Lucky Stiff (3 page)

In a few days, Hurley and I will be traveling to Daytona Beach to attend a two-day educational seminar on advances in forensics, one of the requirements of my new job description. Though I failed to inherit my mother’s tiny, trim figure, I did get her fair coloring, blue eyes, and blond hair. My normal skin tone is quite pale. Along with my height and my size-12 feet, it earned me the nickname of “Yeti” in high school. Given the warm weather and the sunny beach where we’ll be staying for the seminar, I thought it might be prudent to spend a little time in a tanning bed getting some base color. I know the sun can be dangerous, but the idea of worshipping it a little is irresistible—especially since I’m in the midst of one of Wisconsin’s infamously long, dark, snowy winters. Thanks to daylight saving time, I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. Every day I check my canine teeth in the mirror, expecting to see that they’ve grown.

So an artificial sun is my only choice and I’ve had two sessions at the tanning bed so far. I got a bit impatient yesterday and set the timer for longer than I should have. As a result, I burned a little, leaving me cherry red instead of tanned. Fortunately, I kept my panties on and draped a small towel over my boobs so my more delicate parts didn’t get hit. I’m not too worried about the red parts, because I know from past experience that they’ll fade to tan in a few days, giving me an approximate two-week window of looking sun-kissed and healthy before giant sheets of my skin start peeling off like a sloughing leper’s.

I planned it all out so that I’d look my best when we hit Florida. However, as I glance into the mirror and examine my backside, I realize I’ve made a fatal miscalculation. The curved tanning bed cradles me pretty tightly. As a result, I have a series of red-and-white stripes down both of my sides—red, where my skin was exposed to the tanning bed; white, where rolls of back fat kept certain areas tucked away and hidden. The end result is laughably hideous. I look like a mutant albino zebra.

Disgusted, I get into the shower and try to block the image from my mind, vowing to get back to the gym. A hugely overweight, semiretired detective by the name of Bob Richmond conned me into doing workouts with him a few weeks ago, but I’ve slacked off a bit as of late while he’s been at home recuperating from a bullet wound. My idea of exercise is walking to the bakery rather than driving, and I’m convinced that the exercise machines at the gym were purloined from a medieval torture chamber.

Fifteen minutes later, I am cleaned of ash and my stripes are safely hidden beneath a set of scrubs. When I arrive in the autopsy room, Izzy informs me that he and Arnie, our lab tech, have already X-rayed the body—including a set of dental films—drawn vitreous samples, and obtained blood from the carotid artery. Hurley and another local cop, by the name of Junior Feller, are standing against the wall by the door. As I approach the table, the song “Bad Boys” from the TV show
Cops
starts to play. Looking a bit embarrassed, Junior takes out his cell phone and answers it, stopping the music.

“Are you kidding me?” Hurley mutters, with a roll of his eyes.

Junior says into the phone, “Not now, Monica. I’ll call you later.” He pauses and then says, “Yes, I can pick up some eggs on the way home. But it may be a while.” He snaps the phone shut and drops it back into his pocket.

“Seriously, dude?” Hurley says, shaking his head. “You have the theme song for
Cops
as your ring tone?”

Junior looks sheepish and shrugs. “Monica likes it.”

Monica is his new girlfriend and a committed badge chaser. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she and Junior do it in the back of his cruiser while Junior keeps on his uniform and gun belt.

Izzy and I smile at one another, but say nothing. We turn our attention back to the task at hand. Jack’s body is already laid out on the table and fully exposed. It’s a bizarre sight. His limbs look like giant, burnt chicken wings; his torso is like a charcoal briquette. Yet, his face looks relatively normal.

Izzy starts his superficial exam at Jack’s face, while I take a comb to what’s left of his hair, searching for trace evidence. All I find are chunks of the asbestos insulation, ash, and some bits of ceiling tile. I collect it all on clean white paper and then bag and seal it as evidence.

Izzy steps up on the footstool he has to use in order to reach everything and opens Jack’s mouth to look inside. “There’s no sign of soot in his nostrils or in his mouth,” he says. “That tells me he was likely dead before the fire started. I’ll be able to tell better once I get a look at his lungs, and after Arnie runs the lab tests on the blood he sampled. But I’m guessing Jack’s carbon monoxide level will be zero.”

