Weak Flesh (3 page)

He looked down at her from his great height, but she didn't flinch or look away. "I know you were Nell's friend." He cleared his throat, unaccustomed to being gentle. "When Williams finishes with the autopsy, I'll tell you what he says. You have my word on it."

Her lips thinned. "Don't try to hide the information," she warned, "like you did with the letter."

What the hell?
"How did you find out about that?" he barked, and to her credit, she stepped back quickly. Good, she ought to be afraid of meddling.

"By God, Bailey, if you interfere with a police investigation ... " He left the threat dangling, for in truth he didn't know what he'd do.

"Who told you?" he demanded. Someone in his department or a member of the Carver family, he guessed.

The letter had arrived at the Station House several weeks after Nell disappeared and claimed that the police could "find the body of Ellen Carver at the south end of the Pasquotank River." A hand-drawn map with a large X marked the spot where her body supposedly lay. They'd searched immediately, of course, but found no evidence that Nell had been there.

He'd concluded the letter was a cruel hoax.

"If you stick your pert little nose where it doesn't belong, I'll – I'll toss you in jail," Gage warned when she remained silent. "This isn't one of your adventures or games."

Her brilliant eyes flashed with something that might've been hurt, and he remembered the pirate games he'd played with her as a child when she was bored and he'd felt sorry for her.

"I know that." She gritted out the words and huffed from the room without another word. And, of course, with no promise at all to leave the police business to him.

How the hell was he to carry out a proper investigation with such interference?

#

The man's father took him on his first righteous hunt when he was thirteen. In the black night, the pure, hot flames of the blaze fascinated him as its orange and white ghost-fingers licked the sky. They started as kindles, torches tossed on a wooden shack, but when the flickers caught, the fire was a brilliant, hallowed conflagration.

The boy he'd been stood there, mouth agape as the fire burgeoned, the smoke thick and suffocating on the hot summer air. So lovely in its fiery destruction.

When the coons stumbled from the burning hut – the male with a young one, the female clutching a bundle in her arms and wailing a god-awful sound like a cow being butchered – his pa and the other men were waiting. The boy hovered at the periphery, watching, but desperate to join in.

The four animals went down with the first round of rifle fire, the female still gripping the bundle hard to her chest although several rounds had caught her in the hips and legs and back.

After a moment she ceased struggling and one of the men jabbed her with the hard toe of his boot. Nothing. But the bundle at her side squirmed and started to bawl, the thin thready cry of a newborn calf, but not nearly so valuable.

The man picked it up with one giant paw and tossed it back into the flames.

A righteous hunt, his father had called it, satisfaction lining his weathered face.

A sacred mission.

The one thing the boy knew for sure was the hard gratification in his groin. The pleasure he'd gotten from the whole night. The urgency to do it again.

Chapter 3

A small crowd had gathered at the open doors of the kitchen outbuilding at Pine Grove by the time Gage returned. Officer Pruitt held open the wide doors to allow the waning light in. The box-shaped main room was steamy with the ovens' heat, and the air was redolent with the odor of grease and herbs.

Gage elbowed his way through the group of men gawking at the wet body of Nell Carver. Town statutes required an inquest committee to determine the cause of death.

Another Pasquotank County physician had arrived from Elizabeth City to assist Williams. Along with the local veterinarian and barber and other prominent community members, they made up the eight-member inquest committee.

However private Gage might've preferred the autopsy be conducted, he had no choice in the matter.

Nell lay on a makeshift table with her feet pointing toward the wide entrance. An empty basin and another of water, along with cleaning cloths and several rows of instruments, lay behind her head.

Gage ordered Pruitt to push the crowd back, not liking so many men gathered luridly around Nell's body, but before he could act, the coroner's men quickly stripped Nell of all her clothing. A communal gasp rose from the men staring from the doorway. Had none of them ever gazed upon the naked bodies of their own wives? Gage wondered, indignant on Nell's behalf.

