“Sure. Whatever you need.”
Giving her a final nod, I turn my attention back to the scene. The Holmes County coroner, Dr. Ludwig Coblentz, has arrived. He’s a rotund man and clad in his trademark extra-large scrubs, a slicker draped over his shoulders. There’s a young technician with him. Judging from the tuft of peach fuzz on his chin, I guess him to be a trainee and new to fieldwork. I wonder how long he’ll last.
While the doctor slips into biohazard gear, the technician, who’s already suited up, kneels and unzips a body bag. Several yards away, two paramedics from Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg stand just inside the sliding door, watching. A volunteer fire fighter has set up an aluminum combination ladder beneath the body. A second volunteer stands on the platform section, trying to figure out the best way to lower the corpse to the ground.
I cross to Doc Coblentz and motion toward the biohazard on the ground beneath the body. “Do you guys have a field test for blood?” I ask.
“We do.” The coroner nods at the technician. “Randy, grab one of those Hemastix strips, will you?”
The technician digs into his equipment bag, removes a bottle of Hemastix, and plucks out a single plastic strip.
“It’ll test for the presence of hemoglobin, which indicates blood,” the doc tells me. “If it’s present, we’ll get a color reaction.”
We watch the technician press the colored end of the strip against the moist earth. Within seconds, the tip turns green.
“I got a positive,” the technician says.
From his place near the workbench, Maloney plugs the work light into the extension cord, and the barn is abruptly flooded with severe fluorescent light. I get my first good look at the corpse—and the size of the reddish black stain on the shirt.
“Too much blood for a hanging,” the doc says grimly.
“Let’s get him down and take a closer look,” I say.
We watch in silence as the firefighter standing on the platform uses a utility knife to cut the rope. Keeping it looped around the rafter for friction, he slowly hoists the body toward the ground. As the body descends, the technician and Doc Coblentz open the body bag on the ground. The victim’s boots make contact first. The technician pulls the victim’s feet toward the base of the bag and places him in a supine position. I can tell by the stiffness of the dead man’s legs that he’s been there awhile. Rigor mortis peaks at about twelve hours, then subsides after twenty-four to thirty-six hours. It would have been a much grislier scene had more time elapsed before he was discovered.
Beneath the glare of the work lights, Dale Michaels’s face is swollen and purple. His tongue is twice its normal size and protrudes from his mouth like some overripe fruit. The flesh around his eyes is like crepe paper, fluid filled and nearly black in color. The eyeballs within are milky-looking and bloodred with petechiae. Though I’ve backed six feet away, I’m repelled by the odors of urine and feces.
Death is always an ugly sight to behold, whether it’s homicide, suicide, accidental, or from natural causes. But from all indications, Dale Michaels’s demise was particularly brutal. The doc has removed the rope from around the victim’s neck. It left a two-inch-deep trench in the flesh and severely abraded the skin. The yellow nylon rope is about three-eighths of an inch in diameter, and there’s about thirty feet of it. I watch as the technician coils it and then places it in an evidence bag. From where I’m standing, I see blood and abraded flesh embedded in the fibers.
Suicides don’t require the same level of scrutiny from law enforcement as a homicide, but the scene must still be documented. In the state of Ohio, all unattended deaths require that an autopsy be conducted, and this case will be no different. Unless it is determined that foul play was involved, there will be little in terms of actual police investigation.
My mind drifts as the doctor goes about his work. I’m wondering if I can wrap this up in a couple of hours and get home in time to help Tomasetti with that bottle of cabernet when the coroner gives me a sharp look over his shoulder.
“Chief, I’ve got an irregularity here.”
I walk over and kneel beside him. With gloved hands, he opens the jacket to reveal a partially tucked shirt. A hole in the fabric the size of my pinkie is surrounded by a wide bloodstain that spreads downward to soak into the waistband of his trousers and underwear.
“There’s the source of that blood,” he tells me. “I’m pretty sure that’s a gunshot wound.”
“Self-inflicted?” I ask.
“Hard to tell.” He looks at me over his bifocals. “The only thing I can tell you with relative certainty at this point is that he was alive when he was shot. There’s not much blood, but enough so that I feel the heart was beating when he sustained that gunshot wound.”
“So he was shot and then hanged?” I ask.
“Correct,” the doc confirms.