Working Stiff (20 page)

“He doesn't have a forehead?”

I hear more papers rustling and stifle a bizarre urge to laugh. “I don't think your instructions will tell you what to do if someone is missing a forehead,” I say calmly. I hear her swallow—a big, echoing gulp—followed by a little cough. “You're kind of new at this, aren't you?” I say.

“Um, yeah. Is it that obvious?”

“Probably not to everyone. But I spent several years working as a nurse in the ER, so I'm kind of jaded.”

I hear a noise and turn to find a uniformed police officer standing in the doorway to the showroom. It is Brian Childs, one of the cops I know from working in the ER, and he looks wired and ready to jump. As soon as he sees me he relaxes a little, though his hand hovers close to the gun strapped to his side.

“Mattie, hi,” he says. “Are you okay?”

I nod. He looks around the room warily.

“Are you alone?”

“Far as I know,” I tell him, to which the 911 operator says, “Pardon me?”

“Sorry, I was talking to an officer here.”

“An officer is there?” She sounds greatly relieved.

“Yes. Brian Childs.”

“Okay. That's good.”

“What's your name?”

“My name?” She sounds shocked that I would ask such a thing. “It's Jeannie. Why?”

“I just wanted to know. Thanks for your help, Jeannie.”

“I wasn't very good, was I?”

I realize then that she probably thinks I want her name so I can file a complaint about her. “You did fine, Jeannie. Honest. The first few times are always rough.”

“I guess.”

“Hey, someday I'll tell you about a few things I bungled back when I first started working in the ER. It will make you look like a pro.”

She lets forth with a nervous little laugh but I can tell her tension has eased some.

“Look,” I say, seeing Brian signaling to me, “I need to talk to Officer Childs, so I'm going to hang up.”

“Okay.”

“And, Jeannie?”

“Yeah?”

“Hang in there. It gets easier.”

“I'm not sure that's a good thing,” she says. “But thanks.”

Brian speaks to me as soon as I disconnect the call. “Dispatch said there was a shooting here?”

I point to the bathroom door and say, “In here,” though I could have saved my breath since he is already heading in my direction, his nose wrinkling at the acrid smell of blood.

“Whoa!” he says, sticking his head through the opening in the door and looking inside. “Guy did a number on himself, didn't he?”

“He did that,” I agree, peering over his shoulder to see if it is as awful as I remember. It is.

Brian lifts a walkie-talkie to his mouth and hits the button. “All clear in here, Junior.”

Junior, I know, is Jonathan Feller, another cop about my age.

“Shit, Mattie. This is a mess, ain't it?” Brian says.

It certainly is, enough of a mess that my lunch begins to churn menacingly in my stomach. I gulp in a breath of air and not only smell the thickening blood that suddenly seems everywhere, I swear I can taste it. My stomach lurches, tossing a burning dose of acid up my throat, and I swallow hard several times, hoping to convince my GI tract that down is the only way to go. I get a brief reprieve when I hear the door to the front showroom open. I turn, grateful for the distraction and expecting to greet Junior.

But it isn't Junior; it's Steve Hurley. He sees me and frowns, not quite the response a girl hopes for from the man who kissed her silly just the night before. He walks toward me, and I can't help but wonder if he is remembering the kiss, too.

The mere sight of him gets my pulse racing, and when he stops and looks at me with those gorgeous blue eyes, my legs begin to shake. My stomach gets this odd, squishy, butterfly feeling and his closeness seems to rob me of all self-control, leaving me stunned and senseless.

All thought escapes me. As does my cheeseburger, the remnants of which splatter all over his shoes.

A
s Hurley reveals his impressive knowledge of profanity, my mind clicks back into detached clinical mode as I eye the mess I've just barfed all over his shoes. A pickle slice, whole and intact, rests on his laces and I make a mental note to try to chew my food more thoroughly in the future.

