Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (10 page)

“Okay, I’ve heard enough. He’s the real deal,” I
said. “Read me his phone number,” I said, rummaging through my big leather
shoulder bag for my notebook. “I think he’s worth a call.” As Ryan was giving
me the number, I remembered I’d gotten a call when we were interviewing
Margaret Hagerty. “Wait a second,” I said, grabbing my phone and studying the
screen. “Harold Breen called me. Maybe he’s got something from the autopsy. Let
me call him real quick, then I’ll call the Archbishop and see if he’s got anything.”

I dialed the Medical Examiner at headquarters.
“Harold, Karen. You got anything on Arlen Hagerty?” I listened for a moment.
“Great, ten minutes,” I said. “Harold’s got some results for us. Let’s go back
to headquarters. I’ll call the Archbishop, then we’ll see what Harold’s figured
out.”

As we walked out to the Crown Vic, I got the first
sense we were really going into winter. The wind had a kick to it. We could see
it on the faces of the people we passed; they looked grim, hunched over,
holding their coats shut, like winter had Montana in its teeth and was going to
hold on tight and shake the life out of it for four or five months.

Back at headquarters, I settled in at my desk and
dialed the archdiocese. I got caught up in phone tree—three different people
before I could get someone who would talk with me about the Archbishop’s
schedule. I explained it was in regard to the murder of Arlen Hagerty. The
Archbishop was very busy, the woman said.

Why do they always say things like that? Do they
think I expect the Archbishop to be flipping pennies off the edge of a table,
trying to land them in a shot glass?

The assistant told me the Archbishop would be able
to phone me in an hour and could give me ten minutes. The hour would give her
time enough to check out if there was a Karen Seagate or a Rawlings Police
Department or, in fact, a Rawlings or a Montana.

“Okay,” I said to Ryan, “let’s see what Harold’s
got.” We walked downstairs, past Robin’s crime lab to the ME’s office.

“Hey, kids,” Harold Breen said as he looked up
from a microscope.

I loved Harold but hated his lab, with its tile
walls and floor, the harsh, bright fluorescent lights, the astringent chemical
smell that got up in your nose and stayed there for a couple days. Plus, there
was usually a corpse or two lying on steel gurneys.

On a good day, the bodies were covered with
sheets. Today was not a good day. Arlen Hagerty lay on a metal table,
uncovered, his torso a huge empty red and purple cavity, the organs on a shiny
steel tray on a cart next to the corpse. “What did you figure out, Harold?” I
said to him, looking straight into his eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at the
body.

“Well, I’m pretty sure it was foul play,” he said.

“Good, so we can rule out twenty identical sharp
objects falling out of the sky?” Harold always started with the same joke, and
I had to respond with a victim-appropriate “so we can rule out” response. Then
he would answer me straight. I didn’t mind.

“Yeah, what happened was someone, probably right
handed from the angles, used a reasonably sharp instrument, maybe a screw
driver, to put twenty-four holes in your guy’s chest and abdomen. He bled out,
but he would have died of multiple organ failure anyway because there were a
bunch of significant lacerations to his heart, his lungs, and a handful of
other important parts they told us about in doctor school. He was probably dead
in ten minutes.”

“What have you got on the killer?” I said.

“As I said, right handed. Reasonably good
strength: the weapon hit a bunch of ribs and took pretty big chunks out of
them. And pissed. He was really pissed.”

“From the number of wounds?”

“Number and severity. If you were just trying to
kill this guy, you’d’ve known after four or five stabs he was a goner. The
blood would be geysering out of his chest. Let me show you something else over
here,” Harold said, pointing to the steel tray next to Hagerty’s body.

“Show Ryan,” I said. “I’ll be waiting over here.”
Ryan walked over to the cart, his heels tapping on the tile floor.

“Look at this,” Harold said to him, pointing to an
organ on the tray. “Know what it is?”

“Well, it’s kidney shaped,” he said. “I have no
idea.”

I was really starting to like Ryan.

“Very good, young man. Now see that slit in it?”

Ryan leaned in a little closer. “That’s a puncture
wound. You saying the killer stabbed Hagerty in the back?”

