The Mourning Sexton (6 page)

The elderly black man smiled down at them. “Yes, sir, Mr. Guttner.”

“Has Maurice made my favorite today?”

“Chocolate cheesecake? He certainly has, sir.”

“Ah,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Superb, Julian. Superb.”

CHAPTER 7

A
be Shifrin stood in the doorway, a dab of brown mustard on his chin. From somewhere inside the house came the sounds of the evening news. He studied Hirsch with a frown.

“Hirsch?” he repeated.

“I'm the attorney who filed the case over your daughter's death. I called you this afternoon to see if I could drop by after work.”

The frown changed to an embarrassed grin. “Oh, of course. Come in, Mr. Hirsch.
Oy,
this brain of mine. Come in from the cold.”

Shifrin's home was a redbrick two-bedroom bungalow with a small living room to the right of the front door and a smaller dining room to the left. The living room looked old and tired—the couch sagging in the middle, the fabric frayed, the blond coffee table and end tables scarred by water rings and cigarette burns, the lampshades faded to a yellowish gray.

Hirsch followed Shifrin toward the little kitchen, moving around a dining room table strewn with newspapers and unopened junk mail and magazines still in shrink-wrap. The kitchen sink was piled with dirty dishes, pans, and silverware. So was the countertop. A faint odor of rotting food filled the room.

“Excuse the mess,” Shifrin said, waving his hand vaguely. “The
schvartza
comes tomorrow.”

On the small kitchen table was a chipped dinner plate with a half-eaten salami on rye and a handful of potato chips. Near the plate sat an open jar of pickle spears and a large plastic cup with a red Wal-Mart logo. The cup was half filled with dark soda, presumably from the plastic liter bottle of store-brand diet cola on the kitchen counter. The noise came from a portable black-and-white television that sat on a TV tray facing the table. The little television had a bent shirt hanger for an antenna. Hirsch recognized one of the local sports reporters on the fuzzy screen.

Shifrin turned off the TV and turned to Hirsch. “Can I fix you something to eat, sir?”

“No, thanks.”

He gestured toward the other kitchen chair as he took his seat. “Make yourself comfortable. If you don't mind, I'll finish my dinner while we talk.”

Shifrin listened intently as Hirsch gave him a status report, which ended with yesterday's lunch meeting with Marvin Guttner. When Hirsch finished, Shifrin grunted and reached for a toothpick.

“So they want us to think about a settlement?”

“They do.”

Shifrin pointed the toothpick at Hirsch. “But only if the settlement is for less than their defense costs. I've heard that one before.” He paused to pick at his side teeth with the toothpick. “I was in a lawsuit once where my lawyer told me to make that kind of offer. What did he call it? ‘Nuisance value,' right?”

“That's what some people call it, but that number could be quite high here.”

Shifrin leaned back in his chair and studied the toothpick. “So that's what my Judith's death means to those miserable bastards, huh? Just a nuisance?”

“It's only a word, Mr. Shifrin.”

“Only a word? I have a word for them, Mr. Hirsch. My word is ‘guilty.' About the money I couldn't care less. This is my daughter they killed. Money is nothing here. What I want is for a court to tell the world they're guilty.”

“Our settlement demand could include an expression of regret.”

Shifrin crossed his arms over his chest. “No confession, no deal.”

“If the defendants pay enough, Mr. Shifrin, the money becomes an admission. Sometimes a person makes an admission with his actions.”

He snorted. “Money talks, eh?”

“Occasionally.”

“It's got to do more than just talk, sir. What did you have in mind?”

“That's one of the reasons I came over here. We need to talk about that.”

“Let's go in the living room.”

Hirsch leaned forward to study the framed portraits that hung side by side on the living room wall across from the couch. One was a high school photograph of Judith Shifrin—a standard yearbook shot of a smiling young woman with a pale airbrushed complexion, straight dark hair, and dark eyes. The other was of her mother—one of those Sears specials with a flowery background and artificial light. Mrs. Shifrin was a washed-out version of her daughter—a thin, pallid woman with sad eyes and limp hair streaked with gray.

From the couch Shifrin said, “That was my Harriet,
aleya ha 'sholem.
”

Hirsch turned toward him. “When did she pass away?”

“Almost fourteen years ago.
Oy,
she had so many problems, but in the end it was the cancer that killed her. Ovaries, the doctors said.” Shifrin shook his head. “It was very hard.”

“I can imagine.”

“You have no idea, Mr. Hirsch. No one said life would be easy, of course, and no one said life would be fair. Even so, those were difficult times for me. She was bedridden for years.”

