The Dead Will Tell (16 page)

I follow him to a comfortable living room with leather furniture and an oversized wood coffee table. The flat screen is tuned to a morning television program out of Columbus.

“Have you received any more notes?” I ask.

“No. Why?”

“Jules Rutledge was murdered a few hours ago.”

“Wh—what?”

“She’d been receiving notes, Norm. Just like the ones you showed me.”

He stares at me, blinking, the color draining from his face. “But … Jules? Dead? How?”

“Stabbed to death. In her home.”

“Oh my God. Ohmigod.” He sets his hands on either side of his temples. I can’t tell if he’s trying to block out my voice and the news I’ve just relayed or deny that it’s happening.

“Norm, did you know them? Jules Rutledge and Dale Michaels?”

“No,” he says defensively.

“There’s got to be a connection. At least between you and Rutledge,” I say. “The notes you showed me are exactly the same as the ones I found at her gallery.”

“Oh Jesus,” he says. “Jesus.”

The pattern of denial is clear. Blue Branson. Julia Rutledge. Jerrold McCullough. And now Norm Johnston. Each of them adamantly denied being friends with the others. Why?

“Norm, if you knew them, now would be a good time to tell me,” I press. “Two people are dead and there’s no doubt in my mind there’s some connection to you.”

He tries to cover his discomfiture with a laugh, but this time the sound that squeezes from his throat more resembles a whimper. “Look, I may have had a beer or two with them, but I didn’t run with them. We weren’t friends.”

“You mean recently?”

“No. When we were young. High school, for chrissake.”

“So then, what’s the connection?”

“I don’t know. Maybe all of this is … random.”

“This is not random.” I take a breath, ratchet back my impatience with him, and soften my voice. “I can’t help you unless you help me.”

“What do you want from me?” he cries.

“The truth. All of it.”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

I pause long enough to let him absorb everything that’s been said. “Norm, I haven’t put all of this together yet, but I think these two murders may be related to a cold case from back in 1979,” I tell him. “The Hochstetler case.”

“I remember it. That Amish family. But I was only a teenager at the time.”

“Did you know the Hochstetlers?”

He hesitates. “No.”

“Do you know anything about what happened the night that family was murdered?”

“Of course not.” He makes a sound of disbelief. “What the hell are you insinuating?”

“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m trying to solve two homicides, get a killer off the street, and maybe keep you safe in the process.”

“I had nothing to do with that.” His lips peel back, exposing small, artificially white teeth. “How dare you accuse me of—”

“I didn’t accuse you of anything.”

From two feet away, I can hear his molars grinding. “This is outrageous. I ask you for help, and you come into my home unannounced and start making wild accusations, all because you haven’t the slightest clue how to do your job! I’m a sitting member of the council, for God’s sake.”

“Norm, I need you to level with me. If there’s anything you’re not telling me, you need to come clean. Right now.”

He stares at me, his mouth open, his chest rising and falling. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

“I’m not going to let this go,” I tell him. “Do you understand?”

A quiver runs the length of his body. In the periphery of my vision, I see his right hand curl into a fist. And I know he’s struggling to control a temper run amok. That if he loses the battle, I’d better be prepared to defend myself. I’m not sure what it says about me, but I’m pretty sure I’d take a hit for the opportunity to arrest him.

“You fucking bitch. I’m sick and tired of your incompetence. First my daughter is killed because of you and now this. I swear to God, I’ll have your job for this.”

I try hard to let the words roll off me, especially the insinuation about my being responsible for the death of his daughter. But I don’t quite succeed. My heart is pounding; I can feel the pulse of it in my neck. Adrenaline jigs in my midsection, powerful enough to make my hands shake.

“You do what you have to do,” I tell him. “This isn’t going to go away.”

He strides to the door and opens it. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

I stand there for a moment, looking at him. “Watch yourself, Norm. I mean it.”

He snarls another expletive at me as I go through the door and step into the pouring rain.

CHAPTER 15

I’m nearly to the station when my phone erupts. I check the screen to see that I’ve received a text from the coroner:
Michaels autopsy complete. Will be at my office until noon.
Groaning inwardly, I make a U-turn and head back toward Pomerene Hospital.

