a small plastic baggie and put it with the rest of his things to give to his family, and then I turned back to the body to start the examination.

I got him cleaned up and started my external examination, documenting everything I came across, including the tattoo on his tricep. Three-point crown. Not five. I finished and ran him through x-rays, not expecting to find anything, but not expecting is what always led to surprises.

“What the hell?”

I saw what looked like crumpled paper in his trachea, so I grabbed my forceps and adjusted the light. I opened his mouth carefully and tilted back his head and I could barely see the corner of what I’d seen on the x-rays. I used the forceps and gently reached in to pull it out.