WHEN DECKER GOT BACK to his hotel room he ended up taking Jamison’s advice and called his sister, but probably not for the reason his partner had intended.
Renee exclaimed, “Okay, I’m going to stroke out, Amos Decker calls his big sister. Stop the presses.”
“Growing up, I never really realized how funny you were, Renee.”
“Disappointed how our last conversation went? Want to make amends?”
“Right now, I just want Stan’s cell phone number.”
“You didn’t get it from him when you saw him?”
“It didn’t seem appropriate under the circumstances.”
She gave him the number and he put it in his contacts. “Thanks. Stan said Diane’s husband lost his job?”
“That was a year ago. Tim’s back on his feet and Diane has a good job. They’re doing okay. And I guess it’s a good thing they don’t have any kids they have to support. Now, don’t call me for another year.”
“What, why?”
“I need time to recover from the shock of talking to you twice in such a short time.”
He next called his brother-in-law. Baker was at work but got off at five thirty. Decker arranged to meet up with him at the OK Corral Saloon at seven thirty.
He had some time to kill and decided to put it to good use.
He pulled out a copy of the pathology report from the postmortem that Walt Southern had performed on Irene Cramer’s remains. He went over it, page by page, line by line. When he got to one sentence, buried in the middle of a long paragraph near the end of the report, he sat up.
Son of a bitch.
He headed out. The rain had stopped falling, but the humidity level was off the charts. He turned left and reached the funeral home a few minutes later. A young man outfitted all in black except for his dazzling white shirt rose from behind a small desk and greeted him. Decker asked for Walt Southern, who wasn’t there. But his wife Liz was.
She came out a minute later. Liz Southern was not dressed in black but rather in lavender. She stood out like a pink flamingo in a desert, and it occurred to Decker even more forcefully how strikingly attractive the woman was. He wondered how happy she was working with dead people. But then again, someone had to do it.
“What can I do for you, Agent Decker?”
“I was hoping to talk to your husband.”
“He’s out of town. Be back tomorrow. Is there anything I can help you with?”
In answer Decker held up the autopsy report. “Had some questions about this.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Questions about the report Walt did?”
“It’s not unusual for detectives to have follow-up questions about a postmortem report.”
“Well, is it something I can help you with? I’ve picked up a lot just being around Walt, and also with the business we’re in.”
He flipped to a page of the report and pointed at one long section.
“Buried in the middle of this it says that her intestines and stomach were sliced open.”
She stiffened. “But isn’t it standard procedure to take out the stomach and slice it open to analyze its contents?”
“Yes it is, only these cuts were not done by your husband. Which is why I need to see her remains. Now.”
She led him into a room where the thermostat was set very low. It felt great after all the heat outside.
Out of the fryer and into the fridge.
Set against one wall were columns of small doors behind which corpses were kept in refrigerated climates.
Southern opened one of the drawers and slid the gurney out.
“There she is,” she said.
Decker nodded and glanced at her when the woman made no sign of leaving. “Thanks, I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
She seemed unsure about this but withdrew from the room.
Decker turned to the body when something suddenly occurred to him.
The room’s not electric blue.
It wasn’t that he missed experiencing this phenomenon. But Decker’s brain had begun to change recently; his memory had hiccups and he had momentarily forgotten some things he thought he never would. And he didn’t enjoy change like that.
Decker lifted the sheet off the corpse and looked down at Cramer.
The first time he had viewed her body, he had known nothing of the woman’s past. Now he knew that she was a teacher and possibly a prostitute/escort, although the jury was still out on that. And he also knew that her past beyond her time here was a mystery.
But what he had always known was that someone had murdered her.
Decker turned to the pages in the report that contained photos of the deceased’s remains. There were pictures of every organ. But Decker focused on the images of the small and large intestines and the stomach. The slices referenced in the report had not been photographed, which was why Decker was here.
He was about to do something he had never done before, something he had never even thought of doing before, but under the circumstances he could see no way around it.
After finding them in a locker, Decker put on gloves, donned a long apron, and settled a surgical mask over his mouth and nose, and a pair of goggles over his eyes. He grabbed short-handled forceps off a tray and pulled out the Y-incision sutures, often called the “baseball stitch” because of its resemblance to that threading. Inside the revealed cavity the woman’s organs had been placed in bags to prevent leakage.
