Fixin' To Die (A Kenni Lowry Mystery Book 1) (6 page)

Chapter Seven

Max Bogus’s hearse was parked next to the funeral home. I pulled up behind him and parked the Jeep. The lapel pin was still in my grasp. My heart took a dip when I looked at the pin and could clearly remember Poppa wearing it. I stuck it through my shirt. In my bag was a pencil; I popped off the eraser and used it as a stopper to keep the pin in place.

The morgue and funeral home was a one-stop shop. Like any business in Cottonwood, the door to the funeral home was unlocked and I let myself in. There wasn’t any commotion coming from the funeral home and Max’s hearse was outside, which meant one thing: I was going to have to go downstairs to the morgue to find Max.

I stood in the doorway, my eyes fixed on naked Doc Walton. Though it was almost lunch, it was still too early to see a corpse, much less that of Doc Walton.

“You aren’t going to believe what I found on Ronald.” Max and Doc Walton had been friends. “It’s the strangest thing.”

“What?”

Max stood over Doc with a scalpel in his hand, blue lab coat slung open, a big pair of goggles on his round face. He looked up. His black eyes were round like large marbles. “Don’t tell me you’re squeamish.”

“No, not at all.” I gulped, taking a step closer.

Suddenly, as if someone was pushing me from behind, my feet scooted across the floor without me picking them up.

“Did you see…” I jumped around and pointed to the door and then back to where I was standing. “Was someone…”

I wanted to ask if he had seen someone behind me, but I knew no one else was there. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Seeing Doc Walton’s corpse was playing a number on my senses.

“Are you okay?” Max glanced over Doc Walton at me.

“I’m fine.” I turned to the metal tray table next to me and grabbed a couple of gloves from the box.

“Some people aren’t good around dead people. Trust me, it’s not only you.” Max’s voice was calming.

I turned back around and gave him a kind smile.

“I’m fine.” I forced my eyes down to the corpse. “Now, tell me what you discovered.”

“This.” He turned over Doc’s wrist, where there was some sort of tattoo.

“Who knew he was such a rebel?” I tried to make a joke out of it, not successfully.

“It’s not a tat. It’s Sharpie marker. On his right wrist.” He used a pointer to point to Doc’s other hand. “Ronald has never been able to write properly with his left hand, nor deal a good hand in poker, because the tip is gone off the pointer finger. He was right-handed.” He dragged the pointer over to the Sharpie design. “This is intricate detail Ronald could’ve never done with his left hand. Plus, when I swipe it, parts of it rub off easily because it’s not been there long.”

The design written in Sharpie on Doc’s wrist reminded me of something. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

White’s Jewelry, I thought to myself.

“White’s Jewelry,” a soft and gentle voice spoke back.

My head shifted side to side. “I’m sorry.” I leaned a little over Doc’s body. “Did you say White’s Jewelry?”

“No.” Max’s brows furrowed. “I said there is no way—”

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved him off. “I heard you say that, but you didn’t say anything about the jewelry store? And the break-in?”

“No.”

“You don’t know.” I gasped. “You’ve been down here all morning.” I gestured to the autopsy room. “White’s Jewelry was broken into before Polly Parker opened up for Viola White and this exact same symbol was spray-painted on the carpet behind the glass counter.”

Somehow Doc Walton’s murder and the White’s Jewelry theft were related, and the killer wanted me to know.

“I even took pictures of it but I left my bag out in the truck.” I held a finger up. “I’ll be right back.”

A clear glass jar full of Band-Aids was sitting on the counter on my way out of the autopsy. I lifted the lid off.

“You don’t mind if I use one, do you?” I asked, peeling the gloves off of my hands.

“No, take what you need.” Max was bent over with a magnifier stuck on his goggles taking a good look at the Sharpie tattoo.

Walking out to the truck, I ripped the Band-Aid open and made it tight around my finger like my mother used to do when I was a child. Oh, how I missed those days.

Follow your instincts.
The
whisper filled my head. My heart sank and I took a few quick breaths.

I grabbed my bag, taking it back inside.

“I swear it’s the same symbol from White’s,” I said as I rushed back into the autopsy room, where Max was still hunkered over the corpse.

I sat my bag on the counter, deliberately keeping my back turned, not facing the procedure until I heard some clicking noises.

“What are you doing?” I asked, looking at Max, who was holding a fancy digital SLR camera.

His hand was placed on the lens, rotating it left and right, clicking with the other. He would squat, stand, and move around the body like he was a photographer on the set of
America’s Next Top Model
and Doc Walton was the model.

“I have to take pictures of everything.” He didn’t miss an angle. His finger continued to snap away. “It’s part of the procedure. Especially in a murder investigation.”

It might be sick, but for the first time today, I felt a little better. Taking any more pictures myself than I needed to of Doc Walton’s dead body was not high on my priority list. I wasn’t looking forward to downloading them at home tonight as I stirred my spaghetti.

“I had to take pictures while Ronald was in the body bag.” His voice cracked, and I looked over at him. There were tears in his eyes. He cleared his throat. “And when I transferred him to the table.”

I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder. He continued to snap.

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure how to console him. “I know y’all were poker buddies and friends.”

He stepped away from my hand, putting the camera down on the stainless steel table next to Doc Walton, and peeled off his gloves, the bags under his eyes damp.

“I’ve never had to do an autopsy on a friend before.” He nodded for me to follow him. He picked his camera up, putting the strap around his neck. He lowered the exam table, grabbed his camera, and took pictures of Doc’s face. “What in the world?” He let the camera dangle and grabbed a pair of tweezers.

“What?” The shock in his voice had me hoping it was something important.

“Is this mercury from a thermometer?” He held the tweezers under the magnifying lens.