“Maybe not zero,” I say. “He was a smoker.”

“Good point.” Izzy then explains the situation to the cops. “Smokers tend to maintain a carbon monoxide level anywhere from zero to ten, depending on what they smoke, how long ago they smoked it, and how often they smoke. But if he inhaled smoke from the fire, his level will be much higher than that.”

Izzy peels back Jack’s upper lip, then the lower one. “Hmm, this is interesting,” he says, and both Junior and Hurley step up to the table to take a look. “He has some bruising here on the inside of his lips—something we often see when someone’s been smothered.”

Hurley asks, “Can it be caused by something else?”

Izzy thinks a moment before answering. “Yes, I suppose it could. The weight of the ceiling debris falling on his face might have caused it. But considering the amount of the bruising, I suspect he was still alive, with his heart pumping, when it occurred, and if that was the case, he’d have soot in his mouth. So I can only assume the bruising occurred perimortem, before the fire started and the ceiling came down. It’s also possible he hit his face against the floor or some other object when he fell out of his wheelchair.”

After Izzy snaps some photos, we examine the remainder of Jack’s body surface, both in the room’s normal light and again using our ultraviolet light. Aside from more ceiling debris, we don’t find anything of interest, but we bag and tag what we do find, just in case.

Next Izzy hoses the body down and the resultant gray water runs along channels on the sides of the autopsy table into a special filter and drain. The filter will be examined later for any additional trace evidence.

Izzy steps down from his stool and looks over at Junior and Hurley. “This next part is going to be a bit grim,” he warns. “I need to straighten out his arms and legs.” Izzy instructs me to hold Jack’s shoulder and torso down while he takes hold of the lower part of the arm and pulls. He throws most of his weight into it—a considerable effort despite his height, since Izzy is nearly as wide as he is tall. His face flushes red and his bushy, dark eyebrows draw together and form a V over his nose as he pulls. Finally the arm gives way with a distinct
crack.
After a short breather, we repeat the procedure on the other side and then move to the hips and legs. By the time we have the body as straight as we’re going to get it, bits of charred flesh have flaked off onto the table.

Izzy takes his scalpel and starts his Y cut. He has to work at it; burnt flesh doesn’t cut as easily as normal tissue. Once he has the torso exposed, he goes to work cutting the ribs and removing the breastplate. The underlying organs are in better shape than I expected. They appear shrunken to some degree, but they are still identifiable and those in the upper part of the torso appear almost normal. The stench, however, is anything but. It smells like roasted, rancid meat and at this point, everyone in the room is mouth-breathing. The stinky aspects of this job do take some getting used to. Even Izzy, who I’d begun to think can’t smell at all, since nothing ever seems to bother him, is wrinkling his nose.

“The organs are often protected to some degree by the outer layers of the body,” Izzy explains, reading my mind and once again slipping into teaching mode. “But if the fire burns hot enough, long enough, they’ll eventually get thoroughly cooked and might even become charred.”

When he dissects the lungs and trachea, the lack of soot verifies his theory that Jack died before the fire. Jack’s stomach contents include some type of bread, bits of tomato, some soft, gooey white stuff, a thin, half-moon–shaped piece of what looks to be some type of meat, and a couple small chunks of something hard and white. I’m pretty sure I know what Jack’s last meal was, and my suspicion is confirmed when Izzy crushes one of the small white chunks and the aroma of garlic wafts into the air.

Izzy and I exchange a look across the table and both say, “Pesto Change-o.”

“Huh?” Hurley says.

“It looks like Jack’s last meal was a pepperoni pizza from Pesto Change-o,” I say.

“How can you be that specific?” Junior asks.

“Pesto is the only place in town that puts big chunks of garlic like this on their pizzas,” I say.

I hold up the beaker with the stomach contents in it and point to one of the white chunks, which nearly makes Junior blow chunks. He clamps a hand over his mouth, prompting a muttered “Wuss ass” from Hurley. Izzy and I share a smile and then turn our attention back to the autopsy.

The fire burned much hotter near Jack’s pelvis; and the lower down in the body cavity we go, the more distorted and damaged the organs are. Despite being shrunken and discolored from the heat of the fire, his liver appears otherwise healthy and non-cirrhotic. Apparently, his alcohol consumption hadn’t been enough to destroy it yet.

