Heart of Stone (43 page)

Submitted this 25th day of August 1961, by Peter Stueben, MD

I stared at the page. The injury to the left side, the smaller bruised area I'd observed on Karl Merkleson's body, was the blow that killed him. The broken bones on his right side had occurred after death. I had assumed the body had simply bounced or rolled when it hit the rocks, thus accounting for the injury to his left side. This new information changed all my preconceptions about the two deaths at Baxter's Rock.

But the biggest surprise in the autopsy report was the presence of glass in the wound on Karl's left side. I didn't remember having seen any broken glass on the rocks where he fell. But then I reminded myself that the report made it clear that death had occurred somewhere else, unless the body had been thrown off the cliff twice, which seemed unlikely. Where, then, had Karl Merkleson died, and how? And what about Jerry Kaufman? Had he died where his body was found? Had he died at the same time as Karl Merkleson? I would probably never know, since there had been no autopsy performed on the boy, and I figured he'd already been buried. I made up my mind, though, to contact the Kaufmans to encourage them to order an autopsy on their son.

I put down the report and crossed the compound to my cabin. There, I retrieved an envelope from the dresser drawer. Inside were the color slides I'd shot with Fadge on Thursday morning. In light of the autopsy report, I wanted to have a second look at them. I doubted I'd be able to discern any broken glass in the transparencies, at least not without a good projector to enlarge them. And I knew now that Karl Merkleson had died elsewhere, that his left side had most certainly collected the glass fragments in that unknown place. Still, I had to cover all the bases to be sure.

“Any sparkles?” I asked the slides as I peered into them with a loupe. “Come on. Show me some glass.”

My examination of the slides was interrupted by a car arriving outside. I looked out the window and saw Terwilliger's pickup truck.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Tiny Terwilliger showed up at Cedar Haven a little after eight. Dressed in his finest police uniform, he actually looked like a cop. He'd shaved that morning, and his hair was clean. The fabric of his trousers was still engaged in a pitched battle against the broadness of his backside and the volume of his protuberant belly, but one couldn't expect miracles in just one day. I let him inside and told him I didn't have anything to offer him except the last of the gin and Scotch. He'd finished his supper, he said, so he wasn't wanting for food. He did, however, accept my offer of booze. I poured myself a short one as well.

“What's the latest on Simon Abramowitz?” I asked as he eased himself into Max's armchair.

“He's still in the jail,” said Tiny, swallowing some gin with a grimace. “Fine stuff.”

“He didn't sign any confession, did he?”

“Nope. Changed his mind about that, which was too bad. I was hoping to be finished with this case by now.”

“You know he confessed only to protect his wife,” I said.

“Yeah, that's what I figure. Still, a fellow can hope for an easy solution, can't he?”

“Then why is he still in jail?”

“He made a false statement to the police. That's a crime. I have to make an example out of him. Besides, it might get his wife to own up to defiling that boy.”

“But she didn't do it,” I said.

Tiny looked surprised. “But you told me she did. You said her name was Mimi.”

“I was wrong. It turns out only her husband calls her Mimi, and she didn't have a relationship with Jerry Kaufman.”

He drained his glass and stood to refill it.

“We only have time for one more,” I said. “I have new information, and I think you're going to want to talk to Nelson and Lucia Blanchard.”

“What for?” he asked, draining the last of the gin into his glass. “Does this mix with whiskey?”

I shook my head. “I know now that Lucia Blanchard is Mimi.”

“Are the Blanchards those perverts who have a place on Pine Grove Lane?” he asked, and I nodded. “So how do you know that she's Mimi?”

I explained the Puccini reference to him, but he didn't exactly swallow it whole on the first cast. He drank his gin and frowned, telling me that it all seemed like a lot of hooey to him. He asked if I'd spoken to the Blanchards about it, and I told him I had.

“I suppose they denied everything,” he said.

“Of course. They even have an airtight alibi for twelve thirty last Saturday.”

“Then that shifts the suspicion back to your friends. Especially Miriam Abramowitz.”

“Afraid not,” I said. “Miriam was with the Blanchards at the time. Unless they're lying for each other, they couldn't possibly have been near Baxter's Rock at half past noon last Saturday.”

“Then we're still stuck,” he said. “I've got two witnesses who saw them fall to their deaths at twelve thirty.”

“But they only saw one man fall,” I corrected. “Jerry Kaufman.”

“What are you saying?”

“Just that they couldn't possibly have seen Karl Merkleson fall to his death.”

“And why not?” he asked.

“Because he was already dead well before twelve thirty,” I said with a flourish. “I've seen the autopsy report.”

“Autopsy? What autopsy?”

“Esther Merkleson asked for one. Don't you remember releasing the body to her?”

“Sure,” he said, taking a gulp of his gin. “But I thought she just wanted it for burial. Did she say why she wanted an autopsy?”

“She suspected her daughter-in-law, Gayle Morton, was guilty of some kind of foul play,” I said.

Tiny stared deep into his drink and frowned. “Are you sure about this time of death thing?” he asked. I nodded. He downed the rest of his drink, the last gin of the summer. Then he stood up. “All right, then. Let's go talk to the perverts.”

On my way out the door, I stuffed the envelope with the transparencies into my purse along with my camera. The slides were an integral part of my plan to extract a confession from the Blanchards.