He used his large body to block the view as much as possible. "Go on home, now," he ordered, his voice quiet but commanding. "Let the coroner's jury do their duty. You'll hear the news soon enough."

When no one moved, he glowered at them and raised his voice to a shout, wishing he'd thought to bring along another patrolman. "Get on, now. Show some respect for the dead."

Reluctantly, one by one, the crowd dispersed.

Without speaking, Gage found a discarded table cloth, folded it in half, and draped it over Nell's hips for modesty. He left her breasts exposed for the scalpel incision. He felt more shaken than he'd expected at the prurient interest of so many men in poor Nell's broken body.

Williams' round face flushed and he cleared his throat before continuing. "I'm looking for bruising or injuries on the outside of the body." He looked around the room, but the other men shook their heads.

Finally Alan Freeman, the local barber, spoke up. "Don't that look like some puffiness there on her temple?"

Williams poked a finger against the spot Freeman indicated. "Can't say for sure." He then pressed a finger into her left breast to compare. The tissue bounced back under the released pressure. "Looks the same to me."

Gage gritted his teeth and looked away. From the floor he picked up Nell's discarded clothing, the deep red of her discarded gown heavy and slick with the river's slime. The pockets were empty except for a lace-edged handkerchief and a bit of paper, a torn edge, he thought. No cloak, hat, or gloves, but otherwise all of her clothing was accounted for.

Had she left the house without a coat then? On such a cold night?
He'd have to ask her parents if the missing items were hanging at Pine Grove.

He'd just picked up an undergarment when the doctor's grunt of satisfaction caused him to turn back to the examination table. "What is it?"

"There are bruises on her neck."

Strangulation, Gage thought.

"Pressure to both sides of her neck." Williams shrugged, peering at the area. "I can't say it caused her death though."

Gage leaned over to see the bruises. "It looks like a thumb print on one side and maybe three fingers on the other, like this." He demonstrated with his own neck.

"Perhaps," Williams said cautiously.

After removing the cloth, the doctor moved on to the genitals. "These marks on the torso could be from the water's battering," Williams speculated.

Gage stepped closer to the splayed body. He composed his face to show neither pity nor abhorrence for the once-lively woman. Small round bluish spots on one breast stood out against the white flesh. Grappling, he thought instantly, not the river's damage. Someone had squeezed or grabbed her breast.

After a moment Williams continued, "No clear signs of sexual assault, no bruising, no scratches in that area. No semen or blood, although the river would've washed the evidence away. No obvious sign of pregnancy."

That would, at the least, relieve her parents' minds.

"However, disruption of the hymen, swelling and enlargement of the canal indicate she engaged in intimate relations shortly before her death." William added, "Consensual."

The other men looked at him as if to say that jot of information was expected.

To Gage it represented motive.

Satisfied with the external examination, William performed the first incision from the breastbone to the pubic bone and then executed the horizontal cut. He desecrated the girl's beautiful breasts, laying the flaps of her chest cavity wide.

Using his scalpel, he cut the cartilages and with some effort removed the ribs and breastbone. He inspected the chest organs, excised them in a bundle, and examined them in the silver basin. All the while the other men leaned over to examine his methodical actions.

Next Williams dissected the lungs, revealing the surfaces of the large airways and the great arteries. "I'm looking for pulmonary edema," he explained, examining the lungs.

"Drowning then?" Gage asked, trying to keep the hopefulness out of his voice. He didn't mind the puzzle of solving a murder, but an accidental drowning would sit much easier on the family and the community.

"Ultimately, yes." Williams pointed to the lungs in the basin. "If someone drowns in seawater, those small pockets quickly fill with water as you see here. Nell was alive when she went into the river, but – " 

"But someone knocked her unconscious and put her in the river to drown," Freeman finished.

"She could've fallen into the river," Oliver Nolan, the banker, contradicted.

"Completely by accident," agreed Seth Adams, who always looked for the easiest answer.

Gage looked at the men surrounding the table. Were they all so eager to certify Nell's death an accident? All except Alan Freeman, who seemed determined to look for murder?

