When Shadows Fall (6 page)

Chapter
12

Lynchburg Police
Department
Lynchburg, Virginia

FLETCHER KICKED THINGS
off. “Timothy Savage. What can you tell us about him?”

“Other than the fool could have gotten my officers killed with his stupid stunt?”

Davidson pulled a file folder from his drawer and put it on the desk in front of Fletcher, draped his jacket on the back of his chair. “Detergent suicide. It’s worse than running up on a meth lab without your gear. At least he had the presence of mind to warn us so we didn’t blunder into the scene and lose men.”

“What do you mean, he warned you?” Sam asked.

“Look at the pics. I have them arranged chronologically.” Fletcher opened the file and scooted his chair closer to Sam’s so she could see the crime scene photos.

Savage had died in a small cabin surrounded by forest. There were a few shots of the cabin from afar, then close-ups of the windows and doors. Large white signs with hand-drawn biohazard symbols were taped in the two front windows, and the front door had a note on it with the words:

HYDROGEN SULFIDE

SUICIDE

POISON GAS

DO NOT OPEN

DANGER!!!

1 BREATH CAN KILL YOU

Sam raised an eyebrow. “You’d have to have a pretty high concentration to die from a single breath, something like seven hundred seventy parts per liter, but this stuff is toxic. Even a small concentration will cause all sorts of respiratory problems. What did he use?”

“Muriatic acid and lime sulfur. Bought it at the gardening center down the road from his place. More than enough to do the job. We had to get HAZMAT involved to come in and clear the place so my coroner could retrieve the body. Took a day to make it safe enough to get anyone near without a mask.”

“Who found him?”

Davidson’s brows pulled together. “Anonymous 911 call from a pay phone in front of a 7-Eleven on Rivermont. No working cameras there, so we couldn’t get a shot of the person who called. I can play you the tape, it’s quick. Male voice states the address, and requests police response to a dead body. That’s it.”

“Have you dealt with many of these before?”

“Not many, but it’s getting more and more common. Usually they do it in a car, in an out-of-the-way parking lot where they won’t be discovered and disturbed. You seeing this in D.C., too?”

Fletcher shook his head. “I’ve heard of it but haven’t worked one. They still like the traditional means up north. Guns, pills, hangings.”

“Well, some of these rural kids get pretty hopeless. This is a guaranteed death, without a lot of mess, and it’s cheap, and fast. The ingredients are readily available and mostly unregulated, too. They can do it with dandruff shampoo and toilet cleaner if they’re desperate enough. As long as there’s an acid and a sulfur, they’re in business.”

“But Timothy Savage used industrial-strength elements for his concoction?”

“That’s right. He wasn’t messing around. At least he warned us.”

Fletcher flipped through a couple more pictures and stopped. “Is this his suicide note?”

“It is. We found it right next to the body.”

Fletcher pulled a plastic sheet protector from the file and handed it to Sam. Inside was a handwritten note. She read it aloud quickly.

“‘I am sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused. This is best for everyone. Goodbye. T.S.’”

She set the letter down on the desk. “Fletch, the handwriting matches.”

“Handwriting matches what?” Davidson asked, suddenly wary.

Fletcher removed a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. “This is a photocopy of a letter Dr. Owens received yesterday. Before she was called upon by Mr. Benedict regarding Savage’s will.”

Davidson read the letter, frowning the whole time. “May I keep this?”

“By all means. I have the original in D.C.”

“I don’t get it,” Davidson said. “Why would Savage kill himself but send a letter to Dr. Owens claiming to be murdered?”

“There’s more,” Fletcher said, and filled him in about Benedict, the will and the lawyer’s subsequent murder. Sam noticed he left out mentioning the angle of the garrote.

Davidson rubbed a meaty hand across his face. “Let me get this straight. Not only did he send you this letter, he made you executor of his estate, meager though it may be? And then Rolph Benedict is murdered after delivering the message? I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. We better get in touch with Rolph’s partners, see what’s up.”

Sam finished flipping through the crime scene photos and a two-dimensional crime scene drawing. From what she could see, the Lynchburg P.D. had been thorough and careful. “Just so you know, the will stipulated I perform a secondary autopsy on Mr. Savage. I know he wasn’t sent to Richmond for posting, so he must still be here in town. I’d like to arrange it as soon as possible.”

