Until Judgment Day (22 page)

Fields raised the S&W, then decided a second shot wasn't needed. He climbed to his feet and kicked the shooter's Glock as far as possible.

Suddenly his legs gave out and he began to tremble violently, as his body stopped consuming the massive doses of adrenaline it was still pumping into his bloodstream.

He collapsed, more than squatted, over the injured man.

 

He tried to speak but nothing came out except a soft moan and stringy globs of bloody, foamy spit.

•   •   •

Fields peeled off the ski mask, aimed a Mini-Maglite in the assassin's face, then lurched back.

“Oh God! Oh Jesus! Oh my God!” His voice was hoarse with tension, anger, fear, and shock.

“Goddammit, why?” Fields demanded.

 

Frothy red oxygenated air spilled out of his destroyed lung, gurgled past his lips, and dripped off his chin. He felt cold.

Summoning one last burst of strength, he laid his hand on the cop's arm.

The cop stared back wordlessly.

He fought back the insidious blackness long enough to whisper, “I'm sorry.”

 

Fields grabbed the man's shoulders and shook him hard, flopping the head on the limp neck like a rag doll.

“Don't die, goddammit!” Fields screamed and shook his attacker again. “Tell me why, damn you!”

It was too late. Sheriff David Granz was dead.

M
ONDAY
, J
ANUARY
13, 10:30
P.M.
S
ANTA
R
ITA
C
OUNTY
M
ORGUE

“
Y
OU DON
'
T HAVE TO BE HERE
.”
Morgan Nelson turned his gaunt face toward James Fields, removed his skull cap, and ran a hand over his buzz cut.

He, Fields, and Miller stood in the hallway, backs toward the open door to the autopsy suite where Granz' sheet-draped body lay on a stainless steel table.

“Sure I do, Doc.”

Fields' jaws clinched, rippling the muscles under his pockmarked cheeks. He still had on the slacks and clerical shirt he'd worn under the cassock, cell phone hooked to his belt by an empty holster, his pistol having been seized as evidence.

“And you know why—he was my friend.”

“Ours too.” Nelson was dressed in green surgical scrubs and rubber-soled shoes with plastic booties pulled up over the tops.

“And his wife, the
best
friend I've ever had, is in a goddamn hospital bed four floors above us, in shock.”

Nelson fought back a tear. “Autopsies are my job, not yours. You don't look like you're up to it.”

“I'm all right.”

Nelson stared at him. “It's your call, but you don't look all right.”

“I have to be.” Fields' voice trembled. “I put him on that table.”

Nelson shook his head. “From what I learned at the crime scene, Jim, I'd say he put himself on the table.”

“Either way, Doc, observing his autopsy might help me make sense of it.”

“I wouldn't count on it.”

Nelson removed his bifocals, knotted his hands into fists, and with his knuckles massaged his eyes, already bloodshot from grief and exhaustion.

He pulled paper scrub suits and booties, masks, and latex gloves from a drawer and handed them to the two cops. Backs still toward the autopsy suite, they wordlessly slipped into them.

Nelson led them into the autopsy suite. He switched on a bright overhead halogen light fixture with built-in video and audio recorders. When the tapes started winding he keyed the headset microphone, hesitated briefly, then slid off the sheet.

Granz' eyes were closed, his face relaxed in what looked like a smile. Except for the bullet hole in his chest, whose ragged edges had begun to crust over with coagulating blood, he might have been asleep.

Nelson exhaled loudly, then started dictating his external examination.

“The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished, forty-seven-year-old white male, seventy-two inches in length, weighing one hundred eighty pounds.”

He rolled the body from side to side to examine the torso, lifted the arms and legs, checked the underlying tissue, then inspected inside the ears, nose, mouth, eyes, and other body orifices.

“Rigor and livor mortis onset is absent—hair is short and brownish blond, irises are green, nose and ears normal, teeth natural. The chest is symmetrical, abdomen flat, external genitalia unremarkable. Upper and lower extremities exhibit no tattoos, scars, or deformities.”

