Three Times a Lady

Chapter 15

Ten minutes later, Dana pulled the Protégé into the parking lot of the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office on Cedar Avenue. ‘Ready to go do this?’ she asked Templeton.

The Cleveland cop nodded in his seat next her. ‘Yep, but are you absolutely sure you’re feeling up to this, Dana? You still look a little pale to me.’

Dana dismissed Templeton’s concern with a quick wave of her hand, at the same time sliding her sleek silver vehicle into an empty space before downshifting the Protégé to park mode and switching off the ignition. Glancing up into the rearview mirror, she checked her appearance. Not great, but not all that bad either, considering the circumstances. ‘I’m fine, Gary,’ she said, returning the mirror to its proper position and turning in her seat to face him. ‘As far as my colouring goes, I always look this pale. Curse of the Irish. Hell, I get sunburned if I read for too long under anything stronger than a forty-watt bulb.’

Templeton laughed at her joke, and Dana didn’t bother mentioning to him the other curse of the Irish that sometimes ruled her life – a little too often for her to simply dismiss as the harmless blowing off of some steam. The curse of the Irish that sent her running straight for the bottle whenever things got too difficult to deal with. Still, Dana’s alcohol use had clouded her judgment when she’d been investigating the Cleveland Slasher case – had slowed her down mentally when she’d needed to be clear-headed the most – and she was determined to never make that same mistake again. Like it not, people’s lives depended on her and she couldn’t afford to let them down any more. Not now and not ever again.

Dana and Templeton exited the Protégé and stepped out into the freezing wind before heading for the entrance to the coroner’s office fifty feet away. Cold winter air sliced through their jackets like the sharp scalpels no doubt slicing their way through the deceased bodies on the inside of the forbidding building, making Dana wonder briefly if she’d ever feel warm again.

Templeton hustled up the front steps ahead of her. He held open the door for Dana before stepping inside himself. When they reached the front desk inside the lobby of the building, Templeton asked the receptionist where they might find the chief coroner. The woman behind the desk smiled and directed them down a long hallway.

Dana and Templeton moved down the hall and toward Dr Philip Johnson’s office without speaking. As the head coroner for the entire county, Johnson hadn’t been especially pleased with Dana when she’d pressed him into exhuming and re-autopsying the four victims previous to Jacinda Holloway in the Cleveland Slasher case. And unlike Gary Templeton, Johnson was the kind of guy who did hold onto a grudge. Held onto it like a dog with a bone clamped down hard between its teeth.

Dana stopped herself mid-thought. To say the least, an inconvenient way of thinking about things when Christian Manhoff had died in the exact manner he had.

In any event, Dana had very little doubt that Phillip Johnson had gone apoplectic when he’d found out that somebody had snuck into his building and attached a picture of Dana’s half-brother to one of Christian Manhoff’s nipple rings. To his mind, Dana and anything connected with her probably constituted nothing less of a nuisance than a plague of locusts. A nuisance of biblical proportions.

Finally coming to a stop outside Johnson’s door, Dana made a mental note to have background checks run on everyone who’d worked at the coroner’s office over the past three years – much as she’d done with everybody who’d played a part in investigating the Cleveland Slasher murder scenes since it had seemed like whoever had been committing those murders had possessed some sort of background in detective work. Nothing had come of it during that case, but who knew? Maybe Dana would get luckier this time around.

And maybe that Publisher’s Clearinghouse letter stuck in her mailbox back home had a cashable check inside with her name on it.

Dana shook her head and tried to reason things through. Wasn’t easy. In all likelihood, she knew that somebody had probably just been playing a game with her by attaching the picture of Nathan Stiedowe to Christian Manhoff’s nipple ring, having a mean-spirited laugh at her expense. Law-enforcement types were notorious for their macabre senses of humour, weren’t they? Of course they were. There was a time-honoured tradition in the field of hazing your fellow cops with all the subtlety of drunken frat boys at a keg party. It was just part of the deal, the nature of the beast. Always had been and always would be.

Then again, maybe somebody had been deadly serious about the whole thing. Only one way to find out.

Pity it had to be through a man who detested Dana’s guts as much as Johnson did.

Johnson opened up the door to his office before Dana even had a chance to knock. Somebody must have called the head coroner to alert him to the fact that a Cleveland cop and an FBI agent had just strolled through the front doors of his building.

Johnson barely looked at Dana and shifted his gaze immediately to Templeton. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re here for.’

Brushing past them, Johnson led Dana and Templeton down the hall to the main autopsy room thirty feet away. Ever the gentleman, he opened the door and went in first. Dana entered next, with Templeton bringing up the rear.

The sickly-sweet smell of formaldehyde filled Dana’s nostrils as she entered the room, tickling the tiny hairs lining the inside of her nose and making her want to sneeze. From the corner of her left eye, she watched Templeton wrinkle up his own nose against the offending odour, and she didn’t blame him one little bit. The entire space stank of death.

The autopsy room itself was a cold, sterile place, filled with refrigerated drawers were used for storing the dead bodies. Dana had seen a lot of horrible things over the course of her fourteen-year career with the FBI, but for some reason or another the stark sight of Christian Manhoff’s naked and bloated body lying dead on a shiny metal slab twenty feet away suddenly made her want to cry.

Was this where life ended up? she wondered. Whether you lived it the right way or the wrong way? Whether you lived it with love in your heart or with your heart filled with hate? Was this the end waiting for all of them? Her? Johnson? Templeton?

