Wild Fire (22 page)

“I understand. Meanwhile, drive now to the airport and wait for a helicopter to pick you up. A state trooper will meet you there with Harry’s cameras, which you will bring to 26 Fed—”

“Hold on,” I said. “We’re not leaving here until this investigation is complete.”

“You’re coming back to Manhattan, tonight. I’ll be here—”

“Tom, excuse me, you need
your
people on the scene.”

“Thank you. I know that. In fact, two people from this office will be on that helicopter. You, Detective Corey, are off this case, and so is Kate. Return immediately. Meanwhile, Headquarters is on hold, and I don’t have the time or patience to—”

“Neither do I. Let me give this to you straight, Tom. Number one, Harry Muller was my friend. Two, you wanted my ass on that assignment, and I could now be lying in that morgue instead of him. Three, I think he was murdered, and four, if you pull me off this case, I’m going to make a stink that they’ll smell in the Justice Department.”

“Are you threatening me with something?”

“Yes. Five, you sent that man into a fortified camp with no clue about what was there—hell, I just left this place, and a Delta Team couldn’t penetrate it, and you either knew that or should have known it. Six, Harry Muller went in there carrying his credentials and no plausible cover story. How long have you been doing this for a living?”

He was really hot and yelled, “Let me tell
you
something—”

“No, let me tell
you
something, Einstein. You totally fucked up. But you know what? I’ll go to bat for you when the shit hits the fan. Why? Because I like you? No, because you are right now going to tell me to stay here and stay on the case. If you don’t, my next stop after 26 Fed will be Washington. You understand?”

It took him about four seconds to understand, and he said, “You make a compelling argument for your continued work on the case. But so help me God, Corey, if you—”

“You were doing fine until ‘so help me God.’ Quit while you’re even.”

“I will
get
even.”

“You’ll be lucky if you don’t get sent to Wichita.” I said, “I’ll let you and Kate have the last word.”

Kate was really shaken up and she said to Walsh, “I have to agree with John that Harry’s assignment was not well thought out, and not well handled.” She added, “That
could
have been my husband lying in the morgue.”

Walsh didn’t respond to that and said instead, “I need to speak to Headquarters. Anything further?”

Kate said, “No.”

He said, “Get over to the state police in Ray Brook, and call me from there.”

He hung up, and we both sat in silence for a while on the side of the road. I could hear birds in the woods, and the sound of the engine idling.

Finally, Kate said, “I was afraid we’d get that news.”

I didn’t reply, lost in my own thoughts about Harry Muller, who’d sat across from me for about three years; two former cops, working as strangers in a strange land called 26 Federal Plaza.
Body shipped back to New York City for an autopsy, funeral home Thursday and Friday, and Mass and burial on Saturday.

Kate took my hand and said, “I just can’t believe this . . .”

For months after 9/11, I attended wakes, funerals, Masses, and memorial services, day and night, sometimes three in a day. Everyone I knew was on this insane, soul-numbing schedule, and as the weeks went by, I’d run into the same people at funeral homes, churches, synagogues, and cemeteries, and we’d all just look at one another with eyes that were beyond expression; the shock and trauma were fresh, but the funerals started to blur into one another, and the only difference was the grief-stricken family who never looked the same as the last grief-stricken family, and then the widows and kids would show up at some other cop’s funeral to pay their respects, and they became part of the crowd of mourners. It was a gut-wrenching and surreal time, black months, with black caskets and black shrouds, and black mourning bands on shiny badges, and black mornings after a night of too much drinking.

I can still remember the shrill of the bagpipe bands, the final salute, and the casket . . . more often than not containing not much more than a body part . . . being lowered into the grave.

Kate said, “John, let me drive.”

Harry and I had gone to some of the funerals together, and I recalled that at Dom Fanelli’s funeral Mass, out on the steps of the church, Harry had said to me, “When a cop thinks about getting killed on the job, he thinks about some dumb dirtbag who’s having a lucky day. Who would’ve thought something like this could happen right here?”

Kate asked, “John? Are you all right?”

I remembered, too, Dom’s mother, Marion Fanelli, conducting herself with great dignity, almost ignored in the crowd as everyone focused on Dom’s wife and kids, and Harry said to me, “Let’s go talk to her. She’s alone.”

And that reminded me that Harry’s mother was still alive, and I made a mental note to add her to the list of people who should be officially notified with a chaplain in attendance.

Kate had gotten out of the car and opened my door. She took my arm and said, “I’m driving.”

