The Path of Silence (3 page)

It was a beautiful night. The air felt soft, caressing. I wanted to go home, sit on my porch with a cup of coffee and wonder whether Fate had scribbled the words 7-Eleven, on Brick’s birth certificate.

I hoped that Joe would not invite us to visit the city morgue. He’d done it often enough, asking us to bring lunch, dinner or a midnight snack. I didn’t mind dining in the morgue, as Joe skipped around, flagrantly ignoring most basic laboratory procedures. He always liked to show off with a saw in one hand and a piece of pizza or a drumstick in the other. What I did mind was that Joe never paid his share for our group meals.

We stopped on the sidewalk and waited with stoical acceptance of the pathological procedures in motion at the scene.

Finally, Joe finished his evaluation. He straightened up. His shoulders settled into a perfect “T.” He thrust his neck forward. It was a sign that we now had a permission to speak. He was in good humor but I was aware that I still had to be careful about what I said.

“Time of death?” I asked.

“Did you look at your watch when you went inside the store?” he asked, his tone pure vinegar.

“Yeah.” I was tired and didn’t want to play his game.

“Three minutes, give or take one or two, after you went inside.”

“Outstanding. Will you be refining that time of death then?”

He ignored me. I had to continue. “Approximate cause of death?” I smiled at the pathologist who claimed he spent half his life studying to become an expert on death, just so he could live twice as long as the rest of us.

“His chest exploded,” Joe said and folded his hands on his chest

“Immediate cause of death?” I had to get through protocol.

“His chest exploded.”

“Mechanism of death.”

“Blew the hell out of his chest and everything that was in it.”

“Manner of death.”

I saw Joe’s evil smile even in the smoky shadow of the store’s lights. “Natural causes.”

“I have ten bucks left, Joe. You can have a bucket of chicken wings or whatever else ten bucks will get you. That’s it.”

“Nando’s Chicken is just a block up from the city morgue.” His smile twisted even more.

“We have no car, Joe.” My eyes went to the Malibu, still draped with its large human ornament.

Joe fished out his car keys and tossed them to me. “Take mine. I’ll ride in the ambulance.”

“Joe…” I said slowly.

A shadow slid over his face, erasing the levity. His shoulders sagged and he sighed.

“I think he had a pacemaker but I can’t be sure. I don’t want to go burrowing through his chest out here.”

“Pacemakers don’t explode inside a patient’s chest.” I was taken aback.

He shook his head. “This one did. Or at least I think that’s what happened.”

“A silent explosion?” Ken asked.

“Revolutionary,” Joe said, giving him a troubled nod.

“Pacemakers aren’t installed into a patient’s chest under a great deal of pressure. Not the kind that would do this,” I said.

“Like I said, revolutionary. It not only exploded inside his chest but also damn well liquefied his internal organs. It had to be filled with something powerful, corrosive, though I can’t think of anything that would do that to a man’s organs so quickly.”

We had enough reasons to follow Joe and the ambulance to the city morgue. A pacemaker that would result in the kind of damage he had suggested was highly suspicious. I wondered whether any patient would voluntarily let a doctor insert such a deadly device into his chest.

We were frequent visitors at Nando’s Chicken. We got quick service but for once, I didn’t appreciate haste. It only got us to the morgue that much faster.

“Whatever it was, it had to be filled with a powerful toxin,” Joe said, as he rummaged through the food bags.

“Standard precautions?” I asked, already resigned to a short life.

“No need. Whatever it was had burned out seconds after it made a mess of him. It was that quick and potent.” He took a drumstick and circled the table with Brick’s body.

Most forensic pathologists shied away from lifting human bulk. That’s why they had dieners.

Joe was an exception. He had a hobby—popular mechanics. Under his rule, the morgue was a cybernetic heaven. He had installed electronic gadgets to move the bodies. Everything in the morgue was mechanically controlled and operated. He liked to push buttons, move levers and twist knobs. He delighted in turning screws and poking plates. All such motion produced results—rotation, tilt, slide, angle, roll and slither. He could spare one hand on food while doing his job with the other.

I heard a whispering noise. The table with Brick’s body rotated so Joe could examine the chest. We moved to the other side.

I wondered what I had touched when I pressed down on Brick’s body because I saw only remnants of tissue and bone, swimming in red mud, drying up.

