The cruelest cut, p.1
The Cruelest Cut, page 1
A Camel Press book published by Epicenter Press
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Design by Scott Book and Melissa Vail Coffman
The Cruelest Cut
Copyright © 2021 by Gene Rontal
Previously published by Sterling House
ISBN: 978-1-60381-266-5 (Trade Paper)
ISBN: 978-1-60381-267-2 (eBook)
Printed in the United States of America
To Ellen
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Life is short and the art long.
—Hippocrates
Chapter 1
“Are you sure you two want to see this?”
I stood motionless next to the murder victim, the ordeal of uttering anything trapping me somewhere between fear and curiosity. Allan Davis, the Wayne County Medical Examiner, glared impatiently for an answer, his eyes shifting from me to the powerfully built black man next to the autopsy table. After a moment of indecision, we both nodded silently.
Davis drew the shroud downward from the victim’s head. At first, I couldn’t quite understand what I was looking at, just amorphous, bloody tissue. Then I looked at the head: there wasn’t any hair. It took me a moment to realize why. He had been scalped.
I felt sick and mesmerized at the same time.
“Gentlemen, what you are seeing is a modern-day version of a skinning,” Davis intoned.
As he spoke, I studied the uncovered face and saw that skin had been removed in neat, linear strips, leaving thin white zebra stripes of cadaveric skin. Against the dark facial musculature, it produced a hideous red and white mask, like some horrific preternatural monster.
“Whoever did this was meticulous,” I said, trying to intellectualize the dreadful calamity in front of me.
“That, Dr. Dailey, is because this is most likely a ritual murder, and those usually involve some type of design that only the killer understands,” Davis said without wavering. He pulled the sheet down further. As on the face, ribbons of skin had been removed from the exposed chest and abdominal musculature.
I glanced at Lieutenant George Sennett, standing next to me, and saw that he had backed away from the body. The muscles of his jaw were clenching and unclenching. “Is this the way they brought him in?” he asked.
The M.E. barely nodded as he reached silently under the edge of the table and withdrew a small oscillating saw to start opening the skull.
“What are those, Dr. Davis?” Sennett asked, pointing at several clear glass jars on the shelf behind Davis.
Davis put down the blade, picked up one of the jars, and showed it to both of us. “They contain the heart, lungs, and kidneys. We’re required to section the major organs. Everything else is gross, un-sectioned material only, unless there is some reason for further analysis.”
As he put the jar back, I looked at the victim’s face again, then his hands. “He has no nails,” I said almost to myself.
Davis looked pleasantly surprised. “Obviously, doctor, your days in the anatomy lab weren’t wasted. You are correct, each one was pulled out. And that’s not all. This victim died of asphyxiation.”
Davis turned and pulled out another jar from the storage shelf. It held two ovoid objects floating in formaldehyde.
“Don’t tell me . . .” Sennett gasped.
Davis nodded solemnly. “Yes, his testicles. We found them in his throat. I assume that’s what choked him to death.”
My chest got hot and my mouth was suddenly parched. Sennett turned away. I heard him breathing slowly and deeply.
“Dr. Davis,” Sennett interjected weakly, trying to swallow and clear his throat at the same time. “The only death I’ve ever seen like this was that young girl who was mutilated and killed several years ago.” His words came out slowly, as if the memory had irritated a festering ulcer.
“True, but that crime was solved,” Davis replied. “Besides, from the needle marks on his arm this looks more like a drug killing to me.”
Sennett nodded. “Considering the circumstances, it’s a possibility. There was a note with the body. It read, The wage of sin is death.”
“Any idea of the significance?” Davis asked, placing the glass specimen bottle back on the shelf.
Sennett looked back at the body and then ran a handkerchief over his sweating face. “We have a few ideas we’re working on.” Sennett’s voice dropped, and he turned to leave, mumbling to Davis that he had seen enough. We walked away from the table, allowing the M.E. to spend the rest of his day muddling through the dead man’s tissues.
Sennett looked down at the floor as we walked past Davis’s office, then into the hallway. “Well, that was . . .” Sennett began before he ran down the hall and into the men’s bathroom. The sound of his eructation echoed down the corridor.
Chapter 2
Iwaited for Sennett on the sidewalk outside of the building and looked absently from the Medical Examiner’s office southward to the downtown Detroit skyline. As I did, I thought about an architect friend of mine who once told me he despised the Wayne County Morgue, because it represented an architectural metaphor for Detroit. He maintained that this tasteless and prosaic building, housing the worst of the city’s misery, was purposefully placed so that its windows could overlook the Renaissance Center, the city’s dying attempt at resurrection. I used to think that his theory was a bunch of artistic psychobabble. After what I just saw, I wasn’t so sure he was wrong.