“How old was Judith when her mother died?”

“Just fifteen. Think about that, why don't you. There I was, burying a wife and trying to raise a teenage daughter. Believe me, Mr. Hirsch, those were not easy years for me.”

“Were you and your daughter close?”

“I thought so back then, but what did I know?”

“Why do you say that?”

Shifrin stiffened. “And why should this be any business of yours, my daughter and I?”

Hirsch came over and sat down across from him. “These are difficult subjects to discuss, Mr. Shifrin, but they're important for the lawsuit. We need to talk about them.”

“Why?”

“Because the lawyers for the defendants will. They are going to ask you lots of questions about your relationship with your daughter.”

“
My
relationship?” He blinked his eyes. “How can they do that?”

“One of the ways a jury determines damages in these cases,” he explained, “is to place a dollar value on the loss of a loved one. You're the only living member of Judith's family. Under the law, you're the only one who will suffer the loss of her companionship. That means that your relationship with your daughter is an important factor for the jury to consider in determining the damages in this case.”

“So what does that mean then? I become like one of those rape victims? All of a sudden I'm on trial?” Shifrin crossed his arms over his chest. “All of a sudden they're staring at me instead of the bastards who killed my daughter, those sons of bitches. This is what you call justice?”

“You won't be on trial, Mr. Shifrin. I won't let them put you on trial. But your relationship with your daughter is part of the lawsuit. This is a wrongful death case. That means that you are one of the victims of the wrongdoing. You've lost a loved one. That's one of the reasons I'm here tonight. I need to learn more about you and her. Were you close? Did you spend time together?”

“When? When she was little? She lived here, for God's sake. Of course we spent time together.”

“What about later? What about her last few years?”

Shifrin turn and stared at the base of the lamp, a tense little man with his arms crossed over his chest.

Still looking away, he said, “We had our ups and downs. What father and daughter don't?” He gave a resigned shrug. “They become teenagers, Mr. Hirsch, and everything gets crazy, and then they decide that they're adults and all of a sudden the whole world turns topsy-turvy, and then on top of all that her mother dies.” Shifrin turned toward him, his face flushed with anger. “I do not like this, sir. I do not like this one bit. This lawsuit should be about those bastards killing my only child. It's not about whether I took her to the zoo on Sunday or read her a bedtime story. I had a business to run and a dying wife in my bedroom, and then I had a dead wife and a daughter who—” He shook his head and then patted his chest. “Believe me, sir, I had plenty of
tsouris
.”

Hirsch suggested that they look at family albums, hoping that old photographs might help ease them into a discussion of his relationship with his daughter. Shifrin went back to one of the bedrooms and returned with three worn albums.

The old photographs worked for a while. Shifrin grew sentimental over pictures spanning Judith's toddler and elementary school days—shots of him pushing her in a stroller at the zoo, of the two of them seated together on a picnic blanket in the park, of him holding her on a merry-go-round, of him and his wife standing proud at a piano recital with their grade school daughter seated at the piano in a starched white dress and black patent leather shoes. But the later photos, especially the ones that included cousins and family friends, seemed to highlight the widening gaps in his memory. His mood shifted from teary nostalgia to teary frustration as he tried to remember the names of the people in the photos. He slammed the album closed and squeezed his eyes shut.

“I'm sorry,” Shifrin told him at the front door. “I get upset with my brain. Maybe we can try again in a few days?”

Hirsch adjusted the two photo albums under his arm. “Sounds good.”

Shifrin forced a smile. “So what's our next step?”

“I'm meeting with an expert tomorrow.”

“What kind?”

“Medical.”

“A doctor? Why a doctor?”

“To go over some matters related to the accident.” He shook the old man's hand. “I'll be back in touch, Mr. Shifrin. Have a good evening.”

“You, too, sir.”

Hirsch sat in his car in front of Shifrin's bungalow, letting the engine warm up. Tomorrow's meeting with Dr. Granger had suddenly become key. He hadn't learned all the details that night, but it was clear that Shifrin's relationship with his daughter had been troubled, especially toward the end. Somehow, Guttner had discovered that as well.

Which didn't mean that he couldn't patch together a claim for loss of companionship. Enlargements of the best of those father-daughter photos, placed on an easel in front of the jury would help. But pretty pictures alone would never make the loss of companionship claim worth big money, especially at the settlement stage.

