Three Times a Lady

Chapter 16

Out in the lobby of the coroner’s office, Dana asked the woman seated behind the front desk where she might find Nancy Lawson, the human-resources person Johnson had said could compile a list of employees for her.

It was a long shot and it would take a ton of time and energy to run through background checks on all the workers at the coroner’s office – both past and present – but Dana hoped she could talk Templeton into getting some of his underlings at the Cleveland PD to do most of the legwork. And fast. Every last second counted here, and Dana was already hopelessly behind schedule as it was. Most investigative leads that didn’t turn into cold-case files were usually developed within forty-eight hours after a crime had been committed – something known to even the most casual of television viewers. And the stopwatch on that magic number had already expired two days ago. So, once again, just as had been the case during so many other investigations during her career, Dana found herself playing catch-up with her quarry. And the kicker about the whole thing was that she still didn’t have the foggiest clue in the world of who her quarry even was at this point.

‘You found her,’ the woman behind the desk said in response to Dana’s inquiry. Delicately pretty and somewhere in her mid-fifties, she wore small gold hoop earrings and a smart-looking blue blazer that matched perfectly with the soft colour of her eyes. ‘I’m Nancy Lawson. How may I help you?’

Dana flipped open her badge; feeling tragically underdressed in her leather bomber jacket. ‘I’m Dana Whitestone,’ she said. ‘I’m with the FBI. Dr Johnson said he’s going to ask you to put together a list of past and present employees for me, but I wanted to ask you about something else.’

Dana jerked her head up at a small camera mounted in a corner near the ceiling where two walls met. The camera had been trained on the front doors to capture on videotape everyone who entered and exited the building. A silent watcher completely incapable of lying. ‘How many of those things do you have around here?’ Dana asked.

Lawson turned and looked up at the camera. ‘Well, they’re all over the place,’ she said, turning back in her seat again to face Dana. ‘To tell you the truth, they sort of creep me out. I can’t help but feeling like Big Brother is watching me all the time. George Orwell was right when he wrote that crazy book of his, wasn’t he? Uncle Sam, Big Brother – what’s the difference?’

‘Is there a camera in the autopsy room?’ Dana asked, wanting to speed along the conversation and avoid any unnecessary small talk. She didn’t want to seem rude, but neither did she want to waste any more time here. She was in a race against the clock and the clock was already kicking her ass in a big way. As she’d noted earlier, every last second counted in this case, so she couldn’t afford to waste even a single one of them. It might very well turn out to be the difference between someone’s continued life and their horribly painful death. ‘I didn’t notice a camera when I was in there,’ Dana went on.

Lawson nodded. ‘Yep. Actually, they just put a new camera in the autopsy room not too long ago, if memory serves. Some sort of improved version, I guess.’

Dana lifted her eyebrows. Bingo. Things were looking up for her already.

‘They did it over the Thanksgiving holiday,’ Lawson went on. ‘They’ve got the new camera hidden pretty well in there, though. I suppose they didn’t want the families to notice it when they come in to identify the bodies of their deceased relatives.’

Dana nodded. Made sense. God knew she wouldn’t have wanted to know her loved ones had been taped after death, either. Not to mention how much tape they must have used in her case, considering all the many loved ones she’d lost in her life. How many loved ones she’d lost recently.

‘So are all the autopsy procedures videotaped?’ Dana asked.

Lawson moved a pile of papers on her desk to one side and nodded. ‘Yep. Sure are. There was a big lawsuit brought a couple of years ago by a family that contended their grandfather’s body had been mistreated. Cost the city four million bucks by the time everything was said and done, so I guess the big-wigs downtown finally got the message and wanted to cover their asses.’

A nervous tingle rippled through Dana’s stomach. The thrill of the chase at work again. ‘Does Dr Johnson have access to the tapes?’ she asked. ‘I’d like to take a look at them. One in particular.’

Lawson rolled her eyes halfway around her face. ‘Heck, to tell you the truth, Agent Whitestone, I’d be surprised if that man even knows the camera is in there. Or even what a camera is, for that matter. He’s completely lost when it comes to technology. From the way he looks at a computer, you’d think he was still living back in 1963.’

Lawson paused. ‘Probably still is living back in 1963 – in his mind, at least.’

Dana slipped her FBI shield back into the inside pocket of her leather jacket and resisted the urge to scream. Once again, it looked as though Dr Phillip Johnson would be of absolutely no help at all to her on this one. Then again, what else was new? Johnson had never been any help to her. Quite the opposite, unfortunately.

Dana gritted her teeth and fought back the powerful wave of irritation in her chest. She couldn’t wait for the day a new, more competent ME took Johnson’s place. Catching murderers was hard enough without constantly being hamstrung by people like Johnson – people who were supposed to be on her side. ‘Who else has access to the tapes?’ Dana asked.