No matter how many times I make this journey to the morgue, it never gets any easier. Dread is a dark and silent presence that steps onto the elevator and rides with me to the basement. The doors swish open to a tiled corridor. My boots echo as I pass a yellow and black biohazard sign and a plaque that reads:
MORGUE AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL
. At the end of the hallway, I push open dual swinging doors and traverse a second hall to the clerk’s desk, but Carmen is nowhere in sight. Early lunch, I think, and I’m reminded that I’ve yet to have coffee.

I go through a second set of swinging doors. The autopsy room is straight ahead. To my right is a small alcove, where the biohazard protection supplies are stored. I glance to my left and through the mini-blinds of his glassed-in office, I see Doc Coblentz sitting at his desk, eating a burger the size of a small tire.

I enter his office. “Sorry to interrupt,” I tell him, relieved he’s not eating in close proximity of a dead body.

“This is the only place I can enjoy red meat in peace.” He blots his mouth and rises. “My wife has me eating rabbit food. Beets and carrots.” He extends his hand and we shake.

“You work all night, Doc?”

He nods. “The dead are blissfully quiet.”

“Okay.” But I can’t help but grin. “You finished the Michaels autopsy?”

He sobers. “We just received Julia Rutledge.”

“Any idea when you might get to her?”

“As soon as I can.” Taking a final bite of the burger, he motions toward the alcove. “You know the drill.”

I go to the alcove, where his assistant has set out disposable shoe covers, a blue gown, hair cap, and latex gloves. Doc Coblentz is waiting when I emerge and, I find myself wondering how he does what he does. No matter how well prepared I think I am, I’m never ready to witness this cold and clinical side of death. While the blood and bodily fluids have been rinsed away, the incised skin hidden from view, there is no eradicating the hideousness. I can’t look at a body without thinking of the life that person lost or the loved ones he left behind.

Entering the autopsy room is like stepping into a cave where some grotesque beast stores its kills. Ensconced in gray ceramic tile, the room is maintained at a cool sixty-two degrees. But despite the state-of-the-art HVAC system, the smells of formalin and decaying flesh are ever-present reminders of why this place exists. It’s a large room, about twenty feet square. Stark fluorescent light pours down from several overhead lamps onto stainless steel counters. There are a dozen or so white plastic buckets. Gleaming instruments lie atop stainless steel trays, the uses of which I don’t want to ponder. Two deep sinks with arcing faucets are butted against the far wall, next to a scale used to weigh organs.

“What’s the cause of death?” I ask.

“Strangulation due to the compression of the carotid arteries causing global cerebral ischemia.”

I follow the doc to a gurney situated beneath a lamp that’s been pulled down close. A green sheet marred by several watery stains covers the body. I brace an instant before Doc Coblentz peels away the sheet.

I steel myself against the sight of the massive Y-incision cut into Dale Michaels’s torso. The flesh is blue gray with a sprinkling of silver hair on a chest that’s sunken and bony. A few inches above his navel, a neat red hole the size of my pinkie stands out in stark contrast against the pasty skin.

“So he was still alive when he was hanged from those rafters?” I ask.

“Correct. There was a good bit of bleeding from both gunshot wounds, which tells me the heart was still beating when he sustained them.”

“There were
two
gunshot wounds?”

“Sorry to do this to you, Chief, but you need to see this.” He draws the sheet down to mid-thigh, revealing more of Dale Michaels than I ever wanted to see. A shriveled penis and scrotum are nestled in silvery pubic hair. There’s a wound there, too, and I can barely force myself to look. My eyes skim over jutting hip bones and the tops of skinny thighs. But Michaels was not a thin man. The abdomen bulges and is slightly gelatinous with fat.

The urge to look away is powerful, but despite my aversion, I don’t.

“For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to them as Wound One and Wound Two.” Using a wooden, cotton-tipped swab, he indicates the hole near the navel. “On Wound One, we’ve got an entry wound here. The slug penetrated the stomach wall between the greater curvature and the pyloric canal and lodged near the spine.”

“Did it paralyze him?”

“Probably not, but the trauma so close to the spinal cord may have temporarily immobilized him.”

