But he was cut short by the coroner, who apparently had something important to say. A few moments later, Pierce said, “Yes, Dan? When did you arrive?”
Lucy and I exchanged a quizzical look—was Pierce now speaking to Deputy Dan Kerr? Pierce’s end of the conversation consisted of short questions that did nothing to enlighten us. At last Pierce said, “I’ll be right over,” and then he hung up.
Lucy and I both stood as he returned from my desk. I asked, “Well…?”
He explained, “When I reached Formhals, he immediately told me that Deputy Kerr was with him there at the morgue, then he handed the phone over to him. Kerr told me that Formhals had called him over because he’d just discovered something that may be pertinent to the investigation.”
“
What?
” blurted Lucy.
Pierce laughed. “Kerr wouldn’t tell me, but he assured me that it was significant. He asked me to get over there and see for myself.” And with that, Pierce moved toward the door, ready to rush out through the newsroom. In the doorway, he turned back to ask me through a grin, “Well? Are you coming?”
The phone on my desk rang as I answered Pierce, “I didn’t know I was invited. After all, I’m ‘press’—will they let me in?”
Lucy stepped to the desk to answer my phone as Pierce assured me, “They’ll let you in if you’re with
me.
Come on.”
He didn’t need to ask me twice. Patting my pockets, I confirmed that I had my pen and notebook. I wouldn’t bother with a topcoat—Pierce was ready to roll. I had just about stepped out the door with him when Lucy called to me, “It’s your nephew. He’s at school. Says it’s important.”
I wagged my head from Pierce, to the phone, and back to Pierce. I was torn.
Pierce nodded, smiled. “Go ahead and take it.”
“I’ll keep it short,” I assured him while crossing to my desk. Taking the phone from Lucy, I said into it, “Hey, Thad. I’m kind of busy right now. What’s wrong?”
“Nothin’!” There was a lot of background noise—he must have called from the hall between classes.
“Well…good,” I said awkwardly. “But I don’t usually hear from you during the day. What’s going on?”
“I got it, Mark! The part in the play—I’m Dr. Einstein!”
“What? Really? No kidding? That’s wonderful, Thad. I’m proud of you.”
“I’ve already got the script, and Mrs. Osborne told me to go ahead and underline my lines, and now I have to start memorizing everything—scary, huh?” He didn’t sound the least bit scared by the challenge.
“You’re going to love every minute of this. Have you told Neil yet?”
“Not yet. I’ll call him next. I’ve got a few minutes before the next class.”
“Congratulations, kiddo. I’ll see you at home tonight. Bye, now.”
“Bye, Mark.”
Riding over to the morgue with Pierce, I explained, “Thad really needed
something.
I’m glad he got the part. In the time I’ve known him, he’s never shown such enthusiasm.”
“What’s the play again?” asked Pierce, eyes on the road.
“
Arsenic and Old Lace.
Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it.”
“I’ve
heard
of it, sure, but I’ve never seen it. What’s it about?”
“Two little old ladies who poison old men and bury them in their basement.”
Pierce looked at me. “This is a comedy, right? Sounds kind of ghoulish.”
With a laugh, I conceded, “I guess it is kind of ghoulish. The play’s villain, Jonathan Brewster, is a sadistic killer, while his sidekick—Thad’s role—is a drunken plastic surgeon who disguises his friend by repeatedly cutting up his face.”
Pierce turned to me with a look of dismay.
“Kids love it,” I assured him.
Glancing through the windshield, he announced, “Next stop: county morgue.”
Pierce laughed at the irony in the timing of our arrival, but my own lighthearted mood was squelched by his words, which reminded me of the purpose of our mission. It was sobering to ponder the emotional chasm that separated, on the one hand, the melodramatic chills of a three-act comic thriller from, on the other hand, the grim reality of a four-day-old corpse that had methodically been dissected in search of clues to its demise.
During my career, I’d seen enough victims of murder, suicide, and accidents that I could stay analytical when faced with the aftermath of tragedy. I’d visited morgues before, as well, and I’d witnessed procedures that most laymen would find unspeakably repulsive. Rarely, however, had I known the victim, and never had I been invited to view the autopsied cadaver of a man who’d expressed interest in me sexually, as Carrol Cantrell had. I suddenly wondered why I’d so eagerly agreed to accompany Pierce. Certainly, the prospect of learning enticing new details on a major story had proved more than sufficient to whet my reporter’s curiosity, but professional considerations were now outweighed by a gut emotion that resembled, for lack of a better word, dread. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to do this. Short of simply confessing my cowardice to Pierce, though, I knew of no way to back out.
