“Not now, not yet. This is my problem. I’d like to solve it myself. I did okay tonight. And you’re giving me plenty of support as it is.” She paused. “What I’d like to do now is get in the shower, go back to my natural color, and then sleep for about 10 hours.”
“The face paint is designed to wash off. I’ve included a special soap. Just follow the instructions.”
“You think of everything.”
“What can I say?”
“Always be more prepared than your adversary?” she quipped.
23
When Hannah emerged in fleece pants and a jacket many sizes too large for her small frame, she found Ray hunched at the kitchen table, staring at the screen of his iPad.
“I like your costume,” he said, sitting up and smiling.
“Best I could find in your closet,” she responded, pulling out a chair. As if on cue, Simone appeared from the bedroom, leapt onto Hannah’s lap, and started inspecting the contents of the tabletop.
“The women are hungry,” said Hannah.
“I can see that,” said Ray.
“What’s going on?” she asked, noting Ray’s attention returning to the screen.
“The downside of technology,” he responded. “In the old days when you requested a forensic autopsy, it would take days to get the preliminary results. It went something like this: After the body arrived in Grand Rapids, a pathologist would do the post mortem during normal weekday working hours, then dictate his or her findings. The dictation would go to someone in the secretarial pool, who also worked normal business hours. He, or most likely she, would send a typed copy back to the pathologist for revision and approval. Any changes would be made on a paper copy and returned to the typing pool. The secretary would make a final copy and return it to the pathologist again for review and signature. This alone would take days. A week after this back and forth, we might get a fax with the preliminary findings, followed in another week or so by an official signed copy with photos via snail mail. Then, a week or two later, we’d get the final toxicology.”
Ray pushed the iPad across the table. “Now, it’s all here in a couple of days: the report, photos, everything but the toxicology. All neatly typed and organized by Samantha Redding, M.D., Fellow, AAFS.”
Hannah glanced at the screen. “Rule one in medicine, never read an autopsy before cappuccino.”
“I’d be happy to do that,” said Ray, putting down the iPad, “but there’s a problem. Something isn’t right. I’m not going to complain about technology again, so I’ll say it’s mostly my technique or lack thereof. The shots I make are bitter, and all I do is warm the milk up—big bubbles, no micro foam.”
Hannah set Simone on the floor. “Come here,” she ordered. “It’s time for Barista 101. We start with the grind.”
She inspected the grinder. “The first problem is that someone messed with the settings. Or maybe it just got out of kilter in the move.” She pointed to a mark she had made with a Sharpie on the adjustment scale. “This is where you want it. It took me several weeks to find the sweet spot and get this dialed in.” She poured in some beans, then pushed the “on” button until the change in sound indicated that all the beans in the hopper had been ground. Then she worked through the rest of the process, filling the portafilter and tamping the grounds. She frothed some milk and pulled the shot. Standing at Ray’s side, she offered gentle coaching as he repeated the procedure.
Settling again at the table, Hannah moved the iPad close to her. “Have you read this?”
“Just started. I was getting mired in the boilerplate.” Ray watched in silence as she carefully studied the report, occasionally moving the text backwards to review a paragraph or two. He got up and gave Simone her breakfast. A few minutes later she was at the door, demanding his attention and a walk with a sharp, command bark.
Hannah was still concentrating on the screen when they returned from their stroll around the neighborhood. Ray made her another cappuccino and then repeated the process for himself.
Finally she looked up, held him in her gaze, and asked him a second time how much of the autopsy he had read.
“Like I said, just the beginning.”
“This is all so interesting. For an old guy, Fox was in awfully good shape. He had some plaque buildup in his coronary arteries, but it wasn’t too bad for a man of his age who’d been eating the American diet forever. His muscle tone was quite remarkable.”
“So how did he die? What killed him?”
“Fox had a pacemaker. Did you know that?”
“No. His daughter never mentioned it.”
“Did you see the note on the burn marks on his neck consistent with the kind made by a stun gun?”
Ray stared at her. “Where’s that?” he said, pointing at the iPad.
“Several pages into the report.” She pushed the tablet in his direction, pointing to the section. She pulled it back, flipped through multiple pages, then slid her chair close to his and pointed at the photograph showing burn marks on the left side of Fox’s neck, below the collar line.
“What was he wearing when you saw the body?” she asked.
“His usual costume: jeans, a shirt with a sweater of some sort, and an old buckskin jacket. He had a boot on one foot, it was missing on the other.” He zoomed in on the burn marks. “I can see how the medical examiner might have missed the stun burns,” he admitted, “given the conditions where he made his preliminary observations.” Ray sat for several minutes absorbing the information. “Why would someone do that?”
“The perpetrators were trying to snatch him off the street, right?”
“That’s a likely scenario.”
“Fox was probably a tough old bird, much stronger than his assailants expected,” said Hannah. “He wasn’t going to go anywhere without a fight.”
“But who carries a stun gun?”
“You tell me. You’re the cop.”
“Well, under current law only people in law enforcement-related activities can carry Tasers. Of course, the legislature could change that in the next few months.”
Hannah was keying on the iPad. Then she was flipping screens. “There are only a few hundred sites selling Tasers and stun guns. Here’s one with Christmas specials. I can’t tell if the page is left over from last Christmas or out there for people who do their shopping early.”
“I can’t believe it,” Ray said. “I thought Fox had been grabbed by some people thinking that he really knew where the Capone treasure was, and that they could pressure him into leading them to the gold. The use of a stun gun just makes it all seem incredibly sinister.”
“What we are capable of almost defies imagination. You should spend some time in a war zone,” Hannah answered, her tone dark, tension in her voice.
Ray let her comment hang for a long time. “So what killed him?”
Hannah shrugged. “Here the pathologist equivocates a bit. Because of the absence of bruising, she doesn’t think that he was constrained for any period of time. And there’s no evidence that he was ever bound at the hands or feet. She speculates that the stun gun was used during the initial assault and wonders what effect that may have had on his pacemaker. She notes the literature on this type of weapon and its potential effects on pacemakers are extremely limited. Three citations to recent articles are appended at the end.”
Ray got up and carried his mug to the sink.
“What are you thinking?”
“You see, I’ve invented two scenarios. The first one involved a couple of our locals: somehow I’m seeing two middle-aged guys, down on their luck, not incredibly bright, who got started into this whole thing by stealing a copy of Fox’s book. They quickly figured out that they weren’t going to find the money based on the descriptions or maps, so they grabbed Fox off the street, and, based on the burns on his foot, tried to get information out of him by holding his foot against their wood-burning stove. I can see the interior of the house, the stove their only source of heat.” Ray returned to the kitchen table, pulled his chair away from Hannah’s, and sat down. “Unfortunately, Fox just up and dies on them. The guys panic, load him in their car or truck, head up the road 15 or 20 miles from the scene, and dump the body.”