Snow Falling on Cedars (8 page)

But anoxia, like Alec Vilderling, or a waterlogged, choking asphyxiation? Like most people, Horace felt the need not merely to know but to envision clearly whatever had happened; furthermore it was his obligation to envision it clearly so that in the official register of Island County deaths the truth, however painful, might be permanently inscribed. Carl Heine’s dark struggle, his effort to hold his breath, the volume of water that had filled the vacuum of his gut, his profound unconsciousness and final convulsions, his terminal gasps in the grip of death as the last of the air leaked out of him and his heart halted and his brain ceased to consider anything – they were all recorded, or not recorded, in the slab of flesh that
lay on Horace Whaley’s examination table. It was his duty to find out the truth.

For a moment Horace stood with his hands linked across his belly and debated silently the merits of opening the deceased man’s chest so as to get at the evidence in the heart and lungs. It was in this posture that he noted – how had he missed it before? – the wound to the skull over the dead man’s left ear. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he said aloud.

With a pair of barber’s shears he cut hair out of the way until the outlines of this wound emerged cleanly. The bone had fractured and caved in considerably over an area of about four inches. The skin had split open, and from the laceration of the scalp a tiny strand of pink brain material protruded. Whatever had caused this wound – a narrow, flat object about two inches wide – had left its telltale outline behind in the deceased man’s head. It was precisely the sort of lethal impression Horace had seen at least two dozen times in the Pacific war, the result of close-in combat, hand to hand, and made by a powerfully wielded gun butt. The Japanese field soldier, trained in the art of
kendo,
or stick fighting, was exceptionally proficient at killing in this manner. And the majority of Japs, Horace recalled, inflicted death over the left ear, swinging in from the right.

Horace inserted a razor into one of his scalpels and poked it into the deceased’s head. He pressed the razor to the bone and guided it through the hair, describing an arc across the top of the deceased’s skull literally from ear to ear. It was a skillful and steady incision, like drawing a curved line with a pencil across the crown of the head, a fluid and graceful curve. In this manner he was able to peel back the dead man’s face as though it were the skin of a grapefruit or an orange and turn his forehead inside out so that it rested against his nose.

Horace peeled down the back of the head, too, then lay his scalpel in the sink, rinsed his gloves, dried them, and brought out a hacksaw from his instrument cupboard.

He set about the work of sawing through the dead man’s skullcap. After twenty minutes it became necessary to turn the
body over, and so with reluctance Horace crossed the hall to Abel Martinson, who sat in a chair doing nothing at all, his legs crossed, his hat in his lap.

‘Need a hand,’ said the coroner.

The deputy rose and put his hat on his head. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Glad to help.’

‘You won’t be glad,’ said Horace. ‘I’ve made an incision across , the top of his head. His skull is exposed. It isn’t pretty.’

‘Okay,’ said the deputy. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

They went in and without speaking turned the body over, Abel Martinson pushing from one side, the coroner reaching across and pulling from the other, and then, with his head hung over the sink, Abel Martinson vomited. He was dabbing his mouth with the corner of his handkerchief when Art Moran came through the door. ‘Now what?’ asked the sheriff.

Abel, in answer, pointed a finger at Carl Heine’s corpse. ‘I puked again,’ he said.

Art Moran looked at Carl’s face turned inside out, the skin of it peeled back like a grape, a bloody foam that looked like shaving cream clinging to his chin. Then he turned away from seeing it.

‘Me, too,’ said Abel Martinson. ‘I got no stomach for this neither.’

‘I’m not blaming you,’ the sheriff answered. ‘Jesus H. Christ.
Jesus Christ
.’

But he stood there watching anyway while Horace, in his surgical gown, worked methodically with his hacksaw. He watched while Horace removed the dead man’s skullcap and placed it beside the dead man’s shoulder.

‘This is called the dura mater.’ Horace pointed with his scalpel. ‘This membrane here? Right under his skull? This right here is the dura mater.’

He took the dead man’s head between his hands and with some effort – the ligaments of the neck were extremely rigid – twisted it to the left.

‘Come over here, Art,’ he said.

The sheriff seemed aware of the necessity of doing so; nevertheless, he didn’t move. Certainly, thought Horace, he had learned in his work that there were distasteful moments about which he had no choice. In the face of these it was best to move quickly and without reservations, as Horace himself did as a matter of principle. But the sheriff was a man of inherited anxieties. It was not really in him to go over there and see what was under Carl Heine’s face.