As Pierce pulled into a parking space marked with his name, I realized that the morgue was located within the county’s sprawling Public Safety Building, which also housed the sheriff’s department and emergency offices. His was one of many tan cars bearing “Official” plates in the assigned lot behind the building, and his parking spot was among those closest to the door, an unassuming back entrance with restricted access. He got out of the car, and I followed as he stepped up to the metal door and swiped a card through its lock. When the door clicked open, he swung it wide for me and followed me inside.
We found ourselves in the heart of a dispatch area, where several officers staffed a switchboard. A wide hallway broke off in four directions. The floors were gray terrazzo; the walls were white; the ceiling was a suspended grid of diffused fluorescent lighting. Someone behind a counter said, “No messages, Sheriff.” Pierce nodded his thanks while leading me down one of the hallways at a brisk clip. Our heels snapped on the hard, shiny floor.
“Have you met Vernon yet?” he asked me.
“No, but his name has come up in various stories since I took over the
Register.
He’s an MD, right?”
“Right. He’s both coroner and chief medical examiner, a trained forensic pathologist. In a town this size, we’re lucky to have him.” Pierce turned down another short hallway and stepped to a door that bore a simple engraved-plastic sign:
CORONER
. “Let’s introduce you,” said Pierce, opening the door.
We entered a small office. A clerk worked at a desk. There were a few extra chairs. A faded print of a bucolic cow-dotted landscape hung in a plastic frame, slightly askew, on an otherwise blank, windowless wall. Pierce asked the clerk, “Is Vernon in his office?”
“Go right in, Sheriff. Deputy Kerr is with him.”
Pierce led me around a corner, into a larger office where Dan Kerr stood talking to an imposing figure of a black man in a white lab coat. I assumed that this was Vernon Formhals, though I hadn’t known that he was black. As coroner, he was often quoted in the paper, but he hadn’t been pictured on the
Register
’s pages during my tenure there as publisher.
Pierce, Formhals, and Kerr exchanged perfunctory greetings, using first names, no titles. Then Pierce said, “Vernon, I’d like you to meet Mark Manning, publisher of the
Register
. He’s been lending me some brainpower on this case.”
Shaking hands, I told him, “It’s a pleasure, Dr. Formhals. The sheriff speaks highly of you.” As I spoke, I studied his face and found it impossible to peg his age. Whether he was mature-looking for thirty or young-looking for sixty, I honestly couldn’t tell.
“The pleasure’s mine, Mark.” The coroner’s manner was cordial but predictably dry—I’d hardly expect a bubbly personality in his line of work. “Do call me Vernon. We needn’t stand on ceremony.” He allowed himself a friendly chortle.
“Doug,” said Deputy Kerr, getting right to the point, “Vernon called me a few minutes ago because he noticed something on the body that he’d previously overlooked. It opens new possibilities in the investigation.”
“Doug,” said Vernon, jumping in, “I hope I’ve not committed a breech of protocol. It was my understanding that you’d turned the investigation over to Dan.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Pierce assured him.
“Look,” said Kerr, “I realize that I was assigned to this case under iffy circumstances. There’s no turf to be defended—there’s simply a murder to be solved. I want Doug’s input, and if Doug wants Mark’s input as well, so be it. Let’s put our heads together and get to the bottom of this.”
“Well said,” Vernon told Kerr, his tone rather stiff and academic.
I marveled at the professed spirit of cooperation I’d just witnessed. Back in the big city, this would never have happened between ranks and departments. As for the welcome participation of a journalist—that was simply unthinkable. While there are doubtless those who would judge this approach highly unprofessional, I found it, in a word, refreshing, not only because it allowed me a firsthand role in the investigation of a top story, but also because it brought a measure of common sense to police procedures.
Now that we were all working from the same page, Pierce asked Formhals, “What did you find?”
“This way, gentlemen.” And Formhals led us out of his office, through a set of swinging double doors—the sort designed to accommodate a gurney.