Lawson fiddled with one of her gold hoop earrings and slid her small pink tongue across her teeth. Dentures, Dana guessed. Nice ones, too. ‘Funny you should ask, Agent Whitestone. Believe it or not, I’ve actually got access to them. But they’re not actually tapes. Everything’s digitised these days. The fact I’ve got access to them creeps me out, too, but we’re so shorthanded around here that I was designated as the backup A/V person even though I barely know the difference between a USB port and a telephone wire myself.’ Lawson shook her head, looking annoyed. ‘No raise to go along with it though, of course.’

‘Who’s permission would you need in order to get me the video of Christian Manhoff’s autopsy?’ Dana asked.

Lawson glanced around the lobby. The place was mostly empty, save for a tired-looking janitor who was mopping up the tiled floor beneath a television set hanging in the corner that was tuned into a rerun of The Golden Girls but turned down too low to hear. Plastic yellow signs were tented all around the man to separate him from the rest of the lobby and to warn passers-by the floor was slippery – in English on one side and in Spanish on the other. Losing loved ones was a multi-lingual proposition, after all.

‘Theoretically, I’m supposed to talk to Dr Johnson before I release anything like that,’ Lawson said, ‘but he always acts so goddamn irritated whenever I ask him a question that I stopped doing that a long time ago. The videos are public record anyway since the taxpayers pay for them, so I’m not too worried about that. Do you know the date of the autopsy you’re looking for?’

More hope tickled Dana’s chest, but was swallowed up quickly by even more anger at the chief coroner. For all intents and purposes, autopsy probably wasn’t the right word to use for it. Dana highly doubted Johnson had taken more than five minutes to examine Christian Manhoff’s lifeless body, much less shown the initiative to actually cut him open to see what might be inside. As with everything else concerning the good doctor, it had been an open and shut case for him. The faster he was done with it, the better.

‘I’m not sure when the autopsy took place,’ Dana said. ‘In the past couple of days or so. Couldn’t you just type the name into the database?’

‘Sure I could,’ Lawson said. Leaning forward in her chair, she punched a few keys on the computer in front of her before looking back up at Dana again. ‘What’s the name again?

‘Christian Manhoff. M-A-N-H-O-F-F.’

Lawson pecked away at the keyboard some more. After a moment two, she looked back up at Dana and said, ‘You can come over here if you want. I don’t like watching these things very much. They make my skin crawl.’

Dana pressed her lips into a tight line and gave the woman a sympathetic look. She didn’t blame Lawson one little bit for her squeamishness. After all, who in their right mind would like watching videos filled with nothing but blood and guts and despair? With the obvious exception, of course, being the killers and other dregs of society out there who actually got off on watching such dreadful things.

Dana came around to Lawson’s side of the desk, bumping her hipbone painfully against the sharp edge of one corner in the process. ‘Not exactly must-see TV, huh?’ Dana asked, simultaneously wincing at the hot jolt of pain shooting through her hip.

Lawson shook her head and stood up, offering Dana the chair. ‘Whoa, careful there, honey. When you get to be my age, your hip will crack just like a bread stick if you’re not careful. And, no, it’s not must-see TV at all. Anyway, sit down, Agent Whitestone. I don’t know about you, but I have to sit about six inches away from the screen to see anything clearly any more. Old age is no fun, dear. If there’s any way you can avoid it, please do so. Just remember you heard it here first. I’d actually like to get some credit for my world-class brilliance one of these days.’

Lawson paused and sighed deeply. ‘Ah, what am I talking about? You’re still young and pretty so that’s something you don’t need to worry about for a very long time. Lucky girl.’

Lawson shook her head to chase away the thought and leaned down over Dana’s right shoulder, positioning the cursor over the ‘play’ button on the screen. ‘Just tap the trackpad once and you should be good to go,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go grab a quick cup of coffee while you’re looking for what you need. Would you like some coffee, as well?’

Dana shook her head. ‘No, thank you, Miss Lawson. But are you sure you won’t get into any trouble for this? I could always come back later when you get the proper clearance – or when I get a search warrant. I’m not going to lie, though – this definitely saves me some time. It’s a huge help.’

Lawson waved a hand in the air and looked around the lobby again. ‘Hell, nobody ever comes in here,’ she said, almost underneath her breath. ‘Nobody who’d raise a stink about it, anyway. Besides, if we get caught I’ll just say that you overpowered me and threatened to arrest me if I didn’t let you see the video. Sound like a plan to you?’

Dana smiled. ‘Yep. Thanks again for all your help, Miss Lawson. I really appreciate this.’

Nancy Lawson squeezed Dana’s shoulder. ‘No problem, sweetheart. After all, we girls need to stick together, right? Anyway, I’ll be back in just a minute or two, OK?’

‘OK.’

Lawson headed down the hall with her high heels clicking loudly against the tiled floor, and Dana waited until the sound had faded away before tapping the trackpad on the computer. Movement sprang to life at once on the screen.