Davidson stared at her for a heartbeat, then paled and grabbed the phone. He dialed a number from memory and breathed an audible sigh of relief when the call was answered.

“Roy? It’s June. You haven’t put Savage’s body through the furnace yet, have you? Oh, thank the Lord. All stop, right now. Yes. We’ll be down shortly. Bye.”

He turned to Sam. “Lady, you have the Devil’s own luck. Savage’s body was set to be cremated this morning. Roy came in late and hadn’t gotten to it yet. We caught him just in time—Savage is already in the retort, ready to go.”

“Who is giving the instructions regarding the body? Who decided he should be cremated?” Sam asked.

“Well, that’s where all this gets a little hinky. No one claimed the body— Savage is a loner, doesn’t have any family nearby to speak of. The orders came from Benedict’s law office. They’re footing the bill.”

Fletcher spoke up. “Cremation directly countermands the deceased’s request for an autopsy by Dr. Owens. What the hell, Davidson? What sort of law offices are these?”

“Well-respected ones. I honestly have no idea what’s going on here. No one mentioned the man had a will.”

Sam asked, “Does he have any family? Someone must have placed the obituary.”

“Honestly, Dr. Owens, that obituary is a bit of a mystery to me. Savage isn’t from around here. He showed up with his son a decade ago, kept to himself, homeschooled his boy, didn’t get into any sort of trouble. The boy’s name was Henry, if I remember correctly. I think he went to Randolph College, but we haven’t been able to locate him.”

“Henry Matcliff?” Sam asked. “Benedict told me he’s the primary heir to the estate, but they hadn’t had any luck finding him.”

“Matcliff? Never heard the name. Far as I knew, it was Henry Savage.”

“It seems very odd that Henry wouldn’t claim his father’s body and have a burial, or a memorial service. Is there bad blood between them?” Fletcher asked.

Davidson shook his head. “I don’t know. Like I said, this was so clearly a suicide we treated it as such.” He stood up. “We better get on over to the law firm, see what they have to say for themselves. Then we can get you together with Mr. Savage, face-to-face.”

Sam shook her head. “I want to do the autopsy first. Without the facts, nothing else matters.”

“What more do you need? The man killed himself and roped you into his scheme.”

“You’d be amazed at the facts you miss without a proper autopsy,” she replied. “I must admit, I’m a bit surprised it wasn’t done in the first place.”

The note of admonition was clear to Davidson, who bristled. “Hey, now, I can only do what I can do. Coroner ruled it a suicide, looked the body over and there was no indication of foul play.”

Sam shrugged. “Thankfully, it’s not too late. Take me to Mr. Savage’s body, please, and let’s get things under way. Then we can talk to the lawyers.”

Chapter
13

Lynchburg, Virginia

SAM LOVED THE SOUTH.

The Hoyle Funeral Home and Crematorium was housed in an antebellum mansion worthy of its own sound stage in Hollywood as a depiction of Tara. Huge Corinthian columns soared in front of three stories of pristine white clapboard, black shutters, a wraparound porch and a red double front door, its true purpose masked by the picture-perfect facade of a luxurious bed-and-breakfast. The main doors opened into a magnificent foyer with a small, awkwardly placed reception stand, currently empty. The counter had a small bell, like in a hotel, and Sam smacked it lightly with her palm. Moments later, a small man scurried into the foyer.

Roy Hoyle of the eponymously named crematorium was a mouse of a man with a mop of unnaturally black hair that was slightly crooked on his scalp, and thin, pale hands that hardly seemed capable of the duties they were called upon to perform on a daily basis. He shook Sam’s hand and she could barely feel his fingers in hers. She saw Fletcher flinch when the action was repeated, and cautiously wipe his hand on his trousers.

While the man himself might have been a mouse, his setup roared like a lion. When Davidson told him why they were there, he quickly gave them a tour of the facilities. His embalming suite was tidy and boasted the latest materials, all polished to a high shine, and the attached crematorium was immaculate. He even had a small but separate autopsy suite, designed specifically for independent pathologists who were called in to perform private and secondary autopsies for families.

Sam felt bad for her earlier uncharitable assessment—a mouse he might be, but a professional, cautious and meticulous one. Exactly what she needed to get to the truth about Timothy Savage.