At this point, my momentary enthusiasm, inspired by office chat of mutual cooperation, waned. Back at the coroner’s desk, the issues we discussed were theoretical; passing through the doors to the morgue complex, we entered the realm of the highly tangible. And once again, I dreaded the notion of seeing Carrol Cantrell’s autopsied remains.
Formhals gabbed with the sheriff and his deputy as we made our way through several rooms—labs for blood work and photography; the examination room with its stainless-steel dissection table, its drains, pumps, and lights; and finally, the cold, quiet confines of the morgue proper, a file room for the deceased.
The equipment, the smells of disinfectant, the hum of compressors, the background trickle of water—it was all familiar—other morgues in larger cities served the same purpose. Dumont’s facility was much like the others, only smaller. This final room contained only a few of the refrigerated drawers in which corpses could be stored, not the rows of anonymous crypts found in crime-embattled urban counties. Owing to my work at the paper, I knew that only one suspicious death was currently under investigation. Only one of these drawers was occupied.
While gripping the handle of the pertinent drawer, Formhals told us, “I’m embarrassed to admit, gentlemen, that during my initial examination of the subject, I failed to notice a small detail that could, just possibly, have an enormous impact on your investigation. The cause of death, which we have all assumed to be strangulation, may in fact have been otherwise. Stand back, please.”
As instructed, we backed away as the drawer slid open. There lay a long, lean corpse, chilled and fully shrouded, presumably Carrol Cantrell. Pierce stood along one side of the drawer with Formhals; Kerr and I faced them from the other side. I knew what had been done to the body, and I didn’t want to see it. Sensing my uneasiness, the coroner lifted the sheet near the head so that only Pierce could see the face as well as most of the body to confirm the identity of the victim.
Regardless of how routine such experiences may be in police work, I can’t imagine how Pierce managed to view the corpse with such complete lack of emotion. I knew that the scalp had been cut back and the skull sawed open so that the brain could be removed. I knew that a giant Y-shaped incision had been cut across the chest and down the abdomen so that everything else could be removed, examined, bagged, tagged, and replaced. I also knew that this defiled specimen had, in life, made love to Pierce three nights running. With a sober nod, Pierce confirmed, “Yes, that’s Cantrell.”
“Now then,” said Formhals, tucking the shroud back in place, “I’d like for you all to have a look at the victim’s right thigh.” Exposing a section of the leg below the hip, he arranged the sheet so that only the flesh of Cantrell’s outer thigh could be seen. “Don’t be shy, Mr. Manning. Please step over here and take a close look.” He offered me a magnifying glass.
My curiosity was sufficient to outweigh my instinctive reluctance, so I stepped around the feet of the corpse and took hold of the magnifying glass, positioning myself between the coroner and the sheriff. Squatting, I peered at Cantrell’s leg, mere inches from my face. The skin had lost its fleshy color, of course, and now appeared distinctly gray and lifeless. Otherwise, there was little abhorrent about the experience of nearing this framed section of a man’s leg—the rotting had been arrested by refrigeration, and if there was a putrid smell at all, it was well masked by other odors that carried the sting of chemicals. Lifting the lens in front of my eyes, I saw nothing unusual on the skin—a random pattern of short, fuzzy hairs; their follicles; a few blemishes, including a blackhead and a pimple or two. I told Formhals, “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
He pointed to the pimples, a few inches apart. Examining them more closely, I saw that these two tiny red patches did not have lumps at their centers, as pimples would, but rather craters, darkened presumably by blood.
Pierce conjectured, “Needle marks?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Formhals. “Unmistakable. Two of them.”
Standing, I handed the magnifier back to Formhals, asking, “Was Cantrell doing drugs?”
“There was some residual evidence of previous drug use, but that’s not what killed him, and that’s not what made those marks.” Covering the section of leg, he slid the corpse back into the wall. The drawer closed with a clank.
Deputy Kerr suggested, “Poisoning? Injected poison?”
Formhals shook his head. “I doubt it. Gentleman, all of you saw the victim at the crime scene on Sunday. Do you recall that he wore a Medic Alert bracelet?”
“I
do
recall that,” I told the group. “I noticed it when Cantrell arrived last Thursday—the bracelet’s design was conspicuously different from his other jewelry. Then, when I accompanied Harley Kaiser and Miriam Westerman to the coach house on Saturday morning, the bracelet came up in conversation. Cantrell said he was allergic to nuts.”