Horace Whaley knew this: that the sheriff did not want to see what was inside of Carl Heine’s head. Horace had seen Art this way before, chewing his Juicy Fruit and grimacing, rubbing his lips with the ball of his thumb and squinting while he thought things over. ‘It’ll just take a minute,’ Horace urged him. ‘One quick look, Art. So you can see what we’re up against. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’

Horace indicated for Art Moran the blood that had clotted in the dura mater and the tear in it where the piece of brain protruded. ‘He got hit pretty hard with something fairly flat, Art. Puts me in mind of a type of gun butt wound I saw a few times in the war. One of those
kendo
strikes the Japs used.’

‘
Kendo
?’ said Art Moran.

‘Stick fighting,’ Horace explained. ‘Japs are trained in it from when they’re kids. How to kill with sticks.’

‘Ugly,’ said the sheriff. ‘Jesus.’

‘Look away,’ said Horace. ‘I’m going to cut through the dura mater now. I want you to see something else.’

The sheriff turned his back deliberately. ‘You’re pale,’ he said to Abel Martinson. ‘Why don’t you go sit down?’

‘I’m okay,’ answered Abel. He stood looking into the sink with his handkerchief in his hand and leaned hard against the counter.

Horace showed the sheriff three fragments of the deceased’s skull that had lodged in the tissue of his brain. ‘That what killed him?’ Art asked.

‘That’s complicated,’ answered Horace Whaley. ‘Could be he took a hit to the head, then went over the side and drowned.
Or maybe he hit his head
after
he drowned. Or
while
he was drowning. I don’t know for sure.’

‘Can you find out?’

‘Maybe.’

‘When?’

‘I have to look inside his chest, Art. At his heart and lungs. And even that might not tell me much.’

‘His chest?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What’re the possibilities?’ said the sheriff.

‘Possibilities?’ said Horace Whaley. ‘All kinds of possibilities, Art. Anything could have happened, and all kinds of things
do
happen. I mean, maybe he had a
heart
attack that pitched him over the side. Maybe a stroke, maybe alcohol. But all I want to know just now is did he get knocked in the head first and
then
go over? Because I know from this foam’ – he pointed at it with his scalpel – ‘that Carl went in breathing. He was respiratory when he hit the water. So my guess right now is that he drowned, Art. With the head wound an obvious contributing factor. Banged himself on a fairlead, maybe. Setting his net and got a little careless – hung up his buckle and went over. I’m inclined to put all that in my report just now. But I don’t know for sure yet. Maybe when I see his heart and lungs everything is going to change.’

Art Moran stood rubbing his lip and blinked hard at Horace Whaley. ‘That bang to the head,’ he said. ‘That bang to the head is sort of …
funny,
you know?’

Horace Whaley nodded. ‘Could be,’ he said.

‘Couldn’t it be somebody hit him?’ asked the sheriff. ‘Isn’t that a possibility?’

‘You want to play Sherlock Holmes?’ asked Horace. ‘You going to play detective?’

‘Not really. But Sherlock Holmes isn’t here, is he? And this wound in Carl’s head is.’

‘That’s true,’ said Horace. ‘You got that part right.’

Then – and afterward he would remember this, during the
trial of Kabuo Miyamoto, Horace Whaley would recall having spoken these words (though he would not repeat them on the witness stand) – he said to Art Moran that if he were inclined to play Sherlock Holmes he ought to start looking for a Jap with a bloody gun butt – a right-handed Jap, to be precise.

Horace Whaley scratched the birthmark on his forehead and watched the falling snow beyond the courtroom windows. It was coming harder now, much harder, wind whipped and silent, though the wind could be heard pushing against the beams in the courthouse attic.
My pipes,
thought Horace.
They’ll freeze.

Nels Gudmundsson rose a second time, slipped his thumbs behind his suspenders, and noted with his one good eye that Judge Lew Fielding appeared half-asleep and was leaning heavily on the palm of his left hand, as he had throughout Horace’s testimony. He was listening, Nels knew; his tired demeanor shielded an active mind from view. The judge liked to mull things soporifically.

Nels, as best he could – he had arthritis in his hips and knees – made his way to the witness stand. ‘Horace,’ he said. ‘Good morning.’

