Dr. Henry Krohlmeyer, Marsha’s boss and the chief medical examiner for Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County, was the next witness. Dr. Henry, as he was called by virtually everyone, described in his usual gory detail the procedures by which he’d determined the cause of death in the case of Rebecca Gibson. He also explained that he’d had to perform the autopsy at the Vanderbilt Medical Center hospital, what with his own morgue presently indisposed.
As a journalist, I’d seen a couple of autopsies before. Truth is, they’re not as awful as one might think, as long as you have a decent idea of what to expect and the body hasn’t been left out for so long it’s turned fragrant. You detach yourself from it all. Dead bodies-to me, anyway-don’t really look like people anymore. One of my first really bad car-wreck assignments as a young reporter was when a carload of drunks in a convertible took a curve at eighty miles an hour, then flipped. I got there just after the cops had set up the yellow tape and got past with my press pass. Five adults, two teenagers, thrown all over hell’s half acre, killed instantly, splayed out in the most damnably bizarre angles I’d ever seen a human body assume.
But they didn’t look like people anymore. They were like store mannequins that fell off the back of a runaway semi. I never blinked an eye. Completely professional, all the way.
This was different. I’d seen Rebecca Gibson when she was alive, had heard her sing, heard her laugh, felt her spark. I don’t mean to go on about it. After all, I didn’t know her. But I was attracted to her despite myself. So was everyone else in the room that last night of her life. Listening to Dr. Henry talk about the results of her autopsy, and imagining her on a stainless-steel table with the awful Y-cut from her shoulders to the middle of her breasts, then down to her crotch; hell, I don’t know. It made me cold everywhere. My feet felt like blocks of ice and I realized I was covered in a thin, frigid sweat.
“You okay?” Ray whispered, jabbing me in the left arm with his right elbow. “You look pale as death.”
Interesting simile. “I’m okay,” I whispered back.
Dr. Henry finished his testimony. Rebecca Gibson had suffered over a dozen fractures to her cheekbones, skull, one arm, a collarbone, three ribs, with the accompanying cuts, bruises, abrasions. She’d suffered acute abdominal trauma; her gut was full of blood and fluid that shouldn’t have been there. One eye had been crushed in its socket, her nose shattered. Cause of death was a toss-up: accumulated acute head trauma from a multitude of severe blows led to extensive damage to the lining of the brain, subdural hematoma, and fatal swelling of the brain. However, her throat had been ripped open as well-presumably by one of the shards from the shattered lamp-tearing the carotid artery and leading to a Class-IV hemorrhage.
I squirmed against the wall. Someone had beaten Rebecca Gibson to a textbook bloody pulp, and had done it with great zest as well. It was not simply a case of passion overriding one’s best judgment and things getting out of hand. Someone with great physical strength had given themselves quite a workout. I stared at Slim as he sat at the defense table in his orange jumpsuit. The one-piece jumpsuit was short-sleeved, and Slim’s thick arms were the only thing stretching the oversized garment. Slim was young. He was well built, kept himself in shape, looked, in fact, like an iron-pumper. He didn’t smoke, had good wind.
I remembered one other thing Ray told me Slim had: a bad temper, accompanied by a history of domestic-disturbance calls.
I suddenly needed some air.
The sun on the plaza in front of the Criminal Justice Center brought me back to some level of stability. I sat on a concrete bench, the pedestrians passing by in a swirl of movement and color. The traffic stopped-and-started down the James Robertson Parkway in the long shadows cast by the courthouse across the street.
I took a few deep breaths and brought my hands to my face and rubbed hard, then leaned back and stretched, letting the bright sunlight warm my face. There were footsteps behind me, then Ray’s voice again.
“Harry?”
“Yeah?” I said without looking at him.
“They ain’t going to let him go,” he said in a monotone. He sounded as if he were in shock.
I lifted my head and gazed off down the parkway, toward the aging Municipal Auditorium. “Denied bond, huh?” That was bad. About the only time bond is ever flat out denied in this state is when they’re going for capital murder.
“No, but they set it at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
I chuckled. “Hey, things ain’t so bad. All you got to do is come up with thirty-five and he’s outta there.”
“Thirty-five thousand dollars.” He sighed. “May as well be thirty-five million. I never seen anything like it, Harry.”
I sat up straight. It was nearly lunchtime, and I hadn’t had a bite since the night before. I needed to eat, get my blood sugar back to where it ought to be. Then I needed to think. This was a hell of a lousy mess.
“When can we see him?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I think Roger Vaden’s still with him.”
“I want to talk to him, Ray. I think you need to talk to him, too.”
I turned and stared at him. “Why?” he asked.
“Ol’ buddy,” I said, making a hammer out of my right fist and bouncing it once off his knee, “I think we need to grok the possibility that our boy Slim just might have done it.”
Ray and I agreed to meet back at the office building on Seventh Avenue. I picked up a sack of burgers and a couple of orders of fries, then listened to my stomach growl as the food sat congealing next to me on the car seat while I searched for a parking space.
I fought off a sense of hopelessness, with mixed success. Rarely had I felt like life was completely beyond my control. Even during the worst period of my life, which I suppose was probably when I lost my marriage and my job all within a couple of months, I had never felt the sort of psychic impotence I was feeling at this moment. The marriage wasn’t that great to begin with; there was more relief than anything else when it finally ended civilly and without drama. As for my career as a journalist, the truth was that I had become stale. After a while you feel like you’ve written every story in human history at least ten times. The challenge becomes to approach each assignment in search of the fresh insight, the new angle. After a certain number of years, the challenge becomes a tedious struggle, and then finally, not worth the effort.
So my transition from secure, staid journalist to freelance, on-the-edge investigator had been good for me in the long run. I hadn’t had a dull day since. A woman who I was beginning to suspect was going to be a far bigger part of my future than I’d ever imagined was in danger of being snatched away from me at any given miscalculated moment. Another friend stood accused of murder. I was faced with loss on personal, business, and financial levels.
And to top it all off, I realized as I parked the car and dug into the sack of food, those rat bastards at the drive-in window put tomatoes on my burgers!
Damn. I hate tomatoes.
I suffered through the insult up in Ray’s office as we snarfed down lunch and sipped slick, wet cans of Coke. Ray had put in a call to Roger Vaden’s office, and there was little conversation as we sat chewing and waiting.
I’d checked my answering machine before stepping down to Ray’s office. Nothing. No mail yet, either, which meant no incoming checks. But, I rationalized, that meant no bills either.
“When you reckon they’ll let us see him?” Ray asked.
“Visiting hours are Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons,” I answered, distracted. I was thinking about Marsha again in a generalized, unfocused way. I wondered when I’d hear from her, if they’d gotten food and supplies sent in. If she had what she needed.
“You mean we can’t see him until then?”
“That’s right. Lawyers can see prisoners almost anytime. But civilians are off-limits.”