Dana closed her eyes and tried not to think about the fact that Crawford Bell and Eric Carlton had laid on tables just like these recently, in this very same room. Maybe even the same table. Not to mention her poor mother and father. Whatever most people’s faults might be – and Dana knew that everybody had their fair share – she also knew that the vast majority of human beings deserved a fate far better than this. Deserved to be kept warm and safe and loved. Deserved better than having someone like Dr Phillip Johnson clinically poking at them and prodding at them and slicing open their sternums to find out just how much their hearts and spleens and livers might weigh.

‘Could you bring us up to speed on what you found out with Christian Manhoff, Dr Johnson?’ Dana asked, wanting to break the heavy silence in the room. She needed conversation in the air right now – even if that conversation was with a man who despised her as much as Johnson did. Needed some sign of life amidst all this death. Needed to escape the haunting thoughts still floating around inside her brain and threatening to suck her down into the black hole of a clinical depression.

Johnson bristled, obviously irritated at the prospect of having to explain his exact, complicated science to an ignorant layperson such as Dana. ‘Not sure what exactly there is to bring you up to speed on, Agent Whitestone,’ he said gruffly. He shook his head in thinly veiled annoyance. ‘Someone shoved a large rawhide bone down Christian Manhoff’s throat and he choked to death on it. There isn’t much more to it than that.’

Dana eyed Manhoff’s naked body. ‘You didn’t cut him open,’ she observed, a sharp stab of irritation slicing hard through her chest at the nine-millionth example of Johnson’s incompetence. ‘There could be some evidence inside him, you know.’

Dana pressed her lips together while she waited for the coroner’s reply. The comment had been made to remind Johnson of the fact that he’d failed to fully autopsy the little girls in the Cleveland Slasher case the first time around – a mistake that had set back the investigation by at least three months by delaying the discovery of the plastic letters shoved inside the little girls’ uteruses. To remind Johnson of the fact that his carelessness had cost innocent people their lives. Had cost innocent children their lives.

‘I’m doing it tonight,’ Johnson said, clearly making up the lie right there on the spot. If nothing else, thirty years on the job had obviously taught him very well how to deal with people like Dana – people who seemed to exist for no other reason than to make his life more complicated. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow morning and let you know if I find anything interesting, but I highly doubt I will. To me, this death looks like somebody was in a big hurry. I wouldn’t count on finding any clever clues in this one.’

Dana nodded but also made a mental note to call the state medical board on Johnson. Enough was enough with this a*shole already. There was no way in hell he should be allowed to continue operating in the slipshod manner he did. It just wasn’t fair to the victims or their families. ‘Great,’ Dana said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice but not quite accomplishing the feat. ‘I really hate to bother you any further, Dr Johnson, but is there be any way at all that I could also get a list of all the people who’ve worked here in the past three years? Including cleaning staff and maintenance workers? I’ll need their names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Also, any background information you might have on file would be extremely helpful. I want to find out if anyone who’s worked here – either now or in the past – might have had a reason to attach the photograph of my brother to Christian Manhoff’s body.’

Johnson waved a thin arm in the air, showcasing thick veins that pulsed like fat blue snakes in the back of his skeletal left hand. ‘I’ll have Nancy Lawson in human resources compile a list for you,’ he said. ‘You can pick it up from the receptionist at the front desk tomorrow morning.’

Johnson paused. ‘Will there be anything else you require of me, Agent Whitestone? As always, I’m at your complete and utter disposal.’

Dana shook her head, annoyed by Johnson’s flippant tone but knowing there wasn’t anything she could do about it right now. ‘Nope,’ she said in a clipped tone that matched the coroner’s perfectly. ‘That should just about cover it for the time being. Thank you so much for your help, Doctor. I really appreciate it. And I’ll let you know if and when I need something else from you, so please keep that in mind. Is your cellphone number still the same?’

Johnson worked his lips into a dull, gray smile, his worn-down teeth set into a crooked pink gum-line like concrete tombstones in an unkempt graveyard. ‘Sure is, Agent Whitestone. As a matter of fact, I even have you programmed into my contacts list. How about that for a nice surprise? Always happy to get a call from you.’

Just then, as if on cue, Gary Templeton’s own cellphone rang in his pocket. The Cleveland cop dug it out and placed the receiver to his ear. After a moment or two, he turned down the corners of his mouth.

Templeton flipped shut his cellphone and put it back into his pocket. ‘I’ve got to run, Dana,’ he said, shaking his head and checking his watch. ‘There’s been an armed robbery over at the Fifth Third Bank on Ontario Avenue. A squad car is coming to pick me up now. Chief says it’s an all-hands-on-deck type of thing. Will you be OK getting on with this on your own? I’ll call you tomorrow morning and touch base with you to see what you’ve found out.’

Dana smiled; enjoying the feeling of knowing someone was watching her back. The same feeling she’d had while she’d been working with Jeremy Brown. ‘Absolutely, Gary,’ she said, making yet another mental note, this time to call Bill Krugman down in Washington, DC, and check up on his wife’s medical condition just as soon as she got back to her car. She needed to hear the Director’s voice right now, to know that he and Marie were OK. Because along with Templeton, the Krugmans were just about the only people Dana had left in her life any more, and she needed to guard them with all the zeal of a mama bear protecting her cubs. ‘I’ll talk with you tomorrow morning. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine.’

Templeton nodded and said his goodbyes to Johnson. Dana smiled again as she watched him walked away. Still, had she’d known then just how far off the mark she’d been with her statement about being just fine, she never would’ve left the coroner’s office alone in the first place.

Then again, if hopes and wishes were loaves and fishes, she’d never go hungry again.