Chapter Eleven

Monday

Sara drove to the funeral home, Jeffrey giving her directions from the passenger seat. Normally, she liked to have time alone before an autopsy to get a sense of the task in front of her, but there was no time for that luxury. She had called her mother before they left Nell's and told Cathy she would be back home in Grant that evening.

"Here," Jeffrey said, indicating a long U-shaped building on the side of the highway. Nothing else was around except a small flower shop across the road. Eighteen-wheelers stirred the hot air as Sara got out of the car. In the distance, there was a grumble of thunder, which perfectly reflected her mood.

She winced as she stepped onto the asphalt, a loose rock digging through the thin sole of her sandals.

Jeffrey asked, "You okay?" and she nodded, walking toward the entrance.

Paul, the deputy who had taken her to Nell's last night, stood at the doorway smoking a cigarette. He stubbed it on the side of the trash can and left it in the sand on top.

"Ma'am," he said, opening the door for Sara.

"Thank you," Sara answered, noticing the suspicious look the deputy gave Jeffrey.

Jeffrey asked, "Where are they?"

When he answered, he looked at Sara instead of Jeffrey. "They're down that hall in the back."

The deputy walked between them as they headed toward the back of the building, and Sara could hear his keys jangling and the leather of his gun belt squeaking with every step. The funeral home was almost institutional, with painted cinder-block walls and fluorescent lighting giving a yellow cast to everything. Sara could smell embalming fluid and some sort of air freshener that might have been pleasant in a living room or office but here was almost sickening.

Paul indicated, "Through here," reaching ahead of her to open the door at the end of the hall. She chanced a look at Jeffrey, but he was staring past her into the room, his jaw set. Embalming equipment surrounded a concave metal table where the body had been placed. Covering the dead man was a clean white sheet, the edges blowing gently in the breeze generated by a loud window air-conditioning unit. The air was so cold it was stifling.

"Hey there," Hoss said, holding out his hand to Sara. She went to shake it, too late realizing he meant to put his hand on her elbow and guide her into the room. Sara knew that men of Hoss's generation generally did not shake hands with women unless it was in jest. Her grandfather Earnshaw, whom she dearly loved, was the same way.

Hoss introduced her to the men in the room. "This is Deacon White, the funeral director." A rotund, dour man with a receding hairline gave Sara a curt nod. "That's Reggie Ray." Hoss indicated the second deputy who had been at Robert's house last night. The young man still had a camera around his neck, and Sara wondered if he slept with it.

"Slick," Hoss said, addressing Jeffrey. "Don't think I mentioned this last night – Reggie's Marty Ray's boy."

"That so?" Jeffrey said, without much interest. Still, he offered the other man his hand. Reggie seemed reluctant to take it, and Sara wondered again why the deputies were so cagey around him.

Hoss said, "Got Robert's statement this morning," and Sara saw the surprised look on Jeffrey's face. "Neighbors pretty much backed up his story."

Sara waited for Jeffrey to ask what Robert had said, but he stared at the floor instead.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Deacon White indicated a door behind Sara. "We keep our protective clothing in the storage room. You're welcome to anything we have."

"Thank you," Sara told him, getting a solemn nod in return. She wondered if the man was annoyed she was taking over. Grant County's funeral director had been a childhood friend of Sara's and more than happy to relinquish the responsibility of town coroner, but Deacon White was a lot harder to read.

She walked over to the storage room, which was little more than a glorified closet. Still, she shut the door. The moment she did, the men started talking. She could hear Hoss's deep baritone mixing with Paul's. From what she could gather, they were discussing a recent basketball game at the high school.

Sara opened a surgical gown and slipped it on, feeling foolish as she spun like a dog chasing its tail trying to tie the back. The gown was huge on her, obviously meant for Deacon White's pronounced midsection. By the time she had slipped on a pair of paper shoes and a hair protector, Sara felt like a clown.

She put her hand on the door, but did not open it. Closing her eyes, she tried to block out all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Focusing on her belief that Robert's wound was self-inflicted might shadow her findings during the autopsy, and Sara wanted to make certain she only went with known facts. She was not a detective. Her task now was to give her professional opinion to the police and let them decide how to proceed. The only thing she could control was how well she performed her job.

The men grew quiet as she walked back into the room. She thought she saw a smile on Paul's face, but he looked back down at his notebook, writing something with a well-chewed nub of pencil. Deacon White stood by the body, and Jeffrey and Hoss both leaned against the wall with their arms crossed over their chests. Reggie was by the sink, his camera gleaming in the light. An air of expectancy filled the room, but despite this, Sara got the distinct impression that this was merely a case of going through the motions.

Still, she asked, "Where are the X rays?"

Deacon exchanged a look with Hoss before saying, "We don't normally do X rays."

Sara tried to cover her shock, knowing how it would look to come into their backyard and start treating them like a bunch of yokels. X rays were standard procedure for an autopsy, but they were especially important when dealing with a head wound. The bullet punched out bone as it entered the skull, and X rays of bone chips would provide conclusive evidence of the path the bullet had taken. Excising the wound could distort the path or even create false tracks.

She asked, "Have you found the bullet?"

"From his head?" Reggie asked, sounding surprised. "I got two twenty-twos out of the walls. I didn't find anything near his head except for…head."

"The bullet could still be in there," Sara told him.

Hoss cleared his throat politely before saying, "Maybe ol' Reg here missed it on his sweep through the room. I'm sure we'll find it when we look again."

Reggie seem to bristle a bit at this, but he had regained his composure by the time Hoss looked his way. He gave the sheriff a slight shrug as if to say it could happen.

Sara tried to phrase her words carefully. "Sometimes, brain tissue can slow a bullet down enough so that it has insufficient velocity to exit the skull."

Hoss pointed out, "The right side of his head has been blown out."

"That could be from a fracture." Knowing the policeman's ammunition of choice, she made an educated guess, asking Reggie, "We're talking a nine-millimeter hollow-point, I would assume?"

He flipped back through his notebook, reading, "The Beretta had twenty-two long rifle, the Glock had hollow-point."

Sara said, "That could exert enough force to fracture the bone out through the scalp." She did not add that an X ray would easily show this.

Hoss said, "All right."

She waited for him to say more, but when he did not, Sara pulled back the sheet. She should not have been surprised to find the body faceup, and hoped she managed to hide her irritation. Livor mortis had shifted to the back of the head, which meant blood could have seeped into the soft tissue of the scalp. Any evidence of confluent bruising would be difficult to tell from antemortem bruising. Unless there was a laceration or some sort of pronounced abrasion in the scalp, it would be almost impossible for Sara to tell whether the bruises came from the man's own pooling blood or from someone hitting him in the head.