Lassiter 01 - To Speak for the Dead (30 page)

I walked away, head down.

Big hero.

Big tough guy.

Slapping around a pimply punk with a noodle neck and a garbage mouth. Wrapped a little too tight, are we now?

The two cops had watched it all without moving. Where they come from, an assault doesn't mean much unless automatic weapons are involved. I paced in the reception area, trying to close the spigot on the adrenaline flow. One cop looked at me and shrugged. Midnight in Miami, the crazies out. Anyway, what harm could a guy do in the morgue? Wake the dead?

The cops resumed talking, bellyaching about arresting hookers with AIDS.

"Ain't gonna wear gloves," one said. "Don't help, they bite you in the ankle."

"I hear you can't get it from somebody giving you a blowjob."

The first cop laughed. "What cocksucker told you that?"

The kid hadn't moved, but his eyes followed me across the reception area. Charlie finished apologizing and led me through the doors into a huge, brightly lit, cool room with a faintly antiseptic smell. The walls were covered with blue tile. Steel dissecting tables on wheels were rolled up to sinks. Hoses were coiled at regular intervals along the walls, and the tile floor was marked with drains.

Charlie was poking around in a refrigerator loaded with body parts and various tissues and liquids. Along one wall were five huge coolers loaded with corpses.

"What now?" I asked.

"I saw something on the skin sample I made at the scene. But my microscope isn't powerful enough, so I couldn't be sure. Dr. Kalian was my assistant for fifteen years. He took some other samples from the shoulder area, and . . . here they are."

He pulled out half a dozen slides and walked me through the procedure. If he could make a positive ID through the scope, we wouldn't have to enter Cooler Three, Row One. If he couldn't find whatever it was, we'd have to bring Susan's body out and make new dissections. My mind conjured up her body, already butchered in the autopsy, the parts tucked back inside. I told myself it wasn't Susan in the cooler, just the package that had held her spirit.

Charlie led me to an adjoining lab, where he climbed on a high laboratory stool, took off his cockeyed glasses, and peered through the lens of a high-powered microscope. Seconds later, he shook his head. He tried another slide. Noth-mg.

"What did you see in the samples you made?" I asked.

"I don't know, Jake. Something microscopic that disintegrated in the heat on my slide. It could be something that proves it was just a drowning. I just hope I'm not creating something from nothing—
ex nihilo nihil Jit
—maybe trying too hard to prove it was an accident, to give you some peace."

He loaded another slide, took a long look, then exhaled a deep breath until it was nearly a sigh. "I thought so. Take a look, Jake."

I did. But I didn't see much, a tiny hair particle or nearly invisible twig magnified thousands of times.

"So?" I asked.

"It killed Susan," he said softly.

I looked again. "The hell is it?"

"Physalia physalis,
one of your coelenterates, or all that's left of the one that killed Susan."

"I still don't get it."

"What you're looking at is a nematocyst, a tiny dart. Plus the remains of the sac that held the toxin. Each dart is invisible to the naked eye. She would have been stung by thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, really. The toxin is similar to cobra venom. Just about as powerful. A bad enough sting, the person goes into shock and drowns. Lots of drownings oif the coast are the result of these stings. If you look at the body, nothing. No marks. So it's listed as accidental drowning. Which it is, of course. But the cause is the venom of the
Physalia physalis."

I looked back through the barrel of the microscope. A tiny speck, that's all. But if Charlie Riggs says it's an animal's deadly dart, it is. All these years in Florida, snorkeling, scuba diving, windsurfing, and I'd never heard of a Jil-
sailya . . .

Charlie was still lecturing. "I don't think anybody ever got stung in a swimming pool before. Best I can figure, the Corrigans keep the water circulating from the bay. We can check it, but I'll bet there's no screen on the intake pipe. The pipe sucked water in, brought a couple of these creatures along. Susan goes for a nighttime swim. Can't see worth a darn without her glasses and swims right into one. Happens in the ocean all the time. Why not a saltwater pool? Pool bottom is painted blue. Wouldn't see the
Physalia's
big blue sac."