“Looks like a small caliber.” But I’m finding it increasingly difficult to focus on Dale Michaels’s brutalized body. “A .22 or maybe a .25.” I look over at him. “Is the slug intact?”

“I have one slug, which I’ve bagged for you. The other was a through and through.”

I make a mental note to get with the CSU that processed the scene. If the second slug wasn’t found inside the body, maybe it’s still at the scene, in a wall or in the ground.

“Going on to Wound Two.” Using the swab as a pointer, he indicates the hole near the groin. “The missile entered the anterior aspect of the left thigh, just to the left of the genitalia. It fractured the superior ramus of the pubis, tore through the neck of the bladder, and left the body through the perineum, compromising the entire genitourinary tract.”

“Jesus,” I hear myself say, but I’m keenly aware that the buzzing of the overhead lights seems inordinately loud as I stare down at a hole the color of raw meat. Despite the chill, I feel sweat break out on the back of my neck.

I swallow hard. “So there’s no slug for the second wound.”

“Correct.”

“Was he alive when he sustained it?”

“Yes.” Doc Coblentz shifts his attention to the neck. “Interestingly, the vertebrae are free of any fractures.” He indicates the throat area, where the rope dug a deep groove into the flesh.

“What does that mean?” I ask, but I already know.

“I would venture to guess he was hoisted up from the ground as opposed to being dropped down from the rafters,” he tells me. “Unconsciousness would have occurred in a relatively short period of time, probably one or two minutes. Death occurred when the oxygen and blood flow to the brain were cut off. Most of the damage you see here occurred postmortem, gravity working against the weight of his body.”

I think about that for a moment. “Would he have survived the gunshot wounds if he hadn’t been hanged?”

“Well, both were serious, penetrating wounds. But there were no major arteries involved. Hemorrhage was present, but not life threatening. If he’d received prompt medical attention, and barring any preexisting medical conditions, he would have survived.”

Some of the tension leaves me when he pulls the sheet up and covers the body.

“Any sign that he was engaged in a struggle or physical confrontation?”

“No.”

“Tox?”

“Won’t be back for two or three days.”

“What about that Amish doll, Doc? Do you know if it was put into his throat before or after his death?”

“Before. There were abrasions on the upper part of the pharynx, along with a minute amount of bleeding. It wouldn’t have been a comfortable ordeal for the victim.”

“I get the sense there was a lot of rage involved with this crime.”

“I agree.” He shrugs. “The level of brutality…”

I think about that a moment and then ask, “Do you have anything preliminary on Julia Rutledge?”

Doc Coblentz shakes his head. “I performed a cursory exam upon her arrival. As you’ve probably already deduced, she sustained several stab wounds, including a deep chest wound. I can’t give you a cause of death until I get her on the table.”

“What about the object in the wound?”

He turns to a stainless tray on the counter behind him and picks up a plastic evidence bag. “I knew you’d want to see it, so I extracted it first thing.”

It’s an Amish peg doll exactly like the one we found in Dale Michaels’s mouth. I know what’s inscribed into the base before I look:
HOCHSTETLER
. I pass the bag back to the doc.

“I’ll get it couriered to the lab ASAP,” he tells me.

I thank him and start toward the alcove. As I remove the biohazard gear and toss it into the receptacle, it strikes me that for the first time in the course of my career, the autopsy of a murder victim has raised more questions than it answered.

CHAPTER 16

It had been a long time since Jerrold McCullough was afraid. He’d lived a long, full, and sometimes difficult life. He’d lost a two-year-old daughter when he was twenty-six years old. He’d spent some time overseas in Bosnia when he was in the military. At the age of forty-two, he survived a serious car accident in which he’d lost a limb—and nearly his life. He lost his wife of twenty-four years to cancer several years back. Yes, Jerrold McCullough had faced his fair share of adversity. Each time that bitch fate dealt him a blow, he’d conquered it and come back from it a smarter, stronger, if lonelier, man.

But as life had proved, there were some things you didn’t come back from. Sure, you went on with the business of living. You fell in love and got married. You had children and you brought them up right. But through it all, you knew your life was one big fat lie.