And that left him with one last angle for boosting damages. When Shifrin asked him why a medical expert, he'd been vague. He wanted to spare the old man the anguish that any father would feel if told that the expert was a pathologist who might be able to determine from the medical records whether his daughter had been conscious for at least a few seconds after the impact. If so, the jury would be allowed to award damages for pain and suffering, and that would significantly increase the settlement value. If not, well, he'd be left with those childhood photos and whatever dirt he might be able to dig up on the defendants.

He shook his head.

Digging for dirt.

As if he were some knight errant preparing to battle an evil empire instead of just another personal injury lawyer scrabbling for purchase in a one-car accident case.

This is your brave new world,
he told himself.
A world where you hope an expert will tell you that the nice young woman survived long enough to experience the anguish of her own death. Welcome.

He glanced over at the house. The living room shades were pulled back on a gloomy tableau. Shifrin sat on the threadbare couch and stared at the wall across the room, at the framed photographs of his dead wife and his dead child.

Hirsch put the car in gear and pulled away.

CHAPTER 8

D
r. Henry Granger was over at the window again, squinting at an X-ray he was holding up to the light.

Hirsch watched, intrigued. He was seated at the round table in the sunny breakfast room of Dr. Granger's two-story colonial in suburban Webster Groves. The room was as snug and cheerful as the doctor himself, who was in his seventies now—a spry man with ruddy cheeks, a shock of white hair, and clear blue eyes. The only hint of time's unkindness was the tremor in his hands.

Hirsch took another sip of the fresh coffee that Mrs. Granger had insisted upon brewing when she'd returned from the grocery store and found the two of them in the breakfast room. She was in the den now, listening to the Brandenburg Concertos on the stereo as she knitted a sweater for one of her grandchildren. All six of those grandchildren were in the family portrait that hung on the breakfast room wall. In the photograph, she and Granger were seated on a loveseat, surrounded by their adult children and spouses and grandchildren, who ranged in age from elementary school to college. It was a vision of domestic happiness that underscored the wreckage of his own life. There were no family portraits in his apartment.

“Intact,” the doctor mumbled as he studied the X-ray. “No question.”

With his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and a cardigan sweater buttoned over his blue dress shirt, Henry Granger could have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting of a Vermont country doctor. Actually, though, the first twenty-five years of his career more closely resembled a Charles Addams cartoon. He spent those years cutting up corpses in the subbasement morgue of one of the city's major hospitals. As the hospital's chief pathologist, he occasionally testified in criminal cases, and in the process developed a yen for the courtroom. He spent the final decade of his career as a plaintiff's expert witness and earned big fees testifying in a wide assortment of injury and death cases.

They'd met years ago when Granger served as a medical expert in a case Hirsch was defending. He'd been a formidable opponent—intelligent, well-organized, articulate, unflappable, good courtroom demeanor. When Hirsch decided, after his lunch meeting with Marvin Guttner, that he needed to retain a medical expert with a background in pathology, Granger was his first choice. The doctor had been retired for several years, but he was intrigued enough by the request from an old adversary to agree to meet him. The timing was good, since Granger and his wife were leaving at the end of next week to spend a month in Tucson with their eldest daughter and her family.

Now he was holding up another X-ray to the sunlight. This one appeared to be a front shot of the head and upper torso. The doctor was thorough, no question about that.

Hirsch had assumed that Granger would be able to review the file in ten minutes. After all, the accident report (including witness statements) was just six pages long, the medical examiner's report was another two pages (plus six X-rays, three morgue photos, and a half page of lab results), and there was no autopsy report.

But Granger was still at it after, Hirsch checked his watch, forty minutes. He'd made two pages of notes on a legal pad. He'd carried the X-rays over to the window three times and held them up to the light, studying them one by one. He'd used a magnifying glass to examine each of the morgue shots. A pair of medical textbooks on pathology were open on the kitchen table.

Although Granger had hoped to see an autopsy report, he hadn't been surprised by its absence. Autopsies, he'd explained to Hirsch, were no longer routine in traffic fatalities. The procedure had become so expensive that it was only performed on a traffic accident victim if there were suspicious circumstances.

Granger returned to the table. He lifted his notes and studied them with a frown.

“Fascinating case,” he said, more to himself than Hirsch. “Troubling case.”

“What's the bottom line?” Hirsch braced himself for the worst.

“Hard to say for sure.”

“Do you think she was conscious after the collision?”

“Oh, no.”

Hirsch's shoulders sagged. “Are you sure?”

Granger pondered the question. “I suppose I am about as sure as one could be without an autopsy. Do I believe that this lady was conscious after the collision? No. Does the available evidence support my conclusion? Yes. Is it possible that an autopsy could refute my conclusion?” He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, lowering his head to peer at Hirsch over the top of his reading glasses. “Possibly, but probably not.”

