A Hard Death Read online

  Adam pushed the door to the hallway open gently. Light in the bathroom peeked through the crack in the frame. Something behind the bathroom door was clattering and banging, the sound loud and arrhythmic.

  He took a step closer, then tapped on the door.

  “Señor?”

  Silence.

  He rapped harder; maybe the man hadn’t heard his knocking above the sound of the rain, the hollow banging.

  “Señor?”

  There was no sound other than the rain and the clattering. Adam had no choice: he grasped the doorknob and pushed.

  The door swung open into an empty bathroom, rain pouring through the open window, the wind smacking the window and storm shade against the frame. Adam saw the boot mark that the man had left on the toilet seat when he’d clambered out through the window and into the night.

  The rain soaked him briefly as he pulled the window shut. As he went back to his office, Adam realized he was trembling.

  If the man was so scared he’d climb out a window, he probably thought he’d been followed. The man thought these men—these killers—were watching him and waiting for him.

  And he’d led them straight to Adam.

  CHAPTER 8

  It was well after dark when Nash drove the patrol car past the municipal building to enter the morgue back entrance. The barrier lifted, and as the headlights raked the parking lot, Jenner saw a crowd in front of the garage. Word had spread through the building, through the sheriff’s department, the fire department, and emergency medical services: despite the hour, many people stood silhouetted in the municipal building windows, and at the mortuary the entire staff was waiting for the Roburns in the bucketing rain. They huddled under the eaves in their yellow county rain slickers, some brightly lit by the parking area floodlights, others blurred shapes in the shadows. Several held glowing white candles; the candles kept dying, snuffed out by the rain and the wind despite makeshift paper-cup shields.

  Jenner got out and stood uncertainly, shivering in his wet T-shirt and shorts. A bulky figure in a dark poncho detached from the group and ran to him, an umbrella opening with a pop. Richard Flanagan, the morgue director, held the umbrella up, threw a bearlike arm around Jenner’s shoulder, and walked him toward the garage. As Jenner approached, he saw many people were crying.

  There was a loud buzz to his right, and the security gates at the main entrance ground open slowly, revealing the hulking shadow of the tow truck in a fizzing halo of light and rain.

  As the truck crept into the lot, people moved out to greet it, singly and in forlorn little clumps, letting the truck pass so they could gather around the towed car. Several reached out to press their fingers to the car; Jenner didn’t have the heart to stop them until Norris muttered, “Doc, should they be doing that?”

  He shook his head, and moved forward, calling, “I’m sorry…We can’t…Please don’t touch the car…We have to treat it as a crime scene.”

  Jenner felt a tap at his shoulder: Flanagan, back with his umbrella, now holding a dry scrub suit.

  “Doc, c’mon, you better change. You’re soaked—go inside, dry off, put these on. We’ll look after Mrs. R.” He looked at his colleagues standing mutely around the car in the rain, and shook his head. “You know when they’re bringing in Doc Roburn?”

  As if on cue, the garage walls flickered blue as the ambulance carrying Marty Roburn’s body rolled through the gate, hazard lights flashing, behind it a column of patrol cars, the blue and white turret lights revolving silently. Behind the police cars, Jenner saw a long string of civilian vehicles stretching out, a ragged cortège of cars and trucks, SUVs, even motorcycles, all with headlights blazing, a staggered line of brilliant white light puncturing the dark and the rain.

  The back doors of the ambulance swung open, and two morgue techs climbed up, motioning aside the paramedics so they could take Marty Roburn down themselves. They rechecked the belts securing his body bag, then eased the gurney back, unfolded the rear strut and let the wheels take his weight before extending the other strut.

  They wheeled the body past the line of employees to the morgue entrance, then stopped in front of Flanagan.

  “Doc, if it’s okay, we’d like to offer up a few words in prayer for the Roburns.”

