Drowning Barbie (5 page)

Chapter Nine

Tom Wexler had been hired as the county's newest medical examiner a little over two months earlier. He had not yet had a chance to assess the various actors in the area. Ike Schwartz especially seemed a puzzle to him. Half the time Ike sounded like one of the good ole boys, and the rest of the time he could pass for a faculty member from the local university. Tom preferred his cops to be slow and respectful and uncomplicated. Schwartz was certainly not slow and the respectful part was still up for grabs. He'd think about the complicated bit. He knew Schwartz had a story, but beyond that, little else. He'd had heard rumors but discounted them. Why would an ex-CIA agent become a small-town sheriff? He couldn't think of any reason, and with big-city wisdom on his side, he'd dismissed the thought.

Before moving to the Shenandoah Valley, Tom had served as assistant ME in Detroit, which at one time held the dubious title of Murder Capital of the World. That honor now rested with Juarez, Mexico, or Honduras. The honor seemed to have become a moving target. Tom believed the correct answer to the question of what city should bear the dubious title is Cabot Cove, but he received only a blank stare when he said so. How soon they forget. He also found that the rural pace of western Virginia took some getting used to. His desk, when he'd arrived, faced a window. He'd had it turned one hundred and eighty degrees after two days on the job. The valley's lush scenery and the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains had become a major distraction. Now he sat facing an orange-yellow-glazed brick wall adorned with official-looking paper Scotch-taped to its surface.

He rifled through the papers on his reoriented desk and stared at a blue computer screen. He pulled up the newly digitalized dental record he'd constructed of the dead man found in the woods who now occupied a drawer in his morgue. He would send the chart to the registry. If he were lucky, he might have an ID back in a few days.

It would be the first time he'd tried this—for him—relatively new technology, and he had no idea how well it would work, if at all. But he'd been assured at the recent forensic conference that if the subject had a dental record on file with the National Dental Imaging/Information Repository, an ID could be made. All this assumed that he'd correctly translated the dental information into the computer and that the dead man's record had found his way into the system at some time—a missing person, a perp. At the very least, the chart could confirm an identity. He compared the chart with the X-rays made. Satisfied that the chart correctly represented the teeth and that he'd done what he could; he punched the “send” button and sent the data sailing off through cyberspace to the NDI/IR and the FBI.

Next, he turned his attention to the toxicology screen made on the dead woman. No surprises there. Her bloodstream could have been distilled and sold as a one hundred-proof methamphetamine-alcohol tonic. He shook his head. Whoever clonked the old woman on the head after stabbing her could have saved time and a murder charge if he or she had waited another week. No one could survive much longer with titers of drugs and booze as high as those found in Ethyl Smut. Of course, druggies did have an amazing resilience to things that would kill an ordinary person. Somehow Darwin's theory of natural selection didn't work in the drug world. First-timers and the chronically stupid would frequently succumb on their first or second foray into that dark world, but hard-core stoners seemed indestructible. Then, just when it appeared they had super powers, their personal Kryptonite locked on and they imploded.

He closed the toxicology file and sorted through the rest of the tech's findings—fibers, clothing, estimates of the weapon used to stab her. Not much to work with. Most of what he had would confirm a killer, or method, but not lead to him or her. He envied those TV characters that could identify pollen from Patagonia with a click of the mouse, or clinch the ID of a killer by running a DNA test in twenty minutes on a sample of gummy bears taken from a garbage can. With that thought in mind, he remembered he wanted to order a DNA screen on the tissue scrap from the skeletal remains. It would be a long shot at best. Schwartz hadn't asked for it, and although it would put a dent in his budget that he might have difficulty justifying later, his gut told him it would be needed. He didn't know why. He claimed no extrasensory powers, but when his intuition spoke, he listened. Today it was nagging him to order the test.

***

Ike returned to his office alternately annoyed at Blake Fisher and admiring him for standing by his convictions. In a world committed to the homogenization forced on it by political correctness, the mediocrity of celebrity worship, and the cult of self-empowerment, a person standing on principle was a welcome rarity. He would not have objected if the good vicar had bent the rules this one time, however. A problem he believed solved now owlishly stared at him, daring him to find a quick and easy solution. There did not seem to be one.

He placed a notepad in front of him. Pen in hand he considered who and how many people he should include on his guest list. If there is one thing a man hates to do, party-planning would be near the top of the list. Party-planning, reading Christmas letters, pets wearing clothes, and drinks made with crème de menthe. He was okay with quiche.

The intern, who by now had acquired the label “TAK,” The Academy Kid, walked past his door. Ike called him in.

“How good are you with computer stuff?” Ike was not a Luddite, but his skill set in most things electronic was pretty much limited to pushing the I/O button and double-clicking icons.

“I get around the web,” TAK said.

“Our original geek installed some sophisticated software on our system and I want to know if you're good enough to run it.”

