Coeur dalene waters, p.4
Coeur d'Alene Waters, page 4
“Yeah, I can see that, Andy, but . . . ,” Matt looked up at Merrill, and the piggish glee in his face. It made him angry, gave him some sort of unlooked-for resolve.
“Look, I think I can handle this case on my own,” Matt said. “I’m fine now. I can do this thing.”
“Well, that’s good to hear, at least. Maybe something good will come out of this after all. I could use a breaking case with the media.” Merrill put his head back in the bathroom. “Jeezus, lots of picture rolls. How many pictures Jerry taken so far? Any of ’em useful?”
“I don’t know. I figure we’ll process them, and work out which ones might actually help our case. We’ll need the scene kept closed for a while of course.”
“I see,” said Merrill. He stood heavily. “So, anything I should know?”
Matt stopped dusting “No, not much. I’ve got competent guys here. Except for—”
Merrill guffawed. “Hey, I’m real sorry about Russell, but that’s not my fault. Valerie Herrick twisted my nuts on that one—made me promise to have him on the scene.”
“No,” said Matt. “Russ White is not the guy I’m complaining about.”
“What?” Merrill squinted at him, as if unable to see clearly. “You aren’t pissed about Valerie Herrick pulling her favorite lieutenant into this mess? That’s a major conflict of interest. Matty, you can be honest—”
“I don’t care about Russ,” said Matt. “Don’t misunderstand. That’s not the guy I’m thinking of—Russ is all right. He’s the best right-hand man you could have found.”
Merrill guffawed and lifted his weight from the doorframe. “Look, Matty, even though you helped him get off on a technicality, you and I both know that Russ screwed—”
“Dammit, Andy!” Matt angrily stripped the rubber gloves from his hands. “Russ didn’t know she was underage. He’s a damn good officer. Get some perspective, would you? We’ve got Arlen dead, and you’re still worried about politics? About Russ?”
Merrill held up a hand. “Hey, knock it back a notch, Matty—I mean, yeah, just between you and me and the shithouse, I’m always worried about the fuckin’ politics. And I’m going to ask you to make sure that Russ doesn’t do the press tonight. You can do—”
“Why should I exclude him from that?”
Merrill sighed. “To tell the truth, Matty, it’ll look way the hell too presidential just as the filing deadline for sheriff comes up.”
Matt threw his gloves angrily in the trash. “See, what did I tell—”
“Hell, Matty, listen—there’s another side to it too. I’m not doing my job tonight if I don’t worry about the potential conflict of interest. He’s married to Valerie, after all.”
Matt turned back and glared at him suddenly. “Andy, don’t worry your pretty little head, okay? I’ll do the damn press conference. How about you worry about the politics and the conflicts of interest, and I’ll get the real work done, okay?”
Matt did not wait for a reply. He moved back into the depths of the blood-streaked bathroom and lifted the radio from his belt. He needed two more deputies: one to cover the hallway, and another to finish the fingerprint work.
Russell White looked dirty. His sleeves were pushed up, brown rings around his wrists above the plastic gloves. And he had coffee cupped in his hands, the white Styrofoam smudged with streaks of rusty residue. The steam rose into his face.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I’m here because Val is paying me back.”
“For what?”
Russ glanced over at the Spokane coroner’s assistant working in the same room, a man named Rick Storgen who was studiously ignoring them both. Storgen and one of his technicians were examining the scene. Already they had laid the body out on clear plastic, the pieces on two stretchers.
Russ pointed down at his crotch. “You know,” he said. “I been letting the little head make decisions again. Gets me in the doghouse . . .”
Matt shook his head, a great fatigue coming over him. Some things never changed. He glanced away from Russ, he looked down at the stretchers on the floor.
The body lying there seemed oddly unreal. The flesh was wrapped in plastic to keep fluids from draining on the floor, and in the uncertain light, the pieces seemed to have fallen apart accidentally. The flesh was swollen and pale all around the broken edges.
