Murder on High (8 page)

But Pyle wasn’t biting. “Nope,” he said as he drained the dregs of his coffee. “But I doubt it was really murder. The M.E. is such a publicity hound that he’d try to give that impression just to get a good turnout.”

“I guess we’ll find out in a few minutes,” she said.

5

The hearing before the Mount Katahdin Tragedy Board of Review was to be held at the Eastern Region Headquarters of the state forest service, which was located in a cluster of log cabin-type buildings on the bank of the Penobscot, overlooking the northern end of Indian Island. On the river bank itself were two airplane hangars that serviced the float planes that flew fire watches all over the state. A couple of these were anchored in the river at the seaplane base at the foot of the complex. Next to the hangars, a cluster of helicopters and a row of tank trucks stood at the ready in case of a forest fire.

After parking, Tracey and Charlotte were directed to a meeting room in one of the buildings. Pyle had gone back to the barracks. To their surprise, they found that not only was the meeting room full, a bank of television cameras was lined up at one side.

“The word must be out that Dr. Clough has a surprise in store,” said Charlotte as they headed toward the few empty seats at the back.

“Thanks no doubt to Clough himself,” Tracey growled.

The front of the room was occupied by a dais, on which the four members of the board sat behind a long table. They consisted of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Commissioner, who was the chairman; the Maine Forest Commissioner; the attorney general; and the Baxter State Park Supervisor. To stage left was a chair for the witnesses, and in front was a table for a court stenographer.

No sooner had they taken their seats than the hearing opened.

The first to speak was the chairman, who thanked the park employees and volunteers who had assisted in the recovery effort. This was followed by a brief speech in which he explained that the purpose of the hearing was not to find fault or assign blame, but to reconstruct the sequence of events that had led up to Mrs. Richards’ death, with an eye toward instituting procedures that would prevent future occurrences of such a nature.

These remarks were followed by the witnesses’ testimony. The first witness to take the stand was the park ranger who had discovered the body, a young man named Chris Sargent. Sargent began by pointing out Iris’ route on a topographical map that was projected onto a screen at the front of the room. The map was then replaced by a slide of the Great Basin, which was a perfect bowl with walls of sheer granite, encircled by the sharp rim of the Knife Edge.

“Wow!” exclaimed Charlotte as the slide appeared on the screen. Seeing the mountain’s most prominent feature for the first time, she was taken aback by its strange and magnificent perfection. It was as smooth and regular as if it had been hand-thrown by God himself on a celestial potter’s wheel.

“Pretty impressive, isn’t it?” said Tracey as the ranger pointed out the spot where he had located Iris’ body.

“I’ll say,” Charlotte agreed. She could readily see why the Indians had designated it as their sacred mountain.

The ranger nodded at the projectionist, and the slide of the basin was replaced by a slide of the headwall, which was striated with the snow that still lay in its ravines.

“Here we see the headwall with the body of the victim,” said the ranger. Picking up a pointer, he indicated a small patch of vivid green lodged in one of the ravines, about halfway down the headwall.

He nodded again, and the slide on the screen changed to a close-up which showed Iris’ body caught in a niche, folded up almost flat, with her feet up against her head. She was wearing a neon-green rain suit, which was spattered with blood. The contents of her ash splint pack, which had been crushed, lay spread out along the path of her fall.

Above the niche, the ravine narrowed to a cleft. Below, it widened to a steep, jagged slope covered with loose granite. Charlotte wondered how the rescue team had ever gotten the body off the mountain.

At this point the park supervisor leaned into his microphone and said, “Some people have the impression that getting an accident victim off the mountain is an easy matter. They say, ‘Why don’t they just lug him or her on down?’” He spoke with a Downeast accent that was almost as thick as Tracey’s. “Well, I think you can see from this slide that it’s not that simple.”

These comments were followed by the ranger’s description of the evacuation itinerary, which was also illustrated with slides. It had taken the rescue team the best part of a day to evacuate the body. The task had involved lowering the body down three three-hundred-foot technical pitches to the point where a ground crew could reach it from the ledges at the back of the basin.