I got out and we changed places.

Kate put the car in gear, and we continued on in silence.

The sky above was still light, but the road was in deep shadow, and the forest on either side was black. Now and then, I could see glassy eyes shining in the dark woods, or a small animal scurrying across the road. Around a bend, a deer was trapped in our headlights, and he stood there, half petrified and half shaking in fear before bolting into the woods.

Kate said, “We should be at the state police headquarters in about an hour.”

After ten minutes, I said, “Harry’s assignment made no sense.”

“John, don’t think about it.”

“He could have seen and photographed cars on this road. One way in, one way out. He didn’t have to go onto the property.”

“Please don’t think about it. There’s nothing you can do about it now.”

“That’s why I have to think about it.”

She glanced at me and asked, “Do you really think it was Bain Madox?”

“The circumstantial evidence, and my instincts, say yes, but I need more than that before I kill him.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

W
e came to Route 56, which went south, back toward Saranac Lake and the state police headquarters in Ray Brook, or north toward Potsdam and the morgue where Harry should have arrived by now.

Kate started to turn for Ray Brook, but I said, “Turn right. Let’s go see Harry.”

She reminded me, “Tom said to go—”

“You can’t go too far wrong doing the opposite of what Tom Walsh says.”

She hesitated, then turned toward Potsdam.

Within ten minutes, we passed the brown sign that said we were leaving Adirondack State Park.

A few miles later, we were in South Colton, where I saw Rudy talking to someone who was pumping his own gas. I said to Kate, “Pull in here.”

She turned the car into the gas station. I leaned out the window and called, “Hey, Rudy!”

He came over to the car and asked me, “Hey, how’d you make out there?”

“The ice maker is fixed. I told Mr. Madox what you said about getting the money up front, and he paid me cash.”

“Uh . . . you wasn’t supposed to—”

“He’s very pissed at you, Rudy.”

“Ah, jeez, you wasn’t supposed to—”

“He wants to see you—tonight.”

“Oh, jeez . . .”

“I need to get to the county hospital in Potsdam.”

“Uh . . . yeah . . . well, you just follow 56 north.” He gave me directions to the hospital, and I said to him, “When you see Madox, tell him John Corey is also very good with a gun.”

“Okay . . .”

Kate pulled back onto the road, and we continued toward Potsdam. She said, “That sounded like a threat.”

“To a guilty man, it’s a threat. To an innocent man, it’s an odd statement.”

She didn’t reply.

The terrain had opened up, and I could see houses and small farms now. The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows over the rolling hills.

Neither Kate nor I said much; there’s something about the expectation of seeing a dead body that keeps the conversation subdued.

I kept thinking about Harry Muller, and it was hard for me to believe he was dead. I replayed my last conversation with him, and I wondered if I’d had a bad feeling about his assignment or if what happened since then made me think that. You never know. But I did know that whether or not I’d had this feeling of foreboding on Friday, I definitely had it now.

Within twenty minutes, we drove into the pleasant college town of Potsdam, where we found the Canton-Potsdam Hospital at the north end of town.

We parked in the lot and entered the small red-brick building through the front doors.

There was an information desk in the lobby, and I identified myself and asked the info lady where the morgue was located. She directed us to the surgical unit that she said doubled as the morgue. This did not speak well for the staff surgeons, and if I had been in a better mood, I’d have made a joke about that.

We turned down a few corridors and found the nurses’ station at the surgical unit.

There were two uniformed state troopers chatting up the nurses, and Kate and I showed our credentials. I said, “We’re here to ID Harry Muller. Are you with the body?”

One of the troopers replied, “Yes, sir. We accompanied the ambulance.”

“Anyone else here?”

“No, sir. You’re the first.”

“Who else are you expecting?”

“Well, some FBI guys from Albany, and some guys from the State Bureau of Investigation.”

We weren’t going to have much time alone with the body before we had company. I asked, “Is the medical examiner here?”

“Yes, sir. She did a preliminary examination of the body and cataloged the personal effects. She’s waiting for the state police and FBI.”

“Okay. We’d like to see the body.”

“I’ll need you both to sign in.”

I didn’t want to sign in, so I said, “We’re not here officially. The deceased was our colleague and friend. We’re paying our respects.”

“Oh . . . sorry . . . sure.”

He led us to a big steel door that was marked OR.

