Playing God (6 page)

Lee and his assistant finished measuring and weighing the body, took some photographs, and then Lee dictated some things for the record. "You the primary on this, Joe?" He nodded and introduced Dani Letorneau, who was new to Portland's crime lab. The doc knew Devlin.

"Okay, gentlemen," Lee said, "Excuse me. Lady and gentlemen, you want to get a closer look at your murder weapon?"

Dani cleared her throat, not for the first time, and Burgess turned to look at her, wondering if she might be sick. It was her first autopsy, at least as a member of his department. She shook her head emphatically, waving him off. "I'm fine."

Lee would have already X-rayed Pleasant's head with the rod in place. Burgess approached the table and watched from the other side as Lee seized the metal rod with two gloved hands and tugged until it finally came loose and slid out of Pleasant's mouth. The doctor held it out flat on his palms.

"What the hell is that?" Burgess said, feeling a tingling in his throat. "Looks like a piece of old metal curtain rod sharpened to a point."

"That would be my guess," Lee agreed. "Pretty weird murder weapon, huh? If that's what it is. It doesn't look like some kind of sex toy." He nodded at Letorneau and Devlin. "Okay, kids. It's all yours."

Lee set it carefully on a metal tray and Burgess bent to take another look. The rod was over a foot long, a rough grayish-brown metal, except for the tip, which was sharply pointed and shiny except for clinging bits of bloody tissue. Kind of like a big pencil. Had it been made to use as a weapon? Something a nervous prostitute carried for protection? "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

"Wondering," Lee said. "What we do best, detective. Right about now I'm wondering where our killer got his... or her... hands on this. Someone goofing around in a machine shop?" He dictated a description of the object he'd just removed and proceeded with the autopsy. Letorneau got a little greener when Lee flapped the face down and took a saw to the skull, but she stayed on her feet and didn't make a peep as Lee plied his trade, slicing and removing, weighing and measuring, sectioning off samples for the lab.

"This guy was disgustingly healthy. Arteries clean as whistles. Great lungs, great heart, good liver," Lee said. "I'm surprised there weren't signs of a fight. Guy this fit isn't likely to let someone shove a lethal weapon down his throat without a struggle."

"Maybe he opened his mouth to let out a few orgasmic howls and she slipped it in," Devlin suggested.

"I'm betting there were two," Letorneau said. "Which would be amazing in a car, even a big, fancy one. But aren't we being awfully disrespectful? Poor guy's dead."

"Disrespectful?" Devlin said. "How about envious? There's something pretty awe-inspiring about a guy so horny he's willing to party with two hookers in his car on a freezing February night."

"Except," Burgess said, "we don't know if he was partying with two hookers. Or any hookers."

"Come on, Joe. You think he put on lipstick and sucked his own nipples?" Devlin said. "Not unless he has a rubber neck. And took out his dick because he thought it needed some air? Maybe you think he chucked that little spear down his own throat, too, and this is a suicide. That'd be one for the books."

"Or whether the party took place in his car," Burgess said quietly. "Let's just see what you turn up." He always tried to reserve judgment. He'd seen plenty of odd things over the years. The truth was often more amazing than anything they could imagine. He looked at Lee. "Could he have done this himself?"

"Not very likely. Takes a fair amount of force to shove something like that right through a man," Lee said. "Still, people have killed themselves in some pretty strange ways. You have any reason to think he might have?"

"Not yet. He had a beautiful young wife and a brand new baby. Loved his work. Loved the money even more."

"Well, Joseph me lad," Lee said, "it'll keep your life interesting, unless you drop dead from a heart attack from long hours, bad habits and lousy food. Not, mind you, that I'm being critical. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, right? Exercise is for other guys." He waved his bloody glove over the body. "Look where it got him." He dictated some more, set the stomach in a pan and picked up a scalpel. "Let's see what the guy had been eating, shall we?"

"Could a woman have done it?" Burgess interrupted.

"A strong one or one who was sufficiently angry. Why not? Increasingly, murder's an equal opportunity crime." Lee jerked his chin toward Dani. "Someone want to take her outside?"

Wink put an arm around her and walked her out, returning a minute later to give them the thumbs up. "Dizzy," he said. "Gets so into it she forgets to eat. She'll be okay."

"Then let's finish this thing," Lee said. "Dr. Pleasant hated to be kept waiting."

Lee's breezy style made autopsies easier for some people. Burgess liked him well enough, especially since he was such a good witness, but he remembered his first ME. Dr. Geller had had such a reverence for the process and for the dead. He'd begun every autopsy with a prayer for the soul of the departed and explained the procedure as he went along as though the deceased were still listening. Geller had taught him a lot about death and dying, about the human body and the stories it could tell. Burgess imagined Geller here, and wondered what he might say. He would have looked at the immaculately maintained body, the expensively cut hair and buffed nails, and at the gaudy lipstick-marked genitals and nipples, and he would have known important things about Pleasant—how he'd lived and why he died.

Lee picked up his scalpel and opened the stomach, filling the air with the unmistakable sour scent of stomach acid. He peered in and started to laugh. "Too bad Letorneau left," he said. "Be a good one to start her on. It's yours, Wink. Two guesses where the deceased ate his last meal, and the first doesn't count."

It looked like the man had eaten dog food. "I can't believe it," Burgess said. "A guy like this at a place like that?" There was a pizza place in Portland, Salerno's, put these weird little balls of meat on their pizza, meat that never seemed to get chewed and didn't break down in the stomach. "Not the first time we've seen this, is it, Wink?"

Behind his mask, Devlin yawned. "Man, I'm tired," he said. "By the time we got back from the scene, I was so cold I thought I'd never warm up. A twenty minute shower barely took the edge off."

