An End to a Silence: A mystery novel (The Montana Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

Newton
was met at the mortuary by the medical examiner, Jim Packham. Newton tried to
smile a greeting and patted him on his back as they turned to head to the
autopsy room. Newton could smell it right away and instinctively sniffed a
couple of times as if reacquainting himself with what death smelled like.

The old
man’s naked body lay uncovered on the cadaver dissection table, his trunk
bearing a Y-shaped incision from shoulders to chest which had been stitched
back up raggedly. Newton glanced at the body and then turned away, trying to
think of somewhere else he’d rather be but failing to think of anywhere.

“I guess
you got his clothes?” Newton asked, refocusing on the ME.

“Bagged,
tagged and photographed,” Packham said.

“We’ll
need those,” Newton said.

“You got
it, but the story isn’t in the clothes. I did the usual checks for internal
injury to organs and for cardiac anomalies but neither showed anything. It was
the external examination that threw up something. Here on the ankle. You see?”

Newton
squinted to see what the medical examiner was pointing at.

“Might
need your glasses,” Packham said.

Newton
reached into his inside pocket and took out his glasses, opening them slowly
with his gnarled fingers.

“See it
now?”

“A small
red dot?”

“A small
red dot indeed. Entry wound. From a hypodermic needle by the looks of it. That
got me itchy. That raised my interest. I took a blood sample from the inferior
vena cava and sent it for testing as an urgent. Got the results back and it
seems the victim had a rather large amount of morphine in his system.”

“That
could be due to his medication, right?” Newton said.

“Well,
no. Indeed no. Our deceased was not taking any morphine as pain relief. I
checked. I have his medical records here if you’d like to take a look?”

Newton
wearily shook his head once and waved a hand for the ME to continue.

“And
anyway, that wouldn’t explain the entry point on his ankle. He would take the
morphine in pill form if he was taking any at all. Which he wasn’t. So that’s
moot. No, our customer here had a very large dose of morphine administered by
someone. I’m guessing he didn’t do it himself. That kind of entry point might
work for drug addicts but I wouldn’t suppose our fellow here was an addict. And
there aren’t any other injection points or the telltale tracks that you find
with addicts.”

“Can
we get a second blood analysis done?” Newton said.

“That’s
not for me. This guy is on his way to the State Crime Lab. He’s theirs now. But
it is what I said.”

“What
makes you so sure?” Newton said.

“Because
I’ve been doing this job as many years as you’ve been doing yours.”

Newton
shifted his weight onto his other foot and involuntarily rubbed the base of his
back as an old pain flared. “Anything else?”

“He had
newspaper ink on his fingers. That’s all I’ve got. Apart from that he looks
like a regular old man.”

“Okay,”
Newton said, a dark pain shadowing his face.

“Do we
have a time of death?”

“Approximately,
yes we do. Between eight p.m. and twelve midnight on Sunday.”

“Okay.”

“So, this
old guy has a story to tell. And I guess I turn that over to you to find the
final pages of his tale. What are you thinking?”

Newton
was staring at an area in the far corner of the room and then he said, “I don’t
know what I’m thinking, is the honest truth. I’ll give it to the new guy to
figure out.”

“Of
course. You go this week?”

Newton
said, “Next week.” He automatically flicked over the tag on the old man’s toe.
He stared at it for a few moments. Then he took a step back, his eyes wrenched
open and the blood drained from his face. For a few seconds he forgot to
breathe and then he took a big gulp of air. He mechanically clutched his back
with one hand and reached into his pocket with his other, fingering around for
a bottle of pills. William O’Donnell.

“Hey. I’m
guessing you know the old guy,” the medical examiner said. He touched Newton’s
arm. Newton shuddered under the medical examiner’s hand. “You okay there,
Adam?”

Newton
turned abruptly to face Packham, his head snapping around. His eyes were empty
for a second and then the pupils focused on the medical examiner. He strode to
the end of the table and he stared down at the face he hadn’t at first
recognized.

Then he
swayed back and turned to leave.

“I gotta
go,” was the only thing he said, and he called McNeely on his cell as he left.

Newton
had left tire rubber in the parking lot of the morgue and was headed down North
Dakota Avenue, a blur of buildings, trees and vehicles stretching out beside
him. His foot felt heavy on the gas pedal. “Slow down there,” Ward had said on
the phone just now. But his thoughts were racing ahead of him and he had found
it difficult to explain it to the new guy.

He took
the turn onto Twelfth Avenue almost at a slide, his foot pumping more gas into
the maneuver and his hands twitching momentarily in the opposite direction to
the turn to prevent a full-blown skid. As he did so he saw, a moment too late,
the woman and child crossing the road. The woman, however, had seemingly heard
the revs of Newton’s engine and her senses had sharpened enough for her to
pause on the other side of the road and avoid being swept to her death under
the SUV’s wheels. Newton stamped down on the brakes and stopped a few yards
away from the woman and child. He looked in his rearview mirror and then
covered his face with his hands. He was trembling. He shook his head and tried
to gather himself.
This
shouldn’t be
happening to me
, he thought.
I should’ve retired three years ago when I
could’ve. I don’t want this. Not now. Not
this
dead man.