After Sargent had finished his presentation, the district supervisor and the leader of the rescue team described the roles they had played, from when they had first learned of the accident to when the body was flown out of Chimney Pond. Several made suggestions as to how rescue procedures could be improved, but in general they agreed that the operation had gone smoothly.

At last, it was time for the chief medical examiner, Dr. Henry Clough, to testify. A hubbub swept the room as he took a seat in the witness chair. He was carrying a canvas boat bag, which he set down at his feet.

He was a short, slight man with a long, ruddy face, a fifties-style crewcut, and a wool tartan tie. After identifying himself, he began by noting for the record that he had examined the body of the deceased at the Dow Funeral Home in Millinocket, where it had been taken after being evacuated to the Millinocket Municipal Airport by the 112th Medivac.

He then went on to describe the victim as a white Caucasian female of about seventy years of age, weighing approximately one hundred and forty pounds, and standing five feet six inches tall. Next came the description of the injuries, which went on for some time, each contusion, laceration, and broken bone, of which there seemed to be dozens, being precisely enumerated.

At last, he signaled the projectionist for the first slide.

There was a collective gasp from the audience as the slide appeared on the screen. It was a photograph of the dead woman’s head and neck, taken from the side. The body was lying on its back on a stainless steel autopsy table. The head was covered with dried blood, which had turned black. She looked as if she’d fallen headfirst into a mud puddle.

Charlotte looked for signs of the Iris she had once known, but the body was like a complete stranger’s to her.

“Here you can see some of the injuries that the victim sustained in the fall,” Clough said. “Basically, she was beaten to a pulp. There was a lot of bleeding; some of it’s from the cuts and lacerations that occurred as a result of the fall. However,” he added, “not all of it.” After a brief pause, he turned to address the board directly. “It wasn’t the fall that killed her.”

“Are you saying that she was shot?” interjected one of the television newsmen. At this question, flashbulbs started popping, and the cameramen started jockeying for position.

“Would you like to tell us what it was that killed her?” the Fisheries and Wildlife Commissioner said tartly, obviously perturbed at the medical examiner’s grandstanding.

“Certainly,” Clough responded. He nodded again at the projectionist, and another slide appeared on the screen. This one showed Iris’ head in the same position, but in this slide the dried blood had been washed off. The side of her head was caved in, like a jack-o’-lantern that’s begun to rot.

Rising from the stand, Dr. Clough picked up the pointer and went over to the screen. “This is what killed her,” he said, touching the tip to a small, neat, round hole on the side of Iris’ neck. “A perforating injury to the side of the neck produced by the tip of an arrow.”

For a moment, there was stunned silence as the audience took in his statement. One of the journalists finally spoke. “She was murdered with a bow and arrow?” he asked incredulously.

Tracey leaned in close to Charlotte’s ear. “You’d think Clough would have had the courtesy to let the state police in on this before he blabbed to the press,” he whispered, a look of consternation on his usually genial face.

Nodding affirmatively to the journalist’s question, the M.E. explained that the unusual amount of blood had been caused by the arrow hitting the carotid artery. He then went on to describe the nature of the crushing injury that had occurred at the juncture of the cervical and thoracic vertebrae.

“Dr. Clough, wouldn’t one of the other hikers on the Knife Edge or on Baxter Peak have noticed someone carrying a bow and a quiver full of arrows?” asked another reporter.

“That would be true of a longbow,” Dr. Clough replied. “But not of a crossbow.” Returning to the stand, he reached into his bag and pulled out a weapon the likes of which Charlotte had never seen. “Especially one like this,” he said, holding it up. “For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, this is a pistol crossbow.”

Tracey let out a long, low whistle.

“Basically, it’s a cross between a bow and a pistol: a short, powerful bow mounted at right angles on the forward portion of a pistol body. Fourteen inches long, collapsible”—he demonstrated by folding the limbs up, and sliding the stock into the body—“and neatly fitted into a carryall.”

“What’s the range?” asked one of the board members.

“Thirty to forty yards.” Pulling the weapon back out, Clough opened it up. “This one’s fitted with a rear notch sight and an adjustable front pin sight,” he said, pointing the sights out to his audience, “but they can also be fitted with scopes.”