“Jesus Christ, Winston!” he says, shaking his foot. “Couldn't you have tried to make it to the bathroom?”

“Well, I suppose I could have,” I say crossly. “But there's the little matter of a dead body in the only bathroom I see here, which is what made me lose my lunch in the first place.”

“Oh, that's just great,” Hurley mutters. “How the hell am I supposed to clean this off my shoes if I can't use the bathroom?”

“Try this,” I offer, grabbing a bottle of sterile water and a package of waterproof bed pads from a nearby shelf. I notice some bottles of mouthwash nearby and grab one of those, too, stuffing it in my pocket. I don't normally condone theft or shoplifting, but I figure in this case it is for the greater good, a benefit to mankind…well, at least the mankind who have to share breathing space with me.

Hurley is working at cleaning the vomit off his shoes when Junior comes in through the back door. As soon as Junior joins Brian in the bathroom and I'm certain Hurley is well distracted, I head for the door Junior just came through. Behind the store is a narrow alleyway that backs up to a hill. Checking to make sure the door is unlocked, I let it close and open my bottle of mouthwash. I gulp a mouthful, swish it around, then spit it out onto the pavement. Twice more and I almost feel human again. Shoving the bottle in my pocket, I reach for the handle to head back inside, only to have the door meet me halfway, colliding painfully with my hand as Hurley pushes through it from the other side.

“Ouch, damn it!” I yell, shaking my hand and hopping around as if that might somehow lessen the pain.

“Sorry,” Hurley mumbles. “Didn't know you were there.”

I suck at the base of my thumb where the worst of the pain seems to be concentrated while Hurley stares at my mouth with an expression of unadulterated hunger that makes me ache in a whole different way.

“What are you doing here already?” he asks, dragging his gaze up to my eyes and shaking free of whatever fantasy he's created.

“Already?” I repeat, puzzled.

“Where's Izzy? Don't tell me he's got you out on your own already. You're hardly ready.”

“I'm not here in any official capacity,” I explain. “And how do you know I'm not ready?”

“If you aren't here in an official capacity, then why
are
you here?”

It's a good question, one I'm not too keen on answering since I don't want Hurley to know I am conducting my own investigation into the death of Karen Owenby. “Personal business,” I say, thrusting my chin out in a way that dares him to call me a liar.

“And you just happened to find this dead guy here in the back?”

“Actually, he was alive when I got here.”

“What?”
Hurley barks. “You were here when he killed himself?”

“Apparently. Like I said, he was alive when I got here.”

“Are you sure?”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I'm pretty sure,” I say with no small amount of sarcasm. “I talked to him up front in the showroom area. Then he disappeared into the back. When he didn't show up again for a long time, I got curious and poked my head into the back. I saw blood coming from under the bathroom door and that's how I found him.”

Hurley pauses thoughtfully a moment and I see his gaze drift toward my shirtfront.

“Um, hellooo,” I say, snapping my fingers high above my head. “Did someone tell you about the nipple incident or are you just admiring my assets?”

“Neither,” Hurley says, looking away. He clears his throat and then asks, “Didn't you hear the gunshot?”

I think about that for a second and realize I didn't. “No,” I tell him. “In fact, it was a little too quiet in there once the yelling stopped.”

“Yelling? What yelling?”

I tell Hurley about the muffled voices I heard. “Then it got eerily silent, except for one time when the phone rang. It was pretty loud,” I tell him, remembering how it made me jump. “I guess it could have drowned out the sound of a gunshot, though to be honest, I'm really not sure what a gunshot sounds like. Besides, the bathroom door was closed. Between that and the metal door to the showroom being closed, I'm not sure how much I would have heard anyway.”

“Who opened the bathroom door? You?” The tone of Hurley's voice suggests he isn't going to be pleased with my answer.

“Yes. After I unlocked it.”

“You unlocked it,” he says with a tone of barely contained patience, shaking his head. “That's just great, Mattie. What else did you do to mess up the scene?”