Nelson stopped and yanked a paper towel from a dispenser, wiped his brow and face dry, then wadded up the towel and threw it hard at the wastebasket, but missed.

“Son of a bitch!”

He picked up the towel and kicked the wastebasket across the room. It smashed into a cabinet on the opposite side of the room with a metallic
clunk
and landed upright, its sides caved in, lid hanging lopsidedly from the broken hinge.

“Dirty rotten goddamn son of a bitch!”

He snatched up the wastebasket with both hands and slammed it back down on the floor. The lid flew off. He ripped the towel into shreds and dropped them into the mutilated receptacle, then stormed back to the autopsy table.

He took several deep breaths and wiped his face with another towel, which he set on the bench behind him.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You gonna be okay, Doc?” Miller asked.

“Absolutely—I feel much better now.”

Without waiting for a response, he turned his attention back to the body.

“The only apparent injury is a single gunshot wound, the center of which is forty-five centimeters from the top of the head and three centimeters to the right of the anterior midline of the chest.”

He leaned over the body and adjusted his bifocals.

“The entrance wound is approximately one-point-five centimeters in diameter with a slightly ovoid entry defect, surrounded by eccentric abrasion.”

He rolled the body to its left. “Exit wound is through the posterior skeletal muscle of the right subclavian region. The projectile tracks front to back and slightly downward.”

Nelson slid two black plastic body-blocks under Granz' back, then sliced deep V incisions that started at each shoulder and met at the bottom of the sternum.

A second cut connected the V to the pubis, diverting slightly around the navel. A third ran from hipbone to hipbone, intersecting the leg of the Y.

He laid back the abdominal skin, exposing a layer of pebbly yellow subcutaneous fat that looked like shiny, blood-streaked marbles, then peeled skin, fat, and soft tissue off the chest wall to reveal the rib cage.

Finally, he ran two cuts up the outer sides of the rib cage with the Stryker saw, lifted out the breast-plate, and laid it on the table.

Visually examining the internal organs, he cut the pericardial sac and pulmonary artery.

After removing the heart he tied strings to the carotid and subclavian arteries, snipped out the larynx and esophagus, cut the pelvic ligaments, bladder and rectal tubes, and lifted out the organ block, which he inspected and laid aside.

“Preliminary cause of death,” he dictated, “is massive hemorrhage due to penetration of the bullet through the right heart auricle and right lung—”

Everyone looked up as Escalante rushed in carrying a paper scrub suit, mask, booties, and latex gloves.

“How's Kathryn?” Nelson switched off the recorders, removed his headset, and hung it around the back of his neck.

Fields and Miller watched her expectantly.

“Kathryn's conscious and stable.”

Escalante struggled into the gown, then leaned against Miller while she pulled the boots over her shoes. He patted her affectionately on the shoulder and she leaned her head against his big hand for a moment.

“What happened?” Nelson asked.

“After Lieutenant Miller and I secured the crime scene, I drove to The Shadowbrook, where she and Emma were meeting Sheriff Granz to celebrate the adoption.”

“Adoption?”

“He adopted Emma. Judge Keefe signed the adoption order, and his clerk filed it at nine o'clock this morning.”

“I had no idea,” Nelson said softly.

“I didn't either, until Emma told me on the way to the hospital.”

“How little we know even about our closest friends.” Nelson spoke more to himself than to the others. “I'm going to change from now on, pay more attention to the things that really matter.”

Escalante laid her hand on Nelson's shoulder.

“Tell me about Kate,” he said.

“When I first told her about the shooting, she didn't believe me, just sat there without saying anything, like it was some sort of sick joke. When she saw I was serious, she grabbed her head, started to stand up, but passed out.”

“Shit. Her blood pressure fell dangerously low. How long before paramedics arrived?”

“A couple of minutes—they were dispatched from Central Fire, three blocks from the restaurant.”

“What'd they do?”

“Started a saline IV drip and transported her to the ER immediately.”

“Damn lucky. If her blood pressure stayed that low for more than about five minutes, she could've suffered permanent brain damage—not to mention the damage it might've done to the baby in a hell of a lot less time than that. Did she fall?”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

Escalante pushed the paper mask up onto her forehead. “Her stomach hit the corner of the table, then her head hit the floor.”