Something was scratching around in the back of my mind. "What blue sac?"

"The floating sac. It stays above water. The tentacles trail underneath. They contain the darts, and when they uncoil, they shoot the toxin into the victim. The pain is intense. Horrible, really. Paralyzing. It can cripple the respiratory system and throw the victim into shock."

"A blue sac. Charlie, that sounds like a Portuguese man-of-war."

"Same thing. Forgive me for using the Latin, but it's such a beautiful language. To my ear,
Physalia physalis
sounds so much better than man-of-war or blue bottle, as we sometimes call them. Close relative of the hydroids, jellyfish, stinging corals, sea anemones."

"Man-of-war," I repeated, digging up a memory.

Charlie patted my arm and said, "I hope it's better, knowing it wasn't a murder. As Virgil wrote,
felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
Happy is he who learns the causes of things. Even if it can't bring you happiness, Jake, maybe peace."

Charlie Riggs was right. And wrong.

The man-of-war may have killed her. But it was murder just the same. Now I knew the how and the who.

Charlie was still prattling on. I interrupted him. "Melanie and Sergio killed Susan," I said, evenly and calmly. Keeping the burning rock inside.

Charlie looked puzzled. "Jake, I just said a
Physalia—"

"I know, I know. Listen. After the malpractice trial, the two of them took a Whaler into the bay. Susan and I followed. I got as close as I could on a sailboard. It looked like they were fishing. At least they had fishing rods and Sergio was bringing something aboard with a net. But I remember this. It was one of those days the bay was covered with men-of-war. We could look up the date, I'll bet the county closed the beaches. Melanie and Sergio must have brought back some of them, kept them alive, probably in a tank on the
Cory,
then when Susan went for a swim, they dumped two or three in the pool. At night without her glasses on, goggles steamed up, she never would have seen them. Even if she managed to get to the side of the pool, Sergio could have pushed her back into the water. Before we got there, he netted the damn things and tossed them into the bay."

Still sitting on the high laboratory stool, Charlie was silent a long moment. Sifting through it. Finally he said, "It's possible. No reason it couldn't have happened. But you can never prove it. Not beyond a reasonable doubt."

"I wasn't thinking of legal niceties."

Charlie stiffened. His glasses were still on the counter next to the microscope, and he looked up at me through tired eyes. "Don't do anything foolish, Jake."

Why not? I thought. I've done lots of foolish things. J never one that leaves you face-to-face with a death-qualil jury.

ROAD

Three
a.m
. and wide awake. Mind buzzing, a dozen different departments tying up the lines, busy signals all round. Up front some brain cells readying for trial, still rehearsing, doing what ought to be done. Some neurons in the back running through it all, the experiences of a lifetime, roads not taken, and for now and forever, mourning the loss of Susan. Shrouding it all, a poisonous gray mist choking me with rage. Hot to inflict pain. The pain of a thousand sea creatures a thousandfold.

It was stifling in my little coral rock house in Coconut Grove. The ceiling fans were on but I was soaked. Sitting in

the living room on an old sofa of Haitian cotton, more brown than its original off-white, watching rivulets of sweat track down my chest and into the top of my Jockeys. Three Grolschs didn't cool me off.

I pushed the videotape into the VCR. Same interior shots of the
Cory.
Same striptease by Melanie Corrigan, same ass-rolling act in Roger Salisbury's face. A cut, then Roger playing doctor, listening to Melanie's lungs. When she turns over, he slowly taps her ass with his thumb. Laughter all around. Then Sergio joins the party, and finally, the trick shot with Philip Corrigan shooting the scene in the overhead mirror.

