These Shallow Graves (8 page)

“If it isn't Eddie G.! Guess you got my message. Good thing, because I'm starving. Where are you taking me?” asked the young man in the black leather apron.

He was round-faced, bespectacled, and covered in blood. As Jo watched crimson drops fall from the hem of his apron to the floor, she felt a surge of nausea. For the first time in her life, she blessed her upbringing, with its tight corseting of the emotions. It helped her keep her feelings in check and her supper in her stomach.

“It's almost eleven, Osk. Most places are closing down,” Eddie said. “I'll take you out tomorrow.”

“Better be somewhere good,” Oscar said. “You owe me. Guys from the
Herald
and the
World
came by. I sent them packing.”

“How's Moretti's sound?”

“Ate there last night.”

“Donlon's?”

“I'm sick of oysters.”

“Mook's?”

“Monsieur Mouquin's! Now you're talking.” Oscar held up a bloodied finger. “But only if they're serving bouillabaisse.”

Dear God,
Jo thought.
We're in a morgue. How can they talk about food?

“Who's that?” Eddie asked, pointing at a mangled body splayed out on a white ceramic table. Jo didn't look at it. She knew she'd run out of the place screaming if she did.

“A John Doe. Carriage accident. Cops just brought him in. Who's that?” the aproned man asked, pointing at Jo.

“Oh, her?” Eddie said. “That's … that's our new cub. Josephine …”

“Jones. Josie Jones,” Jo quickly interjected, grateful for Eddie's fib. She could not let it become known that Miss Josephine Montfort of Gramercy Square frequented the morgue in her spare time. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. …”

“Oscar. Oscar Rubin. A girl cub? Guess every paper wants its own Nellie Bly now.” He extended a hand. It was covered with gore. Jo stared at it, horrified. “Oh, sorry,” he said.

He wiped the gore off—most of it—then held it out again. Jo had no choice but to take it. Eddie was watching her, waiting for her to crumple. She knew he was testing her—and that she'd better not fail if she wanted his help.

“The
morgue
?” she'd repeated, when he told her where he was going.

“Yes, the morgue. You game?”

“Yes, Mr. Gallagher, I am,” she'd replied, bluffing madly. “In fact, there is no one more game than I.”

When they'd reached Bellevue Hospital, her hands had started to shake. By the time they'd walked into the morgue, her legs were trembling.

The room was cavernous and cold. Long white ceramic tables stood in rows. Bodies lay upon them—four men, two women, a little boy. The tables had channels in them to catch blood and other bodily fluids, as well as the water that dripped continuously upon the corpses from sprinkler heads suspended from the ceiling. Saws, drills, scissors, and forceps, laid out in a neat rows, rested on an empty table. The smell was unspeakable—a mixture of rotting flesh, the rusty tang of blood, and the tarry bite of carbolic soap.

The cold and damp went right through Jo, but the worst thing about the place was its sadness. The people here hadn't died where they should have—at home, surrounded by their loved ones. They'd died violently in the street like John Doe, or behind a warehouse, forsaken and alone.

“I suppose you want to see him?” Oscar asked now.

“Dying to,” Eddie said.

Oscar rolled his eyes. “Hope Mook's bouillabaisse is fresher than your jokes.”

Eddie and Oscar had an almost jovial way around the dead. The bodies, the blood—none of it seemed to bother them.

“He's over here,” Oscar said, leading Eddie to a table by the far wall. Jo followed.

A man lay upon it. He was slight, with thinning hair and a wispy mustache. A white sheet covered him from his waist down. He had a shrunken look. His chest was narrow, pale, and hairless. Jo had never seen a man's naked chest before. A faint odor of garlic hung over him. Dried saliva coated his lips and chin. His hands had a blue tinge. His eyes were open.

“Meet Oliver Little,” Oscar said.

It was too much. The poor man's chest, so bare and vulnerable. His sad, empty eyes. The sound of dripping water. The smell. Jo felt faint. She clenched her hands, driving her nails into her palms. The pain brought her back.

“Why the water, Mr. Rubin?” she asked, desperate to look away. To look at Oscar. Or Eddie. Anywhere but at Oliver Little.

“It's cold. Helps delay decomposition,” Oscar said.

“So did the boyfriend do it?” Eddie asked.

“That's what the cops thought. But they were wrong. As usual,” Oscar said.

“What happened?”

“Oliver Little killed himself with an arsenic-based rat poison.”

“How do you know that, Mr. Rubin?” Jo asked, anxious to talk, to think, to do anything but feel.

“It's Oscar. And I know because of forensic medicine.”

“Forensic medicine?” Jo echoed. The words were new to her.