Dr. Sparrow, the physician from Elizabeth City, had remained at the head of the table where he now pushed apart the tangled blonde curls. "See here." He exposed the pale bluish area at the left temple. "Particles of some kind."

He reached for a tweezers from the array of instruments on the metal tray. Delving through the curls, he pulled out a minute dark sliver and then four or five similar ones and placed them alongside the first on the white towel.

"Slivers of wood?" Gage asked. "A weapon?"

Williams shrugged. "Or she hit her head on a log when she fell."

Gage cut his eyes sharply toward the doctor. No, not a fall, he thought. "She stumbled and fell ... forward, striking her left temple."

He lifted Nell's right, then her left hand, turning each over to inspect the palm. No abrasions, cuts, or bruises. "Wouldn't she brace herself?" He carefully turned her jaw from side to side, showing smooth white flesh, no bruising. Yet, there were the marks on the neck.

Deep in thought, no one spoke. 

"Not necessarily," groused Adams, the blacksmith.

But Gage watched Williams and Jack Butler, the saw miller foreman, make the mental adjustment and slowly nod in agreement.

"If Nell Carver were struck in the head by someone facing her, a right-handed someone for the blow is on the left side of her temple, she'd likely have slumped sideways from the momentum of the blow." Gage picked up a broom handle by the stove and demonstrated for his audience.

"She still could've fallen." Adams looked disappointed.

"No," Sparrow said. "If she tripped, she'd have instinctively tried to break her fall."

"Yes," Gage said.

Williams drummed his broad fingers on the table's edge. "Still, there was water in her lungs. I must attest to death by drowning, accidental or not." He spread his hands to indicate the whole of his examination. "The rest of this is all conjecture and speculation."

Gage didn't answer, unwilling to utter aloud the nasty word that hung in the air – murder.

Murder, his gut told him, or at the least, a horrible and unfortunate accident by the water's edge that led to a sinister cover up. He didn't see how Nell's body could've rolled into the river unaided with all the flat land surrounding it. Whether she fell and hit her head or someone bashed it in, she was assisted into the cool depths of the Pasquotank.

He looked around at the somber faces of the coroner's jury. "What do the rest of you think?"

"I think she's got a hot-headed boyfriend who banged her on the head and threw the body in the river," said blunt Doc Jackson, the veterinarian.

"Now, Marcus, there's no proof he did that," said Oliver Nolan.

"Ain't no proof he didn't," countered Jackson.

"That's definitely a bruise on her head," Al Freeman said, a tone of assurance and pomposity in his voice.

"I agree," said Jack Butler. "Either she hit her head accidentally or someone knocked her in the head."

"How do we know which one, though?" asked Nolan.

"God dammit all," Andrews said. "She can only have died one way."

Gage held onto his patience. God forbid they wouldn't be able to determine cause of death. "What will you say in your report, gentlemen?"

After a long wait Dr. Sparrow said, "Let's go to dinner and meet back here later."

Gage stepped to the door, blocking their way. "I must have a definitive answer," he insisted.

In the silence that followed, a short squat form stepped into the outbuilding. Alexander Westin – the solicitor who would try the case should someone be charged with Nell's death – entered the building. "Well," he demanded. "Did she die of natural causes?"

"There was water in her lungs and a bump on her head," Freeman answered readily.

"What does that mean?" asked the solicitor.

"They aren't sure," said Gage with no little disgust.

"Damn it, Williams," Westin said. "How can I charge someone if a murder didn't happen?"

Finally the word "murder" had been spoken aloud.

"Look further," Westin commanded, "even if you must cut open her head."

Grumbling at the delay of their luncheon, several of the inquest members turned the body around so the head faced the waning light. As they did so, several curls fell out of her head.

"Damn, the skin's oily as bacon grease on a griddle," exclaimed Freeman.

"Shut up, Al," said Jackson, removing the remaining strands of Nell's hair and placing them one at a time in an empty basin.