Chapter 12 Peregrine Falcon #2
“They didn’t . . . The cadaver for our class didn’t work out,” she explained. “It didn’t, um, last long enough.”
“And you’ve never been to a funeral.”
“No, I’ve never been to a funeral.”
“So you were shocked by the sight of the deceased.”
“Yes. You bet I was. He was just completely bashed around, all purple and blue, and swollen. And naked. Poor guy.”
Several jurors began to look uncomfortable, as did Sam, but not because of the description. He well knew that his adversary
was counting on the emotional impact of the officer’s testimony; the more sympathy for the older man, the less for whoever
put him there. When a crime-scene photo of the body was produced and distributed, Judge Martin had to declare a brief recess
to excuse one juror, who, I later learned, threw up in the bathroom set aside for jury members.
“It was obvious that this wasn’t a death by natural causes,” Israel Ronson went on. Angela Damiano objected: Not only was
this the first dead body that Officer Doherty had ever seen, but she also was not a pathologist.
“He looked like he had been run over by a truck,” the young police officer said, and Angela seemed about to object again, but shook her head wearily instead.
I went home to Nell’s house. Miranda was staying at a bed-and-breakfast inn, and had invited me to stay with her, but all
I wanted to do was hole up like a denning animal, so Nell stayed with Mom. Alone in the kitchen, I ate a whole bag of taco
chips and a whole carton of cottage cheese. I patted a sea mud mask on my face and, for five full hours, watched a British
crime drama about a murderous pastry chef. Then I crept into my closet bedroom and slept nine hours straight. The junk food,
the BBC, the excessive facial routine, and the sleep marathons would become the hallmarks of my life over the coming weeks.
In the morning came Dr. Moira McDermott, the Dane County medical examiner.
Sam had said that if the district attorney was wise, he would go straight to the screwup over Emil Gardener’s cause of death.
“Someone being found naked in a snowbank, that is already a suspicious death,” he said.
Moira McDermott said, “Not necessarily.” She talked about the odd phenomenon of paradoxical undressing that can happen with
people near death from hypothermia who actually feel they are too hot, which has sometimes led to complications, including
the belief that the deceased was sexually assaulted. “There wasn’t necessarily any reason to think of foul play.”
“And so,” Israel Ronson went on, “it seemed to you that he died from the effects of exposure. And that the bruising . . .
”
“It could have happened as a result of a fall or hitting his head, many reasons.” The family had not requested an autopsy
and the death seemed straightforward, despite the ghastly visual.
“And the conclusion was that Mr. Gardener died from cardiopulmonary arrest, correct?”
“Well, everybody dies of cardiopulmonary arrest,” Dr. McDermott said with a sigh. “Your heart stops, you stop breathing, you die. It’s what led to it.”
The prosecutor led the medical examiner through the process of the discovery of the second victim, Felicity’s involvement,
the autopsy of the first victim, the discovery of the kind of tissue damage consistent with some kind of toxin. “Are you sure
this damage was caused by some kind of poison?”
She said, “I’m reasonably sure. As to what kind, many poisons leave no chemical trace. The tissue analysis was inconclusive
for that.”
“What could it have been?”
“Objection. Speculation,” Sam said.
“Overruled. I’ll allow it,” said Judge Martin. “Just please don’t go too far afield, Dr. McDermott.”
“Well, arsenic, for example, is used as an alloying agent in industrial procedures, in metallurgy, and in labs. It’s used
in some pharmaceutical applications. You could find it easily in a factory or in an engineering or chemistry lab at a university
if you knew where to look and you had access to it.”
“But you are not certain that it was arsenic.”
“No.”
“And what about Cary Church’s death?”
“The same thing is true. A death caused by some kind of toxin is even more strongly indicated because Cary Church didn’t present
any apparent health risk factors. He was a healthy young man. And again, there was the way that the body was found, sitting
in a bathtub, undressed.”
“He could have been taking a bath,” said Israel Ronson, “and let the water drain out.”
“He could have been taking a bath and someone else drained the tub after he died. He could have been placed in the tub after death but before the effects of rigor mortis set in, while his body was still pliable,” the medical examiner said.
Israel Ronson offered photographs of Cary Church’s body. I glanced at the juror who had previously become queasy; she looked
frightened, shivery and still.
The doctor continued, “There could have been a toxin in the water that he inhaled, or swallowed, or absorbed through his skin,
although there was no forensic evidence of that scenario at the crime scene.”
