An Intimate Murder (The Catherine O'Brien Series) (16 page)

He blinked and shook his head. “No. Are you sitting in?”

“Yep.”

His eyes trailed to Louise. He smiled, and then noticed we weren’t alone.

“This is Jane Katts,” Louise said. “Jane wrote the story in the paper this morning.”

Digs went still, and a vaguely panicked look crossed his face as if he was suddenly on trial.

Jane stuck out her hand and waited for him to return the gesture. “I’ve been given permission to follow the investigation with the detectives.”

He looked to Louise for confirmation and got it with a curt nod. Reluctantly, he raised his hand and shook.

“It’s nice to meet you.” Digs’ voice had dropped two registers to a more authoritative tone. “I’m Randy Ray. I’m a forensic pathologist.”

Jane pointed at me. “What did she call you when we walked up?”

“Digs,” I said. “That’s what we call him.”

“It’s a nickname.” He shrugged. “You can call me Digs, but I prefer Randy.”

I wanted to laugh and shout, “Since when” but I held back. Digs was thinking about seeing his name in the paper for the first time, a thrill to be sure, if the reporter wasn’t going to crucify you.

Dave Goldwin, the Medical Examiner assigned to our case, shuffled down the hall toward us in his paper-covered shoes. He cut a more convincing figure in his scrubs than Digs ever could.

In Dave’s right hand he held a sandwich and in the left a Styrofoam coffee cup. He chomped into the sandwich and then lifted his cup and slurped his coffee, before he’d even chewed the chunk of bread and meat he’d gnawed off. He toasted us with his coffee cup.

“Jesus, there’s going to be quite an audience today,” he said through a sloppy mouth full of food. He gave two perfunctory chews and then swallowed. “I didn’t realize that autopsies were now a spectator sport.”

“Do you mind?” Louise asked.

Dave took another bite and drink, and then shook his head. “Nope. The more the merrier.”

He used his pinky to punch in the security code on the keypad door lock. The green light beeped on and Dave gestured to Digs.

“Help out a guy would ya’ Digs?”

Digs turned the knob and Dave shoved the door open with his shoulder.

“School’s in,” he said and trotted across the sterile room to a counter that ran across one wall. He set his cup and sandwich on a tray that I prayed had never been used to hold anything other than clean and disinfected instruments. Even then, the thought grossed me out.

The room was cold for obvious reasons. Susan Luther lay on a table in the center of the room, her body covered with a white, cloth sheet. Growing up Catholic, I had a strong urge to cross myself and say a quick
Our Father
. No matter how many times I sat in on an autopsy, the urge to cross myself and pray remained as strong as the first time.

Louise ushered Jane Katts through the door. Jane’s face had gone pale. I wondered briefly, what she had expected to find when we got here. What had she thought an autopsy was all about?

Then I decided that Jane Katts must have believed that I was trying to outwit her. That coming to the medical examiner’s office had been an elaborate joke at her expense, but she’d never expected to see a body.

Dave riffled through drawers collecting the various paraphernalia that he’d need.

“Sorry, I didn’t get to this one sooner,” he said. “Yesterday was crazy and your murders were late in the day. Must have been a full moon or something, because we had a line of bodies waiting to get in like we were the best restaurant in town.”

He unleashed a hearty laugh.

Jane Katts gave a grunt of disgust at Dave’s humor. When I was new to the job, I was also shocked and surprised at the irreverence of the medical examiners. After a few months, I learned it was how they coped.

“I was able to slice the gunshot guy though,” he said. “I figured you’d want the bullet from that one. You can imagine my surprise when I pulled –”

“Dave.” Louise interrupted him before he could reveal our ace. “I didn’t have the chance to introduce you to Jane Katts. She’s with the Saint Paul newspaper.”

Dave Goldwin’s expression changed from placid to furrowed. He gave Jane a hard stare.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Katts. You’re the one who wrote that crap I read in the paper this morning aren’t you.”

