Difficult Run (5 page)

“To make a long story short, I liked the place so much that I went back to Pennsylvania and made arrangements to sell the house there.
 
My folks had both passed away and it really didn’t have much attraction for me.
 
Then I bought this tent and some supplies and hitchhiked back about a week later.
 
I’ve lived here ever since.”

“Where did you find Lola?” M.J. asked.

“It’s more like she found me,” he said. “She wandered into camp here about two years ago.
 
She was just a pup, not even a year old.
 
I put up signs at the Visitor Center and down in the village, but nobody ever claimed her.”

“Why did you name her Lola?” M.J. asked, taking another sip of coffee.

“You know that old song ‘Whatever Lola Wants.’
 
Well, it seemed to fit her,” he said, looking at the dog, which was still pressed against M.J.’s leg.

M.J. smiled and patted Lola’s head.
 
“It does seem to fit,” she said and asked, “How do the two of you get money for food and supplies?”

“I get a disability pension from the V.A. for this,” he said, patting his right leg.
 
“It’s not much, but it’s enough for most everything we need.
 
The checks come to general delivery at the post office in the village.
 
Lola and I hike up there, cash them and pick up any supplies we need.
 
The vet in the village takes care of Lola for nothing. She even gives me flea and tick repellant to use on her in warm weather and shampoo to keep her clean,” he said, pointing to a shelf outside the tent with several bottles and boxes on it.

“What do you do to pass the time?” M.J. asked.

“I read a lot,” Doc replied.
 
“The library in the village gave me a card and I load up on books whenever we go in to pick up supplies.
 
Lola and I also hike around the park almost every day.
 
We really enjoy that.”

“What trails do you hike?” M.J. asked.

“Pretty much all of them,” he replied.

“Do you ever see people here in the park at night?” M.J. asked.

“Oh sure,” he said.
 
“Usually hear them more than see them.
 
You know, kids riding on the trails or running around.
 
They don’t come over on the Swamp Trail very much, but they use the Old Carriage Road and the Ridge Trail a lot, especially during warm weather.”

“What about Difficult Run?” she asked.

“We can’t hear people on that trail from here, but when it’s warm we sometimes go there at night when most of the people have left and jump in one of the pools in the stream.
 
That’s where I give Lola a bath with that shampoo and wash myself up too,” he said.

“Have you ever seen anybody or anything suspicious on Difficult Run or any of the other trails?” she asked.

“Not really,” he replied.
 
“Mostly just hikers, runners, people walking their dogs, that sort of thing.
 
I guess you’re asking me these questions because of those two boys that were killed over on Difficult Run.”

“That’s right,” she replied.
 
“I’d appreciate it if you’d keep an eye out for anybody that is acting suspiciously.
 
We think the murderer is probably around six feet tall and weighs 180 to 200 pounds.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”
 
Doc asked.

“We don’t have much else right now,” she replied, “but I’ll let you know if we get any new information.
 
Obviously, you shouldn’t approach anyone yourself.
 
I’ll be running here in the park every day and probably making some night visits too. If it’s OK, I’d like to stop by from time to time and check in with you.”

“Well, Lola and I always like to have visitors, so just stop by anytime.
 
We might see you out on the trails too,” he said.

“I’ll look forward to it,” she said, finishing her coffee. She stood up and shook Doc’s hand, then turned to give Lola one more scratch behind the ears.

She went back to the Visitor Center and found Dodd.

“Any trouble finding Doc?” he asked.

“None at all,” she replied.
 
“He’s going to watch for people coming into the park at night and I’ll be visiting him to check on anything he might have seen.
 
I’d appreciate it if your people would watch for anything suspicious too.”

“I’ve already asked them to do just that,” he said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

M
.J. WAS EARLY FOR HER MEETING with the Virginia State Medical Examiner.
 
She had expected to just receive a written report, but his assistant had called and asked if she could stop by and meet with him to discuss the deaths of the two boys.

As she sat in the small waiting room, she thought to herself how similar it was to the waiting rooms in other doctors’ offices.
 
Well-worn copies of
People
,
Us
,
Scientific American
and some assorted car magazines lay on a coffee table in front of four upholstered chairs.

The difference, she thought, was that this was not like a normal doctor’s office where people came for treatment of a cold, persistent headaches or broken bones.
 
Here, people came to discuss just one thing and that was death—the how, the why and the clinical details of the end of life, which had usually occurred under tragic circumstances.

The door opened and a man in his mid-forties with curly black hair entered the waiting room.
 
He was tall, perhaps six-one or two and had reading glasses strung around his neck with a cord.

“Hi, I’m Doctor Martin,” he said.
 
“Come on back to my office.”

She followed him down a short corridor and entered a relatively small office with a large window that flooded the room with light.
 
The walls were decorated with two diplomas and several prints of Marc Chagall paintings.
 
In the corner was a full-size model of a human skeleton.

“I appreciate you coming by.
 
I thought that it might help with your investigation if we could talk about the exact cause of death of these two boys,” he said.

“Well, I assume they died of broken necks,” M.J. said, adding, “I saw the bodies.”

“You’re correct in the broadest sense, Detective Powers, but the term ‘broken neck’ covers a lot of different things,” he said, pulling two files to the center of his desk.
 
“People’s necks are broken all the time and in all different ways—automobile accidents, diving into shallow water, sports injuries.
 
