"Not officially," said Cardiff.
"You didn't sign the death certificate?"
"No, I signed off on it, yes, but someone else did the autopsy."
"That seems rather unusual," said Schell, lifting one bushy eyebrow.
"I'm the coroner," said Cardiff. "I sign the legal paperwork in that capacity. That's it."
"Who looked at the girl?" asked Schell.
"Well, usually I examine bodies if there's any question as to cause of death, as I'm also a licensed medical examiner."
"But you didn't handle this case?"
"No. Someone from higher up ordered a special Forensic Pathologist to come in to oversee things."
"Do you know who it was?" asked Schell.
"Never met them," said Cardiff. "I was told to take the day off when the procedure was done. At first I'd assumed Barnes had applied his significant influence, but as it turned out, I rather think his influence was blocked by someone even more powerful."
"It's stated that the girl died of strangulation," said Schell.
"That's what it says," said Cardiff. "But, to tell you the truth…that's fishy."
"What do you mean, fishy?" I asked.
Cardiff glanced quickly up at me. He was now obviously sweating and wiped his brow with the heel of his palm. "I looked the girl over when she first came in," he said. "There were no marks on her throat. There was no traumatic damage done to the windpipe. None of the telltale signs of strangulation. Nothing indicated to me to look in that direction at all. Instead, she was pale, her complexion slightly yellow, as if she were both anemic and jaundiced at the same time."
"No violence?" asked Schell.
"The only mark I saw on her was a puncture wound in the crook of the left arm." Here he laid two fingers of his right hand on the inside of his left elbow.
"What kind of puncture mark?" asked Schell.
"Some kind of needle, large gauge. I took blood for a test, but by then the word came down to leave her be. That's when I had an inkling it might not be Barnes who was calling the shots. Still I had the blood. I waited until the pathologist issued his report. When I read that he'd determined the cause of death to be strangulation, I couldn't believe it. I mentioned to my superior that this couldn't be, and he said to me, 'Do you like your job?' Well, these days…you know the way things are. I couldn't jeopardize my job."
"So you let it slide," said Schell.
"Not entirely," said Cardiff. "Even if no one else seemed to care, I wanted to know what was going on. I sent the blood to the lab to be tested under another name."
"And what did you learn?"
"The strangest thing," said the coroner. "I can't be sure, because I'd have to check the internal organs, and that's impossible now, but it seemed to me that the girl was transfused. I think she died of a bad transfusion."
"Bad in what way?"
"I know this sounds crazy, because the girl seemed to have been otherwise healthy, but I think someone pumped blood into her that was the wrong type. All the signs are there, clotting, jaundice caused by kidney malfunction, the paleness from the lack of oxygen getting to the cells."
"What happens to a person under these circumstances?" asked Schell.
"Fever, pain throughout the body, in the organs. Not a pleasant way to go. The only problem with my theory," said Cardiff, "is that there should have been some indication of the other blood in her system. Her type was A positive. There seemed to be other blood there, but it had no type as far as I could determine. Admittedly, I had only one sample and one chance at a test. If I'd had another go at it, I might have been able to determine what it was."
"Ever seen anything like it before?" I asked.
"I've heard of people getting a bad transfusion. But never this," he said.
"You've been most helpful," said Schell as he rose from the chair. "Thanks for the information. You're sworn to secrecy about this conversation. It doesn't matter who's asking. In other words, Mr. Cardiff, do you like your job?"
Cardiff nodded vehemently and laughed, as if Schell had made a joke. Neither of us cracked a smile, though, and the coroner quickly regained his composure.
Once we were back in the car and on the road, Schell said to me, "I feel as if God, in return for my years of flimflam, is working some cosmic con on me. Now we have bad blood transfusions and a conspiracy to contradict the facts. I've never been so concerned with the Truth before in my life."
"Truth is Beauty, that's what Keats said," I told him as I worked to tear off the fake mustache. I'd already ditched the eyeglasses, the overcoat, and the fedora in the backseat.
"The Truth-highly overrated," he said. "Nothing but a big pain in the ass."
When I was finally free of my disguise, I said to him, "And what about Isabel and me?" I'd been waiting all day for his lecture and still it hadn't come. All through the drive out to Cardiff's place, I'd waited for him to broach the subject. Now that our job was complete, I was more than ready to face him.
He sighed and smiled. "Diego," he said, "you're a good person, a good son. I'm going to have to trust your judgment on this, but I think you're moving too quickly with Isabel. Sleeping together in the house? You know that's not right. Why get so deeply involved with her at this point? Who knows where she'll wind up? She may have to go back to Mexico. She'll definitely have to leave the state. You have too much ahead of you that you have to do. I'm expecting great things."
"I thought you would be angrier," I said.
"I was put out this morning, I'll admit, but mostly I'm worried."
"Isabel thinks it's because she's Mexican," I said.
He considered this for a moment and said, "Yes, but not in the way she probably thinks. She seems like a nice girl. She's very smart, very pretty. But I don't want you falling back into that. It's too dangerous."
"Falling back into what?" I said.
"Getting lost in the past," he said.
I didn't have the heart to tell him I was considering returning to Mexico with her if she went. It wouldn't do to heap that upon him now, with all that was happening, so I bit my tongue.
"In general," he said. "you've got to watch out for women. They work a mean con."
"How?" I asked.
He pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me.
"What's this?"
"A list of the boxes that we have to pick up from Morgan's cabin," he said.
I started to smile, but he held his hand up. "Please," he said, "spare me the indignity."
A SWEET DEAL
It was black as a kettle in among the trees near the cabin. Schell had pulled off the road and hidden the car behind a natural wall of brambles some way off from number six. We stumbled through the dark, avoiding trunks and trying to steer clear of the other cabins. Somewhere high above us an owl sounded every half minute. I'd left my trench coat in the car and, wearing only my suit jacket, was freezing.
"I think this is it up here," said Schell as he struck a wooden match to life. The momentary flame showed us the way to the door of the place, and once we were standing in front of the small cabin, he lit another so we could check the number.
"Yeah, you found it," I said.
Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the key Morgan had given him. He opened the door and we stepped inside. That dank mildew smell made me gag slightly, bringing to mind Charlotte Barnes's body in the tumbledown shack. Schell lit one of the candles on the desk, and the light chased the bad memory from my mind.
"Can you imagine living here?" I said to him, my breath coming as steam in the cold.
"Better yet," he said, "how about hearing someone prowling around outside and having to climb into a hole under the floorboards?"