“No, that’s the interesting thing. There were no
entrance wounds on the back. The killer pushed the weapon in with such force it
traveled a good twelve or fifteen inches and took out this kidney. I’m telling
you, this guy was really pissed.”

Ryan said, “I’m going to write that down in my
notes: ‘really pissed.’ Any defensive wounds on the vic?”

“No,” Harold said. “I did find some tissue under a
couple of fingers on each hand. I got it to Robin, who’s following up on the
DNA.”

“Anything else, Harold?” I said.

“Thank you for asking, Karen. There is one other
thing. The murderer didn’t have to kill him. He was going to die anyway.”

Harold liked to save the interesting things for
the end. “I didn’t go to doctor school, Harold, like you did, but aren’t we all
going to die anyway?”

“Yes, Karen, that’s true, but not before the end
of the year.” He paused, a tiny smile creasing his fleshy face, turning his
eyes into slits.

“Really? What was his problem?”

“Dilated cardiomyopathy.”

“English?”

“Big sick heart.”

“How big?”

“Your heart is about the size of your fist. His
was double that. It was huge, and the muscle was all slack. Which means it
wasn’t pumping blood efficiently. So I opened it up. Look at this, Ryan.” My
partner peered in. “The veins and arteries were clogged to about twenty percent
of capacity. Watch,” he said, picking up a scalpel and making a two-inch
incision along a big artery connected to the heart.

“What’s all that yellow stuff?” Ryan said.

“That’s the cholesterol. You know, you want to
convince people to eat healthy, you’d open up a vein or artery like this.”

I’ve always wondered how Harold can understand the
workings of the human body so well and still stay about three-fifty. Another
irony, I guess.

“So to confirm the diagnosis, I opened up the
lungs. Look here,” Harold said, making a small incision in one of the lungs. A
pale, milky fluid oozed out. “As you may remember, lungs are supposed to be
full of air, not fluid. This is another marker for DCM. And look at his swollen
ankles. He was in end stage.”

“And that’s because of his size?”

“That’s part of it. He was carrying about an extra
hundred and twenty-five, hundred and fifty pounds. So he was officially
morbidly obese, which of course is a killer in itself. But I also checked his
liver. Here, get this,” Harold said, pointing to a black organ on the tray.
“It’s huge. And you see the pebbling on the surface? It’s supposed to be
smooth, with a handful of little holes. You’re looking at advanced cirrhosis.
So don’t drink.”

Ryan said, “I don’t drink.”

“What are you, a Boy Scout?”

“Pretty much. Mormon.”

“Good for you. I bet you’ve got a good-looking,
smooth liver.”

“I get compliments.”

“I like your new partner, Karen.”

“Me, too. So, Harold, you’re saying there’s a good
chance Hagerty would have died soon?”

“No, I’m saying it’s a certainty he would have
died within two months, probably one month.”

“Did he know it?”

“Well, it’s pretty hard to miss you’ve got
something really wrong. He’d have heart palpitations, shortness of breath, leg
pain, chronic fatigue. People tell me fatsos have a lot of those symptoms,” he
said, “though of course I wouldn’t know personally. Whether he went to a doc, I
don’t know. Most of the tests for DCM are non-invasive. Some, like cardiac
catheterization or endomyocardial biopsy, would leave scars. But with this guy
sliced up worse than a Thanksgiving turkey at a homeless shelter, no way you’d
be able to see anything.”

“All right,” I said, “so if you knew his medical
condition and wanted him dead, all you’d have to do is wait.”

“Yeah,” Harold Breen said, “but if you also hated
him and wanted him to know it, or you just flipped out—a good long-necked
screwdriver sends s clear message.”

“Thanks, Harold. Ryan, you two boys can stay down
here in the den and play. I wanna get back upstairs in case the Archbishop
calls.” As I left, I caught Ryan asking Harold if he could try making a couple
of cuts in an artery. I didn’t stay to hear Harold’s response.

*  *  *

I was glad to be out of
Harold’s lab. I could use a few minutes away from Ryan, too. He seemed like a
good guy. He was smart and didn’t seem to mind letting me be the senior
detective. That in itself was something, because I didn’t think any of the four
other detectives, all of them closer to my age or even older than I was, would
tolerate it for a minute. But still, I didn’t know Ryan well, and—shit—he was closer
to my son’s age than to mine.