In this case, the death certificate will say something like ‘acute trauma to the cervical spine and spinal cord,’ which is not much different than what I would put on one for someone who had died from an impact injury, like a car crash.
 
Here, of course, we are dealing with an intentionally inflicted injury and that demands a more detailed explanation than the one that will appear on the official record.”

“Is there something that might help us identify the murderer?” M.J. asked.

“There may be, but first let me tell you what I know about breaking people’s necks.
 
I don’t mean me personally, of course, just from a clinical perspective,” he said, displaying a broad smile.

“First of all,” he continued, “the term ‘broken neck’ usually denotes damage to the cervical vertebrae.”
 
He rose from his desk and walked to the model skeleton in the corner.
 
“The cervical vertebrae are the first seven below the skull,” he said, pointing to that region on the skeleton.
 
“The first vertebra is actually attached to the skull and most neck injuries involve the second and possibly the third vertebrae.
 
Of course the real damage doesn’t occur from the injury to the bone, it occurs because of trauma to the spinal cord that is protected by the vertebrae.
 
If any of the cervical vertebrae are damaged badly enough, it will result in spinal cord injury. That, in turn, can cause unconsciousness, paralysis or death.”

“How easy is it to break another person’s neck?” she asked.

“Well, it’s not like in the movies,” he replied.
 
“I mean when you see Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger casually walk up to someone and twist their neck, it’s a bit of an exaggeration.
 
That could only happen if the person’s neck and shoulder muscles were completely relaxed, which would not be the case if someone was about to kill them.
 
Those muscles are very powerful and they involuntarily tighten to protect the spinal cord from such injuries.”

“Then how is it done?” she asked.

“Well, the technique that’s taught in military hand-to-hand combat involves using one hand to push or pull the opponent’s head back, like this, to loosen the neck muscles,” he said, first placing the heal of his hand under his chin and pushing back, then placing it on his forehead and pulling back.
 
“The other hand comes around the head and quickly twists with a downward motion.
 
This, at the very least, produces trauma to the second and possibly the third vertebrae with varying degrees of injury to the spinal cord.

“I know a lot about this type of injury because the Army paid for my med school education and while I was on active duty to pay them back I was stationed at Fort Benning.
 
We used to see injuries caused by that maneuver three or four times a month, either through training accidents or fights in local bars. Some of the victims left with a neck brace; some left in a body bag.”

“So you think these boys may have been killed by someone with military training?” she asked.

“Well, the killer may have been in the military at some point, but he didn’t use the hand-to-hand technique I just described.
 
The injuries these boys suffered were caused by someone turning their heads laterally against the full strength of their muscles.
 
Given the age and physical condition of the boys, that would have been difficult and would have required considerable strength,” he said.

“But their heads were turned completely around.
 
Wouldn’t that have required even more strength?” she asked.

“Actually, strength would only be a factor in initially breaking their necks.
 
Once there was damage to the spinal cord, all muscle control would cease and turning the head farther would be relatively easy—like wringing the neck of a chicken,” he replied.

M.J. remembered the time, as a little girl, she had surreptitiously watched her grandmother fetch a chicken for dinner.
 
She had picked the chicken up by its neck, swung it up in the air and then brought it down with a quick circular snapping motion.
 
The chicken’s head was turned completely around.
 
Like the boys’ heads
, she thought.

“I x-rayed both of the boys’ necks before I started the autopsies.
 
Their injuries were almost identical.
 
The second and third vertebrae weren’t just fractured, they were completely dislocated.
 
Here, you can see it quite clearly,” he said, holding up an x-ray film.

“These injuries are similar to what is usually referred to as a ‘hangman’s fracture.’
 
It gets its name from the type of damage that occurs in executions by hanging where the head is forcibly pulled up by the noose under the chin and the full weight of the body causes the vertebrae to be pulled apart.
 
In the case of these boys, however, this separation of the vertebrae was accompanied by a violent rotation of the head which literally shredded the spinal cord in both cases.

“I called in a colleague who is an orthopedic surgeon to take a look.
 
He concurred that this could only have been done by a sharp, continuous lateral twisting motion. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it,” he said, adding, “These boys died as close to an instant death as is medically possible.”

She pondered this for a moment, then asked, “So would it be correct to say that we’re looking for someone with considerable upper body strength?”

“Yes, and probably someone at least six feet tall to allow a direct approach to someone seated on a bicycle,” he said. “The killer must have attacked from behind and pulled the boys’ heads back, probably with the aid of their helmets, judging from the bruising where the helmets struck the base of their skulls.
 
The subsequent rotation of their heads was in a clockwise direction, so the killer was most likely right-handed.”

“But why, after killing the boys, would the person continue turning their heads around?” M.J. asked.

“I don’t have an answer for that question, Detective.
 
It is, you might say, a bit of overkill,” he said.

“Thanks, Doctor. This has been very helpful. May I give you a call if I have any more questions?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” he replied, rising from behind his desk and glancing down at one of the folders, “and there’s one other piece of information. Based on the readings taken by your technician at the scene and the condition of the bodies when we got them, I’d estimate the time of death at between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. Sunday night.”

He walked with her back to the waiting room. As she turned to leave, she asked, “By the way, why did you pick this particular medical specialty?”

He thought for a moment, then replied, “Well, it’s intellectually challenging, the hours are good,” he paused, then smiled and added, “and the patients never complain.”