From the look of the angle of the footage, the camera Lawson had told Dana about had been mounted to the north wall of the autopsy room, mostly hidden by a potted plant that Dana only now realised she’d subconsciously thought looked out of place amongst all the cold gray steel. In the footage, Dr Phillip Johnson stood over Christian Manhoff’s naked body, accompanied by a pathology assistant.

Dana grimaced at the image of the huge rawhide bone shoved halfway down the dead man’s throat. The idea itself was bad enough, but to actually see it up close and personal and in living colour really hammered home the point just how horrific Manhoff’s death must have been.

There was no audio on the video, but Dana could see that Johnson was talking by the way his assistant scribbled down notes on a clipboard.

Dana leaned in closer to the computer. Unbelievably, thirty seconds later Johnson actually left the room.

Dana cursed under her breath. Obviously, five minutes had been far too generous of an estimate as to how much time the head coroner had spent with Christian Manhoff’s lifeless body. More like five seconds.

Dana clamped her teeth together until the muscles in her jaw-line bulged against the skin, leaning in even closer to the computer screen and focusing on the pathology assistant.

The man looked to be in his mid-forties, with thinning gray that had been parted sharply on the left side of his head. The paper mask covering the lower half of his face made determining any facial features difficult, but Dana felt certain Nancy Lawson would know who he was. The coroner’s office wasn’t all that big of a place – people-wise, at least – for the man to be an unknown entity. Unfamiliar faces wouldn’t go unnoticed around here, and Nancy Lawson seemed to be the sort of woman who’d notice everything.

A minute or so after Johnson had left the room, his pathology assistant followed suit, closing the door behind him.

Dana frowned as the image on the video stood still for what seemed a lifetime then – just Christian Manhoff’s dead body alone in the room with a large rawhide dog bone shoved halfway down his throat. Finding the fast-forward button on the computer, Dana watched the same scene unfold for two more minutes, according to the time-stamp located in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.

And then the door to the autopsy room opened up again.

Dana widened her eyes. A woman in her late-thirties or early forties entered the room, dressed to the nines in a designer dress and high-heeled shoes. She was holding something in her right hand.

Turning directly to the camera hidden behind the potted plant, the woman smiled at the viewfinder before lifting up the picture of Dana’s brother and mouthing three distinct words that you didn’t need to be a professional lip-reader to figure out.

F*ck you, Dana.

Dana recoiled from the computer screen, as though the woman might somehow reach through the monitor and grab her by the throat. Dana’s pulse skipped three beats in a row in her neck as the woman attached the picture of Nathan Stiedowe to Christian Manhoff’s nipple ring. Then the woman simply turned around, flipped off the camera with both her middle fingers and left the room.

Dana rewound the video and watched it again. And then for a third and fourth time.

F*ck you, Dana.

F*ck you, Dana.

F*ck you, Dana.

F*ck you, Dana.

Dana’s ears rang. Her hands shook. Her palms flooded with sweat. It was clear that the woman in the autopsy video had zero interest in concealing her identity, no fear at all about her face being captured on tape. And that worried Dana. A lot. Because only someone with nothing to lose would display such carelessness. And how in the hell had the woman known the camera had been hidden behind the plant in the first place? Did she work there?

Dana shook her head. Didn’t seem likely considering the fact that it would have taken all of about five minutes to identify her if she did work there. So if that wasn’t it, what was it then? Was she a disgruntled former employee? A relative of one? And just how exactly had she gained access to the autopsy room in the first place? Nancy Lawson had said the camera had been installed just a couple weeks prior, so that meant the woman had been privy to that information too. But how in the hell could she have known that if she didn’t work there?

Dana tapped the trackpad to stop the video and called up the Internet browser on Nancy Lawson’s computer before saving the footage in a zip file and e-mailing it to herself.

Just then, Nancy Lawson’s voice sounded directly behind her. ‘Find anything interesting, Agent Whitestone?’

Dana nearly jumped out of her skin. A cold trickle of sweat slid down the back of her neck. Her heartbeat thudded dully in her chest. ‘Not a damn thing,’ Dana lied, standing up quickly and moving around to the other side of the desk, instinctively putting some distance between herself and the coroner’s office employee. ‘Didn’t find anything, at all.’

The well-dressed woman on the autopsy footage didn’t resemble Nancy Lawson in the least little bit, but Dana had been burned in the past by such simple oversights and she didn’t want to get burned again. Not this time. Everyone had to remain a suspect until Dana could rule him or her out, and she hadn’t done that yet with Nancy Lawson.

Dana tried to keep the adrenalin out of her voice as she continued to speak. Wasn’t easy. ‘Thank you again for all your help, Miss Lawson. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.’

Nancy Lawson blew off a thick cloud of steam from her piping-hot Styrofoam cup of coffee and took a tentative sip.

‘Don’t mention it, honey. That’s what they pay me the big bucks for.’