“Shiree Garvey and I go back a long way. We discussed everything. I hated him for what he was doing to her.”
The shrinks call it transference, I believe. It works the same way radar jamming does. By keeping her mental signals full of other angers and issues, Emma Jackson avoided the terrible subject at hand-the senseless death of her son. It’s a form of denial, and denial is common in the people I deal with. Nevertheless, I couldn’t afford to ignore the fact that this woman might be presenting me with both a possible motive and hence a possible suspect.
“Did she mention any names?”
“No, but it won’t be hard to find out. Men are never nearly as clever about these things as they think they are.”
“I assume Garvey was Shiree Weston’s maiden name?” Emma nodded. “How far back do you two go?” I asked.
“Grade school.”
Both my question and Emma’s initial answer seemed innocuous enough, but then she added an afterthought. “About the same age Adam is now. Was,” she whispered.
Suddenly Dr. Emma Jackson’s steely reserve shattered. She began crying quietly into her hand while I kept driving. By the time we arrived at Harborview, Emma had pulled herself together again. I would have gone around and opened the car door for her, but she beat me to the punch. She led the way into the building as though she knew it well.
“You seem to know your way around,” I commented.
“I’ve been here before,” she replied without explanation.
The lower floor of Harborview Hospital, occupied by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, is dedicated to the dead rather than to the living. There Dr. Howard Baker reigns supreme over a small corps of dedicated employees and an ever-changing and always deceased clientele. As a Homicide detective bringing in victims’ relatives to make identifications, I’m used to taking charge at the receptionist’s desk. This time, however, Emma Jackson handled it herself.
“I’m Dr. Jackson,” she announced. “I’m here to see Dr. Baker about my son, Adam.”
The receptionist, bleary-eyed from being called in during the middle of the night, blinked in recognition at the name. “Oh, of course. Wait right here. Dr. Baker’s busy in the back right now.”
“In the back” is a medical examiner’s office euphemism that means either that Doc Baker’s really out playing golf or else he’s up to his armpits in an autopsy, a word that is seldom if ever uttered aloud in that grim little waiting room.
The receptionist jumped up and hurried through the swinging door that opened into the lab. She returned moments later with Doc Baker in tow.
Emma had walked over to the window and was standing with her back to us looking outside when the M.E. came into the room. “Hello there, Beau,” he said, nodding in my direction. “I understand you brought the mother along?”
Emma Jackson whirled around and faced him. At once I saw a look of shocked recognition cross Doc Baker’s face. “Why, Emma. It’s not your boy, is it?”
“That’s what he told me,” she said grimly. “I’m here to find out for sure, one way or the other.”
Clearly Drs. Baker and Jackson knew each other, although I had no idea how. He held out his arm, and she took it. “This way,” he said solicitously, leading her toward the swinging doors.
Maybe up until then Emma Jackson still had some hope I was wrong. But of course, I wasn’t.
CHAPTER 8
In the years I’ve worked homicide, I’ve been through plenty of identification ordeals. Seeing your own child dead in some cold, stainless-steel-furnished morgue has to be one of the worst trials a parent ever endures. The emotional devastation of that encounter strikes both men and women pretty much equally. I’ve seen more than a few men faint dead away and have to be carried out of the room. Hysterics, explosions of anger, and racking wails of despair are common occurrences that know no gender divisions at a time like that. Men and women, fathers and mothers, are both identically susceptible to grief.
Even though she’d pulled herself together so well back at her apartment, Emma Jackson’s reaction still surprised the hell out of me. It was like she slipped out of the role of mother, put on her doctor suit, and was totally professional about doing what had to be done. When Doc Baker lifted the sheet that covered her son’s face, she swallowed hard and nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s him. That’s Adam.”
I excused myself long enough to call Carl Johnson at McClure Middle School. When I came back, Doc Baker was leading Emma from one victim to another. Each time he lifted the sheet, she spoke quietly for several minutes while the M.E. took copious notes. Their exchanges were conducted in guarded undertones, totally inaudible to me or to anyone else in the room. Whatever information she imparted was delivered with a quiet dignity that I found absolutely mind-boggling considering the circumstances.
Subconsciously keeping count, I was surprised when, after Ben and Shiree Weston as well as the three dead children had all been identified, Doc Baker led Emma Jackson to yet another gurney. Beneath the sheet on that one lay Spot, the Weston family’s dog. That was the first and only time I ever knew of a dog being accorded the medical examiner’s office’s full, deluxe postmortem treatment.
After that, we left the lab and retreated to Doc Baker’s private office. This, too, was highly unusual. After making the IDs, victims’ relatives are usually hustled away from Harborview as quickly as possible. They are generally excluded from any debriefings between the M.E. and the Homicide detectives working the case. When Baker ushered us into his office, I naturally assumed he was just being polite and that conversation would be strictly limited to sympathetic small talk.
“Coffee?” he asked, motioning us into chairs.
The stuff they call coffee in the M.E.“s staff lounge bears a startling resemblance to battery acid with just a hint of formaldehyde on the side. When Emma Jackson nodded and said, yes, she’d like some, I figured she simply didn’t know any better. I did, but I was desperate. The beneficial effects of Ralph Ames’s refueling breakfast were fading fast. My back hurt and so did my feet. My eyes burned from lack of sleep. Even terrible coffee was bound to help a little.
“I’ll have some too,” I said.
“Still drink it black?” Baker asked.
I thought for a moment he was talking to me and was surprised and gratified that he remembered, considering the number of Homicide dicks that pass through his office on a daily basis, but it turned out he was asking Emma.
“Black will be fine,” she said.
That set me back on my heels. Theirs had to be more than a nodding acquaintance. “How is it that you two know each other?” I asked.
“Emma didn’t tell you? She used to work here. Upstairs, I mean, in the hospital trauma center. Whenever she lost a patient, she’s the only one of the whole bunch who ever bothered to follow them down here to find out what exactly went wrong. A lot of doctors never figure out that even dead patients can teach you something. Sometimes especially the dead ones.”
Doc Baker smiled a proud mentor’s smile which Emma Jackson did not return. Instead, she picked up the steaming cup of coffee the receptionist had placed on the desk in front of her.
“Tell him about the dog, Howard,” she urged.
“What about the dog?”
Baker seemed unhappy that she had turned the conversation away from his reminiscing. “Spot’s the only one we’ve had a chance to work on so far. He’s told us a little, but not much.”
“For instance?”
“He bit somebody,” Emma Jackson blurted, answering my question before Baker had a chance.