Russ took off his gloves, stripping them wearily from each of his fingers. Russ’s hands caught Matt’s eye. The nails were rimmed with a dark residue, the spirals on his fingers filled with the brown rust from the body. “Jesus,” Matt said. “You’re covered in the stuff—we should have been more careful about the crime scene.”
Russ shrugged. “Just part of the job, right? Cleaning up messes—it’s what we signed up for. There’s no being careful about it. No one’s gonna live forever, you know.”
“Gentlemen?” said Storgen, “Sorry to interrupt—but I think my team might have some preliminary data, and I thought, considering, that you—”
“Yeah, go ahead,” said Matt. He glanced at Russ, who nodded and lifted his coffee for another sip. The steam fogged his glasses as the coroner’s assistant spoke.
“All right.” Storgen held an unlit cigarette that twitched almost imperceptibly. He might have been holding a tool, working it with his fingers. “Body temperature says that time of death was between six and seven. That’s inaccurate, of course, because the cavity was opened.”
“What do you mean by that?” said Russ.
“I mean that there may have been a long interval of time—as long as a day, potentially—between the time of death and the body being dismembered.”
Storgen plucked at the edge of the plastic, pulling it tighter around the torso. Detached from the neck, Arlen Bowman’s head was turned to the side, as if he were turning to get up.
“Earlier, you said his throat was cut? Are you sure that was the cause of death?” Matt looked up from the broken neckline. He looked at the dull blue eyes on the stretcher. The eyelids hadn’t closed all the way. Water was beaded on the dead cheeks and brow, as if it had sweated through the skin.
Storgen hesitated as he spoke. “Reasonably sure—it’s hard to tell with all the trauma of the dismemberment. But I can tell you one thing—his throat wasn’t cut here. We don’t have enough fluids for a jugular spill here, even though the body was obviously chopped up in the bathroom.” Storgen pointed at the deep gouges in the sides of the stalls, the cracked tiles on the floor.
“What else happened to him? Anything before the throat?”
“Oh yes, there was a lot that happened before the blood loss. The skin was cut in all sorts of places, and burned. But you can’t see it, unless you take the clothes off.”
“But that might not have been the same person—the same time at least— doing the killing and the dismemberment?” asked Matt.
Russ laughed. “I don’t know how you come up with this stuff, Matty!”
Storgen shrugged. “We don’t know. I can tell you that it was all carefully done. If you look at the face and the wrists—the skin on the ankles, under the socks too, the socks and shoes were replaced afterward—you’ll see here this sticky white residue. The skin is slightly abraded in the same places.” Storgen pointed to the flesh just below the palms, and around the lips, where it was bruised and dotted with tiny spots of blood.
Matt swallowed thickly and rubbed his hands together to feel the skin move, waxy and smooth, the hair paper thin against his fingertips.
“He was taped very tightly with duct tape to keep him from moving or crying out,” continued Storgen. “This kind of tape doesn’t come off very easily. That’s why the soft flesh is swollen, broken around the mouth. See, the perp ripped it off after.”
Rick Storgen held the pale leg on the stretcher. Using a pair of tweezers, he pulled the man’s sock carefully down. “There’s something interesting here though. Here and there, on the places where the duct tape stuck, there are some tiny bits of foliage.”
Matt pointed at the leg. “Leaves?”
“Pine needles,” replied Storgen. “I’d have the coroner’s office in Spokane analyze them to be sure, but it looks like white pine to me.”
“So somewhere outside the building.”
Storgen rubbed the stubble on his jaw and grimaced. “Yeah, most probably. But this is kind of tricky. The cut throat and the lack of the rest of the blood—it’s odd. The degree of turpitude in the flesh says that it happened after death, a few hours at least. Doesn’t make sense.”
“Huh—maybe he was killed elsewhere, and then just chopped up here?” said Matt.
Russ guffawed unexpectedly. “That’s an odd idea. Why would anyone do that?”
“No, not so odd,” said Storgen. “That idea might fit—perhaps the perpetrator transported him. Perhaps more than one person was involved. And if you’re considering that possibility, maybe Reverend Bowman could have died hours ago, even a day or two ago. The body could have been preserved somehow?” Storgen considered, rubbing his jaw.