"Know what you mean," Burgess agreed, "I didn't even get the shower."

"We can tell," Lee said.

Dani quietly came back in.

"Stomach contents so undigested you could put that mystery meat back on a pizza and serve it again," Lee continued. "What does that tell us?"

Dani made a gagging sound.

"Didn't live long after he ate," Devlin said brightly.

"Exactly. So we proceed. And you now have the challenging task of finding out when he ate that pizza."

"Lucky me."

The autopsy finished, Lee whipping organs in and out of the body with the speed and dexterity of a carny working the shell game, deftly collecting a sample of the stomach contents to be sent off for toxicology analysis, then putting everything back where he'd found it, like a well-behaved child putting his toys away. He left the body nice and neat for his assistant to stitch up.

They stepped out into the hall and Burgess closed his eyes, trying to will away the dull pounding at the base of his skull that was his body's way of signaling exhaustion. He couldn't take a break now. The job was just beginning, the list of questions growing a hell of a lot faster than the list of answers. He pushed his sluggish arms into his coat, already moving on. He'd begin with some calls from the car. By now, officers with pictures of Pleasant should have canvassed the area where the car was found, and another detective would have started talking to Portland's better known ladies of the night.

Ahead of him, Wink was going through the door, lugging a box with Pleasant's clothes in it, a bulging briefcase full of evidence dangling from his hand. Hours and hours of painstaking work. But the frown on Wink's face was not anticipation of all those hours. Wink loved his work. Wink was worried about Dani. He paused in the doorway. "She needs to rest, Joe. Otherwise, she'll make herself sick and I'll be stuck doing this alone." Apologizing in advance for the delay in processing the evidence. Knowing how much they needed information.

"Sure," Burgess agreed. Living people took priority. It was good to take care of your people. Stop caring and you got like Captain Cote, who viewed his fellow cops as job descriptions and badge numbers. Cote, who was waiting to hold an audience with Burgess's particular detective slot. Probably expecting him to arrive with the whole case solved. Cote, though he'd been a detective himself, expected the cop shop to run like a TV show, with cases neatly solved in an hour.

At a minimum, this was a miniseries. And that was if they got a lot of lucky breaks. Otherwise, the series would run until a solution, or bad ratings, ended it. So far, they'd gotten no breaks. Maybe rounding up some ladies of the night would bring one. And wouldn't Cote love it when the station filled up with whores.

Chapter 5

On the way back, it started spitting snow, harsh, icy granules that bounced against the window. Clouds of it swept across the open fields and onto the wide gray pavement, where it danced and twirled like smoke. The empty road suited him fine. He was glad to be alone with his thoughts. You couldn't be a cop almost thirty years and not develop some intuition. Here his intuition told him that nothing was going to be simple. This case was going to be a big, ugly bitch.

On the surface, it was a tawdry little sex crime. Oversexed doc does a ménage a trois with a couple of hookers, gets rolled for his wallet and stabbed to death. That's what the lipstick, rope marks and missing wallet all said. But that scenario was too obvious, too clearly what someone wanted them to think. Sure, Pleasant's wife said her husband had women service him in his car. Aucoin had seen the car cruising for girls and parked in the same place before. But if Pleasant had been partying with hookers who'd tied him up, it hadn't been in the car. Not even the fit and athletic doctor could have managed that. So whatever had taken place in the car looked like dessert. And why was he out so late?

Pleasant, while admittedly a risk-taker, had valued his professional reputation and income, his lovely wife and home and newborn son. And, as she'd said, he thought he had his wife fooled. So Burgess still had questions. If Pleasant wanted his wife to believe he was working, he wouldn't stay out until midnight. Why hadn't he fought back? He was a strong, athletic guy. Burgess needed to ask Lee how much maneuvering space it took to shove that thing through Pleasant's head. Curious what toxicology would show. If someone had drugged Pleasant, that showed planning rather than the opportunistic act of a hooker or her pimp.

Burgess shifted on the seat, working the stiffness out, trying to wake himself up. Pretending he didn't need the rest he wasn't going to get. In any homicide, major work needed to be done right away, building that picture of the victim, his life and habits, his last days. Interviews and record checks and a canvass of the crime scene area. That was the big picture. It was built of a million small details, each requiring care and attention, accumulated and recorded by officers working as a team.

Another piece of it was taking care of the family, in this case a delicate balance between being supportive liaison and suspicious cop. He had to call Jen Kelly to tell her the wallet was missing. That the body would be released this afternoon and she could arrange to have it picked up. He hated making these calls; hated the pain and suffering he could feel, even over the phone. But it was an important part of the job.

The desk sergeant stopped him. "Captain Cote wanted to know the minute you came in. I'll tell him you're here." He spoke briefly into the phone, then lowered his voice, fishing for details. "I hear the victim was head-to-toe with lipstick kisses. Man. Fat cat doc with a big house in Cape Elizabeth and a beautiful wife. Some people don't know when they've got it good."

Burgess just grunted and went to see Cote. He could already write the script. Your victim's some street kid or scumbag drug dealer, you can rattle any cage you want. Your victim's a prominent citizen and somebody's sure to know somebody, who'll call your boss and beg you to keep things quiet. Dr. Kenneth Bailey wasn't the exception—he was the rule. It was hard to investigate a murder among the rich. They were less likely to gossip in bars or brag to their friends and more likely to call their lawyers. Language wasn't used in ignorance, but for obfuscation, as a tool and a defense. They were also less familiar with the criminal justice system, considered normal police procedure harassment. Crime was something that happened to "them."