  Jenner nodded. The morgue staff, now joined by a motley group of deputies and civilians, gathered around the gurney as Flanagan opened his arms wide, looked up through the rain, and said, “Father, we beseech you, look after our good friend, Dr. Martin Roburn, and his beloved wife, Roberta. Thank you for blessing us by sending him to us. I know I speak for everyone here when I say that he was the best of the best. He was a father to many, and a friend to all, and we’re going to miss him.”

  Jenner was listening to the sound, the loud pack! pack! pack! of raindrops smacking into the stiff black plastic of Marty’s body bag.

  Flanagan paused, then looked at Jenner. “And thank you for sending us Dr. Edward Jenner from New York City. We know he’s a good man, and a good pathologist. We ask you to guide his hand as he investigates the tragic killing of our friend and brother, Dr. Martin Roburn.”

  There was head-nodding in the crowd, and some amens, and then Jenner realized that they were all looking at him.

  CHAPTER 9

  The deputy sat inside the car, watching them move the bodies into the morgue. He’d figured it would’ve taken longer to find them.

  As he watched, he thought about how funny it was how a life changed. You start out with the best intentions, wanting to help people just get along, live peaceful lives, free of fear, free of violence. Then life gets complicated. You buy a house, get a mortgage, have to make payments each month. You meet a girl, and you marry her, and you have kids.

  But she trips and falls in the kitchen, and injures her back, and needs physical therapy and pain meds, and soon she doesn’t like to get up too much, but now she needs pain meds just to lie in bed and watch TV. And your kids go to school, and it’s a public school in a good district, but they need clothes, and they grow so quick. And the fifty grand you’re making as a county cop suddenly doesn’t go as far as it should.

  But you go on busting bad guys, laying down the law, carting lowlifes off to jail. You are not one of them, you are better than they are. One day you bust some scumbag coke dealer, and he has a brown paper bag with twenty-five thousand in hundreds in it, old, new, worn, intact, just thousands and thousands of dollars in hundreds. And he says take it, just take it and let him go. And you need a new roof, and a new water heater, and the boy’s birthday is in a week, and that money would let you breathe for a second, just a second, help you get your head above water.

  But you say no. And you arrest him, because he’s a scumbag and you’re the Law.

  But now it’s different. You know it’s out there, that little brown paper bag or one just like it, that one-inch-thick wad of untraceable hundred-dollar bills. Or one just like it. And you coulda had it, but you said no.

  But it’s still out there.

  And things don’t get better. The real estate market tanks, and you can’t sell the house, and you can’t afford to fix the roof. Your wife is drinking, but not as much as your fifteen-year-old. He’s dropping out of high school, but you’re not there, because you’re working overtime to save up for the roofing, doing details or working security at the parties of the rich. And you stand there watching them go past, blond high school girls driving German sports cars that cost as much as your house, laughing and tanned and carefree.

  And your wife is now a sucking hole of need, a festering ulcer in your bed, and as you lie next to her, you want to gnaw off your arm, hack it off, anything to escape, you want to be parked off the sand at Gran Turtle Beach, slipping the bra off that sixteen-year-old blonde in the back of her Mercedes convertible, breathing in the smell of million-dollar perfume on her neck as you slide aside those silk panties and start fingerfucking that rich little pussy.

  And you discover busting bad guys is like watching the ti
de—they just keep coming, sliding in, going down, always more mopes to take down. And the funny thing is you get to know them—you see they have families, people who care about them. And one day you realize they’re just like you—screwing up their lives trying to make a fucking buck, trying to make enough to keep their own heads above water.

  And it occurs to you that the problem is the scumbag customers: dealers just give the customer what he asks for, a product that in some countries isn’t even illegal anymore. You’ve learned that users will always find drugs, that if they can’t buy from one scumbag, they’ll buy from another. And you finally understand your life is just some picayune shit, measuring out the ocean with an eyedropper.

  And then one day someone offers you a thousand dollars; you don’t have to do anything, you just have to not be somewhere. All you do is make sure your patrol route doesn’t take you past a particular intersection during a particular hour.

  And this time you say yes.

  And after that, it’s all over.

  He checked the cell phone; another eighteen minutes credit before he had to chuck it. He answered on the second ring.