After a bit of small talk, Hoyle led her to Savage’s body, which had been prepared for cremation. When Davidson had said all stop, Hoyle took him seriously—everything was as it had been a few minutes prior, but the heat to the retort had been turned off. Savage was ensconced in a cardboard box, waiting on the automated belt. It seemed he wasn’t the only customer of the day; there were a few other boxes lined up behind his.

Hoyle showed her the environs shyly. He had a soft voice she strained to hear, and didn’t make much eye contact. “Dr. Owens, if you need an assistant, I can provide that service for you. My sister, Regina, has been well trained, she worked for a time in Richmond at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.”

“Why not you, Mr. Hoyle?”

He blushed. “It’s not my forte, ma’am. I’m in charge of the crematorium, and I do the final work for the funerals. Everyone wants their loved one to look pretty, and I’m a good hand with the makeup and hairstyling. My grandmother taught me. Regina does the embalming and autopsy work. Shall I call her? She can be here in a few minutes.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Hoyle. And if we can move Mr. Savage to the autopsy suite, I can get started with the external exam.”

Fletcher said, “I’ll help.”

Hoyle shook his head. “Thank you, but I’ve got it. We have a pulley system that moves the bodies around. Let me just call Regina, and I’ll get the body moved for you.”

Regina promised to come straightaway, and Hoyle got Sam situated.

A few minutes later, an automated cart on wheels arrived in the autopsy suite with the cardboard coffin.

“Handy contraption,” Sam said.

He smiled shyly. “It is. We have the only crematory outside of the big cities that can handle bodies over three hundred pounds. My grandfather designed the pulleys. My father added the automation. They practically move the bodies themselves.”

Davidson called to Fletcher, “Hey, you need to see this.” He gestured to an outer room.

Fletcher looked at Sam. “You okay?”

“Sure thing. Go ahead. I’m not going anywhere.”

He left, and a pretty young woman with the same slight build as her brother appeared in the door to the suite. Roy’s face lit up. “Ah, here’s Regina.”

“Hi, Roy.” His sister came and gave his arm a squeeze, then turned to Sam with a sense of awe. “You’re Dr. Owens. I’ve heard so much about you. I’ve read all your papers. It’s a real honor to have a chance to work with you, ma’am.”

Goodness. She felt her face getting red; she wasn’t used to this kind of adulation.

“Hi, Regina. Call me Sam. You ready to get to work?”

“I am. Are you strong? Savage isn’t a little guy.”

“I can handle myself if you can.”

“Let’s do it, then.”

Roy excused himself, and the two women wrestled the body from the cardboard coffin.

Savage definitely wasn’t little. Sam’s measurements said seventy-two inches, and the scale showed him at two hundred pounds. He was fully dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans.

“Is this how he came in?” Sam asked.

“This is how we got him,” Regina said. “We did the usual radiographs to make sure he didn’t have any devices or replacement joints, but the orders were to cremate him clothed.”

“Is that usual?”

“Sure. Put Grandma in her favorite blue dress before the cremation, that sort of thing.”

“Who dressed him, do you know?”

“No idea.”

“Okay. You have the radiographs?”

“I do.” She put them up on the light board, and Sam looked them over. She saw nothing of great significance, only a previous tibia fracture, well healed.

“Let’s get his clothes off. I can’t believe they redressed him after they examined him,” she said.

“From what I’ve been told, there was no real examination at all. You have a clean slate.”

Sam looked at Regina. “What? I knew there wasn’t an internal exam, but nothing external, either?”

“Not that I know of. It was a clear case of suicide, they told us, and warned us to be careful with the body because of the hydrogen sulfide. It’s the only reason we haven’t sent him through the retort yet—we wanted to give the chemicals time to dissipate.”

Sam shook her head, partly annoyed and partly glad. When they said no post, she’d assumed they were talking about an internal exam. What sort of fool wouldn’t do any external exam on a dead body? Someone was trying to get Timothy Savage out of the way, and fast.

Once his clothes were off, Sam started on a cursory check of the body. She stopped at the neck. There were bruises around his throat. Her first instinct was strangulation, but she thought about the method of his suicide, the hydrogen sulfide, and the reaction he might have had to suddenly being unable to breathe. People sometimes brought their own hands to their throat as if they could claw an airway open from the outside. It was suspicious, but not entirely unheard of. Sam looked closely at his eyes and under the edge of his upper lip, saw the red pinpricks of petechial hemorrhage. That was to be expected in the case of asphyxiation.