The body of a homicide victim is considered a crime scene that needs to be secured, and the chain of evidence needs to be maintained; thus, the presence of the two state troopers and the sign-in sheet, which led me to conclude that someone other than Kate and I thought this was not a hunting accident.

The trooper opened the door and said, “You first.”

I replied, “We’d like to be alone to pay our respects.”

The trooper hesitated. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I need to be—”

“I understand. Can you do me a favor and ask the medical examiner to meet us here? We’ll wait.”

“Sure.”

He disappeared around a corner, and I opened the door. We entered the makeshift morgue.

The big operating room was brightly lit, and in the middle of the room was a steel table on which a body lay covered with a blue shroud.

On either side of the table was a gurney. One held Harry’s clothes, laid out as they would be worn: boots, socks, thermal underwear, trousers, shirt, jacket, and knit cap.

On the other gurney were Harry’s personal effects, and I could see the cameras, binoculars, maps, cell phone, wallet, watch, a pair of wire cutters, and so forth. On his key chain were ignition keys for his government vehicle, a Pontiac Grand Am, and his private vehicle, a Toyota. But no key for whatever kind of camper he had been driving. I assumed that the camper key was with the state police or the CSI team so they could move his camper. His gun and credentials would be with the troopers outside.

The room smelled of disinfectant, formaldehyde, and other unpleasant things, so I went over to a cabinet and found a tube of Vicks, which is a standard item in a place where cadavers are cut up. I squeezed some of the mentholated jelly on Kate’s finger and said, “Smear this under your nose.”

She smeared it on her upper lip and took a deep breath. I don’t normally use the stuff, but it’d been a while since I’d been around a stiffening body, so I, too, put some under my nose.

I found a box of latex gloves, we each slipped on a pair, and I said to Kate, “Let’s take a look. Okay?”

She nodded.

I went to the table and pulled the blue sheet down from the face.

Harry Muller.

I said to myself,
Sorry, pal.

His face was dirty because he’d fallen face-first on the trail, and his lips were slightly parted, but I saw no grimace, or any indication that he’d been in agony, so death had come quickly. We should all be so lucky when we’re that unlucky.

His eyes were wide open, so I pushed the lids closed.

I pulled the sheet down to his waist and saw a big gauze pad taped over his heart. There was very little blood on his body, so the bullet had stopped the heart almost immediately.

I noticed the lividity of his skin—the pooling of the blood on the front of his body, confirming he’d fallen face-first and died in that position.

I lifted his left arm. Rigor usually sets in within eight to twelve hours, and there was almost no flex in his muscles, but neither was his arm totally rigid. Also, from the appearance of the skin, and the general state of the body, I’d say death had occurred twelve to twenty-four hours ago. To take it a step further, if this was a premeditated murder, it had probably been done at night to minimize the chance of discovery during the commission of the crime. Therefore, it probably happened last night.

Assuming Madox did this, he probably waited for someone to find the body and report it to the police. When that didn’t happen by this afternoon, he or an accomplice phoned it in from a park phone, thereby taking the heat off himself before the search of his property began.

In fact, while Kate and I were sitting with him, he was probably wondering why his phone tip hadn’t turned up the body yet, and he was getting nervous.

I examined Harry’s wrist and thumb, and saw no evidence of restraints, though often there are no marks.

I took Harry’s left hand in mine and examined the palm, fingernails, and knuckles. The hands can sometimes tell you something that the coroner, who is usually more interested in organs and trauma, misses, but I saw nothing unusual, only dirt.

I glanced at Kate, who seemed to be holding up okay, then I came around the table and took Harry’s right hand and looked at it.

A female voice said, “Can I loan you my scalpel?”

Kate and I turned to see a woman at the door dressed in surgical scrubs. She was about thirty, petite, with short red hair. As she moved closer, I saw she had freckles and blue eyes. Actually, baggy blue scrubs aside, she was cute. She said, “I’m Patty Gleason, the county coroner. I assume you’re the FBI people.”

I pulled off my latex glove and extended my hand. “Detective John Corey, Anti-Terrorist Task Force.”

We shook, and I introduced FBI Special Agent Kate Mayfield, remembering to add, “Kate is also Mrs. Corey.”

Kate further added, “I’m also Detective Corey’s supervisor.”

Dr. Gleason suggested, “Maybe you can tell him not to handle the body without a medical examiner present. Or maybe not handle it at all.”

I apologized but informed her, “I did this for twenty years in New York City.”

“You’re not in New York City.”