“The science of death.”

“Oscar's a medical student,” Eddie explained. “He works nights at the morgue. Days, too, when he doesn't have class. He's putting himself through school. I don't know why. He's smarter than most of the doctors in this town and all of the cops.”

“How does one practice forensic medicine?” Jo asked, her curiosity overcoming her revulsion.

“Through rigorous observation, my dear,” Oscar said in a professorial voice. “One notes the position of the victim's body, as well as its stiffness, color, and state of decay. One looks for blood spatter. Determines the absence or presence of powder burns. Differentiates between the cuts of a hatchet and those of a carving knife. Recognizes the chemical actions and reactions of poisons, acids, and solvents. And”—he smiled sheepishly—“goes through the stiff's pockets.” He held up six empty packets of rat poison and a flat brown whiskey bottle. “I posit that Little drank some whiskey for courage, dumped the poison into what remained, then downed it..”

“Could the wife or boyfriend have poisoned him and then planted the evidence in his pockets?” Eddie asked. “Arsenic is tasteless, isn't it? Maybe one of them slipped it into Little's whiskey without his knowing.”

Oscar shook his head. “Arsenic's only tasteless in small doses. Six packets of rat poison in a fifth of whiskey counts as an acute dose, and in acute doses, you get a bitter, metallic taste. One slug and Little would've known something wasn't kosher. At that point, the poisoner would have had to force the whiskey down him and the struggle would have left signs—cuts or abrasions around his mouth at the very least. In addition, the symptoms he does display—the dehydration, the blue hands and feet, the hypersalivation and the garlic odor—are all consistent with acute arsenic poisoning. And I'm sure when I cut him open, I'll find lesions in the stomach and intestines, and clots in the heart. Arsenic leaves tracks.”

“The wife and boyfriend—” Eddie cut in.

“—have alibis,” Oscar finished. “Cop I know told me they were seen together in a restaurant from half past five until seven o'clock, and then at a theater. A shopkeeper remembers selling Mr. Little the poison around six o'clock, and a bartender sold him the whiskey a few minutes later. His body was found just after eight, and the show the wife and boyfriend attended let out at nine.”

“How remarkable,” Jo marveled. “You've solved the case!”

“Well done, Holmes,” Eddie said.

“It was elementary, Watson,” Oscar said. “The boyfriend goes free, he gets Oliver Little's wife, and Oliver gets a pine box. The real killer here? A broken heart.”

Oscar moved off to tend to another body. Eddie followed him, asking more questions about Oliver Little and jotting down the answers on a notepad.

As they walked away, Jo pulled Mr. Little's sheet up around his neck.
How dreadful,
she thought,
to be naked and dead and have strangers stare at you.
Had her father been laid out here? She imagined him in this place, set out on a slab like a cut of meat, and her composure suddenly broke.

“Mr. Ru—
Oscar,
” she said loudly, interrupting Eddie midquestion. “Would you happen to know if Charles Montfort's body was brought here?”

“It wasn't,” Oscar said. “We were called to the house.”

“You went to the house?” Eddie said. “You didn't tell me that.”

“You didn't ask,” Oscar replied.

Jo was relieved to know her father hadn't been brought here. “He was a suicide, too,” she said under her breath, her eyes still on sad Oliver Little.

But Oscar heard her. “No, he wasn't,” he said.

Jo turned to him. “What did you say?”

“I said Charles Montfort wasn't a suicide.”

Jo couldn't believe what she was hearing. She shot Eddie a look. “So his death
was
an accident?”

“No, Miss Jones.”

“But if it wasn't one and it wasn't the other—”

Oscar gave Eddie a look. “This one's going to have to sharpen up or Park Row will eat her alive,” he said.

“Oscar,
please,
” Jo pressed.

“Charles Montfort didn't kill himself,” Oscar said, looking at Jo over the top of his glasses. “Charles Montfort was murdered.”

“Miss Montfort? Miss Montfort, where are you going? Stop.
Stop,
” Eddie said, worry in his voice.

“Home, Mr. Gallagher,” Jo said, staggering like a drunk. “I'm going home.”

“That's not the way to your home. It's the way to the East River.”

Jo stopped. She turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. She'd stumbled out of the morgue only moments ago, and Eddie had hurried after her.

“You can't go home. Not like this. You're in shock,” he said now.

“I'm fine,” Jo said.

But she wasn't. Her face was as white as chalk. Her body was freezing cold. She hardly knew where she was. She'd just been told a terrible truth, and it had shattered her.

“How do you know Charles Montfort was murdered?” Eddie had asked Oscar back in the morgue.