This was not dissolution of nondurable parts of the body. It was just as Joe said, instant liquefaction.

“Could he have walked fifty feet after his chest exploded?” Ken asked.

Joe gave him a “You from Mars?” look and said. “One second and his mind registers that there’s something amiss. Two seconds and whatever’s happening in his chest is powerful enough to lift him of the ground and three seconds later, he is lying like roadkill on the hood of your car.”

“So he must have changed his mind when he got out at the gas station and headed for the convenience store,” Ken speculated.

Joe nodded. “He made it to your passenger side fender when it hit.”

“Would he be able to run and could he have been running?” Ken wanted to know.

“Sure—run, swim, climb—he probably lived a normal life. Well, as normal as any man who has that kind of nasty shit planted in his chest. It may have been a pacemaker but it wasn’t for medical reasons.”

“How could you tell that he had a pacemaker?” I asked.

His finger hovered above the chest, in the vicinity of the victim’s heart. “This is the focus of trauma. It started from here and spread quickly, whatever it was that consumed tissue and bone. I’d say thirty seconds post activation the toxic agent was no longer the strength that would pose harm to the living. I don’t think it was an aerial agent. It didn’t linger or mix with blood. Your hands are all right. It would have eaten through the gloves if it was still active. It wasn’t. It was flat by then. What I saw happening was just the tail end of a chain reaction, the kind you can’t stop once it starts. The substance reacted in a flash. It became inert in an incredibly short span of time. I don’t know anything, medical or experimental, that can do that.”

“But why a pacemaker?” I insisted. Mysterious substances were Joe’s territory. “Why not a bullet, or some other projectile?”

“Too small. From the amount of damage, it would have to be a very hefty bullet. I’m sticking with an implant device, explosive and filled with unknown poison. No projectile.”

“You just don’t want to be dragged into another argument about walking ghosts,” Ken murmured. He had often argued with Joe about people who lived for years with imbedded projectiles inside their body.

“He could have been a walking ghost.” Joe tilted his head, holding the drumstick. “That’s what it had to be. He had to walk with that shit in him for some time.”

I wondered whether I should spoil his midnight snack and tell him that the victim had been missing for four years. I looked at Ken. He blinked. I understood.

“Have you read any good medical research journals lately, Joe?” Ken asked. Keeping abreast of the latest bizarre medical inventions was another one of Joe’s hobbies.

Joe tossed the drumstick behind him. It landed on a gurney. “Whatever that shit was, it didn’t come from Johns Hopkins, not legally that’s for sure. I’m going to biop the tissues and send the blood samples over but I don’t think there’s anything there to find anymore. You go and work on his employment, hobbies, friends, family—a name might be nice to have too.”

“Jonathan Anderson Brick, age thirty-five,” Ken said. “His wallet was in his jeans. The car ownership, registration and insurance were in his car.”

“There you go,” Joe exclaimed happily. “You’ve got more than enough to start pounding the pavement, looking for the nasty person who executed him.”

“Executed?” we echoed.

Joe smirked. “What he had implanted into his chest wouldn’t be cheap. It shouldn’t malfunction. Hell, our military would be rattled to know that someone can do that sort of thing—you know, long-distance and on command. He probably knew it was stuck in there but didn’t know how to get rid of it. Even a crooked veterinarian would be tempted to report that kind of strange device to the police. He must have known and couldn’t tell anyone.” He looked down at Brick’s sharp profile, eyes now closed.

“Kidnapped, tortured—and executed,” I murmured.

“Four years between kidnap and execution,” Ken whispered back. Joe heard him.

“What do you mean four years?” His head reared and his features stiffened.

I nodded at the body. “Mr. Jonathan Anderson Brick is a cold case in the truest sense of the word. Four years ago, he went out for popcorn and pop to a 7-Eleven and never returned to his fiancé, waiting for him on a couch in front of a TV.”

We went outside to hail a taxi.

“Do you think Joe will ever go into a 7-Eleven again?” Ken asked, grinning.

“Probably not,” I chuckled, remembering the pathologist’s shocked stare. “I should have said Nando’s Chicken. It would have saved us a lot of money.”