He took out the stomach and looked at it from every angle he could. It had been sliced open on the bottom, revealing the inside of the organ, like a slit balloon. Southern had apparently used this opening to examine the stomach’s contents because Decker could see no other incision. Whoever had made this cut had saved him the trouble. He used an overhead light to peer into the chest cavity once more and opened the bag containing the intestines. They lay coiled inside like a snake sleeping. He saw where sections of them had also been sliced open in multiple locations. He hit these spots as best he could with the light. The slits were large enough to get a hand into them. Decker knew that for sure, because he did so himself. The cuts were jagged and seemed hurried, as though the killer had either been rushed while doing it, or—
Had he gotten frustrated?
Decker took pictures of everything with his smartphone. He bagged the organs, closed the cavity, redid the sutures, covered the body once more, and slid it back into the drawer. Then he disposed of the gloves, apron, and mask in a metal container marked MEDICAL WASTE. He put the used goggles on a metal table. He then washed up in the sink. He let the warm water and soap flood his face and then stared at himself in the mirror attached to the wall above the sink.
I can’t fucking believe I just did that.
He closed his eyes. He felt like he might be sick, but he managed to keep what was in his stomach right where it was.
Too bad Irene Cramer hadn’t been able to do the same.
He left without speaking to Liz Southern. He had nothing to say to the woman and he wanted to get outside. His legs felt wobbly and he was again feeling nauseous.
The heat hit him as he opened the exterior door and, surprisingly, his sick feeling began to dissipate. His body was now probably focused on dealing with the hot environment.
He slowly and gingerly walked back to the hotel.
Decker went up to his room, pulled out his phone, and looked at the pictures he’d taken. They were far sharper with a higher res than the grainy ones provided by Walt Southern.
Decker might have just made a significant stride in the investigation, but the discovery had also led to a great many more questions.
The stomach and intestines shared an attribute that none of the other organs in the body did. If you swallowed something the object would eventually travel to those two destinations. Irene Cramer had been carrying something in her belly or intestines.
And whoever had killed her had taken it from the woman.
“OH MY GOD. You did what?”
Jamison was sitting in the driver’s seat of their rental SUV staring at Decker like he had just told her that he’d been the one who’d murdered Irene Cramer.
“Didn’t you hear me the first time?” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “The killer was obviously attempting to get something back that Cramer had ingested.”
“Look, despite what you found, that theory seems a little farfetched.”
“Drug mules do that all the time. They either stuff plastic bags of drugs up their anuses, or else they swallow them.”
“And very often the bags burst and the person dies when all those drugs enter their body.” She glanced sharply at him. “Is that what you think? That she was a drug runner?”
“That would be the easy answer, but I’m not sure it would be the right one,” he replied. “And there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t Walt Southern highlight this fact for us? It was literally buried in his report. And there were no pictures of the cuts to those organs. And when I asked him if there was anything out of the ordinary, he replied in the negative.”
“You think he didn’t believe it was important?”
“Any pathologist worth his or her salt knows about contraband being carried in the body.”
“I guess that is odd. So what do you think?”
“Did he intentionally not highlight it, or take pictures, thinking we would just take his word and not look too closely at the pathology report?”
“But why would he do that? Wait, do you think he killed her? That would explain the way she was cut up. He would have just performed two autopsies on her.”
“Southern cutting her up like that would be really the only way we would suspect someone like him. So why would he do it that way, unless he wants to be caught?”
“No, I don’t see that happening, either,” commented Jamison.
“So let’s go back to the question of what she might have been carrying inside her.”
“I guess we could hearken back to the days of the Cold War. She could be a spy and swallowed a microfiche dot loaded with government secrets.”
When Decker didn’t respond to this, she added, “I’m just kidding. She’s too young to have been part of the Cold War.”
“But why wouldn’t that be plausible? We have a pretty sensitive government facility right in the neighborhood.”
Jamison said slowly, “Since we don’t know her past, it could be she was a spy.”