By the time we’re done removing and dissecting the organs, Arnie pops in with the results of the lab tests he’s run. It’s the first time I’ve seen him today, and I have to do a double take.

“You cut off your ponytail.”

He looks back at me through his thick glasses and rubs the top of his head, where his skin is visible beneath the thinning brown strands. “It seemed a little too compensatory and pathetic,” he says. “My hair is falling out, and it’s about time I manned up and faced the fact.”

Izzy, who has a superb bullshit detector, says, “Uh-huh.” He stares at Arnie for a beat and then adds, “When are you going to tell us the real reason?”

“What do you mean?” Arnie asks.

Izzy stares back at him over the top of his specs; his left eyebrow arches in skepticism.

“Fine,” Arnie concedes after several more beats of silence. “I lost a bet and had to cut the ponytail off as payment.”

“Ouch,” Junior says. “That’s a pretty stiff penalty.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Arnie says, shrugging. “I bet a friend of mine who works for a certain government agency that the new big-screen TV he won in a company raffle had a hidden camera in it that allowed interested parties to spy on him.”

This comes as no surprise to those of us who know Arnie. He’s a conspiracy nut who believes homeless people are government spies, and all cell phones are secret monitoring devices created by aliens. “And there wasn’t one?” I ask.

Arnie shakes his head. “We dismantled the entire TV and now we can’t figure out how to put it back together.” He shrugs again. “The ponytail seemed like a fair price to pay.”

“The new do looks good on you,” Izzy says. Then he quickly gets back to business. “What have you got for me?”

Arnie shows him the printouts he’s carrying. “I didn’t find anything too unusual, aside from his blood alcohol level, which was 402.”

“Wow,” I say. “Impressive. That’s more than five times the legal limit.”

“Would it be enough to render him unconscious, or kill him?” Hurley asks.

“Depends,” I say. “When I worked in the ER, I once saw a couple of guys who were long-term practiced drinkers who were functioning quite well despite blood alcohol levels in the five hundreds. Over time you build up a tolerance.”

“What was his carbon monoxide level?” Izzy asks Arnie.

“Six,” Arnie says. “Typical for a smoker.”

“Cyanide?” Izzy asks.

“Cyanide?” Hurley echoes. “Why would you test for that? Are you having flashbacks to that other case we had recently?”

“Certain types of foam and plastic give off cyanide gas when they burn, and the end effect is not unlike being in a gas chamber,” Arnie explains.

Junior winces, and Hurley looks thoughtful. Arnie adds, “But that didn’t happen here. The cyanide test was negative. Also, Jack Allen’s dentist is local, so I sent over the X-rays we took and got a confirmation that the body is that of Jack Allen. The dentist said she’ll send us over a copy of the corroborating X-rays later today.”

“Thanks, Arnie,” Izzy says. “And thanks for coming in today. I appreciate it.”

“No problem.” Arnie sets his printouts on a side counter. “I didn’t have any big plans anyway.” As Arnie leaves the room, I can’t help but wonder how he spent his day. He’s a transplant from L.A. and doesn’t have any family here. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he spent his time online in a chat room with like-minded conspiracy theorists, all of them wearing their protective tinfoil hats and discussing how the emphasis on holiday spending is a government plot to subvert religion.

We move on to Jack’s head and our examination of the brain reveals nothing more, ruling out any brain injury from Jack’s fall as a cause of death.

When we’re done, Izzy looks over at Hurley with an apologetic expression. “I can’t give you a definite cause or manner at this point,” he says. “Nor can I give you a time of death. Hopefully, the stomach contents will help narrow that down, if we have any witnesses to when he last ate. If not, we might be able to get an estimate from the potassium level in the vitreous fluid. Though I know he died before the fire, there’s no way to tell if his death was a homicide or an accident. As I said before, the alcohol level alone might have been enough. Though if he was a practiced drinker, that’s less likely. He also might have succumbed to positional asphyxiation when he fell by landing in a position that blocked his airway. Or someone might have suffocated him.”

“Well, whatever happened, we know arson was involved, and possibly robbery, too,” Hurley says. “So for now, we’ll treat this as a homicide, until we can prove otherwise.”