Dr. Joe thought about that for a little while. His final report hadn’t been typed up yet, but he flipped through his notes on Billie Cox, all the while standing on one foot and rubbing his calf with the
opposite heel. There’s very little humidity in the morgue, not the best environment for living flesh. “Just what I already told the detective, about the bruising,” he said, closing the report folder. “That’s already been discussed, and I can’t find anything else of interest.”
“Refresh my memory,” I said. “What bruising?”
“Didn’t Detective Walker fill you in?” he asked. He stretched out his left arm, and rubbed the elbow, scratching. As he did, I noticed a tattoo just above his wristwatch, a new one. From the occasional glimpse and death-house rumors, I knew the pathologist had an impressive collection covering his body from his wrists up, extending over his chest, to just below the neck of his blue surgical scrubs. In fact, along with motorcycles, tattoos were a pet interest of the good doctor, which explained why his new one depicted wings emanating from a motorcycle wheel. Somewhere in the lab, legend had it that he kept a three-ring binder filled with tattoos he traced off dead bodies. He referred to it as his “research project.”
“Detective Brad Walker?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Dr. Joe said. “This is his case. Didn’t you know that?”
I hadn’t noticed Walker’s name in the file. That was why Faith Roberts received such a cold reception at H.P.D. Like all officers, Walker had a jacket, a reputation. I’d never met him, but I’d heard he was a black-and-white kind of guy. He didn’t leave much room for the possibility that things weren’t as they seemed. When Faith Roberts mentioned communication from the dead, Walker must have flipped. If I’d realized he was on the case, I would have asked more questions from the start.
“Just slipped my mind,” I fibbed. “Guess the detective forgot to clue me in. Why don’t you, Dr. Joe? What bruising?”
Everyone who dealt with the medical examiner’s office knew Dr. Joe hated explaining anything more than once. As was usual when his patience was taxed, he stared at the one who strained his goodwill as if inspecting bacteria. At such times, he had this look
about him, kind of a dead, cold stare. Frowning at me, he took a ballpoint pen from the collection in his breast pocket plastic protector. He bent over and used the tip to point at the skin just below the entrance wound in the right side of Billie Cox’s head.
“Take a look here,” he said. “It’s faint but definitely there. You’ll have to stand close to see it.”
I did as instructed, getting within inches of the raw, angry hole in Cox’s temple, and I saw just a slight yellow hue, faint but there, on the lower lip of the entrance wound. “That shouldn’t be there,” I said, stating the obvious.
Suffering from my apparent stupidity, Dr. Joe shook his head. “Lieutenant, when people shoot themselves through the head, depending on the position of the body, standing, sitting, or lying down, there are variations on where the arm holding the weapon ends up and where the gun lands. When the victim is seated, as Ms. Cox was, the most likely scenario is what we see in the scene photos. The pistol’s recoil pushes the hand and gun away from the head, and the body is found with the gun lying near the extended hand.”
“I understand that, but a suicide entrance wound isn’t usually bruised like this,” I asked. “Why is she bruised?”
Again the good doctor sighed, staring at me as if it required all his patience to proceed. “As I explained to the detective, sometimes things don’t happen precisely as we expect,” he said. “There are multiple possibilities, but my guess is that this woman held the gun so tight against her skull, with so much force, that the recoil bounced it, causing the peri-mortem bruising.”
“I’ve never seen that before,” I said. “Not in a suicide.”
“Nor have I,” he answered. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.”
“I have seen this type of bruising in homicides,” I said. Offering nothing more, I waited for the physician to jump in. He didn’t at
first, as if considering how to take my observation. When he spoke, it was again to dismiss my concerns.
“Of course. And I discussed that option with Detective Walker,” he said, with an air of finality.
“Just to make sure I get the right version, how about one more time with me?” I asked.
Scowling at me, Dr. Joe cinched his face into a taut frown.
“You’re absolutely right,” he said, eyeing me as if my very presence irritated him more than his aching ribs. “The usual scenario with this type of bruising is homicide. Someone holds a gun tight against a victim’s skull. A living, breathing shooter has the strength to fight recoil, and that increases the odds that a jerking reaction brings the pistol back toward the head, hitting near the entrance wound. The result? A peri-mortem bruise, just like this one.”