“Damn! Has she miscarried?”

“Not yet. When I left to come here, they were monitoring her.”

“What about Emma?”

Escalante managed a tiny smile. “Bravest kid I ever saw—stayed calm, directed traffic in the restaurant to keep people out of the way, kept telling paramedics to be careful, that her mother was carrying her baby brother.”

“She's a hell of a kid. Where is she?”

“Sitting in a chair holding her mother's hand. I can take her home with me tonight if you think that's a good idea.”

“No.” Nelson shook his head. “I'll arrange for hospital staff to set up a bed in Kate's room so she can spend the night with her mother. I'll drop in from time to time.”

He looked around. “Let's finish up.”

Escalante slid on the latex gloves.

“Put on your face masks, too,” Nelson advised. “Some aerosolization is unavoidable when I open the cranial cavity.”

He pulled the body-blocks from under Granz' back, set one aside, and slid the other under the head. With a scalpel he cut a deep, straight incision through the scalp, over the crown of the head from the top of one ear to the other, peeled the front skin flap down over the face, and the rear flap over the nape of the neck.

He ran the Stryker saw around the perimeter of the skull, creating an upside-down bowl that, using both hands, he twisted back and forth. When the calvarium was loose, he lifted it off.

He set aside the skull and inspected the brain.

And gasped.

“Oh, Jesus!”

Fields and Escalante crowded close.

With a gloved fingertip, Nelson pushed against a hard, white, puffy, dense mass that clung to the front of Granz' brain. Like an anemic crab, its spiny, claw-tipped legs dug tenaciously into the soft, pinkish gray brain tissue. The brain had swollen and turned an angry red where it tried unsuccessfully to fight off the intruder's invasive roots.

“My God that's ugly,” Miller said. “What is it?”

“Brain tumor—the biggest I've ever seen.”

“What caused it?”

Nelson shook his head. “No way to say—medical science hasn't discovered the cause of brain tumors yet—we think most result from environmental factors.”

“Such as?”

“Low-frequency electromagnetic fields, radiation, chemicals, viruses—severe head injury.”

“What caused his?”

“Impossible to say, but he's suffered two life-threatening head injuries—the first at the hands of the Gingerbread Man behind the Seacliff Hotel a few years ago—that one damn near killed him. Could've caused a tumor that the second head injury compounded.”

“What was the second?” Escalante asked.

“The car accident the night before Thanksgiving.”

Miller cleared his throat. Fields shuffled his feet. Escalante squeezed her lower lip between a thumb and index finger.

Nelson snipped the brain stem, carefully lifted out the brain, and set it on a tray.

Fields sighed. “Now what?”

“I take a biopsy and send it for testing.”

“Cancer?”

“Yes, but it doesn't really matter. A brain tumor does its damage through the pressure it exerts on the brain, disrupting the nerve-cell activity. Eventually I'll dissect and analyze it.”

He rolled off his latex gloves and motioned for the others to do the same, then led them into the hallway.

“You three get out of here. I've got research to do. Let's debrief tomorrow morning—say, eight o'clock in the Sheriff's conference room.”

As Fields, Miller, and Escalante stripped off their paper gowns, Nelson told them, “You might want to grab some sleep tonight and get back to work looking for your priest killer tomorrow.”

Fields frowned. “I'm confused. Are you telling us that Granz
wasn't
the shooter?”

“Possibly.” He leaned against the wall and started to go on, but his voice caught.

“If Granz had any idea how sick he was—and given the size of that tumor, it's inconceivable to me that he didn't—he might not have gone to that church tonight to kill anyone else.”

“Why, then?” Fields asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“Maybe to commit suicide.”

“Cop-assisted suicide.” Fields squeezed his eyes shut tight, and recalled Granz' last words:
I'm sorry
.

“Our priest killer might still be out there,” he added.

“Get some sleep,” Nelson said. “Let's hope I have a better answer for you tomorrow morning after I do my research.”