Chapter 3

T
he morning clocked in with all the appropriate stress of having guests. Jazz didn’t want to set a good example and take down the tent. I stopped Mrs. Tavalho from doing it

“Clean up or you’re grounded for the rest of the month,” I said inhospitably. The girls shrank away. I had four hours of sleep and equal amount of fury burning inside me.

“I don’t hear any voice. Do you?” Jazz ignored me. She turned to her friends for support.

“Jasmine, take down the tent and clean up the living room or there will be no breakfast for you—or your guests.”

“I’m an orphan and orphans make their own breakfast,” she declared and moved for the kitchen.

I was about to lose it. Mrs. Tavalho saw it and touched my arm. She offered compromise. She would help with the tent removal and the breakfast, while I should go check my messages. She heard my cell phone buzzing in my purse.

She was a wise woman. She knew why Jazz was so difficult lately.

It wasn’t just the father issue but roots—mine. I was well aware that the grade four had a new course, genealogical studies but it didn’t diminish my resistance to give out information on this dangerous topic. I told Jazz that she should consider herself lucky to have a caring, devoted parent—her mother. These last few weeks, there hadn’t been a moment of truce between us.

I returned Ken’s message. I would pick him up in my Acura. Mrs. Tavalho had a car and the kids would be picked up by a school bus.

“Was I named after someone in our family?” Jazz welcomed me to the breakfast table.

I ignored her question. “I’ll leave you a message on your cell phone before three o’clock, to let you know whether I’m going to be late again today. If I can’t make it home before five, you have the key. Have the sandwich Mrs. Travalho prepared and put in the fridge. I’ll pick up something on my way home—or we’ll order a pizza.”

“I’ll stay until you make it,” the housekeeper said. “Don’t worry.”

“My partner and I just fell into a blender. It’s not promising to be something that we can close quickly.”

“I’ve done my gardening early,” she said. “There’s nothing to do for a while. My family doesn’t need me to pitch in. I don’t mind.”

I was grateful but it was time to leave the house before the other shoe dropped.

I made it to the door.

“There are agencies that help search for kids and parents who want to find each other,” Jasmine’s voice floated after me.

“Make sure you mind your manners when you’re dealing with agencies and government people, or you won’t get any cooperation,” I said and ran.

I lived on Dellwood Avenue, just west of Johns Hopkins University. Ken lived further west, on Ulman Avenue. It took me ten minutes to get there. Brenda lived east of the University. Ken claimed that it was a balancing act—and the main reason why they haven’t moved in together after fourteen years of ‘dating.’ It allowed him to see the sunrise and the sunset. I wondered whether he got to see both at the same time.

We took the 83 downtown, exited at East Fayette and five minutes later, were in our parking lot.

Our Unit Supervisor, Ernst Miel, had retired in January. The Homicide administration had decided not to fill this position. On an interim basis, we reported to Newton Bourke, one of the three Shift Commanders. He was fifty-three and had learned most of life’s hard lessons from experience, not books or hearsay. His thoughts took the shortest path to become words. Had he not liked to speak his mind, he would have made captain by now. His gruffness was textured with humor and all those who had worked for him over the years, liked him.

“I heard you struck pay-dirt last night. It’s going to be a long time before you get to wash your car,” Bourke greeted Ken. He continued. “A curious situation. A scorching-hot homicide but it’s yours. I can’t remember when a cold case came back to life, only to leave it in a hurry…or whatever it was Joe had said…victim drowned in his own liquefied tissues. And that’s after his pacemaker slam-dunked him on to the hood of your car,” Bourke nodded at Ken.

“Did Joe come up with something new?” I murmured.

Bourke grimaced. “Yes. But I don’t need a medical examiner to get me fired. I can do that by myself well enough. All I have to do is march into Halpern’s office and lay him out with an uppercut. I might even enjoy that. What the hell is a battery-powered micro-shock hammer trigger?”

I looked at Ken and sighed. “Joe went to catch up on the latest developments in medical journals, probably right after we left. He must have flown over to Hopkins, delivering those tissue and blood samples by hand,” I said.

“I’m not even going to print out that preliminary report he e-mailed me,” Bourke threatened. “A gadget, similar to a pacemaker, had been implanted in the victim’s chest. This alien marvel contained a triggering device—this battery-powered micro-shock hammer—which, when a signal was given, sparked and blew up the victim’s chest. What kind of immediate cause of death is that?” he demanded.