“In this case, there’s some reason you don’t believe that’s what happened? The file I reviewed had a notation that your conclusion on the autopsy report will agree with a finding of suicide,” I said. “You didn’t find that bruise a convincing reason to consider murder?”
“No,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Everything else fits a suicide, so my opinion is that this bruise is simply an aberration. Detective Walker agreed with me that when the rest of the scene screams suicide, something so minor isn’t enough to question manner of death.”
I thought about that for a few minutes, and then asked one more question. “When you did the GSR test on the shooting hand you only tested the back of the hand?”
“Of course. Why?” he asked.
“Humor me and test her right palm.”
“We’re not going to find anything, Lieutenant. She was grasping the gun, so the grip blocked residue from her palm,” he said. I
said nothing, just waited, until the good doctor shrugged. “But if you’d like, sure. We can do that.”
“Thanks,” I said, with a smile. “It’s appreciated.”
“Now, since I’ve been such a good sport, you will, of course, return the favor by getting this woman’s sister to claim her corpse, won’t you?” he said. “As I mentioned on the telephone earlier, I need the room. These days the morgue has a permanent no vacancy sign.”
I knew he wouldn’t be happy, but what the heck. “I’d like you to keep Ms. Cox’s body a bit longer, while I look into the case,” I suggested. “Until we’re sure we’ve got it right.”
Predictably peeved by my request, Dr. Joe glared at me but said, “Okay, Lieutenant, but let’s make every attempt to hurry this woman along to her final resting place.”
On the way home from the M.E.’s office, I called the captain and filled him in on what I’d learned about the autopsy and the bruising. “I’d like to poke around a bit,” I said. “I want to make sure we’re not closing the book too soon.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “Now that you’ve got something to back up your suspicions, I’ll notify H.P.D. in the morning, tell them you’ll be investigating further. Keep me posted.”
“By the way, Captain,” I added. “You didn’t mention that this is Brad Walker’s case, and I don’t remember seeing his name on the file.”
Even on the telephone I could hear the captain’s sigh. “Sarah, I didn’t want it to color the way you saw it, make you second-guess if there wasn’t anything there,” he said. “Maybe I was wrong, since now you do have suspicions, but I took out H.P.D.’s assignment sheet because I didn’t want it to complicate matters.”
“Okay,” I said. “That makes sense. I’ve got an appointment in
the morning on that Collins stalking case. I’ll see you at the office, not sure when.”
“See you then,” he said.
It was well after dark when I arrived at the ranch and found Mom and Bobby winding white Christmas-style lights over the wrought-iron gate at the entrance. They’d crisscrossed the circular emblem at the top with the white cord so many times that the Rocking Horse insignia was hidden under what looked like the web of a Chippewa dream catcher. I hoped it would capture all our bad dreams and spirit them away.
I stopped and lowered my window.
“I didn’t know you two were doing that tonight,” I said.
“It’s a surprise for Maggie,” Mom said, looking proud. “It was Bobby’s suggestion, something to lift her spirits.”
“Good idea,” I said, thinking Mom looked cute when she’s smitten.
“I’ve got a full day at the office tomorrow,” Bobby said, explaining that his family business, Barker Oil, was getting into a bidding war over an oil company that had just recently gone up for sale. “The company president died suddenly. I figured if your mom and I were going to do this for Maggie, we needed to do it tonight.”
“Well, it looks great. See you two at the house.” That said, I drove up the driveway, parked the Tahoe, and got out. Then I decided to walk back to the gate for a little talk.
“Which oil company?” I asked Bobby, who was bending over, picking up the remains of the packing materials from the lights.
“What?” he said, looking at me over his shoulder.
“Which company are you bidding on?” I asked. “Is it Century Oil?”
“How did you know that?” he asked, standing beside me. He looked uneasy, as if called on something he found distasteful. “I hated to pick it up like this, but with the whole place in chaos after
Billie Cox went and shot herself, the two old guys who own it are selling, and companies are lining up to put in a bid. Oil as high as it is right now, it’s a no-brainer. But how did you know?”
Ignoring his question, I asked, “Did you know Cox?”