I looked back at the entrance again and this time saw Sennett walking slowly from the door. He stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. Outside, in the bright sunlight and inhaling the fresh air, he seemed revived. But not totally. I think if I had mentioned a double cheeseburger and fries, it would have sent him praying once again to the porcelain gods. “Okay, Lieutenant, now you can explain to me why you dragged me down here to witness this.”
Sennett stood at the front steps and pulled out his sunglasses. “I’m sorry about dumping you into this mess, Ben. When there’s a murder, I make it a point of going to the autopsy. I hate it, but it gives me a chance to see the murder, get into the killer’s head. Davis didn’t tell me it was going to be that bad. I think he enjoys the shock value,” he replied, putting on his dark Ray-Bans.
“All you said was that there was a murder and you wanted my advice. I’m a doctor, not a policeman. What advice could I possibly give you?”
“I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. It’s about Jordan.”
At the mention of Jordan Dalkind, I felt myself come to attention. “What about her?” I watched as Sennett flipped his coat over his opposite shoulder, exposing a 9-millimeter SIG Sauer poking over his hip.
“This guy on the table was named Hamoud Ishaki.”
“Who’s he?”
“Didn’t you see the paper this morning, Ben?” he asked.
“No. I try not to obscure my opinions with the facts.” As a matter of record, I usually only read the sports page of the local rag.
“It made the front page.” He opened the car door and reached for the paper on the front seat.
I scanned it quickly. The headline read “Arab Community Claims Bias in Federal Charges.” I read further. They cited Jordan by name as the lead prosecutor. Hamoud Ishaki’s name was mentioned as one of the named suspects.
“That’s great,” I said. “There are 500,000 people in the Detroit area of Middle Eastern descent. Now one of them is killed, and my girlfriend is right in the middle of it. Why do the newspapers want to pick on her?”
He explained that Jordan was the lead prosecutor in a drug case involving several Lebanese-American suspects. The claim from her detractors focused on charges of prosecutorial misconduct. I wasn’t completely surprised at the accusations. Jordan was conscientiously silent about her work, but after
“So what’s the big deal? If they’re guilty, they’ll get what they deserve,” I said anxiously. “Jordan is doing her job.”
“In a perfect world that’s right, but not when a man named Bill Yaldo is involved.” As Sennett spoke, he started walking again, taking slow measured steps.
“Who?”
“He is one of the richest Arab-Americans in Detroit. The word at the station is that he has property, a few businesses, and lots of cash.”
“Why would he be involved?”
“For one thing, Ishaki was his grandson.”
Sennett described the murder victim as someone bound for trouble from the start—a broken family, in and out of juvenile homes, and a couple of brushes with the law. His latest problem involved drugs.
“Hamoud Ishaki was important to the Feds,” Sennett continued. “They had evidence that he was transporting pseudoephedrine hydrochloride across the border into Canada.”
“That’s a cold medicine. The over-the-counter stuff,” I murmured.
“Right. Broken down it can be made into amphetamines. Once they get to that point, it’s sold as a narcotic. Crystal is the street name. There’s millions in it. The drug money is used for Arab terrorist activities. It’s a big business.”
By the time I had made the simple assumption that he should be arrested, we were at the front of Sennett’s sedan. “So why is my fiancée getting all this attention?” I asked.
Sennett described how, based on the FBI information, Jordan was getting ready to go to a Federal grand jury to get a sealed indictment on some of the most prominent Arab businessmen in the city. Those close to the case assumed that someone leaked the information to the paper.
“How does a leak like that happen?” As I spoke, I was momentarily distracted by a man at the corner in a heavy overcoat, greasy brown cotton pants, and dirty white tennis shoes, clutching a paper cup and yelling at some imaginary combatant. He was making his way toward us.
“There is some suspicion that Yaldo might have been part of the scheme to discredit Jordan. He has friends in high and low places—judges, an Arab congressman from his district, a U.S. Senator, and probably some informant inside the Federal building, just to name a few. The ethnic profiling claim is just a dodge to divert attention from the crime.”
When I asked what they could do to Jordan, he told me that was the reason he wanted me at the autopsy. He said I needed to know what kind of people we were dealing with. He finished by claiming that when they wanted to get someone, they wouldn’t quit.
“What do you mean ‘get someone?’” I asked, feeling more and more anxious.
