Wife or Death (13 page)

The district attorney gargled something.

That evening Denton phoned Corinne to see how she was holding up. She sounded depressed, but said she was managing. She had already made the arrangements for George's funeral. It was to be from Gerard's Funeral Home at 2 P.M. Tuesday. The Methodist minister was conducting the service.

“Angel's is that morning,” Denton said. “I don't suppose you plan to attend that.”

“Jim, I couldn't face two funerals the same day.”

“Of course not, Corinne—I was just asking. I'll be at George's, of course. Have you arranged for anyone to stay with you tonight?”

“Mother and Katie will be in from Cleveland at eleven P.M. They're flying as far as Erie, then taking the bus. George's parents will be here tomorrow morning, and his brother Fred gets in tomorrow night.”

“May I meet your mother and sister at the bus?”

“Thanks, Jim, but I've already arranged for one of Mac's taxis to be there. You have enough troubles without bothering with mine.”

“It's no bother,” Denton protested. “I want to help you.”

“There's nothing to do, Jim. I'll see you at the funeral.”

“All right,” he sighed. “Good night.”

Sunday he did not stir from his house except to run over to Gerard's Funeral Home with Angel's photograph.

On Sunday evening Western Union phoned him a wire from Titusville. It was from Angel's father. No one in the family would be able to attend the funeral, but “we are sending flowers.”

So Stanislaus Koblowski had never forgiven her for running away from home, and his Old World morality pursued the vendetta beyond the grave. Denton felt a momentary sympathy with Angel's mother. This must have hit her hard. But then he shrugged. There was nothing he could do about it.

On Monday morning Denton was at his desk at 7:30, as usual. At 9 o'clock he said to old Case, “Amos, I'm afraid you're going to have to pretty much run things for the next couple of days.”

“Who runs 'em when you're on vacation?” the old printer asked dourly. “Take all the time you want,” he added in an altogether different tone. “And don't worry about a thing, Jim.”

As Denton crossed the square to the courthouse, it occurred to him that Amos Case had not been referring to the state of the
Clarion
.

Well, he thought, I have some friends left in Ridgemore.

15

Denton paused on the county court house steps and waited. The gargantuan form of August Spile was lumbering up the street from the direction of his home. The chief always walked to work in the hope that the exercise would reduce him. It never did, because the ounces it took off were replaced with interest by his sharpened appetite at lunch.

They entered the building together.

Sergeant Harley said, “A messenger from the hospital just brought this over.” He handed the chief a large manila envelope.

In Spile's office the big man seated himself at his desk, indicated a chair, opened the manila envelope and drew out two double sheets of paper. He glanced over them quickly, then handed one to Denton and began reading the other.

In spite of himself, Denton shivered.

The first page of his double sheet was headed in large block letters: POST MORTEM EXAMINATION. Below this was printed in smaller letters:
Upon the body of
: and typed in the blank space following that was: “Angel Denton.”

Immediately under this there were several spaces for statistical data in which were listed her age, color, sex, height, weight and the color of her hair and eyes.

The first printed item following was
External Appearance
. After this was typed: “The body is in a median state of decomposition and had been molested by some small, fanged animal after death, possibly a fox or wild dog. There is a large stomach wound in the right lower quadrant such as would have been made by a shotgun blast. Traces of cordite in and about the wound, as well as the relatively localized area of the wound, indicate that the weapon was fired at close range, probably not more than four to six feet.”

The rest of the report, two pages on both sides, was filled with medical terminology which boiled down to nothing more than had been already said under
External Appearance
:—Angel had been killed by a shotgun blast.

Under
Remarks
there were two pointed items. From the number and weight of the recovered pellets, it had been determined that the murder weapon was a twelve-gauge shotgun. And death was estimated to have occurred ten days to two weeks before recovery of the body.

Since Angel had been missing twelve days when her body was found, and considering the other circumstances, it seemed likely that she had died during the night of her disappearance. And that's real progress, Denton thought sourly. He had assumed it from the start.