Hirsch leaned back in his chair and exhaled slowly. “So we can forget pain and suffering.”

“I wouldn't say that. There certainly was pain and suffering.”

After a moment, Hirsch said, “I'm not following you, Doc.”

Granger stared at Hirsch, his lips pursed. “I do not believe that the young lady died in the accident.”

Hirsch tried to parse the sentence but couldn't. “What do you mean?”

“I would surmise that she was dead before she got in the car.”

Hirsch stared at him. “I'm lost.”

“The medical examiner concluded that she died of asphyxia. Based on the observations in his report, I would agree with his conclusion. I would disagree, however, with his determination of the cause of that asphyxia. Of course, this is hardly the first time I've disagreed with Sam Avery.”

“Was he the medical examiner?”

Granger nodded and pointed to the signature line on the report.

“You don't like him?”

“To the contrary, Sam is a charming man. Just last fall, in fact, the two of us went duck hunting in Illinois. On a professional level, however, Sam is second-rate. In medical school, David, some students gravitate toward pathology because they are fascinated with the study of various diseases and the changes they produce in the organs they attack. Other students are steered toward pathology because their professors believe they will inflict less harm if their patients are already dead. Sam Avery was one of the latter. Still, I shouldn't be too harsh on him here. This case arrived with all the earmarks of a routine traffic fatality. On a busy night, a better pathologist than Sam could have missed it.”

“Missed what?”

He pointed to the bottom line on the medical examiner's report. “Sam describes the cause of death as ‘blunt force trauma with asphyxia, apparently caused by motor vehicle accident and deployment of air-bag system.'” Granger looked up from the report. “In a front-end collision, David, there are only two ways asphyxia could be the cause of death. Either the victim suffocated while jammed against the air bag, or the force of the impact broke her spinal cord and she lost the ability to breathe. The X-rays eliminate the latter scenario.” He held up one of the X-rays he'd been studying by the window. “Her spinal cord was intact.”

“What about the air bag? She was a small woman.”

“Her size has little to do with it. To suffocate, the air bag would have to have remained fully inflated for longer than thirty seconds.” Granger shook his head. “That is not possible.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Several years back, I worked on two infant fatality cases involving rear-facing seat restraints in the front seat. As a result, I became somewhat of an expert on air-bag design. There are not many of us, and Sam Avery most certainly is not one. I learned that all air bags have multiple vents in the back. Without exception. The vents are an essential design element that ensures that the bag stays inflated for less than half a second. Which is not to say they can't cause injury. Air bags inflate with explosive force—explosive enough to have knocked this young lady unconscious, perhaps even given her a concussion. But the bag would have deflated a fraction of a second later.” He shook his head. “She did not suffocate against an air bag.”

“But you still believe that she suffocated?”

“That's my opinion.”

“How? And when?”

Granger picked up the medical examiner's report and adjusted his reading glasses. “Do you see this observation?”

He turned the page toward Hirsch and pointed to a line of text.

“Petechial hemorrhages,” Hirsch read aloud.

“Exactly. Petechial hemorrhages in the eyes.”

“What are they?”

“Red splotches in the whites of the eyes. The usual cause is the restriction of blood flow in the head area. Here, I would venture to say that the cause of that blood flow restriction is linked to this observation.”

He pointed to the phrase
slight compression of soft tissue of neck.

“What does that mean?” Hirsch said.

“I can't be one hundred percent certain without an autopsy, but in my judgment the most likely cause of death was manual strangulation.” He shook his head sadly. “I'm afraid there would have been plenty of pain and suffering.”

Hirsch tried to grasp the implications.

Granger leaned over one of the morgue shots with the magnifying glass, studying her neck. “It's barely detectable in the picture,” he said, frustrated. “They should have taken a close-up.”

He sat back and gazed at Hirsch.

“David, based on what I've reviewed here, I'd say that it is more likely than not that someone strangled that poor girl. Strangled her, stuck her behind the wheel of that car, and then drove it into a tree. You wouldn't need much of an impact to trigger the air bag. Moreover, if you were seated in the passenger seat and could brace yourself for the moment of impact, you could actually run the speed up high enough to do some impressive damage to the front end of the vehicle without seriously injuring yourself.”

Granger removed the reading glasses and studied Hirsch. “I suppose one could try to construct another scenario out of this evidence, but this is the one that seems most likely to me.”

He put his glasses back on and peered at the front page of the medical examiner's report.

“Judith Shifrin. The name sounds familiar.” He looked up. “Who was she?”