Frozen Stiff Read online

  “Why didn’t you tell me about him? Why is there crime scene tape at his house? And why am I finding all this out from my neighbors instead of you?”

  “Whoa, slow down, would you?”

  “I can’t slow down, Mattie. People around me are turning up dead with frightening frequency lately and it’s making me a tad anxious.”

  “Understandable,” I say slowly.

  Hurley lets forth with a weighty sigh. “You’re not starting to have doubts about me, are you? Because I’m counting on you, and if you’re withholding information from me, I’m thinking we’ve got a problem.”

  “Minniver was more than just your neighbor, wasn’t he?”

  He doesn’t answer right away and while I’m waiting, I reach over and turn off the shower.

  “We had some disagreements recently,” Hurley says finally. “He didn’t like where I put my fence, claiming it encroached on his property. He has . . . had some old survey map from twenty years ago that shows a different property line than what my survey shows. So he’s suing me.”

  “Not anymore,” I toss out.

  Hurley groans. “What did he die of?”

  “I don’t know,” I say honestly. “My first thought was that he had a heart attack but after reviewing his medical record I think that’s unlikely. Right now I have no idea what killed him. We’re going to post him this morning.”

  “Do you suspect something other than natural causes?”

  “Not necessarily. While it’s unlikely that his heart was the cause, he could have had a stroke, or thrown a blood clot, or blown an aneurysm. There are a ton of natural causes in a man his age that are plausible. Hopefully we’ll be able to narrow it down once we’ve done the autopsy.”

  “I want to be there when you do it.”

  My heart skips a beat. There is nothing I like more than having Hurley around, even when it occurs over a dead body. But . . .

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say. “Clearly you’ve got some connections to this man other than the typical neighborly one. Given the other . . . situation, I think it might be wiser if you distanced yourself from the investigation.”

  “But that just makes me look guilty.”

  “Are you?”

  This time the silence stretches out for what seems like a full minute or more, long enough that I start to wonder if he’s disconnected the call. I’m about to call his name to see if he’s still on the line when he says, “What do you think, Mattie? Do you think I went off the deep end and killed both my ex-girlfriend and my neighbor?”

  The term “ex-girlfriend” rankles me, particularly when I realize I’m still naked. It just feels wrong to be nude and discussing an ex-lover with someone I have a current interest in. Plus, I’m reminded of how lovely and tiny and petite she was, and as I survey my own body in the mirror, I’m reminded of my many faults, not the least of which are the bingo wings I can see developing on my upper arms. Fortunately I’m spared visualizing anything below the waist since the mirror is mounted too high.

  “I don’t think you killed anyone, Hurley, but I want to hear you tell me,” I say finally. “I need to hear it, from your lips to my ears.”

  “I didn’t kill them, Mattie. I swear it. But I’m starting to get a very bad feeling about all of this.”

  Well, that makes two of us. “I’ll call you after the autopsy is done, okay?” I say, hedging for now. I’m hoping that once I have a definitive cause of death for Harold Minniver, things will be clearer in my mind. “But there’s no way you should be there. It’s just too . . . too . . . dicey. I think you should continue with your case of the blue flu.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Hurley admits, and while I’m tempted to breathe a sigh of relief, his quick capitulation leaves me suspicious. It doesn’t help that he hangs up before I can utter another word. I stare at my phone a minute, wondering what to do.

  Once I’m showered, dressed, and blown dry, I gather up the hair I collected from Hurley’s bathroom, hop into my hearse, and head out. When I arrive at the office, I find it empty of any living souls, though there are now two dead ones in our morgue fridge. I check the fax machine and find a reply from a hospital in Chicago verifying that the numbers on the breast implants we sent them were surgically implanted in a patient named Callie Dunkirk, confirming our presumptive identity.

  As I’m walking the fax report to Izzy’s desk, I hear the door to the garage area open. A minute later Arnie, our lab tech and resident conspiracy theorist, appears. Despite his casual dress, John Lennon glasses, and ponytailed hair, all of which make him look more like a Woodstock survivor than a scientist, he’s a whip-smart and very talented evidence tech.