‘Morning, Nels,’ answered the coroner.

‘You’ve said quite a bit,’ Nels Gudmundsson pointed out. ‘You’ve told the court in detail about your autopsy of the deceased, your fine background as a medical examiner, and so forth, as you’ve been asked to do. And I’ve been listening to you, Horace, like everybody else here. And – well – I’m troubled by a couple of matters.’ He stopped and pinched his chin between his fingers.

‘Go ahead,’ urged Horace Whaley.

‘Well, for example, this
foam
,’ said Nels. ‘I’m not sure I understand about that, Horace.’

‘The foam?’

‘You’ve testified to having applied pressure to the deceased’s
chest and that shortly thereafter a peculiar foam appeared at his mouth and nostrils.’

‘That’s right,’ said Horace. ‘I would say this is usually the case with drowning victims. It may not appear when they’re first recovered from the water, but almost as soon as someone starts removing their clothing or attempting resuscitation there it is, generally in copious amounts.’

‘What would cause that?’ Nels asked.

‘Pressure brings it up. It results from a chemical reaction in the lungs when water mixes with air and mucus.’

‘Water, air, and mucus,’ said Nels. ‘But what causes them to mix, Horace? This chemical reaction you speak of – what is it?’

‘It’s caused by breathing. It happens in the presence of respiration. It – ’

‘Now this is where I got confused,’ interrupted Nels. ‘Earlier, I mean. When you were testifying. You say this foam is
only
produced when you’ve got water, mucus, and air all mixed together by a person’s breathing?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But a drowned person doesn’t breathe,’ said Nels. ‘So how does this foam … you can see why I’m confused.’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Horace. ‘I think I can make this clear. It’s formed – this foam – in the
early
stages. The victim is submerged and begins to struggle. Finally he begins to swallow water, you see, and as he does the air in his lungs is forced out under pressure – and this gives rise to the foam I’ve testified about. The chemical reaction occurs at the time the drowning victim is
ceasing
to breathe. Or breathing his final breaths.’

‘I see,’ said Nels. ‘So this foam, then, tells you Carl Heine in fact drowned, doesn’t it?’

‘Well – ’

‘It tells you, for example, that he wasn’t murdered first – say on the deck of his boat – and then thrown overboard? Because if he was, there would be no foam, would there? Am I understanding the chemical reaction correctly? It can’t happen
unless the victim is breathing at the time of submersion? Is that what you said about it, Horace?’

‘Yes,’ said Horace. ‘It tells you that. But – ’

‘Excuse me,’ said Nels. ‘Just wait a moment, now.’ He made his way to where Mrs. Eleanor Dokes sat poised over her stenograph. He worked past her and nodded at the bailiff, Ed Soames, then picked out a document from the evidence table and made his way back to the witness stand.

‘All right, Horace,’ he said now. ‘I’m returning to you the exhibit you identified earlier, in direct examination, as your autopsy report, which you’ve testified accurately reflects your findings and conclusions. If you would kindly take it and read back to yourself paragraph four on page four, please, we’ll all wait.’

While Horace did so Nels returned to the defendant’s table and sipped from a glass of water. His throat had begun to bother him; his voice had gone hoarse and reedy.

‘All right,’ said Horace. ‘Done.’

‘All right,’ said Nels. ‘Am I correct in saying, Horace, that paragraph four on page four of your autopsy report identifies
drowning
as the cause of Carl Heine’s death?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘So your conclusion was that he drowned?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was that unequivocal? Was there any doubt?’

‘Yes, of course there’s doubt. There’s always doubt. You’re not – ’

‘Just a minute, Horace,’ said Nels. ‘Do you wish to say that your report is inaccurate? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?’

‘The report is accurate,’ said Horace Whaley. ‘I – ’

‘Can you read for the court the last sentence of paragraph four, page four, of the autopsy report you have in front of you?’ said Nels Gudmundsson. ‘The paragraph you read silently just a moment ago? Please go ahead and read.’

‘All right,’ answered Horace. ‘It says this, and I quote: “The presence of foam in the airway and around the lips and nose
indicates beyond doubt that the victim was alive at the time of submersion.” Unquote.’

‘
Beyond doubt
that he was alive at the time of submersion? Is that what it says, Horace?’