“Dr. Koehler—my boss—got called to the Montforts' house. I went with him. He glanced at the body, opened the gun, and ruled the death a suicide,” Oscar had said contemptuously. “Then Phillip Montfort arrived. He collapsed when he saw the body. Koehler got him up and took him into another room, which gave me the chance to do my own exam. There were a couple of cops hanging around. I told them I needed to take notes for Koehler. They didn't care what I did. They were too busy chowing on the coffee and doughnuts the butler brought them.”

“What made you want to do your own exam?” Eddie had asked.

“A lot of things didn't look right,” Oscar had replied. “The entry wound was in the right temple, and Charles Montfort was right-handed—”

“Which makes sense,” Eddie had cut in.

“Yes, but it's the only thing that did,” Oscar had countered. “The gun was still in Montfort's hand, and suicides usually drop it. The entry wound itself was wrong, too. Most suicides press the muzzle of a gun right against their heads. When the gun's fired, gases and bits of gunpowder are driven directly into the skin, causing it to char and rip. Sometimes you can see the muzzle's imprint, too. Montfort's wound showed no imprint, no charring, no ripping. It didn't show any tattooing, either—which is a kind of stippling that happens when gunpowder particles hit the skin from a short distance, maybe six inches to two feet. That means the bullet was fired from farther than two feet.”

“Which is tough to do if you're shooting yourself,” Eddie had said.

“Exactly. Also, the exit wound was at the back of the skull, at a pretty sharp angle to the entry wound—which again suggests the bullet was fired from a distance. I'd expect a straighter trajectory and an exit wound on the left side of the skull if Montfort fired the gun himself,” Oscar had explained.

Jo had had to steady herself against a table; her legs had begun to shake again. Eddie hadn't noticed. He'd been scribbling in his notebook. Oscar hadn't either; he'd kept on talking.

“After I looked at Montfort's wounds, I opened the cylinder of his revolver. The markings on the bottom of the casing from the bullet that killed Montfort didn't match those of the unfired bullets. They were all .38 longs, but the bullet that was fired was marked UMC .38 S & W—which means it was made by Remington. The others were marked W.R.A. Co. .38 LONG. That's Winchester's mark.”

“Did you tell anyone this?” Eddie had asked, his voice grave.

“I told Koehler after we left. I've learned not to offer my opinions during an exam. I told him I believed that the lethal bullet was from a different gun. He didn't agree. He said he'd seen the different markings but didn't think they were relevant. He said Charles Montfort had simply loaded his revolver with two different makes of ammunition. Maybe there was only one bullet left in his box of Remingtons, so he opened a box of Winchesters.”

“It's possible,” Eddie had said.

“Yes, but there was no empty box of Remingtons. Not in the cabinet where Montfort kept his ammunition. And not in his garbage can, either. I looked.”

“What did Koehler say to that?”

“That Montfort might've loaded the gun days ago and tossed the box. Or he might've loaded it at a shooting range. Apparently, he liked to practice. He told me that Charles Montfort's death was a suicide, plain and simple, but that after speaking with Phillip Montfort, he'd decided to rule it an accidental shooting to spare the family further pain.” Oscar snorted. “And to ensure himself further gain. I bet Phillip Montfort paid him a bundle to rule the death accidental, and Koehler didn't want me to screw it up for him. In fact, he told me I was free to disagree with his decision … and free to seek employment elsewhere if I did.”

Oscar's story had had a terrible effect on Jo. She'd thought she would break down while he told it. She had managed to hold herself together through sheer force of will, knowing that if she suddenly became emotional, he'd want to know why. When he'd finally finished, she had managed to smile and say goodbye, and then she'd lurched out of the morgue and into the street.

“He was murdered,” she said to Eddie now. “My father was
murdered.
Someone fired a bullet into his head and left him to die. I have to go to the authorities, Mr. Gallagher. Right away.”

“First, let's find a bench so you can sit down for a minute,” Eddie said, trying to calm her.

“If you could just tell me where the nearest police station is,” Jo said. She stumbled over a pile of horse manure. Once again, Eddie had to catch her before she fell.

“Come on,” he said, putting an arm around her. “We're going to take that cab over there to my place. I'll fix you something hot to drink, then get you home.”

Jo shook her head. “I don't think it's a good idea, Mr. Gallagher.”

“None of this is a good idea, Miss Montfort. I tried to tell you that.”

“Yes, you did. I'm sorry,” Jo said weakly.

“I'm sorry, too,” Eddie said in a gentle voice. “Now, please come with me before you faint in the street.”

“I'm fine. Really. I just stumbled, that's all,” Jo protested.

Eddie's expression was grim. “You sure did,” he answered. “Into something a lot worse than horse manure.”