“And maybe the reason she came here was to spy on the Douglas S. George Defense Complex. But she’s been here a year,” he added, looking puzzled.
“Meaning what took her so long?” said Jamison.
Decker nodded.
“How . . . was doing what . . . what you did?” she asked.
“I never want to do it again.”
“So what now?”
“Bogart hasn’t gotten back to me. If we can’t get at her past from the Bureau’s side, we need to try from another angle. She was here a year. Someone might have seen or heard something suspicious about the lady.”
“So, we talk to people? But we already did that.”
“I think some of the people we’ve talked to have been less than forthcoming. And Colonel Sumter was stonewalling us the whole way.”
“But how do we get him to talk? He has the DoD behind him. He has to follow orders.”
“I’m not sure. So for now we keep pushing ahead on other paths. We met one local titan with Stuart McClellan. Maybe we should meet the other.”
“Caroline’s dad? I guess he might know something useful.”
“Well, for one thing, he was the one to hire Hal Parker to get the wolf that had killed his cattle. So the body was presumably found on his property.”
“Do you think he knew Irene Cramer?”
“That’s one of the first things I’m going to ask him.”
* * *
They got Kelly to join them and he gave directions to Hugh Dawson’s estate.
Kelly eyed Decker, who sat in the front seat next to Jamison. “So why the interest in Dawson? You never said.”
“We’re just trying to get the lay of the land at this point.”
“Okay, that really tells me nothing.”
Jamison added, “We’re not trying to play coy, Joe. We’re looking around for some traction on this case. We’ve talked to the military and the Brothers and people who knew Cramer. We talked to Caroline Dawson and we ran into the McClellans, so we’re rounding it out with Hugh Dawson.”
“When did you see the McClellans?”
“At the restaurant at our hotel,” replied Jamison.
“Both of them?”
He sounded so puzzled that Decker turned to look at him. “Yeah. Why? Is that unusual?”
Kelly shrugged. “Stuart, as a rule, doesn’t frequent places owned by Hugh Dawson.”
“And the son?” asked Jamison. “Shane McClellan looked to me like he was head over heels for Caroline.”
“Shane’s a nice guy. Not what you would call an intellectual, but he’s got a good heart.” He added in a more subdued tone, “And you’re right, he’s got it bad for Caroline. Has since we were kids.”
“But that would be a problem, considering the fathers are business rivals,” noted Decker.
“Sounds like Romeo and Juliet,” interjected Jamison.
“Or the Hatfields and McCoys,” replied Decker.
“I think you might be closer to the mark with that one,” said Kelly. “But though they don’t get along, and they are sort of in a pissing contest like Ida Simms said, they’re not exactly true rivals either. Hugh’s businesses service Stuart’s workers. That actually helps both of them.”
“And what about Shane’s mother?” asked Jamison.
“Katherine McClellan died a while back. Cancer. She and Shane were really close. A lot closer than he and his old man. After that, it was just Shane and his father. Not the best of situations. Katherine acted as a buffer between the two. After she was gone, well, it wasn’t pretty.”
“Sounds complicated,” said Jamison.
Kelly nodded. “It is.”
“I take it you and Shane are friends. You’re close to the same age.”
“We all went to high school together. Caroline too. Yeah, we were all good friends. Pretty much inseparable.”
“Getting back to the case, Hal Parker was hired by Hugh Dawson,” said Decker. “To hunt down a wolf?”
“Yep.”
“Wolves are a problem around here?”
“They certainly can be. Them and wild dogs. Coyotes, mountain lions. They can devastate a herd.”
“What else can you tell us about Hugh Dawson?” asked Decker. “You said he was big and gregarious but could take your head off if need be.”
“That’s pretty much all you need to know about the man. I’ll leave it to you to form your own impression when you meet him.”
“And you said his wife died in an accident?” said Jamison.
Kelly nodded. “It was really tragic. The worst sort of accident, because it was like a perfect storm of connected events. Maddie Dawson was caught in her car in a blizzard and died from carbon monoxide poisoning.” Kelly shook his head. “Fortunately, she probably would have gone unconscious before she knew what was happening. Still a helluva way to go.”
“Yeah,” said Decker. “But a lot better than what happened to Irene Cramer.”