'Not from him, at least,' I had said.
He did his best to explain that my mother's concerns were for me. She
didn't believe Dad could run away from the problem. And since he
wouldn't be able to convince anyone that he'd seen something
suspicious, he might as well get what he could out of Brigg and Kerr.
But for my father, the decision wasn't about pragmatism. Brigg was
forcing a choice between the two most important components of his
character dedication to his family, and an unwavering commitment to
good over evil.
My father had found a third way. He should have been proud. He had
avoided accepting the favors of corrupt men like Brigg and Kerr, and he
had refused to let martyrdom destroy his reputation and family. But to
him, his departure from OSP felt cowardly an easy way to tell himself
that he'd rejected a deal with the devil, without actually confronting
Brigg. It was the kind of moral equivocation he despised.
When he saw Susan Kerr on television that Monday morning, the
unfairness of the choice Brigg had given him and the shame of his
response came flooding back. His instinct was to save me. If someone
was going to stumble onto the secrets of someone like Clarissa and her
friends, Dad reasoned, let it be someone other than his daughter. His
family had paid their dues.
I felt a wave of anger. I had suspected all along that someone was
blackmailing Clarissa; if he'd shared his story about Brigg and Kerr
earlier, I might have made the connection to Susan instead of spinning
my wheels all week. Maybe I hadn't been particularly forthcoming with
details of my own about the case, but it would have been easy enough
for him to bring me into the loop.
I understood why he'd been struggling, though. From his perspective,
the pit in his stomach had seemed irrational, a sour remnant of his own
mistakes. Why, after all, should he have assumed that a woman who
married Herbert Kerr years after his own encounter with the man was
herself corrupt? Nevertheless, his instincts were what they were and
he'd been right.
My plan was to call information to find the closest Pasta Company, but
then I had a better idea. I pulled the garbage can from beneath the
kitchen sink. On top of the heap lay a take-out bag with the receipt
still inside. Tuna nicoise salad, just as she'd said.
I used Susan's phone to call a sergeant I knew at central precinct. He
agreed to send a patrol officer to meet me at the restaurant with the
pictures I needed.
Pulling out of the driveway, I waved to Dad in my rearview mirror. He
followed me to the bottom of the west hills, letting loose a final honk
before going his own way.
At the light at Fourteenth and Salmon, I paged the medical examiner,
Dr. Jeffrey Sandier. We'd never worked together before, so I had to
explain who I was and what I was calling about before we got down to
business. But then the business was quick.
'Just how sure are you on the time of death?' I asked.
'Time of death's never as certain as they make it sound on TV shows.
You draw inferences from the forensic evidence, but in the end, it's
exactly that an inference. I often tell people that in my thirty-eight
years of experience I've only seen one case where I could pinpoint the
exact moment of death. And that was because the defendant unplugged a
clock from the wall and used it to bash in the victim's skull.'
For a disgusting story, it was actually pretty cute.
'So what about Easterbrook? You calculated time of death based upon
her stomach contents?'
'Exactly. By the time she was found, her body temperature was already
down to the ambient temperature at the crime scene, so her liver
temperature was of no use. Rigor mortis had already come and gone,
which would normally signal at least thirty hours postmortem, usually
more like thirty-six.'
'But she was found Monday afternoon, putting her death at Sunday
morning, not Sunday afternoon.'
'You're still assuming more precision than exists. I said it would
normally be thirty-six hours or so, but change the facts and it could
be entirely different. Say, for example, there was significant
physical exertion immediately before death. Through the exertion, the
victim's already depleting her body of the chemical that keeps her
muscles relaxed. So the stiffness sets in sooner, quickening the
entire process.'
I could see why the DAs all said that Sandier was a pro on the witness
stand. No jargon or scary science stuff.
'Here,' he explained, 'we got lucky. Once Johnson told me he knew what
time the victim ate lunch, I went by that instead. Death stops
digestion. Based on the state of her stomach contents, she died an
hour or two after she ate.'
'What if Johnson was wrong about the time?'
