I was therefore surprised when she paused at the foot of the stairs, after we’d spent another fifteen minutes carefully retracing our steps. he stood looking down at the black, flaky skull-like head with its frozen, soot-smeared grin.
“What do you think killed him?” I followed her gaze. Most of him was under debris, but you could see bits and pieces, if you knew where to look, along with one twisted, charcoaled arm, its fist clenched in midair-the classic “pugilistic stance” of the severely burned victim.
I’d taken it earlier as a piece of wood.
“Sounds like a trick question. I’ll say the fire.” “Therefore dying of smoke inhalation?” “I guess.” “Have you seen many people die from falling down a set of stairs?” “No.” “What are their injuries, usually?” “I couldn’t say-not about stairs-but from similar falls, I’d guess mostly bumps and bruises, broken legs and hips, an occasional neck or two… something like that.” “How about being knocked out cold?” I looked again at the man I’d briefly known as Fox, wondering what he was telling her that he’d hadn’t told me yet. “Not often, I guess.” “How old was he… ? Oh, did you even know him?” “I met him once. He must have been in his late twenties, early thirties.” She pursed her lips.
“Well, then you’re right, statistically at least.
Very few people of this approximate age group die from such a fall.
Most of the time, they’re nimble enough to take some sort of evasive measures. They might break something in the process, but they rarely die, and they rarely get knocked unconscious.” “Rarely.” She nodded.
“True-the exception proves the rule. But there’s something else. Are you aware of the AVPU scale of consciousness?” “AVPU? Sounds like something hatched in the Pentagon.” “It does. It’s a mnemonic, actually, with each letter standing for a key word in the descending order of consciousness: a patient is either Alert, responsive to Verbal stimulus, responsive to Painful stimulus, or totally Unconscious.” She drew the letters in the air for emphasis.
“Painful stimulus is usually a pinched ear or a knuckle rub on the sternum-some physical way of disturbing this artificially deep sleep, in other words.” I was finally beginning to follow her train of thought.
“Or putting your hand on a hot stove.” She smiled. “Right. You do something like that, and all but a deeply unconscious person will react, usually by pulling away from the stimulus. Again, it’s not a guarantee; it’s just a statistic.” “But if it’s true, this man was out like a light before he hit the e.” “That’s not all. Look at his flesh, high on the chest.” I followed her pointed finger. Fox’s skin had split in several places, ch as a hot dog’s does when it’s been cooked too long. “What color is it?” she asked. “Sort of beige; a little pink, maybe.” “The classic sign of carbon monoxide poisoning is the cherry-red or of the skin after death. Of course, where the skin is charred, you k for the flesh underneath for the same indicator.” “So he was dead before he hit the stove.” “He might have been dead before he hit the stove.” She wagged finger at me. “And don’t you tell anyone I told you so.” Ron Potter sat on the toilet seat and shook his head. “The BCI arson teams are here. They helped Dr. Hillstrom get the bodies out.
e burned one kept falling apart; I don’t know how she does what she s.
I spat into the sink. “It’s interesting. If it gets to you, just think being a proctologist-now there’s a curious line of work.” He made a face. “They had to get three different funeral homes carry the bodies to Burlington. Nobody had enough body bags we five people killed simultaneously in this state, and it’s considered official disaster.
The guys in New York must have racks in their recesses.
We were upstairs in Buster’s house. I’d just spent four hours trying to catch up on last night’s lost sleep, with negligible success.
Potter had looked in on me fresh from a shower, while I was brushing my teeth, he had been asking me questions. He watched my technique for a moment. “You think Bruce Wine killed them?” I rinsed my mouth out and squeezed by him to cross the hall to bedroom. He followed me. “I think the fire killed them, at least st of them.” “Come on, Joe.” I began putting on a fresh shirt. “Maybe. I want to see what we get from the scene before I draw any conclusions. We may find out it was an accident, that Fox had a heart condition and died of it on the way downstairs.” “What about the locked door, then?” “I don’t know. Maybe they had an argument and he locked them in.
Maybe he locked them in every night. People do strange things, especially this Order bunch, from what I hear.” Potter sat on the windowsill and stared out gloomily. He had not been the brightest cop I’d ever worked with; he lacked the flair it often took to get people to open up. He’d been hard-working and earnest most of his fellow officers had found him a grind-but it hadn’t seemed to do him much good. I’d thought maybe his lackluster style was because being a cop was a means to an end; according to him, he’d always dreamed of becoming the state’s Perry Mason, carrying the cop’s hard work up to the bench and convincing judge and jury that the bad guys deserved hard time. I’d never pointed out to him that Mason was a defense attorney; it was his flat-footed opponents who were prosecutors.
I wondered now, looking at him, whether that kind of misconception should have told me more at the time. Judging from his present lack of enthusiasm, it appeared the idea of his job was more appealing than its reality. It reminded me, albeit cynically, that the State’s Attorney was an elective post, as open to politicians as to qualified prosecutors. I made a mental note to keep that distinction in mind before putting all my trust in his hands.
I finished dressing. “Any objection to my tagging along with the arson people?” He stood up quickly. “Objection? God, no.” “Well, I’m your boy now. I could drop this whole thing and go after your embezzling town clerk.” He waved his hand. “Oh, forget her.
Do what you got to do.” Like a model at a fashion show, the burned house had again changed appearances. From the scene of a fight to a five-alarm inferno, it was now playing host to a full police investigation. Instead of fire trucks and hose, State Police and Sheriff’s cruisers clustered near its blackened walls. Men in uniform and in plainclothes milled about, measuring, photographing, and collecting evidence. As I approached the front door, one of them came up to greet me. He was about my age, but with more hair and more gut, and was dressed in filthy blue overalls with “State Police” stenciled in white letters across his shoulder blades. “You Gunther?” he asked, sticking out a dirty, ham-sized hand.
I almost winced at the grip. He was also about my height-five ten inches-but built like a brick. “Yeah.” “I’m Dick LeMay State Police arson investigator. Thanks for ing the scene clean.” I looked for some irony there. Arson sites, aside from their natudirty nature, are notoriously abused by others: Firemen, rescuers, s, medical examiners, homicide teams, and sometimes even insure adjustors and gawkers trample on the evidence before the arson investigator gets his first glimpse.
More often than not, important things that could have told the story of the fire right off are ground into vion.
“Unless you’re pulling my leg, you ought to thank Corporal Wirt.
roped it off before it was even cool.” “Yeah, well, I don’t like him. I also heard you and Hillstrom were dainty going in for an early look.” We were standing in front of the house, by the front door.
Suddenly, there was a crash from inside.
“That’s the boss.” LeMay grinned, and motioned me to enter ad of him.