“Yeah, I scanned through some of your programs. ‘Sophisticated' isn't the half of it. You have enough stuff jammed into your box to start World War III.”

“To end it, maybe, but we'd never start it. Here—” Ike picked up the yellowed photo on his desk. “See if you can scan this in and run it through the facial recognition program. If this child ever entered the system, we may get a hit. I want know who left their antique trash in my father's barn. Also, run it through the program that ages people. How old would you say this picture is?”

TAK took the photo from Ike and turned it over. “Eleven years more or less. There's a date on the back.”

“Okay, I'm guessing the girl in the photo is five or six, so age her eleven years.”

“I don't know, Sheriff. I know computers as good as the next guy, but running that software might be beyond me.”

“TAK, do you know the first rule of police work?”

“Umm…which first rule would that be? The instructor who teaches forensics said the first rule was ‘Never screw up a crime scene until the ME clears it.' The range officer said the first rule is ‘Always use two hands.' The traffic instructor said—”

“Okay, I got it. So here's the first rule that trumps all previous first rules: ‘Fake it 'til you make it.'”

“What?”

“When you are faced with something new and unexpected, you can't wait for the experts to arrive. If you do that you will never get anything done and you may end up with some bullet holes in places you'd rather they weren't. You live by your wits on the streets, son. Do something. What's the worst thing that can happen here?”

“I could fail.”

“Fear failure and you flunk life. There, you can write that down and put it on your refrigerator or your Facebook—what did you call it?”

“Wall.”

“Exactly. Post it on your wall thing. Now go see what you can do.”

“Yes, sir.”

The intern wandered back to the converted cell where the Picketsville Sheriff's Office had assembled its electronic presence. Ike returned to the consideration of his guest list. The phone rang. With any luck, he thought, this will be a massive catastrophe of some sort that will require my undivided attention for the next twenty-four hours. After that, the list-making could be addressed with ample amounts of bourbon to make it doable. It was Ruth with a request. Close enough.

“Before we go this weekend, you need a haircut.”

“Thank you for that.”

“Thank me for…? Never mind, get a haircut.”

“Just one? Wouldn't it be better to get them all cut?”

“Don't be a smartass. Call Lee Henry and move your uniformed butt down the street.”

“I do not wear my uniform except on special occasions.”

“I stand corrected. Move your non-uniformed butt and get a haircut.”

Chapter Ten

Hannibal Colfax worked at the FBI as a career agent. He had survived the tag end of the Hoover years, not Hoover himself—he wasn't that old—but the residue, you could say. And he'd endured the succession of directors since. He understood the ramifications the politicization of the agency. Furthermore, he was old…well, getting old. His arthritis plagued him no matter how many Percocets he popped. His wife of forty years left him for a classmate from grammar school, and the children took her side in the divorce procedures. His coworkers knew all this and wondered why the kids chose their mother over him and consequently looked sideways at him. Hannibal was not a happy man. He walked toward the meeting room with a gait that signaled his aches and wore an expression that confirmed them.

The Dental Information/Imaging Repository isn't so much a place as it was an elaborate software program. It requires a few people to manage calls and to sort new submissions into the proper categories or to send them back to the submitting agency for clarification and correction. For Hannibal, it was the dead end that came before unceremonious retirement and a move to a rented apartment in a middling neighborhood and a bleak old age.

When the system worked, it provided a smooth, efficient, and cost-effective addition to the FBI's many services. Who could argue with an easily accessible system to help trace missing persons, identify victims, or even their killers? But it had its critics. While inexpensive, it still cost money to operate, and politicians, Hannibal knew, find expenditures they don't think are vote-getters easy targets for public displays of fiscal outrage. By the same token, and often it's the same politicians, they find enthusiastic support for the same program or service in times when a tragedy is avoided or a life is secured. The nature of politics in the twenty-first century, Hannibal thought, is that expediency trumps principle. With these dark, cynical thoughts in mind, he pushed through the door of the conference room to hear the latest from his section chief, a man half his age who commanded a quarter of his abilities.

“Congressman Trangant is annoyed at us again,” the section chief was saying. “Apparently the agency's Fraud Division has stepped on a few toes in a corporation that contributes large sums to his campaign. Accordingly, he will be bringing a sub-committee of the Appropriations Committee through here on Monday. He believes he will find waste and inefficiency.” He shot a veiled glance in Hannibal's direction. “Well, if he knew where to look, he probably would. However, he doesn't know, so he and his fellow political hacks are on a fishing expedition. He has decided the cost-benefit ratio of some of our newer services is demonstrably poor. So all of you, especially your group, Hannibal, make sure you look busy when the sharks swim into view.”