Matt caught Russ’s eye. “So maybe you can tell the resort people—hell, just tell Val—that the chaplain probably didn’t die here. That’ll be a relief, at least.”
Russ gave a weak grin. “Yeah, that would be something my wife would be happy to hear. I might get back in the sack, just for passing that on.”
Storgen looked at Russ and nervously flicked some nonexistent ash off his cigarette. “Anyway, gentlemen, I think we’re done here. After the photographer finishes, you can transfer the body to the morgue.” Then Storgen turned to Matt.
“I’ll send you my report on Monday.” He turned and left the room.
Jerry pulled the plastic aside and took two more pictures of the face. The features of the dead man flashed hot white and then dropped into gray again. The image stayed with Matt, but he saw it in a different context: the eyes closed, the man standing in a briefing room in front of the deputies, the lips moving slowly, hands folded. Something in the photographic light made the face appear surprised, awakened. He remembered Arlen alongside him as they met with a family that had lost their mother in a fire. He saw the same face reflected in his rearview mirror, sitting in the backseat of a patrol car on its way to the annual sheriff’s barbecue. He thought of the chaplain talking to his son that time Matt found the pot in his son’s room.
And he remembered the last time he’d seen Arlen alive. They’d sat together for hours in Albi’s Bar and Grill, Matt doing most of the talking. Now a lot of that evening was black to him—whiskey had a way of wiping the time clean. He didn’t even remember leaving the place. Vaguely though, he could remember Arlen’s face early in the night, nodding in sympathy. Anyone else, he wouldn’t have shared half as much. The man had a way of listening that kept you calm, told you things would be all right. Matt could see him again, smiling, his blue eyes flashing with humor and good will. Arlen.
The face flashed in relief, and faded away again.
A resinous darkness had seeped into the corners of the room. Traces of the black ninhydrin dust, for fingerprinting, still glinted on the handles and doorjambs. He’d been here for six hours, it was almost morning. Russ had left some time ago, along with most of the rest of the shift. Soon the day-shift deputies would arrive and lock down the scene.
Matt pulled on another pair of latex gloves with a snap, and felt for his notebook and flashlight. When he turned the flashlight on, the room seemed to expand into shadow. Under the uneven light, the flat floor seemed concave, curving up to fill the edges with darkness.
Over the intervening hours, he felt as if things had settled into themselves, congealing so that anything that could have been revealed was hidden under the weight of the real. There was only what had always been there. The door, the stalls, the toilets, the tile floor, the faux-marble counter. He shone his flashlight against the walls, the stall doors, the toilets, the tiled floor. The shape of the sinks seemed different. They swelled out at him, the only purely white things in an uneven gloom.
He played his light over the splashed brown drops on the wall, and the taped notations that surrounded the gouges in the walls, the penciled lines around the splash trajectories, showing where the drops had come from. He moved his faint light into the corners of the room. Nothing waited there. They were empty, bare and deserted.
At just after six in the morning, Matt pulled in his driveway and parked beside Sall’s Jeep on the verge of the grass. A book had been left in the car. He picked it up. There was no cover, the first page had the title: Hanging Woman Creek, it said. Louis L’Amour. A page was dog-eared where Jerry Kelberg had stopped reading.
When he opened the door to the bedroom he could see Sall’s shape flung out across the bed. After the fight about Doug, Sall and he hadn’t talked for two days. He’d tried not to come home until he had something to say. But he’d never come up with anything.
In the bed, Matt could see the thin blue veins on the insides of her thighs. In the spill of the light a faint pulse moved under her skin. He felt a sudden tenderness. Then an instant later came his memory of the blood in that bathroom, the pieces they had placed on two stretchers.
Matt paused beside the bed. Then he went back to the front door and locked it.
When he came back to the bedroom, he could see Sall’s nursing outfit was piled in a rumpled mass against the far wall. He placed his uniform atop it, and pulled the bedsheet down gently, so that her thighs were covered, and turned off the light.