The pressure that throbbed in my heart since Jane had joined us ebbed for a moment. I silently blessed Dave for his irreverence and honesty.

Digs’ eyes went wide enough to pop out of his skull and he shuffled from side to side with a nervous laugh. Louise placed her hand firmly on his right shoulder to keep him from doing the Daffy-Duck-bounce off the walls.

Jane jerked up slightly at the stinging jab. “It wasn’t crap.”

“Sure it was.” Dave turned back toward his drawer rummaging. “Sounded like spoiled grapes when I read it.”

“What’s your name?” Jane took her notebook from her purse, the threat in her question far from veiled.

“Goldwin.” He approached her and leaned over her notebook. “G–o-l-d-w-i-n and don’t spell it wrong when you write your crap about me.”

Dave looked at me and jerked his thumb toward her rolling his eyes as if to say, “Get her”. After all what would she print?

“You done passing notes, Ms. Katts? Because I remember saying that class was in.”

Jane clicked her pen closed and dropped it neatly into the side pocket of her purse along with the notebook. She sucked her cheeks in like a fish mugging against the side of a tank.

Doctor Dave Goldwin snapped on his rubber gloves and fixed an icy gaze on her. He reached up, opened a cupboard door, and pulled out a handful of surgical masks. He dangled a mask from the end of his chubby index finger and held it out to Jane. She took the pale, green, square of fabric, and tied it around her face.

Louise, Digs, and I took our masks and followed suit.

Dave wheeled a tall table with a silver tray on the top, littered with various mean-looking, stainless steel instruments, across the room, and stationed it next to the body on the table. The neatly laid out tools looked like some grisly Thanksgiving carving tray.

He drew the sheet away from Susan Luther’s bloodless, blue-tinged face, and then looked up at Louise and me. His eye danced from us to Jane as if to ask if we were sure.

For my part, I was more than sure. I wanted Jane to see what she had only previously imagined in a detached manner.

Dave folded the sheet down past her naked breasts, then again at about her knees. Finally, he drew the sheet away and Susan Luther lay naked on the table in front of us, arms at her side and legs at a hips width apart.

Digs briefly made eye contact with Jane Katts. He shifted uncomfortably in place and turned bright red. I didn’t believe it was the first time Digs had seen a naked woman, but part of me wondered if it was the first time, he’d seen a naked woman with a live woman in the same room. Judging from his reaction it was quite possible that Digs was the world’s oldest living virgin.

Dave switched on the microphone above the table to record his observations during the autopsy.

“The victim is Susan Luther, a forty-six year old female.”

Dave ran his fingers down Susan’s neck, and rolled her head toward him. He checked her teeth, then ran his hands down her arms.

“Victim appears to be in good physical condition.”

A dark, slightly purple puncture marred the skin on her left side about an inch below her left breast. Dave used a magnifying glass to examine the area for trace evidence. He used a tweezers and removed a few fibers that were most likely from Susan Luther’s shirt. Digs handed him an evidence bag and Dave deposited the string in the baggy.

“Preliminary cause of death appears to be stabbing,” he said.

I looked across to Jane whose color hadn’t returned to her face. “You okay over there?”

She dismissed my concern with a brusque, “I’m fine, thank you.”

Dave probed the four stab wounds on the front of Susan Luther’s body, then put one hand under her shoulder and one under her hip. He rolled Susan onto her side exposing her bare bottom to us. Jane turned away for a moment, then recovered and turned back.

Dave counted nine more stab wounds, thirteen total. We were definitely dealing with a crime of passion.

“I’m ready to cut.” He took a scalpel from the tray and made a Y-incision on her chest. Dave glanced up at Jane. “You still doing alright there, Ms. Katts?”

“Yes, and I wish everyone would quit asking. I’ve seen blood and gore before.”

“Okay,” Dave said and peeled Susan Luther’s skin from her rib cage.