His smart-assed tone strikes a nerve and I decide I've had enough of his bullying attitude. “Screw you, Hurley. There was blood oozing under the door. I'm a nurse, or at least I used to be. And I thought someone might be hurt and in need of help in there. I knocked first and when I got no answer I went in. What was I supposed to do, just let whoever was in there die? I had no way of knowing what was behind that door.”

I pause long enough to catch a breath, expecting Hurley to jump in with an angry rebuttal. But to my surprise, he bursts out laughing instead.

“You got spunk, Winston. I'll give you that.”

“And I did what any concerned person would have done under the circumstances.”

“Okay, fair enough. Did you disturb anything else in the bathroom?”

“No. I looked the guy over for any signs of life and then I left him.”

“Okay.” He shoves a hand into his pocket and fishes out a handful of change. “Izzy should be here soon and then the two of you can process the scene. In the meantime, there's a soda machine out front. Let me buy you a Coke or something to settle your stomach. Have a preference?”

“Something clear. Like a 7-Up or ginger ale,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

Hurley walks around the side of the building toward the front of the store, leaving me standing alone and unwatched. I pull the mouthwash from my pocket, chug another mouthful, swish and spit. I take a few moments to collect myself and when I head back inside, I see that Izzy has arrived. He and Hurley are standing just inside the door to the showroom area, talking. As soon as Izzy sees me, he hurries toward me, Hurley close on his tail. I see Izzy glance at the bandage on my forehead.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I'm fine. Did Hurley fill you in on the details?”

“More or less. But he didn't say anything about you being injured.”

“I wasn't. This”—I touch the bandage—“is from last night. A little accident.”

“I've been calling and paging you but I got no answer. I was starting to worry.”

Belatedly I realize that both my beeper and my cell phone are in my purse, locked inside my car. “Sorry. I'm not used to carrying the cell phone around yet,” I say feebly.

“Are you sure you're all right?” he asks again, eyeing me worriedly.

“Yes, I'm fine,” I assure him. “I had a little touch of the ickies, but it's gone now.”

“It happens to the best of us,” says Hurley. He hands me a ginger ale and says, “Easy does it with the drink. Feeling better?”

“I am, yes. Thanks.”

Hurley's kindness toward me is exciting and I bask beneath his attention. As I sip my ginger ale, I briefly consider taking advantage of his solicitous mood to flirt with him a little. But then I realize that the lingering dregs of my vomit on his shoes might not set the best stage for a seduction.

“Well, let's get to it,” Izzy says. He turns to head toward the bathroom, then stops and looks back at Hurley. “Is it okay for Mattie to assist me, given that she was the one who found him?” he asks.

Hurley nods and waves us on, saying, “Judging from the mess in that bathroom and the fact that the only splatter I can see on the front of Winston's blouse is a big mustard stain, I'm pretty certain she wasn't anywhere near the guy when he did it.”

I give Hurley a dirty look, pissed at both his cavalier attitude and the realization that when he was staring at my chest, he wasn't admiring my boobs, he was checking me for blood splatter.

I follow Izzy back to the bathroom, unsure of how well I will handle being near the body again. Normally I have a cast-iron stomach; after years of dealing with the nastier bodily secretions we humans produce, most nurses become pretty stalwart about such things. But despite my usual fortitude, the right set of circumstances can occasionally get to me. I fear this is one of those.

But as Izzy and I don the gloves, paper booties, and waterproof paper gowns he removes from his black suitcase, I sense that my cast-iron stomach is back in place. There is a subtle shift in my mind, a mental distancing that is almost automatic to me now. And with that shift comes the clinical detachment I need. Plus, the cops have removed the bathroom door by taking it right off its hinges, opening up the room a little more.

The first thing Izzy does is take several pictures of the overall scene, including close-ups of the wounds and the hand that holds the gun. Once that is done, we begin our exam at the man's head.