Tiny's truck was no less smelly that night, but I figured it would be the last time I'd have to suffer it. On the ride, I explained the Puccini reference again, and Tiny seemed to buy into my reasoning better the second time around. Then I gave him my theory on the perverts' dealings with Karl Merkleson. Nelson Blanchard liked to brag about his Hollywood projects. He'd told me that he'd been working on a movie project with Karl,
The Scarlett Lady
. I had doubted him, of course, sure no one would be interested in making any of his debauched masterpieces into pictures, but he talked a big game. Nelson's dirty movie provided the link I'd been searching for. Surely Lucia had been lying to me about knowing Karl.

Lucia was the bridge between Karl Merkleson and Jerry Kaufman. I still didn't know exactly how the two men had come to die, but it was clear that Karl's death was no simple diving accident. The autopsy had eliminated that possibility.

We were rattling along Lake Road, heading south on Route 15 toward the village, just as the skies finally opened up, and the rain began to fall in earnest. Then Tiny plowed into a pothole, sending a bang and a shudder through the truck. Seconds later we heard the folding rubber and felt the shaking of a deflated driver's side front tire. Tiny swore then apologized to me for his language. He pulled over and climbed out of the cab.

“I'll just be ten minutes to change the tire,” he said, throwing a coat over his head to protect against the downpour.

He opened the tailgate and heaved himself up into the flatbed, and the truck lurched under his weight. I could hear the clanging of metal.

It was bad enough being cooped up in the smelly truck when it was moving, but parked at the shoulder with the windows closed was more than I'd bargained for. I wanted to stick my head out the window, but the rain ruined that idea. I needed a distraction from the odor. Then I remembered my slides. I flicked on the dome light and retrieved the envelope and loupe from my purse.

Having located the tools he needed to change the flat, Tiny dismounted from the flatbed, and I'm pretty sure he stumbled and fell on his face in the wet gravel. I heard a thud, a splash, and more swearing.

“Sorry about that!” he called from behind the truck.

Then he passed the driver's side window and ducked down to deal with the tire. In no time, he was cranking the jack and lifting the truck off the ground.

“The rim's ruined,” he yelled, convinced that I somehow cared either way about the wheels of his truck. “I hit that hole pretty hard.”

I turned my attention to the transparencies. There was plenty of sunlight in the photographs but nothing looking like broken glass on the black rocks. Staring at one after the other, squinting through the loupe for any sign, I shut out the clanking and huffing coming from underneath the driver's side fender and focused on the images.

The painted lines provided a strong contrast to the black rocks, and the bright sun gave everything a warm color temperature. What was I looking for? I scanned the ground for anything resembling glass, even though I knew that the glass must have come from somewhere else. The shale was flat, flaked, and gave up no secrets. The sky was clear, already blue at a few minutes past eight. Nothing helpful there. I zeroed in on a large shadow being thrown by Fadge, even if he was not otherwise visible in the photograph, and I lost track of the outside world. I fell into a near trance, a meditative state of complete immersion, as I gazed at the shadow. And that was when I saw it. I saw what had been there in plain sight all along.

I slid across the seat to the driver's side, intending to share the news with Tiny, who was still grunting away as he performed his task. But something poking out from under the seat caught my eye. It was a brown envelope. It looked familiar, right down to the ring left by a beer glass at Arcadia. It was the envelope I'd given to Tiny. The one with the prints and negatives of the two dead bodies inside. The idiot was supposed to turn them over to the state police. I couldn't say if it was laziness, incompetence, or indifference, but he was the worst lawman I'd ever met.

I'd only looked at the photographs once, but now I was curious. Forgetting about my plan to tell Tiny about my discovery, I yanked the black-and-white prints out of the envelope and pored over them. The images were sharp and showed some details not immediately evident to me at the scene. Merkleson was lying on his right side with his head pointing more or less east. The sunburn covering his back looked even fiercer in the grainy black-and-white photos. What struck me as odd, though, was how the burn ended at mid-calf, below which his skin had retained its very white complexion. Thanks to the high walls of the cove, the sun's rays would be blocked as it rose high in the sky on its westward journey. And that was the confirmation of my discovery of a few minutes before.

I picked up the slides again and peered through the loupe. Yes, the sun was what I'd missed. So obvious and so bright. I'd shot those color slides a few minutes after eight in the morning on Thursday, and the sun was burning brightly onto the painted outlines left by the state police. I verified one last time. It was a coincidence, to be sure. But like a sundial, Karl Merkleson's painted outline showed me the exact time his body had landed on the shale beneath Baxter's Rock. In several of my slides, the sun was illuminating the outlined figure on the rocks from the top of the head to mid-calf. Someone had dumped Karl Merkleson's dead body off the cliff a few minutes after 8:00 a.m., I was certain.

The driver's door opened, and Tiny climbed back in. I had to slide over to the passenger's side to make room. Drenched in rain, with black hands, he turned the key and looked over at me. Still he managed a smile.

“All fixed,” he said, reaching for the gear shift. “Now let's go see those perverts.”

“I think I've broken their alibi,” I said, quite proud of myself.

“How'd you manage that?” he asked, taking his hands off the gears and leaning onto the steering wheel.

“While you were wrestling with the tire, I was looking at the photographs I took Thursday morning.”

He stared at me. “Thursday? You took more pictures?”

“I wanted better photos. I shot some color slides.”

He nodded. “Anything interesting?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I know now exactly when Karl Merkleson went over the cliff.”

“From the pictures you took? How could you tell that?”

“From the position of the sun on the painted outline of the body and the actual sunburn on Karl's skin. They match exactly. So you see, he must have been thrown over the cliff earlier than twelve thirty. At a couple of minutes after eight. That's what time it was when I took those pictures on Thursday.”

“But I've got two witnesses who say he went over the cliff at twelve thirty.”