The box is out by the street and the mailman said he drove up at about ten in the morning, put the mail inside the box, and continued on. He didn’t pay particular attention to the yard display.
“The only other information I have is that her coworkers said she ate lunch around twelve-thirty on the day she was killed: a roast beef sandwich, some cream of tomato soup, and an order of fried cheese curds.”
Izzy says, “That might help us narrow down the time of death even more once I get a look at her stomach contents.”
Hurley says, “I’m betting she was killed after six that night. The husband definitely has some issues and I think that whole thing with the separation papers set him off.”
I frown and Hurley catches it. “What? You still think he’s innocent?”
I shrug. “I’m having a hard time believing he could do this, based on what I know of him.”
“Want to make a friendly wager on it?”
“I don’t know. It sounds like you already have your mind made up. How do I know you’ll even try to find another suspect?”
Hurley sighs and gives me an
“You seem pretty convinced that Erik did this.”
“At the moment I am.”
“See, I knew it.” I look pointedly at Izzy, who wisely shrugs and says nothing. “Taking this wager would be a sucker bet.”
“Then find me someone who looks better for it,” Hurley says.
“Will you let me do some of my own investigating?”
“As long as you keep me in the loop, don’t do anything that would interfere with the official investigation, and promise to share anything you find with me.”
“And you’ll share evidence with me?”
“Tit for tat,” Hurley says with a suggestive grin.
I consider the idea. I’m competitive by nature and something about Hurley brings that trait out even stronger in me. “What are the stakes?” I ask.
Hurley shrugs, thinks a moment, and then says, “How about dinner? The winner picks the place and time, and the loser gets to pay.”
“Deal,” I say without hesitation, so excited over the prospect of dinner with Hurley that, for a moment, I don’t care who wins the bet.
“Good.” He closes his eyes, licks his lips, and says, “Mmmm. I can already taste my filet mignon from Harvey’s, medium rare, wrapped in bacon, with a baked potato on the side.”
I’m so transfixed by the sight of Hurley licking his lips and moaning that it takes me a second to remember that a dinner at Harvey’s will cost me more than half a week’s pay. My hands start to shake and I’m not sure if it’s out of fear or lust. I realize Izzy has finished cracking Shannon’s chest and is in the process of removing one of her lungs, so I tear my gaze from Hurley and try to focus on the work instead. Trembling hands, sharp scalpels, and slippery organs make for a bad combination.
Shannon’s chest cavity is filled with clots of blood, and as Izzy scoops some of them out of the way, the idea of a medium rare filet mignon is suddenly nauseating. Izzy severs the connections for the right lung, removes it from the chest cavity, and hands it to me. I weigh it on the scale, noting that its color is a dull gray rather than the healthy pink it should be, an indication that Shannon was a smoker. Once I take it from the scale and lay it on the dissection table, I can see that it also has two bullet holes in it: one in the front of the lower lobe, which is most likely the entry point, and a second on the back of the middle lobe, the probable exit point.
Izzy confirms my suspicions when he finds a bullet lodged next to Shannon’s thoracic spine. He pulls the bullet out, cleans it off, and shows it to Hurley. “Looks like a .38,” he says.
“Yup,” Hurley agrees. “And guess who owns a .38 caliber handgun?”
“Half the people in Wisconsin?” I offer, knowing it’s not the answer he’s looking for.
“I don’t know about half,” he says, “but I know Erik Tolliver owns one. He bought it two years ago.”
I sigh, and start calculating how many pints of ice cream I’m going to have to forgo in the future so I can save up enough money to pay for our dinner date. I might have to ask Izzy for a raise, which would be rather brazen considering that I’ve only been on the job for a couple of weeks.
“Lots of people have guns,” I counter. It’s a feeble argument, but a true one. The NRA is alive and well in Wisconsin, where deer season means closed-down businesses, hunting widow parties, and men who become live oxymora by dressing in camouflage clothes topped with blaze orange vests. Every year, one or two yahoos are mistaken for a deer and get shot . . . Darwinism in action.
“A .38 is pretty common, isn’t it?” I continue. “That alone isn’t enough to convict the guy.”
“Maybe not,” Hurley says. “But it’s one more piece of the puzzle.”
“Did you find Erik’s gun?” Izzy asks.
Hurley shakes his head. “Apparently he was smart enough to ditch the thing. I had a couple guys execute a search warrant on his place early this morning.”
We have removed the second lung, and after noting that Shannon had a hiatal hernia—a typically benign condition where there is a hole in the diaphragm that allows a portion of the stomach to slide into the chest cavity —Izzy cuts loose Shannon’s stomach. As soon as it’s out, he slices it open.
“Her stomach is empty,” he says.
“What does that mean?” Hurley asks.
“Well, it takes four to six hours after ingestion for food to empty out of the stomach and move into the intestines. So if Shannon ate around twelve-thirty as her coworkers said, it’s unlikely she was killed before four- thirty. Once I get a look at her intestines I might be able to finesse that estimate some more.”
For the next half an hour the room is relatively silent except for the sounds of slicing, dicing, and sloshing organs. We find a second bullet in the abdominal cavity and my initial suspicion that Shannon’s liver was hit by one of the bullets is confirmed. The damage to the organ is extensive and would have caused significant bleeding. Some of the blood, most of it eventually, would have oozed out through the bullet wound. But a fair amount had also spread throughout the abdominal cavity, a condition that would have been excruciatingly painful. It might also have been a blessing of sorts since the bleeding into the chest cavity, along with the gradual collapse of the shot lung, would have caused a slow form of suffocation had she not bled out from the liver first.
For a moment I imagine Shannon, wounded, frightened, weak, and in pain, dragging herself down the hall of her house and out onto the porch in hopes of finding help. She had to have known she was seriously wounded and likely dying, and her will to live must have been strong. That she lost her life in such a cruel, horrifying, and painful way both saddens and angers me.
Nothing new is discovered during the examination of the remaining organs other than the fact that Shannon’s uterus is riddled with large, fibroid tumors, something that would have made it very difficult, if not impossible, for her to get or stay pregnant. With Shannon’s abdominal cavity now devoid of organs, Izzy shifts his attention to her intestines, which we’d removed earlier and placed in a large basin on the dissection table. He runs the twenty-some feet of small intestine like a garden hose, examining it inch by inch, opening sections along the way. Then he does the same with the large intestine.
“The only food I see here is in the ascending colon,” he says when he’s done. “That would take, on average, about eight to twelve hours. So if we assume she ate nothing else after her lunch at Dairy Airs, it’s likely she was killed sometime between the hours of eight P.M. and midnight, give or take an hour or two.”
“What a coincidence,” Hurley says, shooting me a smug look. “Our primary suspect has no alibi for those hours.”
“You mean
Hurley ignores my comeback and instead closes his eyes and licks his lips, an action that leaves me with my jaw hanging. “I can taste my steak already,” he says.
His display of arrogant confidence brings out my competitive side. But though I want desperately to be right about Erik and his innocence, I know I have to be careful not to lose my objectivity.
“Don’t get too cocky,” I tell Hurley. “It’s still only an estimate and I’m sure crow doesn’t taste nearly as good as filet mignon.”