Hannibal returned to his section and instructed his team to take the rest of the day off. He would see them bright and early Monday, he said, and they were to prepare for an inspection by a panel of Congressional poo-bahs. They were not to touch any of the materials currently stacking up in their electronic in-boxes but should wait until the politicians arrived. When these good gentlemen and ladies entered, the staff was to tackle them then and look terrifically busy. Satisfied his group could stand the scrutiny of even the most persistent prober, he joined his group by vacating the premises. Monday was a long weekend away.

***

Lee Henry used to cut hair in her home where she acquired a substantial client list and some small savings. She was an early subscriber to the lemons-to-lemonade philosophy and had parlayed hard times into an entrepreneurial success. Instead of hunkering down when things got tight, she plowed her small savings into what she believed would be a successful business plan. She took over an abandoned commercial site on Main Street, installed several specialty chairs, and opened a salon. The extra chairs she rented to women like herself who thought a place in town would be more profitable than cutting and shampooing in their basements or kitchens, even after paying rent to Lee. Some were forced by hard times to return to haircutting to make ends meet.

Leasing chairs to women did not quite cover it. Bob Blankenship, Flora Blevins' retired cousin twice removed, rented one of her chairs every Wednesday and Friday afternoon. “Bob the Barber” worked those times because, he declared, men, if they planned ahead, usually had their hair cut late on Wednesday and, if they didn't, had it done on Friday. The rest of the week's business wouldn't pay him enough to lure him all the way out of retirement. When he worked, Lee assigned Bob the first chair. She didn't think his clientele mixed well with hers or the other girls'.

When questioned by one of Callend's faculty members at the term
girls
, Lee had brushed it off with a succinct—one might say rude—remark about folks giving up the joy in language usage for fear of offending, and she didn't give a rat's rear end for that. Actually she had not said “rear end,” but used a somewhat earthier term. The faculty member had never returned. One look at her hair was enough to confirm the truth of that, Lee had remarked later.

Lee said if Ike got his handsome Semitic self over right away, she'd fit him in; she'd had a cancellation. He stepped into the shop's unmistakable aroma of wet hair, conditioner, Lysol, and whatever the rest was. He could never quite determine what, but guessed it had something to do with permanents.

“Well, you got here pretty quick, Handsome. How you been, how was your vacation with the beautiful Miz Harris? I been hearing stories.”

“Stories? The vacation had its moments. Maine is beautiful in late May. Just trim me up the way you do. What's the latest joke? I've been away and have missed your naughtiness, Lee.”

A young woman entered. Ike scanned her as she walked past. Cop habit. He did not notice anything out of the ordinary except her clothes. They were new, all of them, blouse, jeans, shoes, everything new. How often does a young woman wear everything brand spanking new? And if he guessed right, everything wholly out of style. Most young people wore jeans that were past redemption—torn, worn, and ragged either from wear or were made to look old and decrepit with a belt sander and bleach. This young woman's jeans were new and very blue. The copper rivets gleamed. He couldn't quite guess how old she was. She had old eyes. That he did see. Her face had a familiar look, but he would have said that about half the women her age. The familiarity could be a generational thing.

“You go see Grace,” Lee said to her. Grace Chimes rented the third chair today and apparently Lee had handed this client off to her.

“Lordy,” Grace said, “we need to get that mop of yours washed before we do any cutting. How long has it been, Sweetheart, since it saw a dab of shampoo?”

Ike didn't hear the reply.

“Okay, Mr. Sheriff, sit back while I spritz you.” Lee said. Ike could no longer see the girl but he could have sworn she jumped when Lee spoke just then.

“Whoa there, Honey, you okay? I didn't get soap in your eye, did I?” Grace asked.

“No. I'm okay. Just a little jumpy I guess.”

“So,” Lee began, “a rabbi, a monsignor—that's one of them Catholic preachers, you know—a Baptist, a Muslim, and an atheist all come into this bar together, okay? And the bartender says, ‘Is this going to be some kind of a joke?'…Get it? It's like—”

“I got it, Lee. That's funny.”

“I don't get it,” Grace said. “What's the joke the bartender thought was coming?”

“Aw, come on Grace,” Lee said, “all them jokes start that way. You know: a this, and a that, and the other go fishing or come into a bar or whatever and one says something. It's a whatchacallit.”

“Cliché,” Ike added.

“I still don't get it.”

“Well, shoot, Grace. You just ain't been around this salon long enough or you woulda. Okay, Ike, you ain't answered my questions about you and the beautiful Doctor Miz Harris. What's up with that?”

“I expect you'll know soon enough, Lee.” He nodded his head fractionally toward the girl.

In a lower voice Lee said, “Flora Blevins' niece or grandniece, I think. She said something like that anyway. Flora called and set up the appointment. Luckily, Grace was in today. The kid's here on a visit or something. What do you mean, ‘soon enough'?”

“Ask me that next week sometime.”

“That don't qualify as encouraging, Ike.”