“Sure,” he said. “Great gal. Lots of fun, and a great businesswoman. I thought the world of Billie. Can’t understand why she’d do anything so blatantly stupid. Just not like her. That gal, why she was smart as a whip.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“A couple of weeks ago,” he said. “We were getting ready to do a deal together, buy up an old field in East Texas and co-develop it. Combining our assets made it easier. Now, I’m looking at buying the field alone, for Barker Oil. It’s a good investment. They’re widow wells, abandoned decades ago because it was too expensive to get to the oil. But we figured with prices so high and new technology, we could cash in, big time.”
“That’s interesting, and I’d love to hear about it sometime, maybe the same day we discuss the loan I need to take out to fill up my gas tank?” I interrupted.
“You know, finding more oil isn’t a bad thing, Sarah,” Bobby said, patiently. “More supply brings down prices, not raises them.”
He, of course, had a point.
“We can argue about oil prices later,” I offered. “But for now just tell me what you’re hearing from folks in the oil patch. What’re folks in the business saying about Cox’s death?”
Mom moved forward, as interested as I was in hearing what Bobby had to say. He looked at both of us and a small smile inched across his face. “You know,” he said, with a chuckle, “I’ve been hoping to find a way to get this kind of attention from you two women. Didn’t know all I had to do was spread a little gossip.”
“Don’t think of it as gossip. I have reasons for wanting to know,” I told him. “What are you hearing?”
“Most folks don’t think she did it, Sarah—killed herself, I mean,” he said. “She was a gung-ho kind of gal, Billie was, but not the kind to do anything rash. Billie was young and aggressive. Under her, Century pulled together one hell of a portfolio, one of the best in the industry for a medium-size company. With its share of this field we were buying, the company would have been the envy of nearly every privately owned oil company in Texas.”
“Folks who aren’t questioning why she did it,” I said. “What are they saying?”
Bobby sucked in a breath. It was obvious he’d prefer not to talk about those rumors. My mom’s suitor was more the strong, quiet kind of man, one who offered a steady hand without a lot of fanfare. I’d grown to believe that was what Mom saw in him, the same quality I’d always recognized in her, someone there for the long haul, no matter what.
“Well, there are folks who say someone broke Billie’s heart,” he said. “And there are others, a few, who, the way I hear it, are spreading rumors that she’d been seeing a therapist, maybe because she was having a hard time splitting off from the guy. The way folks tell it, Billie had an affair of the heart that went wrong, because the man she was after was married.”
Mom scowled, and I figured talk of an adulterous relationship had crossed the line for her. She’d never been one to approve of what she called “such shenanigans.” Of course, she didn’t know the reason for my questions, and, at least at this juncture, I preferred that no one, not even Bobby and Mom, know that I was looking into Billie Cox’s suicide as a possible murder. If the news broke, it would only add fodder to the swirl of gossip around her death.
Appearing intent on changing the subject, Mom said, “Let’s light this gate up and see how she looks.”
Figuring I had enough information for the time being, I didn’t
object. “Good idea, Mom,” I said. “It looks like I got here just in time for the grand unveiling.”
With that, Mom bent down and plugged the cord into an outlet under the coach light on the post next to the gate. The lights flared, covering the arch over the gate like a bright, white rainbow, and we stood there for just a moment enjoying the view. “Beautiful,” I said. “Just beautiful.”
“It is pretty,” Bobby agreed. “Maybe it’ll help give Maggie some peace about Emma Lou.”
“You don’t think the horse will make it, do you Bobby?” Mom said.
“I think the pinto will pull through, but that foal is in for one hell of a fight,” he admitted. “I’d be willing to bring in a specialist, someone to treat the horses, if you’d like, Nora?”
Mom thought about that a bit, but shook her head. “I trust Doc Larson,” she said. “He’s been watching over our livestock for years. And I don’t want to give Maggie false hope. If the foal comes too early, no vet’s going to be able to keep it alive. Seeing some expert will only give the wrong impression. At least for the next few days, until the mare’s pregnancy hits three hundred days, that foal is in God’s hands, not ours.”
“You’re right, of course,” he said, and I saw him slip his arm around Mom’s waist.