She backed away as Todd finished. “It’s not a given that a suffocation always results in such a finding, any more than it is that the hyoid bone is crushed in a hanging or that petechiae have to result from strangulation. But if you find what we did here, the question has to be: How did those injuries get there otherwise?”
Joe was nodding, pleased with his instinct to have sent Marshall here in the first place. “But there must be other findings you can use to back that up, now that you know what to look for? Brain or blood tests?”
She gave him a sad expression. “Not necessarily. If this is a suffocation, that may be it, especially if his heart went into atrial fib quickly. But I do have an ancillary notion. Given that Mr. Marshall was an alcoholic, he may have been drinking before going to bed. That might-and I stress ‘might’-have impaired him enough to explain why the frenular damage is as slight as it is. Because this-” And she tapped the man’s lip with her gloved finger.-“is relatively subtle.”
“You’re thinking he may not have put up much of a fight,” Joe suggested.
“Something else supports that theory,” she answered indirectly. “The responding personnel at The Woods routinely document their actions. It’s part of their corporate protocol, and one that I greatly appreciate. They faxed me that report, and there is specific mention of the decedent’s being supine, in bed, with his arms under the covers. To me, that either indicates that they were pinned in place while he was being suffocated-possibly by an accomplice-or that the attack was sudden and lethal enough that his own enfeebled constitution simply collapsed under the strain.”
“How was his pillow situated?” Joe asked.
“There were two of them. His head was resting on one. The other was found on the floor beside the bed.”
Joe’s cell phone began to vibrate where he’d clipped it to the waistband of his scrubs. He checked the caller’s ID. It was Sammie, who knew where he was, what he was doing, and that he’d be poorly disposed to being disturbed for anything shy of an emergency.
He looked up at Beverly. “I better take this,” he said apologetically, as she was already encouraging him to do so with a hand gesture.
“Joe,” he answered.
“Sorry,” Sam began, “but I knew you’d want to know this right off. There was a fire at the house where you and Les went to see Barb Barber and her son, in Shelburne. They’re both dead.”
“Arson?” he asked.
“Don’t know yet. I just got it.”
“Okay. I’ll head there right now. Thanks.”
He snapped the phone closed and looked up at Beverly. “It appears you’re about to get two more customers. House fire in Shelburne.”
She gave him a world-weary smile and said, “It was nice seeing you again, Joe. Try to fit in dinner next time.” She nodded toward Marshall. “I’ll send you my findings on him as quickly as I can.”
“Thanks, Beverly,” he replied, already retreating toward the door. He stopped there to cast her a more measured look, and added, “And I’d enjoy dinner very much.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hillside Terrace this time was a far cry from the near-empty street that Joe and Les encountered on the night they’d met William Friel and his mother. Despite the time taken for the news of the fire to reach police channels, for Sammie to contact Joe, and for him to leave Burlington and reach the center of Shelburne Village, the street was still jammed with fire department apparatus, pickup trucks, and police cruisers, along with coils of fire hose as crisscrossed as a plate of spaghetti.
He settled for a space by the curb two blocks away and walked to where a group of men stood across from the charred remains of the modest home Joe had barely left. Clouds of steam and smoke drifted into the afternoon sky from a blackened pyre of collapsed wall studs and roofing material. The air was thick with an eye-watering pungency and the sounds of radio chatter and idling diesel engines.
Joe approached a firefighter dressed in the white helmet and coat of an officer, pulling out his credentials as he drew near. He waited for the man to stop talking into his portable radio, aware of the others in the group all staring at him, and showed them his badge.
“Chief?”
The man’s eyes traveled from badge to face. “Yeah?”
“Joe Gunther. Sorry to bug you when you’re knee deep, but the people living here are part of an investigation I’m running.”
“Guess that makes you out of luck, then. They didn’t make it.”
Joe pocketed his shield. “So I heard. Anything you can tell me?”
The chief shook his head. “VSP arson guy is on his way. You’d do better to talk to him.” He pretended to see something in the distance, invisible to the rest of them, and abruptly said, “I gotta go.”
He shouldered through two people opposite and went diagonally across the street without another word.
An awkward silence among the others ended with one of them saying, “He doesn’t like cops.”
Joe merely nodded at that. “Any of you know anything?”
“Yeah,” the same one said. “The call came in about ninety minutes ago. I was on the first truck. Place was fully involved, right through the roof, like it had been cooking for hours. Hadn’t been, though, not according to the neighbors. It just looked that way.”
“Why would that be?” Joe asked them all.
“Looked like a gas fire to me,” another of them said. “Fast and hot. Plus, it was an older building, like a match head.”
“Anyone see anything suspicious beforehand?”
A third man answered, “I work part-time for the PD here, and volunteer for the fire department,” he added, explaining his being in turnout gear. “Our people asked up and down the street, but nobody saw anything out of place. No strange cars or people hanging around. We asked if there’d been any comings or goings to the house. Did you come with a real tall, skinny guy when you did your interview a while ago?”
“Yeah.”
“You were seen, then, but nobody else. These people apparently didn’t socialize much.”
“Did you know them?” Joe asked, taking them all in. “Any of you?”
They shook their heads as a group.
“Where were they taken?” he then asked.
“To Burlington for autopsies,” the cop said.
Joe glanced across at the remains of the house. “How was this called in?”
“One of the neighbors. It was real sudden, according to her. One minute, everything was fine; the next, it’s like a firebomb.”
“That’s why I’m thinking gas,” the first man said confidently.
* * *
“It was gas,” Jonathon Michael said flatly.
It was a few hours later. Joe had set up quarters in the corner of a normally closed Shelburne coffee shop that had kept a side door unlocked and a couple of lights on, just for the personnel who were still stuck at the fire scene one block over. The shop’s owner lived upstairs, had once been a volunteer firefighter, and was predisposed to lending a hand.
“Accident or arson?” Joe asked.
The two of them were nursing mugs of coffee. Michael had also located a sandwich that he was largely ignoring. They’d known each other for more years than either could recall, and had developed a trust that they now took for granted. Michael was with the Vermont State Police, as he had been for his entire career. He was now chief of their arson division, but still regularly came out on assignment to keep his hand in.
“Hard to tell,” he said, then taking a bite of the sandwich. He continued speaking as he chewed. “If it was arson, it was well done. The house was old and cheaply built, central heating and cooking were supplied by the propane tanks to the left of the bulkhead door.”
Jonathon swallowed before resuming. “What happens is, there’s a leak, usually at a juncture. If it’s somewhere like in a kitchen or bathroom, people usually smell it before it becomes explosive. But most of those lines run where you can’t see them. From what I could piece together, this one was in the basement, not far from the water pump. If someone suggested that the cellar filled with gas just before the pump went on, creating a small spark, I wouldn’t call them a liar.”