“There was a broken thermometer on the floor. Doc Walton didn’t believe in the battery ones.” I thought about going to see him as a child and having to put that glass thermometer in my mouth for what seemed like a long time. I almost smiled.

“I know, but why was this embedded in his mustache?” Max asked.

“Embedded?” I asked and leaned over Doc Walton’s face.

Max used the tips of the tweezers to rake through Doc’s mustache. “See?” The tweezers parted a couple of hairs to expose another ball of the mercury.

Carefully, Max put the mercury ball into a beaker with the other one.

“You don’t think he could have dropped the thermometer while he was being stabbed?” I asked. “Maybe he was taking the killer’s temperature. The killer could have taken Doc off guard and stabbed him. Doc dropped the thermometer, breaking it, and the mercury rolled everywhere. When he fell to the ground, he fell face forward into the mercury, getting it in his mustache.”

It seemed like a pretty good analysis, if I said so myself.

“There are no cuts on his face.” Max grabbed his magnifying glass and looked down through it. “If he landed in glass, he would’ve had some cuts. Besides, when I moved his body, there wasn’t a pile of mercury or glass.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip, disappointed that my theory was probably wrong.

“Kenni.” Max put the magnifying glass down. His tone became chilly. “I think I can guess how Ronald died.”

“Guess?” There was no room for guessing.

“I’m pretty sure I know.” His voice cracked. “I think the killer somehow made Ronald ingest the mercury.”

“What?”

I had never heard of such a thing.

“Ronald might have been stabbed multiple times, but he most likely died from ingested mercury balls.” He put his hand over his mouth like he was being smothered. “I believe the balls on the floor fell out of the killer’s hand when they were trying to smother Doc. He does have some bruising on the back of his neck, which makes sense if the killer grabbed Doc and forced the mercury balls from the broken thermometer over his mouth and nose. When Doc tried to catch some air, the mercury balls would’ve slid down his passageways. This would explain the little blood in his mouth, his swollen eyelids, and bloodshot eyes.” He moved his hand over every body part he had named that would be affected by the poisoning. “It’s hard to trace and the killer was smart enough to know that. And,” he moved his finger over one of the stab wounds, “they were very angry with him to keep stabbing him.”

“So your theory is the killer stabbed him first and saw it wasn’t going to do the job so they broke the thermometer, got out the mercury globules, and forced them down Doc’s throat?” I asked.

“I’m just here to figure out how he died.” Max motioned for me to follow him to his office. He talked into a mini tape recorder, reciting exactly what he had told me. “I have to put in all theories to help me put the facts together. Ronald will tell me how he died.”

“Ronald will what?”

“His body will tell me how he was killed,” Max spat. This was the first time I had heard him sound angry.

We walked into his office right off of the autopsy room. The room was bare. There were two chairs in front of his desk, neither of them matching, which made me think they came from Ruby’s Antiques on Main Street. Behind the desk was a bookshelf wall, only it didn’t hold a single book. It was filled with files upon files.

“Have a seat.” Max took a seat in the chair behind the desk. “I have to find out what happened in Ronald’s office last night.”

“Me too.” He had to know how serious I was. “Last night?”

“The wound marks can tell me a lot.” He flipped his fancy camera on and showed me a picture of some of the wounds.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing to the stuff around the wound.

“It’s Steri-Strips. Like Band-Aids. They help me take a good picture of each wound so I can measure the depth and figure out the mapping.” He flipped to the next picture. “If the blood tests come back toxic with mercury, I’ll be able to use the mapping to figure out if he was stabbed first, and when that didn’t do the job, they used the mercury.”

“How does the mapping work?” I asked.

He put the camera down and took in a deep breath. I could tell he was a little frustrated with my lack of knowledge. “I can determine by the pattern of the wounds how and in what order they were created. I’m wondering if the killer didn’t intend to kill him, but something set them off and they killed him on impulse. That might explain the random pattern of stabbings.” He drew his arm up over his head, pointing to his shoulder blade. “The x-rays show the depth of the wounds, and I really have to rule out the stab wounds as the cause of death.”

He picked up the x-ray film off his desk. “This shows the stab wounds didn’t go into the body enough to hit an organ or any sort of major artery, so I’m deducing the weapon was not a knife.”

I stood up and took a closer look.

“These stab wounds look post-mortem.” He used his pen to point to the ones he was talking about.

“So Doc was already dead when he was stabbed?”

“Yes, so mercury poisoning is the most likely cause of death.” He pointed to more of the post-mortem wounds. “The person who did this must have been very angry. I don’t know anyone who would continue to stab someone who was dead unless there was so much hate built up in them that it was the only way to get out their rage.”

“Who could have hated him that much?” I thought about who Doc Walton hung out with, and no one fit the profile Max was talking about.

“The preliminary toxicology test will give us some direction.” He picked up his camera again and showed me another picture. “His wrist. This symbol was also at the White’s Jewelry break-in?”

“Yes.” I pulled my camera out of the bag and showed him the pictures of the symbol. “Which leads me to believe the two crimes are connected.”

“It looks like some sort of Chinese symbol like you see down at Kim’s Buffet.” He stared down his nose at me before he took off his reader glasses, setting them aside and folding his hands in front of him on the folders. “You know, I never saw your Poppa a day without that pin on him.” His chair creaked when he eased back, crossing his arms over his chest. “He even wore it in church.”

I ran my finger over the pin. Mrs. Kim would know what the symbols mean. I needed an expert and she was Chinese. I couldn’t get a better expert. “Listen, you keep working on the autopsy and I’m going to figure out this symbol.” I jumped up, gathering my stuff before zipping my bag. “I think that’s a good place to start.”