The chief was a slow reader, and Denton waited. When Spile was finished, they exchanged reports. The other report was on George Guest.

The medical terminology was much fancier than in the first. Denton skipped to the last item:
Cause of Death
. Typed after this heading was: “Multiple contusion of the pericardium and myocardium resulting from depressed fracture of thoracic cage and sternum. See
Remarks
.”

Glancing upward one section to
Remarks
, Denton read: “Time of death pinpointed with reasonable accuracy by the stage of digestion of a meal established as having been consumed at 6 P.M. preceding time of death. Death occurred between 1:30 A.M. and 2 A.M. However, this in no way establishes the time of the accident, as subject was not killed instantly and may have lain unconscious in the wreck for a number of hours.”

A second paragraph under
Remarks
seemed to be the one referred to under
Cause of Death
. It read: “Several of the multiple injuries could have caused eventual death, but the heart damage shown under
Cause of Death
is believed to be the immediate cause. See
Skull
and
Torso
. These injuries all seem to have occurred simultaneously.”

Denton went back to page one, which provided spaces for separate reports on each part of the anatomy. After
Skull
appeared the typed words: “Fine linear fracture extending from parietal bone through petrous portion of sphenoid bone extending into foramen magnum. Some external ecchymosis and contusion.”

Further down, under
Torso
, there was a mess of medical terminology that made even less sense to Denton. His best guess was that it detailed assorted internal injuries.

He tossed the report concerning George Guest on the chief's desk. When Spile looked up from the report on Angel, Denton said, “Do you understand all this double-talk, Augie?”

“Enough to get the general picture. Your wife was killed by a shotgun blast, George died of a crushed chest. Don't see how he could have been dead when he went over that bank. Looks like the accident killed him, all right.”

Denton frowned. “He could have been unconscious when he went off the road. You notice the item under
Skull
?”

Picking up the report on George Guest, Spile glanced at the indicated section and shrugged. “So his head got banged up. Be almighty queer if it hadn't been. He had bruises and cuts all over him.”

Denton rose. “Well, I'm going over to the hospital, Augie. I'd like Dr. Olsen to explain these reports in language I can understand.”

Augie Spile said with a weak chuckle, “Sure, Jim. And let me know if he says anything
I
can understand.” Then, as Denton neared the door, the police chief cleared his throat. “Oh, Jim.”

“Yes?” Denton said, looking back.

“You own a twelve-gauge shotgun?”

Denton deliberately turned around. “Yes. Doesn't everybody in town?”

“I reckon so. Yours been fired recently?”

Denton drew a key-case from his pocket, removed one of the keys and lobbed it onto the desk. “That's to my front door, Augie. The gun is in my closet in the north bedroom. And you have my permission to search the house for bloodstains while you're at it. Hang onto the key if you want. I have Angel's.”

“No call to get sore, Jim,” August Spile protested. “I got to investigate all possible angles. You know that.”

“I'm relieved to hear it,” Denton said sourly. “Then I assume that sooner or later you'll get around to questioning Matt Fallon and Norman Wyatt?”

The chief looked distressed. “Now, Jim. I'll get to 'em.”

Sure you will, Denton thought. When you find you can't build a case against
me
.

But then Denton decided that he was being unfair. Augie Spile had no reason to lay off Matthew Fallon, and while he might be reluctant to go after Norman Wyatt, he would eventually do so in spite of his reluctance. This was a big deal for old Augie—too big, and Augie knew it. He was feeling his way.

“I'm sorry, Augie,” Denton said. “Guess I'm pretty edgy these days. See you.” Chief Spile actually looked grateful.

Across from the morgue room Denton found the door lettered
Pathology Department, Dr. Horace Olsen
. He opened it and went in.

The pathologist for the county was a grayish man with a stoop, in his early sixties. Dr. Olsen was not a native of Ridgemore, but he was in the country club set and Denton had played golf with him and met him at various civic and social functions. He greeted Denton rather nervously, Denton thought, and indicated a chair.