  “You’re here early,” he says when he sees me.

  “I had my first solo last night and thought I’d come in to prep the body.”

  “Wow,” he says, looking suitably impressed. “Izzy let you out on your own already?” The way he says it you’d think I was a serial murderer who’d just been paroled.

  “He did,” I say, “though it appeared at first blush to be a pretty basic case. It was a PNB the EMTs brought into the hospital. The guy had a cardiac history so it was assumed that was the cause of death.”

  “And you found something to make you think otherwise?” Arnie looks intrigued. He loves unraveling mysteries and he’s suspicious by nature. Both qualities, combined with his faith in science, make him excellent at his job.

  “I did, though it might have been some other natural cause.” Arnie looks crestfallen. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “How much prep did you do last night?”

  “Just the weight and the basic intake paperwork. I didn’t do the vitreous samples . . . I hate those.” Obtaining vitreous samples requires sticking a needle into the dead person’s eye and withdrawing a sample of fluid. It gives me the heebie-jeebies. When I worked as an OR nurse, I never did the eye cases if I could help it. Eyes creep me out.

  “No problem,” Arnie says with a shrug. “How about we do the X-rays together and then I’ll collect the vitreous samples while you develop the film.”

  “That would be great. Thanks.”

  I get the X-ray processor turned on and warmed up while Arnie fetches Harold Minniver’s body from the fridge. After hoisting Minniver, still inside his body bag, onto the X-ray table, we shoot head-to-toe pictures of him. Then we put him back on the stretcher and wheel him into the autopsy room, where Arnie does the eye thing while I retreat to the dark room.

  When I’m finished and carry the X-rays into the autopsy room, I see that Arnie has opened Minniver’s body bag but has only started with the vitreous samples. “Have you gone over any of the evidence from Callie Dunkirk yet?” I ask him, turning my back and hanging the films on a wall-mounted viewer.

  “I typed the blood from her wound,” Arnie says. I shudder as I hear the faint squishy squeak of a needle entering an eyeball. “I also looked for fingerprints on the knife that killed her but the carved surface of the handle isn’t very conducive to retaining them. I found a very small partial and sent it to Madison but I don’t know if it will be enough. And those metal fragments we found in her hair? Turned out those are lead bits, most likely from soldering.”

  I’d forgotten about the metal bits and as soon as Arnie says this, I recall Hurley’s workshop, where I saw both an acetylene torch and a soldering iron. I hadn’t made the connection when I was there last night; I was too distracted by Hurley’s presence. But I’m making it now and it seems a little too coincidental. The earrings Hurley gave me are still in my ears and my lobes feel hot all of a sudden.

  “I also examined that hair we found in the congealed blood of the wound,” Arnie says.

  This is the direction I wanted the discussion to go so I shake off my sense of dread and try to focus on my original plan.

  “What, exactly, do you look for when you examine hair evidence?” I ask, trying to sound only mildly curious. Arnie loves talking about his work an
d he takes great pride in what he does. So I’m hoping for a basic rundown of hair as trace evidence to give me some idea of what to look for if I compare Hurley’s hair to the one found on Callie, assuming I can do so on the sly. But I forgot how extreme and varied Arnie’s interests are, and he gives me a whole lot more than the basics.

  “You’d be amazed at the things you can learn from hair,” he starts. “Hair evidence has figured quite prominently in some very high-profile cases throughout history. For instance, an analysis of hairs from Napoleon’s body revealed that he may have died of arsenic poisoning. Hairs that were connected to the anthrax mailing several years ago were analyzed with the hope they would implicate a scientist named Bruce Ivins at Fort Detrick in Maryland who was the primary suspect, but they weren’t a match. The scientist then committed suicide, leaving that hair evidence as one of the biggest puzzles in the case.”

  Arnie pauses a second and a twinkle appears in his eye, letting me know the best is yet to come.