He’d also bitten his tongue, a deep black wound caused by his incisors. The injury would have bled profusely, and she had seen no evidence of blood on his clothes or his body. She tucked that fact away, but felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. Someone had cleaned up Mr. Savage, after all. The police? Or someone else?

“Take a vitreous fluid, would you, Regina?”

“Sure.” She expertly drew the fluid from his eye with a syringe as Sam finished the rest of the external exam. “Let’s flip him.”

They manhandled the body so it was facedown, and Sam gasped. The upper part of Savage’s back was covered in tattoos. Spirals and triangles and stars, what seemed to be a type of Celtic love knot. No faces, no names, just strange symbols, arranged in what looked to be a repeating pattern.

“Take a photograph please, Regina.”

The girl hopped up on the autopsy table and motioned for Sam to hand her the camera. She snapped off a few shots. “Pretty.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely. Here, look at the shot from above. They’re arranged in a triskele. Do you know what that is?”

“Never heard of it.” She looked at the photos and could see now what Regina was talking about—the multiple symbols formed a clear pattern of three interlocked spirals.

“A triskele is Celtic, and it’s ancient. It was a pagan symbol, the power of three—maid, mother, crone or land, sea, sky. Any triad, really, but once Christianity came into the land, it morphed into a trinity symbol. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

“How do you know this?”

She smiled, and Sam was reminded of a pixie. “I studied Comparative Religion and the Classics at Randolph College. I was considering entering a convent for a while, then decided I could be of better service to my Lord by helping discover what causes death. I’m considering pathology, but med school is so very expensive.”

It was a strange way to phrase it, what causes death, instead of the more common forensic phrase, cause of death. But Sam didn’t pursue it. She looked at Savage’s back again.

“It must have taken years to get all of these tattoos,” she said. “Did you know Savage, Regina? Or his son, Henry? Where he went to church, or anything else about him?”

“No, I didn’t. Then again, Lynchburg’s a bigger town than you might think.”

“I was told Henry went to Randolph College, too.”

“Really? Must have been after I left. I graduated the last year it was all women. I’m still stunned they went coed on us.”

“Too much to hope for, I guess, leaving the school single-sex. Let’s flip him and get moving.”

Sam put her hands on his shoulders. As they maneuvered the body onto its back, she felt something hard and crusty under her fingers.

She carefully brushed back his hair and saw a trail of something silvery by the man’s ear. “Hold up a sec, I want to collect this. Can you hand me a DNA swab?”

“What is it?”

“Tears. I think. It makes sense. His eyes would be burning from the chemicals. Just want to be sure we catch everything.”

She collected the sample, then they washed the body and got down to the internal exam. Sam added a second set of gloves, pleased Regina had the Marigolds she preferred, put on an eye shield and double-masked herself in case of any leftover gases from Savage’s lungs. She wasn’t too concerned, though. It had been long enough that most of the gas would have dissipated, and they were in a well-ventilated room. Just in case, she made sure Regina had taken the same precautions, then hefted the scalpel in her right hand and glanced at the girl. “Would you like to do the cut?”

“Oh, no, Dr. Owens. I’d like to watch you do it, if you don’t mind. I can probably learn a thing or two from your technique.”

Sam laughed to herself a little—her technique was rusty as hell, considering—but placed the tip of the scalpel into the flesh just below the clavicle and swept the knife downward decisively. The tough skin parted, the yellow subcutaneous fat along the edges thicker than she would have anticipated for a man in such good shape. She sliced down the other side, meeting the cut just above his groin, and stepped back to allow any gases to escape. After a few moments, she set to the task of autopsy. The rib shears made quick work of the breastplate, making little crunching noises that echoed in the quiet space, and when Regina lifted it out of place, Sam’s first view of the lungs brought her to a halt again.

They were perfect.

She was looking at the lungs of a healthy man, in his prime, who’d clearly never smoked or lived in an industrial, polluted area. Nor did they show any sign of irritation, or inflammation. No frothy blood, no edema.

“Son of a bitch.” The words were muffled behind her mask.

“What is it?”

Sam looked up at Regina. “Timothy Savage did not die from hydrogen sulfide poisoning.”