I wasn’t sure how much he had heard about me. I
assume he knew about my one-night stand with a uniform, which enabled my
ex-husband to grab custody of Tommy and got me in trouble with the chief. Ryan
had to know that. One thing I learned from my time in blue is that uniforms
love to watch detectives screw up, that they keep score of everything, from
gossip to bending regs to full-blown corruption. It’s a class system, as
unforgiving as anything the British had devised. And the fact a uniform could
become a detective—that all detectives started as uniforms but most uniforms
would never become detectives—makes the resentment that much greater.

I sat there at my desk, waiting for the Archbishop
to call, thinking about how good a Jack Daniel’s double would taste. I wasn’t
counting on him calling. Big shots like him didn’t tend to pick up the phone
and call small fry like me. Still, he might, if he thought the Hagerty murder
would bring a shitstorm of bad publicity to an organization he was associated
with. He might want to cooperate if only to help me get the story off the TV
and the web. But if that was the way he was thinking, I was pretty sure he
wasn’t going to call when his assistant said he would. Important people loved to
be running a little late. It showed how much the little people needed them, and
how gracious and compassionate they themselves were in granting them the extra
little time they didn’t actually deserve but deeply appreciated.

I was starting to get really pissed off at this
pompous asshole I had never met who would keep me from getting home on time.
The phone rang. “Seagate,” I said.

“Detective Seagate, this is Brian McManus
calling.”

Holy shit. One, he calls. Two, he uses his name,
like he’s a human. “Archbishop McManus, thanks for calling.”

“My pleasure, Detective. This is about Arlen
Hagerty, I assume?”

“Yes, it is, Archbishop. First, though, what
should I call you?”

“How about ‘Archbishop’? We’re not at a barbeque,
but we’re not at the Vatican, either.”

“Okay, great, Archbishop. I don’t want to take up
a lot of your time, so let me get right to it. I called you in your capacity as
Chairman of the Board of Soul Savers. I’m the lead detective in the Arlen
Hagerty case, and I was hoping you could give me some perspective on the people
who were here with the debate.”

“I’ll be happy to try, Detective, but you should
know that as Chairman of the Board, my duty is to oversee the operations of
Soul Savers, to make sure they are adhering to best practices in running a
charitable and philanthropic organization. I might not know as much about the
personalities of the Soul Savers leadership as you think.”

“I understand, sir, but let me ask a couple of
questions,” I said. “About Margaret Hagerty. Could you explain her role in the
organization?”

“Sure, Margaret is the vice president. In Soul
Savers, that means essentially that she is the second in command behind her
husband, who was the president. I haven’t had time even to contact the other
Board members and schedule a meeting to discuss the tragic passing of Arlen
Hagerty, and I must admit I haven’t even had a moment to think about the issue
of succession. I believe the by-laws call for the Board to appoint an acting
president, but that the vice president does not automatically become president
if the president cannot fulfill the duties of the presidency.”

“Do you think Margaret would wish to be
president?”

“Yes, indeed. Margaret is a woman of many talents.
She has a keen organizational mind. She can think at an extremely high level,
both tactically and strategically. I assume she would wish to carry on her
husband’s work, because it was she who approached the Board several years ago,
seeking an official role in Soul Savers. She had spent some years assisting her
husband in an informal capacity, and I must say she always impressed the entire
Board with the clarity and depth of her thinking, as well as her numerous ideas
for improving the operations of the organization.”

“So you think the Board would be positively
disposed to her being president?”

“Well, I hesitate to speak for anyone other than
myself … Oh, my goodness, Detective. I forgot for an instant that I was
speaking with a police detective. Please tell me you are not considering the
possibility that Margaret Hagerty had anything to do with the murder of her
husband.”

“No, no, Archbishop, absolutely not,” I said. He
sounded upset. No point in rattling him more. “I’m just trying to get a sense
of who the players are. No, we don’t suspect Margaret Hagerty at all.” I was pretty
sure this was the first time I’d lied to an archbishop. I lie to everyone; it’s
what I do. I just don’t talk to a lot of archbishops.