  “On a more abstract level there is a rumor that hair samples collected in the Pacific Northwest prove the existence of a Big Foot type creature.”

  Ah yes, my distant relatives.

  “And there are some who believe that redheads are actually alien-human hybrids.”

  Realizing that Arnie has now donned his foil hat, I try to steer him back on track. “I’d love to have you show me how you do hair analysis. I need to learn and it sounds like you really know your stuff.”

  “Sure.” He brightens and stands a little straighter, puffing his narrow chest out so that he resembles a bird. If only Hurley were so easy. Arnie glances at his wristwatch and says, “We probably have time to do a quickie now if you want, before Izzy comes in.”

  As the double entendre hits him, his face turns Day-Glo red and his glasses start to fog over.

  “A quickie it is then,” I say, smiling.

  For once, Arnie is speechless. His mouth opens and closes a few times, and he stammers out a few unintelligible syllables before turning away. He spends a moment zipping the body bag closed and cleaning his glasses off. By the time he’s done, he seems to have recovered. “Come on up to my lab,” he says, “and I’ll give you a crash course on hair analysis.”

  “I’ll meet you there in a minute. I need to make a quick trip to the ladies’ room first.” This is a lie but I need to fetch Hurley’s hair from my purse and I don’t want Arnie to know that. I scoot back to the library, take the paper-wrapped hair from my purse, and shove it into my pocket. As I dawdle long enough to equal a bathroom trip, I brace myself for what lies ahead, wondering if I’m about to commit career suicide.

  Chapter 10

  Arnie’s lab area is located on the second floor of the building and is accessible only with a key card. As I make my way up the stairs, I ponder the potential implications of what I’m hoping to do. What if the hair I have matches the one found on Callie’s body? Where do I go from there? Can I believe Hurley? Can I trust him? Or am I letting my hormones get the better of me?

  Arnie’s lab is an amazing demonstration of efficiency and order. The room looks smaller than it is because it’s jam-packed. Across the room from the entrance is Arnie’s small desk, which sits perpendicular to the storage cabinets lining the far end of the left-hand wall. The right-hand wall contains a long, equipment-covered counter full of machines, microscopes, analyzers, and other lab paraphernalia, with more storage cabinets mounted overhead. I find Arnie standing near the middle of this counter and he waves me over.

  “This is a comparison microscope,” he says, pointing to the device in front of him, which looks like two microscopes joined at the hip with a double eyepiece centered between them. “It allows you to examine two objects side by side to look for differences and commonalities. For instance, I could have compared the hair we found on Callie’s body to one of her own hairs to try to determine if it was hers or the killer’s. I didn’t, because the evidential hair is coarse and black and hers are fine and auburn so the sources are obviously different. If the evidential hair wasn’t a human hair—it is, and I’ll explain how I know that in a second—I can look for a match in one of my reference books, or examine it next to sample references for different animal species: dogs, cats, horses, cows, etcetera, until I can determine what it came from. While an animal hair might not point directly to a given suspect, it can be useful in placing someone at a crime scene.”

  He pauses, reaches up, and plucks a hair from his own head, wincing as he does. I’m not sure if he’s grimacing because of pain, or if it’s because his own hair is rapidly thinning on top, a fact I suspect he compensates for with his ponytail.

  He cuts a segment of the hair and puts it on top of a glass slide. “We typically fix hairs as a wet mount using a drop of glycerin,” he explains, and after grabbing a nearby bottle, he unscrews its top and uses the attached eyedropper to apply a drop of a clear, viscous liquid to the hair. Then he places a cover slip atop the mount, causing the glycerin to spread over the entire sample. He positions the prepped slide on the bed of a nearby single stage microscope and turns its light on. After removing his glasses and positioning them atop his head, he looks through the eyepiece and adjusts the focus. When he’s done he steps back and says, “First let me give you a crash course on hair structure. Take a look.”

  I bend down and peer through the scope.