The journalists, no longer skeptical, were writing furiously.

Holding the weapon at arm’s length by its pistol-type grip, which resembled that of a military weapon, Dr. Clough sighted a bead on an imaginary target, and pulled the trigger. “As accurate and deadly as a pistol, but with the advantage of making very little noise.”

“Aren’t crossbows illegal in the state of Maine?” asked one of the television journalists.

Tracey leaned over to whisper again in Charlotte’s ear. “Since when does a weapon’s being illegal mean that criminals don’t use it?”

“Illegal to hunt with, but not to possess,” Dr. Clough said. “I got this one at a local sporting goods store. The clerk described it as looking like a gun and shooting like a bow, but in my opinion, he should have said that it looks like a bow and shoots like a gun.” Bending over, he reached into his bag again and pulled out an arrow, which was about eight inches long. “This is the arrow,” he said, holding it up. “It’s called a bolt, or a quarrel.”

“Can you spell that, please?” asked one of the reporters.

“Q-u-a-r-r-e-l,” he said. “Like an argument. Maybe that’s where the word comes from. Anyway, this is a target bolt made from high-strength drawn aluminum alloy.” He pointed to the tip. “The point has been fitted with an ordinary cartridge shell to create a blunt head.”

He nodded to the projectionist, and an enlargement of the point appeared on one half of a divided screen, and a close-up of the entrance wound on the other. “As you can see, the shape of the point corresponds exactly to that of the entrance wound. Judging from the fact that the bolt didn’t go all the way through the victim’s neck, I’d guess that the victim was shot from some distance, let’s say about forty yards.”

“Would it be correct to say that the murderer would have to be a good shot?” asked one of the board members.

“I would say so, yes,” Dr. Clough replied. “It requires a lot less skill to hit the bull’s-eye with a crossbow than with a conventional longbow, because the speed of the bolt is much greater, but …”

“How great?” interrupted the chairman.

“The bolt speed of this model is two hundred and eighty feet per second.”

“That’s almost as fast as a bullet, isn’t it?” asked the park supervisor.

“About a third of the muzzle velocity of a .38 calibre revolver, but enough to kill you nonetheless,” the medical examiner replied.

“Jeezum,” muttered Tracey under his breath.

“As I was saying,” Dr. Clough continued, “it requires less skill to hit a target with a crossbow because the bolt speed is greater and the trajectory is flatter, but there was also a lot of wind up there. The murderer would have to have adjusted for windage, which can be done with the front sight.” He demonstrated by moving the sight from side to side.

“Can we tell from which direction it was fired?” the chairman asked.

“We know from the location of the entrance wound that the weapon was fired directly from the side, but not from which side. The victim could have been looking out either to the north or to the south. I assume she was standing, since it’s my understanding that the trail at that point is too narrow to sit on.” He looked over at the board for confirmation.

“Unless you set astraddle it,” said the park supervisor.

Dr. Clough went on. “But I would venture to guess that the murderer was facing away from Baxter Peak, where we know there were other hikers who might have seen him raise a crossbow.”

For a moment there was silence as the audience studied the two photographs. Then the chairman asked, “Why wouldn’t the murderer have used an ordinary arrowhead?”

“I was waiting for someone to ask that question,” Dr. Clough replied with a smile. “I don’t know for sure, of course. But what I surmise is this: if the victim was shot with a broadhead, as an ordinary arrowhead is called, it would have gone through her neck, and it would have stayed there.”

“Making it obvious that she was murdered,” commented the chairman.

The medical examiner nodded. “I think the murderer was counting on the entrance wound being overlooked among the multitude of cuts and lacerations caused by the fall,” he explained.

“But he wasn’t counting on you,” said the chairman.

“Exactly,” said Dr. Clough, humility not being his strong suit.

“Where
is
the bolt?” asked the chairman. “Was it dislodged in the fall?”

“Maybe,” said Dr. Clough. “In which case, state police investigators”—he nodded vaguely in Tracey’s direction—“may find it somewhere on the headwall. But I seriously doubt it.”