SEPTEMBER 1988
THE GIRL was small enough that she could stand in a wheat field, when the stalks hadn’t yet reached three parts of the way toward their full height, and be lost in them, her pale hair blending in with the yellow of the fields.
Looking out from the bluff, the girl could see the faint edge of the Palouse Country—it was all fields there, like the dry rustling of the wheat behind her. From Five Mile Prairie, the whole of the Spokane Valley was spread out below her. She could see the river that ran like silver twine through the valley and the buildings, toylike far below. She could feel the wind on her skin.
From where the girl stood, the houses near the Prairie bluff were scattered, like so many blocks. The hills on the other side of the valley were covered by the shadow of a cloud. Her hair drifted and waved in the slight breeze that always came over Five Mile Prairie in the morning. She pushed her hair away from her eyes and squinted. The strands flipped back into her face and one caught in her mouth.
Absently, she wound the strand of hair around her fingers and began to suck on the points, pushing them together with her tongue into one sodden clump.
She closed her eyes and saw her father turn away from her again, held tightly by the man with the dirty ink all over his skin, a blue-black smear. The dragons glared at her as they twisted on his skin. Her daddy was going away forever.
The wind struck the wheat field behind the girl, and the rushing sound of it filled the air, gusts moving across that bright ocean of wheat. The girl closed her eyes. The air struck her a moment later, the wave washing over her, covering her skin with a fine sheen of dust, swirling past her and rattling the scarecrow cans that hung between the house and the garden, slapping the screen door, brushing the windows with bits of grit. She choked on the chaff in her mouth. When she could breathe again, she opened her eyes.
Her dress was covered in the small things left behind by the wind. All over her arms and legs were tiny bits of dead wheat husk, it seemed like a million bugs had landed on her skin. The gust of wind died out in dust devils that whirled across the yard and disappeared among the weeds.
When the man in the uniform came to the house, the girl looked up. At first, she had thought his car was her mother returning. Now that she knew he was in the house alone with her grandmother, she was nervous. Every time someone came to the house, her grandmother was angry with her afterward. She never said why.
The girl let the water from the hose run wild, swirling around each of the stalks and pebbles. Looking down at the running water, she remembered the lake, she heard again the feverish dream of voices all around her.
“You aren’t fuckin’ with me, are you? Everyone fucks with me.”
A hissing voice: “Goddammit—shoot the bastard! Scary motherfucker!”
A groan in her ear: “I got a knife. Big-ass pigsticker.”
But her father’s voice always echoed in her head: “God will be with me. Anyone can be redeemed.”
Then there was the silence of the interior of the other car, the single light glaring at her from the dashboard. The other voice with her, whispering over and over, “I’m your daddy now. I’ll take care of you. Just don’t worry about him anymore.”
“Close your eyes.” She pushed her fists into her eyes until there was only a red darkness inside her head. “Close your eyes, your daddy will be right here.” The darkness pulsed back at her. “Close your eyes.”
O soul, be changed into little water drops
And fall into the ocean, never to be found.
—Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
THE FIELDS were burned in the fall, after harvest. Outside of Post Falls, between the Bitterroot and Spokane, the burn started as soon as the wheat was in the silos. On windy days, the smoke came off the country and coiled around the basin of the Spokane Valley, hemmed in on one side by Five Mile Prairie and the dry heights of Eastern Washington.
On the day that Matt Worthson took his wife, Sall, with him on a visit to Spokane, the wind seemed to follow them. Fed by the hot updrafts of the burning stubble, the breeze brought cinders and soot from burning piles of hay. It filled the sky above Spokane with debris.
Sall’s dirty-blond hair swung in around her arched eyebrows as she turned her head back toward Matt, her lip curling with yet another sarcastic remark. “Some father you were. You never gave a damn about Doug anyway, why do you care that he’s left now?” Even after all these years, she was every bit the unstoppable force she’d always been, her derision like acid, eating away at his every failing.