  “They found the car in the canal, and identified the body.”

  He listened.

  “Yeah, I know it was fast. The new medical examiner recognized the wife’s jewelry.”

  He shook his head.

  “No, they did. But she had a small necklace, and I guess they missed it.”

  The parking lot was mostly empty now. As the cars began to trickle out of the lot, the radar gun mounted on the dash sporadically flashed the speeds—7, 12, 8—the digits splashing pale green light on his face.

  The deputy shook his head firmly. “He’s sharp—we need to be careful with this one. We’ll keep a close eye on him.”

  He hung up. Sixteen more minutes, and this phone would be history. Fuck it, he should just trash it now, pick up the next one.

  What he was doing wasn’t so bad—it was just information.

  The rain picked up again, and the last of the mourners scurried in to shelter. He liked the sound of the rain on the car, liked being quiet and dry while it poured around him. Tonight, he’d lie in bed awake a long while, listening to the sound of the rain drumming against the terra cotta tiles that covered his beautiful new roof.

  CHAPTER 10

  Jenner asked all staff other than Flanagan, and Bunny Rutledge and Calvin Major, the mortuary technicians who’d be assisting him, to leave the morgue area. He followed the employees out of the autopsy room, crossing the breezeway into the main office facility so he could change into his scrubs.

  Marie Carter, the office manager, put up a fresh pot of coffee in the break room, then disappeared, returning a short while later with four dozen doughnuts from the Dunkin’ Donuts on Country Club Road. Bucky Rutledge, another technician and Bunny’s twin brother, arrived with an almost full bottle of Jack Daniels. He set up at the opposite end of the room to Marie, with the bottle of Jack and a line of mugs swiped from the sink.

  When Jenner got back to the autopsy suite, Flanagan was prepping the table while Bunny and Calvin positioned Marty’s body for photographs. As the Crime Scene technician photographed the unclothed body, Calvin hung Marty’s shirt and slacks in the drying cupboard. Then Flanagan wheeled the body into the radiography suite to X-ray the head and chest. Jenner asked him to do dental films, too—with both Marty and his wife dead, a legal identification could be tricky. Visual identification wasn’t an option—Jenner had seen the man barely two weeks before, and hadn’t recognized his corpse. Marty had no ID on his body—no wallet, no cash; the fish hook necklace was either removed or lost in the water.

  Jenner said, “Do you guys have an odontologist?”

  “Of course, doc. Both Dr. R. and the missus went to Dr. El-Bashir—he’s our odontologist. I’ll give him a call in the morning, and I bet he’ll walk the dentals over himself. Heck, he’ll be pounding down our door as soon as he hears.”

  The three lifted Marty Roburn onto the autopsy table. Marty’s size and condition made him difficult to hold, and when they eased him flat, he started to slip off the sides. They were still placing support blocks to secure the body on the table when the door flew open.

  A thickset, heavily freckled blond man, maybe forty years old, strode over to the table and stood there, swaying. He jabbed a finger at the body and said, “Is it him? Is it really Roburn?”

  Jenner said, “Who are you?”

  “Sheriff Tom Anders…” He looked Jenner up and down warily, then added, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Jenner. I’m covering for Dr. Roburn.”

  “Oh, yes.” The sheriff’s eyes stayed narrow as he looked at Jenner. “Well, I’m your boss.” He gestured impatiently to the body. “Is it really him?”

  Jenner could smell the alcohol.

  “We need to confirm with dental in the morning, but yes. I think it’s Dr. Roburn.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” The sheriff struggled to focus, then blurted, “I liked that old guy…”

  He leaned against the cabinets, breathing fast. Jenner turned to Flanagan and raised an eyebrow; Flanagan shrugged.

  Jenner said, “Sheriff, you don’t have to stay for this—I can stop by your office first thing in the morning to discuss my findings.”

  In a heartbeat, Anders’s gaze shifted from dazed to suspicious, his eyes teeny ball-bearings in his chubby baby face.