Nothing there I hadn't seen before. If there was something Melanie didn't want me to see, she had little to worry about. I'd seen it all and couldn't put a handle on it. I watched it again. Nothing changed. I put my feet up on the sofa and slept for an hour. Maybe two. Then I showered, and headed to the Justice Building. Putting everything else aside, concentrating on the mission, saving a man from the electric chair.

"What I say this morning is not evidence," Abe Socolow was saying as if it were indeed evidence of momentous weight. "It is a road map, a guide as to where the evidence will go."

He was wearing a black suit. All black. No chalk stripes, no patterns. You don't see many black suits these days. Or all black ties. A white shirt. And of course, shiny black shoes. With his beakish look and sunken cheeks, Abe Socolow could have been a small-town undertaker. Or an executioner.

I wore light brown. I almost never wear it, kind of blends me into the woodwork, sandy hair and sandy suit against oak paneling. Trial lawyers always used to wear dark blues and grays, power colors. Afraid brown made them look like salesmen. Then psychologists told us we were salesmen, and brown is friendly. Ronald Reagan wore it when greeting heads of state—big cordial brown plaid or checks. For this trial, friendly brown it would be. Jake Lassiter, the jurors' pal.

Hangman or not, Abe Socolow began his opening statement in restrained and understated tones, slowly building the tempo. First he matter-of-factly described the testimony to come. He turned it up a notch when he talked about the relationship between Melanie and Roger. With motive crucial to his case, he needed the jury to believe that Roger was obsessed with Melanie and would do anything to have her.

"You will hear Mrs. Corrigan describe her long-ago relationship with the defendant," Abe Socolow said. "Yes, they had a physical relationship when she was barely out of her teens, and he already a practicing physician." Socolow shook his head knowingly. How loathsome this defendant must be. Cradle robber.

Several jurors leaned forward. Eating it up. Socolow continued, "The alfair ended, and as frequently happens, their paths crossed again. The defendant tried to talk Mrs. Corrigan into leaving her husband, tried to rekindle the flame that still burned within him, but not her. She would have none of it. But his obsession, his lust, his depravity, overcame his reason . . ."

Judge Crane looked toward me expectantly. I could object here but I didn't. Socolow was arguing his case, not presenting a sterile preview of the expected evidence. The judge shrugged. If I wanted to behave like a potted plant, no problem for the court. But I had a reason. If the judge let me get the tape into evidence, Socolow had just dug himself into a hole.

She would have none of it?

Depravity?

It takes two. Or three in Melanie Corrigan's case. I would use Socolow's own words against him in closing argument.

"First, he worked his way into Mrs. Corrigan's confidence," Socolow continued. "As occurs in marriages, the Corrigans had problems. We all do. Mr. Corrigan was often away on business. She was lonely. She confided in the defendant, sought his guidance as a professional and a friend, not knowing the evil within him."

A bit melodramatic for my tastes. But no one was dozing. I could hear the gentle whir of the television camera placed at an angle behind the bar. The still camera from the newspaper clicked incessantly, despite the muffler designed to quiet it. The newsboys were scratching their notepads, soaking up the sexy stuff.

"And what did the defendant do? Suggest to Philip Corrigan that he spend more time with his wife? No! Recommend counseling? No! This defendant, who pretended to be a family friend, who pretended to mend and to cure, this Great Pretender, whispered to Melanie Corrigan time and again that she should kill her husband.
Murder
him!"

He let it hang there, knowing the silence burned his words into them. No one even coughed. It was as if jurors, spectators, and clerks all held their breaths, afraid to exhale.

"Murder him," Socolow repeated, softer this time. Juror number three, a middle-aged secretary, gasped. If Socolow had paused two more beats, she might have suffocated.

"He showed her how to do it. With a dangerous drug. An anesthetic that paralyzes the muscles and leads to a horrible, painful death as the lungs stop working. Naturally, she was shocked. So shocked that she couldn't believe he was serious. When he finally dropped the subject, she thought it was just a sick joke, a game. But then her husband died after routine surgery performed by this defendant."