“Tell me what you see, Mattie,” Izzy says.

This isn't the first time I've seen how much damage a bullet can do to a head. We had three victims from a drug deal turned sour in the ER one night several years ago and one of them had incurred a similar wound. Plus, I've been reading up on gunshot wounds at the office, familiarizing myself with such details as ballistics, calibers, gunpowder residue, tattooing, and the geometry of entry and exit wounds. I pull from what I've learned and try to describe what I see before me. My task is made easier by the fact that this man is bald.

“It looks as if he held the gun to his right temple with his right hand. This hole here in his right temple is the entry wound. The larger damage on the other side of his head is caused by the bullet exiting and taking a good portion of the skull and brain with it.”

“Good so far,” Izzy says. He looks up at the wall to the man's left and points toward a hole near the top of the blood splatter. “My guess is the bullet entered the wall there.”

He stares at it for a few seconds, then turns back to the victim's head. “Tell me more about the entry wound, Mattie.”

“Okay. It's a round hole about a centimeter in diameter with some signs of hemorrhaging around the periphery.”

“What does that tell you? Anything?”

I think back to what I've read. “Well, the fact that the entry wound is round suggests that the muzzle of the gun wasn't in tight contact with his temple. If it had been, the skin around the entry site would have burst because of the pressure of gases that are released from the end of a muzzle during firing. That leaves a sort of star-shaped injury, right?”

“Right. And other than the bruising you mentioned, what other markings or discoloration is there in the skin surrounding the entry wound?”

“There are these dark specks scattered around the circumference of the entry hole,” I tell him, pointing to a narrow band of spots extending out an inch or so beyond the wound perimeter. I make a quick swipe at them with a piece of gauze. “They don't wipe off so it's not soot. Is it gunpowder tattooing?”

“It is.” Izzy beams at me like a proud parent. “What does that tell you?”

“That the gun was not in direct contact, or even very close to the skin when it was fired. It had to have been anywhere from six inches to two feet away.”

“Good. Now how about the exit wound?”

“Well, given the extent of the damage, I'd suspect that either a large caliber bullet was used or that it was a hollow-point bullet of some type.”

Izzy nods toward the gun near the man's right hand. “That's a .357 Magnum. Big enough to cause this much damage?”

I think about it but I'm not sure. Sensing my hesitation, Izzy says, “Yes, it can, and often does. It's a popular revolver among hunters and law enforcement officers because it's designed to bring a target down in one shot. Now tell me what you can see about the angle of the bullet as it was fired.”

I describe what I see, beginning with the entry wound, which is on the man's right temple about even with the lower margin of his eye socket but set back from it an inch or so. I then move to the exit wound, which encompasses most of the left side of his forehead and temple area. “It looks as if the bullet traveled slightly forward toward the front of his head and slightly upward as well,” I say. Izzy says nothing, but he smiles.

We continue our exam, working our way down the body. When we reach his neck, I point out the Kaposi's sarcoma, explaining to Izzy how I noticed it when talking with the man earlier. When Izzy gets to the man's right hand he takes several pictures of it before carefully removing the gun. He examines the skin of the hand with his naked eye and then again with a magnifying glass. When he finally sets the hand back down, he looks at me with a worried expression.

“Tell me again the sequence of events that led up to this man's death,” he says. “As carefully as you can and with as much detail as you can remember.”

I reiterate the whole thing for him, and when I get to the part where the dead man disappeared into the back and I thought I heard voices, Izzy slows me down.

“Who was the source of the other voice?” he asks.

I shrug. “I have no idea. I assumed it was an employee of some sort who left through the back door. But I really don't know. I never saw anyone but this guy.”

Izzy picks up the dead man's hand again and holds it out for my inspection. “The gun used here was a revolver and they are notorious for leaving soot on the hand that fires it because of the gap between the chamber and the muzzle. Do you see any gunpowder residue here?” he asks.