  “No! I’ll stay! I want to stay.” He looked around the room, spotted a stainless steel stool, and pointed. “I’ll be right there, out of your way. No need to worry about me, Mr. Jenner! I’ll be right there…”

  He walked carefully toward the stool, then sat down hard and slumped back against the drying cupboard. Jenner figured he’d pass out soon.

  Back at the table, Jenner muttered to Flanagan, “Rich, how do we get this clown out of here? A guy that big, if he slips and hits his head, there’ll be blood everywhere—I don’t need the hassle tonight. Anyone we can call to get rid of him?”

  The morgue director thought for a second, stroking his mustache. “Well, he scares the crap right out of the deputies. Maybe Detective Rudge? He’s out in the loading area, talking with Crime Scene.”

  “Okay, good. Can you get him?”

  Flanagan nodded and left the room.

  Jenner looked over to the techs. “Bunny, Calvin? I’m about ready to start. You okay with this? If you don’t want to stay, I can manage by myself.”

  Calvin said, “We want to see it through, doc.”

  Jenner nodded.

  He turned, stood directly in front of Marty’s body, scalpel in his hand.

  How was he supposed to feel? Jenner knew pathologists who said you could do no higher honor to an old colleague than to perform his autopsy, but he’d always thought that was bullshit—he would choose for his friends what he’d choose for himself: leave my body alone. Just burn it, scatter my ashes somewhere I loved. Don’t cut me up, and don’t put me in the fucking dirt to rot.

  But there he was, about to cut right into the heart of a man he had loved—his mentor, his friend. The person who’d helped Jenner, thrown him a lifeline when things were bad, when everyone else was talking about just how badly Jenner had fucked up.

  He felt a nudge at his elbow, and turned to see Bunny. Behind the face shield, her eyes were pink and puffy. “Doc, you okay? You think maybe you should take a break?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m okay.”

  He looked at Marty’s body.

  He was my friend.

  But that wasn’t true anymore, was it? This wasn’t Marty, this was some spongy, rotted husk that had once been wrapped around Marty’s spirit. Christ, the bloated form on the table barely looked human…

  No, this wasn’t Marty Roburn: Marty had left the building long ago, and the bloated corpse on the autopsy table was nothing but evidence. And Jenner would read the evidence and document the information perfectly.

  He smiled at her. “I’m fine, than
ks, Bunny. How about you? You really sure you don’t want to wait in the break room?”

  “No, doc. I’m with you here.”

  She was crying. Jenner looked away.

  In the corner, Sheriff Anders began to snore. In his pale blue Lacoste tennis sweater and pink Polo Grounds Country Club shirt, he looked like a big three-year-old dozing off after a busy day playing with toy trucks.

  Jenner turned to Bunny and grinned, and she began to giggle, the tears streaking down to her mask.

  Jenner looked down, shut his eyes tight for a second, and then made his opening incision.

  He would get whoever did this, get them if it was the last act of his whole fucking train wreck of a career.

  CHAPTER 11

  Cause of death wasn’t an issue—anyone could see someone had cut Marty’s throat with ruthless efficiency, slicing cleanly through the carotid arteries and jugular veins, even severing the windpipe from the Adam’s apple. This would have been the final injury, the coup de grâce.

  And Marty would have needed a coup de grâce: he had been tortured systematically, long, shallow cuts made into his chest, carefully and methodically inflicted. Since the wounds were roughly parallel, Jenner could tell Marty hadn’t moved much during or between each injury; he had to have been restrained, either with bindings or by force.

  Jenner made incisions to explore the wrists and forearms; there was no evidence of a ligature, but a soft or broad ligature could leave no marks.

  Flanagan appeared in the doorway.

  “Doc, Detective Rudge from Major Crimes.”

  Jenner had heard about David Rudge; everyone in the Port Fontaine ME office thought the guy walked on water. Sharp, driven, stellar arrest record, the sort of cop who could nail down the truth in seven questions. Jenner took police legend with a grain of salt, but Marty had said if he ever had trouble, Jenner should find Rudge. And Marty had been a good judge of people.