The coroner was sitting at his desk when we came in. He stood up to shake my hand. He was a round little man, and his white lab coat somehow made him look more like a pastry chef than a coroner. “Mr. McKnight,” he said. “I’m Dr. Pietrowski, the Chippewa County coroner. We appreciate you coming in.”
I looked at Maven. “My pleasure,” I said.
“He’s in this room,” the coroner said, showing me to the far door. “Are you prepared to look at him?”
“I’ll give it my best shot.”
“Are you uncomfortable with this?”
“No, I’m just not sure that I’ll be able to recognize him.”
He nodded. “Let’s see what happens.”
I followed him through the door, Maven behind me. There was a steel table in the center of the room. The body on top of the table was completely covered by a white sheet. The fluorescent lights hummed above us.
The coroner pulled on latex gloves, then drew back the sheet, folding it neatly across the dead man’s shoulders. The face was so white it was almost blue. The eyes were half open. The mouth was half open. I took a step closer.
“Is this one of them?” Maven said.
I tried to replay the night in my head, looking down at the lifeless face, trying to make some kind of connection. It was impossible.
“I only really saw the two men who stayed downstairs with us,” I said. “One was very fair-skinned, with blond hair and blond eyebrows. That’s the one who sounded Canadian to me. This man obviously isn’t him. The other man was heavier…How much did this man weigh?”
The coroner picked up a clipboard. “Two hundred twenty-five pounds,” he said. “That’s minus a few liters of blood.”
I nodded. It sounded about right. “How tall is he?”
“Five eleven.”
“He was wearing a mask,” I said. “A surgical mask, and a cap, too.”
The coroner went to his work table. “Like these?” he said, holding up a green mask and cap.
“Yes.”
He looked at Maven for a moment, then stepped over behind the dead man’s head. He slipped the cap over the man’s dark hair, then draped the mask over his mouth. “Does this help?”
I looked down at him. I took a deep breath, tried to put myself back on the floor at Vargas’s house. The men were walking around. The dog was barking. “He does look familiar now,” I said. “I think this may be the other man who was downstairs. I can’t be a hundred percent certain.”
“There was something in the report about the shoes,” Maven said behind me. “Would you recognize the shoes?”
“If he was wearing the same shoes, yes, I might.”
The coroner went back to his work table, opened up a black plastic bag and pulled out a pair of old athletic shoes. He brought them over to me. “Take a good look,” he said. “But please don’t touch them.”
They were old, beat-up shoes, once white, now a dingy gray. Two blue stripes ran diagonally on each side. “These look like the shoes he was wearing,” I said.
The coroner went back to put the shoes away. I looked down at the dead man, still wearing the cap and mask. “What happened to him?” I said.
“He was shot in the back,” the coroner said. “Two slugs from a forty-five. One passed through the upper abdomen, the other was stopped by the sternum.”
“How long has he been dead?”
“Approximately four days.”
“Four days. That would be…” I thought about it. “That would be the night of the robbery, after they drove away. Where did you find him?”
The coroner just looked at me while he pulled off his gloves. “You’ll have to ask the chief about that.”
“Let’s go,” Maven said. “We’re done here.”
“I did my part,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”
“I’m going upstairs,” Maven said. “You can stay down here if you want.”
The coroner just shrugged when I looked at him. I followed Maven back through the office, down the hall to the elevator. We stood there waiting for it.
“Where did you find him?” I said.
“Right on top of the blood.”
“What’s his name?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
“It’s public information,” I said. “It’ll be in the paper tomorrow.”
“Not necessarily. We might withhold it for a few days.”
“What’s the big secret?”
“If I were to bring Mr. Connery down here, or Mr. O’Dell or Mr. LaMarche, do you think any of them would recognize him?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I don’t think anybody else got a good look at him.”
“That’s assuming they didn’t know who he was already.”
“Yeah, that’s assuming.”
“If his name happened to be Danny Cox, would that mean anything to you?”
“Is that his name?”
“I’m just asking, if it was…”
“I’ve never heard that name before,” I said.
“That’s your answer? Just like that? You didn’t even take a minute to think about it.”
“I don’t have to think about it. I don’t know the name.”
“Most guys, they’d say, ‘Hmm…Let me think. Danny Cox…Danny Cox…Nope, never heard of him.’”
“I’ll think some more if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Never mind.” He looked up at the numbers above the elevator. Without looking at me, he said, “What were you doing downstate, anyway?”
“I had an appointment.”
“I probably don’t even want to know, do I…”
The elevator opened. We got in.
“I know two of the thieves drove away in a car with a Canadian license plate,” I said. “Have you traced it yet? I don’t think American private investigators can call Canada for that information.”
“First of all, how did you come to know anything about a Canadian license plate?” he said. “Second of all, you’re not a PI anymore, remember?”
“I came out of retirement,” I said. “You obviously need a little help, Chief. You’re letting your personal bias get in the way here. You should be out looking for the person who’s really behind all this.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “The appointment you had this morning…”
“Kendrick Heiden,” I said. “I don’t think he was involved, if you want my opinion.”
“You know how much I value your opinion, McKnight. Who’s next on your list?”
“Douglas Swanson.”
“He wasn’t there that night.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Maven rubbed his eyes. “I’m getting a headache.”
“Tell me who owns that car,” I said. “I’m going to find out anyway.”
“Go right ahead. Knock yourself out.”
“If it was a real lead, you wouldn’t say that. It must have been a stolen car. Or a stolen plate, at least. Am I right?”
The door opened on the ground floor. Maven stepped out and walked quickly to the front door. In the sunshine I felt like I was a million miles away from the cold light of the morgue. “I got things to do,” he said.
“So do I,” I said.
He stopped and turned to face me. “You know what? You think you’re helping out your friends? Let me tell you something. The district attorney had a deal on the table. The first one of those guys who flipped was gonna have the conspiracy charge dropped. It was gonna be a class A receiving stolen goods, probation and no jail time. But now we’ve got a dead body on the ground. He was shot in the back, McKnight, and left in the woods so a couple of little kids could find him this morning. You think I’m in any kind of mood to hear you tell me I need help on this case? And that you’re the one who’s gonna help me?”
“Maven, it’s real simple. You’re dead wrong. You’re looking at the wrong men.”
“Because you just know in your heart that they’re innocent.”
“Something like that.”
“I’m the one with the personal bias,” he said. “Think about it.” Then he walked away.
Chapter Fifteen
I drove back over to August Street to check out Swanson’s office again. I hadn’t asked Leon what kind of car Swanson drove, so I didn’t know what to look for. It didn’t matter. There was only one car in his lot, so I figured it had to be his secretary’s. It was a Toyota Camry, which sure didn’t seem like a lawyer’s car to me.