I turned away. I could never watch him open someone. The rest of the autopsy I could cope with, but actually opening the skin bothered me. It made my hair bristle and my stomach flip-flop.

“You can look now, Catherine,” Dave called and I turned back.

“Are you okay, Detective?” Jane’s voice was snide and contemptible.

“I will be now,” I said.

Dave picked up what I referred to as the branch cutters. That’s essentially what they were; only these cutters cut bone instead of tree limbs.

He cut through the first rib. From somewhere to my right I heard a whomp, followed closely by a thud. Jane Katts lay sprawled on the floor, mouth open, arms, and legs twisted like a rag doll.

“See now, I would have bet she’d puke,” Dave said and gave a wicked, short laugh. He flicked a finger toward Digs. “You know where the smelling salts are.”

Digs nodded and crossed to a cabinet on the other side of the room.

Then Dave forked two fingers at Louise and me. “You two get that lying, pile of garbage out of here, and wake her up. In that order.”

“Why are you so hostile toward her, Dave?” Louise didn’t move toward Jane. “She didn’t do anything to you.”

“Yes she did.” He turned back to Susan’s ribcage and released some anger by crunching through another rib bone with more force than needed. “My wife is one of those conspiracy theory buffs and that woman, crumpled on the floor, made my wife mad at me before I’d even had a chance to scratch my balls this morning. My wife cornered me while I was still in bed and gave a high-holy sermon about police corruption. Then she told me I had to go into private practice.”

Another crunch popped off another rib.

“I don’t want to work with the living, that’s why I’m here. Now I’m going to be lectured, and nagged, until my wife finds some other bug nestled in her ass. And that –” He jabbed the branch cutters toward Jane, “Woman is the reason.”

“Enough said.” I reached down, took Jane by the wrists, and dragged her toward the door.

Louise opened the door for me and took the smelling salts from Digs. I slid Jane into the hallway and then dropped her wrists letting them hit the floor. A tiny piece of satisfaction rippled through me at the childish behavior.

Louise knelt down next to Jane. “I’m assuming we’re done with the autopsy, and that you’ve accomplished what you came here for?”

I nodded. “Yep, you can judge me if you want to, but she needed to see the Luthers as human, not as the topic sentence of some news story.”

Louise cracked open the ampoule, and waved the foul smelling concoction under Jane’s nose. She choked awake, sat up, and rubbed at the back of her head.

“You weren’t exactly alright were you, Jane?” Louise asked.

Jane tossed her head from side to side, still massaging the back of her skull.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Louise slid her hand under Jane’s arm and helped her to her feet.

“I don’t know.” She focused on the floor. “I thought I’d be fine, if I’d just breathed through it. Then I felt dizzy.”

“You were probably breathing too heavy,” I said. “You hyperventilated.”

Jane parked her butt on the wall and bent at the waist, and braced her hands on her knees. “I must have.”

“Next time you’re feeling sick you should tell us,” Louise said. “You could have been seriously hurt.”

“I will.” Jane straightened. “Let’s get back in there.”

I put my fingertips on her chest just below the well of her neck. “Hold up, eager beaver. We’ll skip the rest of the autopsy. The Chief will kill me if you pass out again and whack your head on something sharper than the floor.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Yes.” I nodded. “I’ve heard that mantra before, but we have other things to accomplish today. We don’t need to send you to the emergency room to get our work done.”

“Besides,” Louise said. “Doctor Goldwin doesn’t like you much.”

Jane’s eyes went wide. “Why not?”

“You apparently got him in trouble with his wife,” Louise said.

Her face drew into a puzzled expression.

“Never mind,” I said. “It’s enough to know you should avoid the autopsy rooms for a few weeks.”

I checked my watch. If I wanted to catch the McCann County Sheriff in his office and quiz him about Chad Luther’s Grandmother, I’d have to call in the next couple of hours.

“Let’s check in at the office and then we’ll visit the cousin.”