We were off on the wrong foot, but then Kate said, “The deceased was a friend of ours.”

Dr. Gleason softened. “I’m sorry.” She turned to Kate. “What does this have to do with terrorism?”

“Nothing. Harry was also a colleague on the Task Force, and he was up here hiking, and we’ve come to identify the body.”

“I see. And have you made a positive identification?”

“We have,” Kate answered. “What’s your preliminary finding?”

“Well, from what I can see from the external wounds, a bullet passed through his spinal column, then through his heart, and he died almost instantly. He probably felt nothing, and if he did, it was for only a second or two. He was basically dead before he hit the ground.”

I nodded and observed, “In all my years as a cop, I’ve never seen a perfect shot through the spine and heart that was an accident.”

Dr. Gleason didn’t comment for a few seconds, then said, “As a surgeon and coroner, I’ve seen about a hundred hunting-accident wounds, and I’ve never seen one quite like this either. But it
can
happen.” She asked, “You’re thinking it was homicide?”

I replied, “We’re not ruling it out.”

She nodded. “That’s what I hear.”

Some medical examiners like to play detective, like on TV, but most stick strictly to the facts. Not knowing Patty Gleason, I asked, “Did you find anything that would indicate a homicide?”

“I’ll show you what I found, and you can take it from there.”

She went over to the supply cabinet, snapped on a pair of gloves, then gave me a fresh glove and said, “I see you’ve already found the Vicks.”

She motioned toward the two gurneys. “I’ve removed and cataloged everything for placement into evidence bags by the FBI. Do you want to go over the inventory and sign for this stuff?”

Kate replied, “There are other agents on the way who need to list everything on what we call the green sheet.”

I said to Dr. Gleason, “Let’s look at the body.”

She moved beside the gurney and pulled the taped gauze off Harry’s chest, removing some hair and revealing a big, gaping hole. “As you can see, this is the exit wound. I used a lighted 7X magnifier and observed bits of bone, soft tissue, and blood, all in minute quantities and consistent with the passage of a high-velocity, large- or medium-caliber bullet through the vertebrae, heart, and sternum.”

She went on for a while, clinically describing the end of a human life. She concluded, “As you know, I’m not doing the autopsy, but I doubt there’s much more an autopsy is going to show in regard to the cause of death.”

I said to her, “We’re more interested in the events that led up to the moment of death.” I asked, “Did you notice anything unusual?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.” She put her finger on Harry’s chest, an inch from the edge of the ragged exit wound, and said, “I noticed here . . . can you see that?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s a small puncture wound. Obviously made before death. I probed it, and it’s deep into the muscle tissue. I also examined his shirt and thermal top, and there seem to be corresponding holes, and what appears to be a small bloodstain, so this object—possibly a hypodermic needle—was pushed hard through his clothing and into his pectoral muscle. I can’t say if anything was injected, but toxicology should be able to tell us.”

Dr. Gleason continued, “And here are two more puncture wounds on his right forearm. No blood or corresponding holes on his clothing. Nor did I find a hypodermic needle in his possession, and I assume he wasn’t medicating himself through his shirt.”

I asked her, “What do you make of those puncture wounds?”

“You’re the detective.”

“Right.” I thought that the first puncture wound was the one in the chest, through his clothing, which meant it was probably a sedative, administered while he was struggling, or maybe administered from an animal tranquilizer gun.
If it’s off-season, we just tranquilize them and relocate them.
The other two, through the bare skin, were hypodermics, given to keep him sedated. I also wondered if it was sodium pentathol, truth serum, but I kept my thoughts to myself, and said, “I’ll think about it.”

She continued, “I want to show you two more things that lead me to believe there may have been some other unusual events or incidents leading up to the time of death.”

We watched her move around the table toward Harry’s head. Little Patty Gleason put her hands under Harry’s shoulders and pushed his big torso forward into a sitting position, which caused some gas to escape. Kate drew a startled breath. Coroners, I’ve noticed, are not gentle with the deceased, and there’s no reason why they should be, though I’m always surprised at how they handle a body.

I could see the entry wound now, dead center through his spinal column and in line with his heart. I tried to picture how it happened: Harry was probably still drugged and positioned on the trail, standing or kneeling, by a person or persons while the shooter stood close enough to get a perfect shot, but not close enough for the muzzle blast to leave burns or powder fragments. Or, Harry had been lying down someplace else when he was shot and then moved to the trail. But that was too amateurish, and any CSI team would see that.