  “You’re looking at the hair magnified one hundred times. You should be able to see three basic layers. The outer layer is called the cuticle—that’s the part that looks like overlapping fish scales. It tells me what species the hair came from because each animal has a slightly different pattern. The dark line through the center of the hair shaft is the medulla, and between it and the cuticle is the cortex, which is where you’ll find tiny cells that contain whatever pigment colors the hair. How that pigment is distributed can vary from person to person and can sometimes be useful in matching a hair to a particular owner.”

  I stand up and blink several times to adjust my focus. “You need a root to get DNA from a hair, right?”

  “Yes, you do. But there is a lot of information you can get without the root. You can compare a hair to known samples for similarities. You can tell if a hair was cut off or pulled out, whether it’s human or animal in origin, and, if it is human, you can usually tell if it’s Negroid or Caucasian and where on the body it came from. Age might be discernible to some degree since infant hair is typically finer, but that can be a little iffy. With the right equipment you can also map out a dateline of exposure to certain poisons and elements by analyzing the hair shaft in small increments. But while we can compare color, structure, source, and length to determine if a given hair is consistent with a known sample, without a root it’s not as distinct an identifier as say a fingerprint or DNA.”

  He walks over to a cabinet, opens a drawer, and removes a small cardboard box labeled with Callie Dunkirk’s name. Inside the box is a paper envelope with a slide in it. “This,” he says, proffering the slide, “is the hair from Callie Dunkirk’s wound.” He carefully removes the slide from the paper envelope and positions it on the left stage of the comparison microscope. He then switches the slide that holds his own hair to the right stage of the scope. After peering through the binocular eyepiece and making some minor adjustments to the focus, he stands aside and gestures for me to step in. “Take a look.”

  It takes me all of a second to determine the differences between the two hairs. They look nothing alike; not only is the evidentiary hair thicker and darker overall, its medulla is thicker, too. Plus the scale patterns on the two hairs are noticeably different.

  The phone in Arnie’s lab rings and I pull away from the microscope as he answers it. He listens for a few seconds and then mouths Izzy to me. I assume Izzy is awaiting my assistance with the autopsy on Harold Minniver, so I nod my understanding and start to head downstairs to the autopsy suite. I manage two steps before Arnie stops me by snapping his fingers and waving me back. I wait, curious, as he list
ens, muttering only the occasional “Uh-huh” or “Hmm . . .” into his end. A couple of times he shoots a glance at me and then quickly looks away in a manner that suggests I am the topic under discussion. But since I can’t hear the other end of the conversation I don’t know if I’m right or if Arnold Paranoianegger is starting to rub off on me.

  Arnie finally manages to say, “I’ll take care of it,” just before he hangs up. “Izzy said to expect him in a half hour or so,” he tells me.

  “What was the rest of that conversation about?”

  Arnie hesitates just long enough to make me even more suspicious. Well, that and the fact that he not only won’t look me in the face, he won’t even look at my boobs, something he does like an unconscious tic whenever we’re together for any length of time. “There’s some emergency meeting in Madison today that Izzy wants me to attend so he can get caught up on stuff here,” he says, busying himself replacing the evidence slide in its envelope and box.

  “What kind of meeting?” I push.

  He shrugs as he puts the slide box back on the shelf and then he continues his cleanup by taking apart the slide he put together with his own hair. “I’m sure it’s just boring business stuff,” he says. “Administrative crap.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “You were listening for an awful long time.”

  Arnie smiles but he still won’t look at me. “Wow, attractive, smart, and you have a suspicious mind. I like that in a woman.”

  I’m pretty sure Arnie likes just about anything in a woman so I’m not swayed by his flattery. “You’re avoiding the question.”

  “Was there a question in there?”

  “An implied one,” I say irritably. “You pick up on the subtlest of nuances all the time so don’t try to pretend you didn’t pick up on mine.”

  Arnie glances at his watch. “Ooh, look at the time.” He slips out of his lab coat and grabs his parka. “I gotta run. I’ll catch ya later, okay?”