“Samples were taken, from the pipes, and so forth.”
“Yes. It’s impossible to know what happened specifically.”
Just at that point, the queasy juror succumbed to nausea, and, after a short recess, Judge Martin said the juror was indisposed
and court would be adjourned until the next morning.
In the corridor, I waited for the district attorney and displayed my press badge. “Mr. Ronson, I just have one quick question.”
“That’s fine. I’m happy to help,” he said. He really was a genial guy who exuded easy confidence.
“What if that one poor juror keeps getting sick? How can you do this without showing the jury the evidence?”
“You can’t, but that part of the proceeding is over. We can assure the jury that there won’t be any more graphic images unless
someone asks to see them again when they deliberate,” he told me. “You’re the girl from the fashion magazine, right? Who knows
Miranda McClatchey?”
“Right. Who told you that?”
“Oh, you know Sally Zankow. She’s the font of all wisdom.”
“Yep,” I said.
“Is Miranda covering this too?”
“She’s just observing. She is my mother.”
“You don’t say,” he said with a nod. “You don’t say. Wouldn’t have thought Miranda was old enough to have a daughter your
age.”
“Me either,” I said. When I later told my mother this, she smiled, sweetly appreciative.
I’d planned to have dinner that night with my mother at Aria, an old-style Italian restaurant that had been around since her reporter days.
She asked if we should include Claire, Felicity’s aunt.
I didn’t want to. I just wanted Miranda all to myself, as a mentor, but mostly, right now, as a mother.
I wanted to have a long and lingering conversation with Miranda, this time telling her all the details of how fast it all
failed. I wanted my mother to comfort me. She’d never met Sam, but only seen him in court, so she would say that his sophisticated
exterior hid a thug’s heart. She would say, He’s not good enough for you. She’d be wrong. But I could not tell her why he’d ended it. (Imagine telling my mother, or Patrick, about the reservoir!
Then they could disown me too!)
So, of course, I did agree to ask Claire to join us for dinner.
When we arrived, the place smelled spicy and enticing, like the inside of a saucepot just lightly infused with citrus. We
ordered a bottle of wine, and all I could drink was one sip, though I downed glass after glass of ice water and put an embarrassing
dent in the loaf of home-baked French bread. Claire and my mother polished off the whole bottle of Barolo with gusto. I was
glad I was the one driving. Unable to really talk about what was on all our minds, and unable to really talk about the reasons
we couldn’t talk about it, we sat there and picked at our manicotti, discussing how humid the day had been, in the way of
true Midwesterners who never pass up a chance to analyze the weather.
Like a pitcher that filled and spilled and filled again, Claire couldn’t stop crying.
She and my mom were now best friends linked by empathy and eau-de-vie and would seemingly remain in touch forever (this turned out to be true), so my mother also shed tears.
This cozy dinner out felt less like a respite and more like a punishment.
As hungry as I was, eating seemingly nonstop, my reaction to stress, it felt like a gross indecency to swallow in Claire’s presence.
My part of the dinner ended early, as I went back to Nell’s. Wildly sad, unable to bear one more ping-pong game of what-if-he-this?
and what-if-he-that?, I escaped into another ocean of sleep. I don’t know what my mother and Claire did, but they certainly
did not resemble daisies the next morning.
On cross-examination, Sam, in a rather gentle fashion, asked how the doctor felt about such a “mistake” as to certify Emil
Gardener’s death. Moira McDermott sighed again. “I am definitely not happy about it. But I am not guilt ridden either. This
was an understandable mistake.”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “Understandable but not unavoidable.”
“That’s why we do autopsies.”
“Does it mean that this death could have been accidental?” Sam asked. “It definitely could have been a suicide. It could have
been a heart attack.”
She said, “It could have been a heart attack. Mr. Gardener suffered from arteriosclerosis and had heart damage from a previous
cardiac event. But other factors don’t point to that.”
“Such as what?”
“Such as the undressed state of the body. It’s not consistent with a sudden heart event.”
“But suicide?”
“Emil Gardener would have had to take off all his clothing and then swallow some kind of poisonous agent,” the medical examiner
said. “It’s not done. It’s not human nature. People who commit suicide are not unaware that somebody will find their remains.
Even if it’s an impulsive act, and it’s always an impulsive act, even if it’s planned, even if the person suffers from bipolar