“Chief Van Alstyne is already waiting for us,” Dr. Dvorak said, limping down the short hallway to his office.
“Why?” Mrs. Marshall asked as the pathologist opened the door and ushered her through. Russ, seated at the far side of Dr. Dvorak’s desk, rose when she entered. Mrs. Marshall, Clare had noticed, had that effect on men.
“The chief is always involved in a homicide,” Dr. Dvorak said.
Mrs. Marshall turned on him. “Homicide?”
“Let’s have you a seat, Lacey, and then we can hear what the doctor’s got to say.” Norm Madsen patted one of the straight-backed wooden chairs, government-issue circa 1957 and never changed since then.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Dvorak said. “I didn’t know there would be so many.” There were three chairs ranged between the bookcases and the plants in the small office. “Maybe we can nip down to the waiting room and get another.”
“I’ll stand,” Clare said.
Russ, still standing, gestured to his chair. “Take this.”
Clare looked pointedly at his cast. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“I insist.” His back was very straight. She wondered if it was Margy Van Alstyne or the army that had instilled his good posture.
“Sit down, Russ. Doctor’s orders.” Emil Dvorak glanced at him just long enough to see Russ lower himself back into the chair, then turned his attention to the folders neatly squared on his desk blotter. One of them was obviously modern, the kind of plastic-tabbed manila thing everyone bought by the boxful at Staples. The other had a different look to it. Older. It was muzzy green and shedding, like felt left too long outdoors. Clare realized it must be the seventy-year-old police file. The Millers Kill Police Department’s oldest cold case had come alive again.
“Now, let me make sure I’ve got the relationship straight.” Dr. Dvorak un-capped a fountain pen and flipped open the modern file. “You are Solace Ketchem Marshall, the daughter of Jonathon and Jane Ketchem.”
“Yes.”
“How old were you when your father disappeared?”
“Six.”
“Mrs. Marshall, do you recall if your father ever broke two fingers? On his right hand? This would have been several years before he disappeared.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Marshall said.
“Yes,” Clare said.
Everyone turned to stare at her. “Dr. Stillman loaned me his grandfather’s journals.” She spoke to Mrs. Marshall and Mr. Madsen. “Old Dr. Stillman, the one you remember. He treated your siblings during the diphtheria epidemic. The ones that were alive when he was called.” She was getting off point. “Anyway, in his journal, Dr. Stillman wrote that your father had two broken fingers he had set himself the night he came to fetch the doctor. The doctor offered to reset them, but your father refused.”
Emil Dvorak nodded. “Good.”
“Good?” Mrs. Marshall said.
Dr. Dvorak steepled his fingers. “The remains that were brought up out of Stewart’s Pond were skeletonized. That means many of the normal markers a pathologist will use to establish identity are simply gone. In addition, this skeleton is old, certainly more than fifty years old, and there aren’t any reliable dental records available.” Dvorak opened the old green file and flipped through several pages. “We’re fortunate in that the officer who investigated your father’s disappearance was thorough. He sent off for Jonathon Ketchem’s service records, from when he was in the army during World War I.” Dvorak held up a page of brittle, browning paper between two fingers. “They don’t have what we’d consider dental records per se, but there is a written account of the dental work your father had had done and the state of his health as of 1915.”
“And?”
“Jonathon Ketchem was thirty-seven years old and in good health when he disappeared. He has no records of any broken bones, other than two fingers, which Reverend Fergusson has confirmed for us. According to his enlistment records, he had eight molar fillings.” He tapped the modern folder. “The remains brought up from the reservoir are those of an adult male, between his mid-twenties and mid-forties. There is no sign of any premortum trauma other than two broken fingers on the right hand. The decedent had eight molar fillings made of a lead amalgam that fell out of use in the late 1920s.”
Norm Madsen leaned forward. “So is this Jonathon Ketchem’s body?”
Dr. Dvorak spread his hands. “That’s what the evidence suggests.”
“The body was found inside the remains of an old car,” Russ said. “We had the divers bring up several pieces, but at this point, all we can say for sure is that it was some sort of old Ford.”
“My father drove a Ford. That’s what he was in when he went missing.”
“I know. It’s in the original report. Problem is, something like sixty percent of the cars sold in the county back then were Fords, according to Lee Harse over to Fort Henry Ford.” Russ looked at the rest of them, looking at him. “Well, I don’t know anything about old cars. The state crime lab has the recovered pieces and we’ve faxed their photos over to an expert Harse recommended. So hopefully, we’ll be able to identify the exact model and year soon.”
“But till then we don’t know?” Mrs. Marshall twisted her fine-boned hands together, and Clare, from her vantage point near the door, was reminded of the long, elegant finger bones tangled in the divers’ net.
Russ leaned forward, bracing one arm against Dr. Dvorak’s desk. “Mrs. Marshall, the doctor here is going to tell you we can’t really be sure. But I’ll tell you what my gut says. There’s no other missing person I know of who fits the bill. Now, I’ve put the info we have out on the wire. And maybe I’ll get a report back from the Albany PD that they have a seventy-year-old unsolved missing-persons case, and their man has broken fingers and eight fillings and drove a Ford. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I believe we’ve found the body of your father, Jonathon Ketchem.”
Mrs. Marshall stiffened. After a moment she said, “How did he die?”
Russ looked to Dr. Dvorak.
“Did he drown? Was he shot?”
“If he was shot, there’s no surviving evidence of it,” Dvorak said. “I doubt, even if we had tissue to work with, that we’d find he’d been drowned.” He glanced at Russ.
“What is it?” Mrs. Marshall was pale, composed but on the edge.
“It appears that the proximate cause of death was a blow to the back of the skull. Several blows.” Dr. Dvorak paused for a moment, as if waiting for another question. When none was forthcoming, he went on. “From the extent of the damage, the cross-cranial impact zone, and the angle of declivity, I’ve concluded he was struck by a heavy, probably flat object with a surface area of at least eight to ten inches.”
Mrs. Marshall looked at the pathologist. She turned to Norm Madsen, then to Russ. “I don’t understand,” she said finally. “What sort of weapon could that be?”
There was a silence. Clare wracked her brain for some idea. Tire iron… baseball bat… none of those were flat. “A frying pan,” Russ said finally. “It has to be. Jonathon Ketchem was beaten to death with a frying pan.”
Chapter 34
Saturday, March 29, 1930
Is she asleep?”
Jane paused at the door to the kitchen. Jon hadn’t lifted his head from the paper to ask the question. “Yes,” she said. “She was all tired out from playing with the Reid boys today.”
He grunted. She crossed to the sink and pumped more water into the basin before lifting her apron off its nail and pulling it over her head. She knotted it behind her and attacked the dinner dishes. She was all tired out as well, after walking Solace to and from the Reids, and doing the marketing, and seeing to the chickens and the house and three meals and a triple batch of cookies intended for St. Alban’s bake sale tomorrow. As near as she could tell, Jon hadn’t moved from the davenport all day, except to go out back to the necessary. She scooped through the basin and dragged up a couple forks. All day. More like all week. He hadn’t been out of the house since Monday. She was the one who had brought him in the newspaper. The only reason he was in the kitchen right now was because the night was bidding cold, and the kitchen, with its woodstove, was the warmest spot in the house. He hadn’t gone down cellar to shovel more coal into the furnace, and she’d be deviled if she was going to do it for him. As it was, she was going to have to step out to the woodpile on the back porch and chop kindling for tomorrow morning.