Sennett explained that the Feds were getting ready to make a plea bargain with Ishaki and get him to testify against his co-conspirators. They assumed someone found out that he was going to rat on them and ordered a contract murder intended to send a message to the others involved: Don’t drop out of line.
“Ben, I wanted you to know that a death threat was called in to Jordan’s personal office.”
At the words my whole body stiffened. I looked at him closely. His face was an impenetrable mask behind his mirrored sunglasses.
“It’s not that unusual. Threats get called in all the time. The Feds have a policy of recording all non-recognized incoming calls,” Sennett continued.
“What was the call about?” I asked cautiously.
“This one was different. The voice was garbled, but it was clearly directed at Jordan, and it said ‘Wheresoever ye be, death will overtake you.’”
“What’s that from?” I asked.
“I sent it to Washington to see what it meant. They think it might be from the Koran. We traced the call. It came from an outside phone booth at a gas station in the city. No prints, no identification of the caller. For all we know it could have been a crank call. Other than assuming it came from the Arab community and that it’s related to Jordan’s case, there isn’t much more we can do at this point,” he continued.
I asked him if Jordan knew about my being here. He said she did, but wasn’t happy about it. I thought about the dead Ishaki kid and the fuss in the paper. Now, I was really alarmed. “What are you doing to protect her?” I asked shakily.
“You know Jordan. Her first words were that she didn’t want protection. She figures she can take care of herself.”
“What do you mean take care of herself?” I asked angrily. “There are laws against threatening a Federal prosecutor.”
As I finished speaking, our man on the street saw us and made a beeline for the car. He was holding the cup in the air and yelling something about Vietnam and the war. I thought that his madness fit this morning perfectly. Sennett walked over to him, took a dollar out of his pocket and stuck it in his cup. A half toothless smile came across the man’s face, and he shuffled away. Sennett strode back toward his car.
“See, Ben, just like that bum, the law and the truth can be very different things. Panhandling is illegal, but the truth is, I feel sorry for the guy.”
I thought about the newspaper story. If the dead kid’s grandfather was as powerful as he was made out to be, why make an overt threat against Jordan? It would just make him more of a target for the Feds. It made no sense.
But then, who could make sense of anything as gruesome as the murder victim we had just seen? I asked him how I could help. His reply was that right now there was nothing anyone could do but wait and see. I didn’t think he meant to, but his words left me feeling as helpless and frightened and anxious as I had been in a long time. That fear sealed my resolve. I would protect Jordan with my life.
Sennett started up the car and put it in gear. I called to him through the open window. “Hey, Lieutenant, you be careful.”
“Right back at you,” he growled.
Chapter 3
With a threat to Jordan and nothing solid to go on, I felt vulnerable and anxious. The situation wasn’t made any better when I tried calling and couldn’t reach her. Even her secretary didn’t know where she was. This just wasn’t like Jordan to be out of contact. I was about to phone Sennett when my nurse, Katie Andrews, called and told me there was an emergency at the office. Someone from the board of trustees at the hospital had called and insisted that I see a patient immediately. At first, I was going to tell them I had a problem, and couldn’t be there, but I decided that panicking wouldn’t solve anything. When I finally reached Sennett, he said the same thing. The only thing left to do was to head back to the clinic and take care of the emergency.
Walking in through the back door, I entered my private office and stood for a moment, gazing absentmindedly around the room. It wasn’t that much to look at—just a blonde wood desk, a computer, and a few pictures. Behind the desk on the wall was my medical diploma from Ann Arbor and my framed membership plaques from several prestigious societies.
They all pronounced me a laryngologist, a doctor who specializes in diseases of the voice box. At one time I was thought of as one of the country’s experts in the treatment of voice disorders, but being spuriously cast off of a hospital staff will quickly plunder a reputation. And like the long trailer on a movie, bad news sometimes lasts longer than the film. Now, back in practice after so many forgotten years, I understood how fleeting personal recognition is.
My gaze fell onto a small glass shelf below the diplomas. In the middle was a small Michigan football, signed by my coach, signifying my four years of gutting it out on the hamburger squad. Next to it was a photograph of me with a long-legged woman in red stretch pants on a snow-covered ridge in the Rockies, with the peaks of the Maroon Bells rising behind her. It was Jordan holding her Völkl skis in one hand and a red helmet in the other, long hair cascading over her black Arc’teryx jacket and a bright smile illuminating her face. I was part of the landscape, staring at her with admiration. Then I thought about my conversation with Sennett.