“Chief Spile just showed me your post-mortem reports on my wife and George Guest, Doctor. There's something I'd like to ask you about the Guest report.”

“I have a copy right here, Denton.” The pathologist drew a manila folder to him. “I'm not sure—” he began.

Denton smiled. “Check with Augie Spile. Anyway, I have a twin-barreled right and interest—I'm the Ridgemore press, and I'm the widower of one of the parties.”

“Well.” Olsen smiled back. “What do you want to know?”

“Under
Skull
you describe some sort of head injury, which I take it a layman would call a skull fracture.”

Glancing at the Guest report, the doctor nodded.

“Dr. Olsen, I think George's death was rigged to look like an accident—in other words, that it wasn't an accident at all. My theory is that he was knocked on the head at a prior time and place, and that later the car containing his unconscious but living body was pushed over that embankment. Could it have happened that way?”

“Oh, yes. The degree of epidural hematoma over the temporal lobe and the extent of the brain damage indicated a blow to the head severe enough to cause unconsciousness and, eventually, death. But it was not the immediate cause of death.”

“But is there any way to prove my theory medically?”

“I would say no, Denton.”

“Could you go into your reasons for that opinion in language I can understand?” He tried not to let his disappointment show.

“Let me put it this way,” Dr. Olsen said patiently. “If a prior blow had killed him instantly, it would be a simple enough matter to prove your hypothesis pathologically, because the car injuries in that case would have occurred after death—and injuries sustained after death are easily determinable as such. Conversely, had the car injuries killed him instantly, we might be able to show, by certain pathological differences in the character of the damaged bone and tissue, that a non-lethal blow to the head was struck some time before the car-induced death occurred.”

When Denton looked doubtful, the pathologist continued hastily, “What I mean is, neither of the above occurred. So all we can say is that Guest was still alive after the car fell, alive but unconscious. And he lay in the wreckage, unconscious, for some time before he died. Possibly for hours.”

“Then it could have happened either way—is that right, Dr. Olsen? That is, my theory of a prior blow is just as plausible medically as the death-by-car-accident theory?”

“That's right. Smashing his head against the door frame as his car tumbled down the bank could account for what we found. But so could a smash with a jack handle half an hour before. We just have no way of telling which actually happened.”

“Thanks.” Denton rose. “Will you do me a favor, Doctor?”

“Depends,” the pathologist said with a smile.

“Phone Chief Spile and tell him what you've just told me.”

16

Denton returned to the
Clarion
office.

“Thought you weren't coming back,” Amos Case grunted. “Don't you trust me, Mr. Publisher?”

“Oh, shut up, Amos. I'll be in and out.”

At 11:30 he found himself rising from his desk. He sank back, debating with himself. He always left for lunch at 11:30 A.M., allotting himself a half hour so that Amos could eat at noon. But a half hour gave him only time to run into Jordan's Pik-U-Up; to go home, fix something for himself, eat it and get back by noon so as not to hold old Amos up was a temporal impossibility. What it got down to was: Eat at Jordan's, or don't eat. He had not been inside a Ridgemore restaurant since the discovery of Angel's blasted body. But he was hungry …

What in God's name am I doing? Denton thought angrily. Arguing with myself over a thing like that!

He grabbed his hat and stamped out.

Once in Jordan's, he was not so assertive. The lunch rush was still thirty minutes away; only two booths were occupied, a mere four or five people sat on the counter stools. The very fact that they were so few made him feel conspicuous. They all stared at him. One or two said, “Hi, Jim,” others nodded and began to whisper.

He found himself making for a rear booth and sitting down with his back to the restaurant. After the waitress took his sandwich-and-milk order he sat there sweating.

He heard two women approach and take the adjoining booth. Jordan's booths were high-backed; they had not spotted him, and they were shrill-voiced.