One thing
Ward had noticed right away was how tidy the room was. Two officers had sealed
the room off to prevent contamination of the crime scene but first appearances
suggested that the room had been cleaned. Whether that was a deliberate attempt
to destroy evidence or just cleaning, Ward didn’t know. Going by the spotless
environment of Sunny Glade, wasting no time in tidying a dead man’s room was
consistent with the apparent obsession with cleanliness. A pity they couldn’t
get rid of the smell of piss.

Ward
popped McNeely’s cell phone closed and handed it back to her. McNeely stopped
taking photographs and slid the phone back into her pocket. “Everything okay?”

“I guess
so.” Ward stroked his short-cropped beard, opened a drawer. Empty.

“Any idea
what we’re looking for?” McNeely placed her camera on the small table by the
old man’s bed.

“Nothing
much to see.”

McNeely’s
eyes narrowed as she studied Ward.

“I’m
still trying to work you out, detective. You’re different. No offense.”

Ward
removed his Stetson and placed it on his heart. “No offense taken, ma’am.” His
pale blue eyes settled on McNeely and he held her gaze.

“You’re
all right, though. Cowboy boots.” She laughed. “You got cowboy boots.”

Ward
smiled briefly and reseated his hat.

McNeely
studied the detective a few seconds longer. “You’re okay. Different okay. And
don’t pay no heed to Newton. He’s just playing out time. Running down the game
clock. Has been for a while now.” She reached into her bag for her fingerprint
kit. “I’ll dust around but it all looks pretty clean. Maybe too clean?”

“Whole
building’s too clean you ask me,” Ward said. His eyes had settled on the
picture of Bermuda that adorned the wall. He cast a glance around the otherwise
austere room and then his eyes returned to the picture. “We need to find out
where his belongings went.”

The door
opened and Newton lunged through. His speechless eyes fell on Ward. He pulled
his body straight. He was panting and he placed his hand on his chest. He took
a few sharp breaths before speaking.

“What
have you got?”

“Newton,
right?”

Newton
said, “
Wha
’?” and then, “Yes, Newton.”

“Okay,
Newton. Ward.” He pointed to himself. “And I got this,” Ward said. “If you can
tell me what you got and then you’re okay to go.” He studied Newton: the
erosion on his dimpled face, the dark crescents below his eyes and the
retreating gray hair. He thought sleep was a stranger to him. A kindred spirit.

“Okay,”
Newton said. “William O’Donnell.” He waited a couple of seconds after speaking
the name and then continued. “Seventy-eight years old. Cause of death: morphine
poisoning administered through the foot. Approximate time of death: between
eight and midnight on Sunday.” He paused again and then said, “Guy’s a
murderer.”

“Whoa,”
McNeely said, dusting the bedstead for prints as Newton bent to sit on the
mattress. “Not the bed.”

He
straightened up again too quickly and pain showed in his eyes. “Bill O’Donnell.
He murdered his grandson.”

“He did?”
Ward said.

“Sure he
did.”

“We’re
collecting evidence. For the homicide of an old man. You’re saying this old guy
murdered his grandson. He do time for it?”

Newton’s
shoulders slumped and he took a fat swallow.

“You’re
going to tell me what I’m missing here?” Ward said.

“Okay,
some history,” Newton said. “Back in 1985 a seven-year-old boy called Ryan
Novak disappeared.”

McNeely
nodded recollection.

“The boy
was never found. No body neither. The main suspect was this guy, his
grandfather”—he pointed at the empty bed—“but there wasn’t enough evidence on
him.” Newton left a pause. Ward and McNeely didn’t fill it. Newton rubbed the
base of his back and with his other hand reached in his pocket for his pills.
He took them out and put them back. “The guy was never convicted.”

“Okay,”
Ward nodded slowly. “And how does a twenty-five-year-old cold case help us with
this here homicide? Do you think they’re connected somehow, detective?”

Newton
looked at McNeely and then back at Ward. “I think they might be.”

“Might
be? Okay. Even if we accept that he killed the boy, as you say he did even
though he didn’t do time for it, who does that put in the frame for this old
guy’s death? We need to be mindful not to go confusing the two cases, don’t you
think? So, I suggest that McNeely and
myself
go on
with this crime scene and then we’ll look at what we’ve got.”

Newton
clasped his hands together and bit his thumbs. “You’re right, you’re right.
I’ll be… I’ll get out of your way,” he said, and he stood up to leave. “Thing
is, it was my case,” he said. “It was my case.”

Ward had
stared at the picture of Bermuda for going on five minutes. And then he noticed
the extra pushpin at the bottom, offset to the right-hand side. Then McNeely took
his attention away.

“What
have we got here?” She was staring at the windowsill with hands on hips. All
the fingerprints that the dust had revealed. “Only a whole load of latents. The
cleanest crime scene ever apart from this windowsill. Not just one set of
prints but a whole load of them.” She reached into her bag and took out a
magnifying glass.

Ward went
over to take a look. “All pointing inwards. Into the room.”

“Mostly.”

“What
does that tell us?”

“Well,
all the prints look like they’re from the same person. So it tells us that
somebody repeatedly entered the room through this window.”

Ward took
a closer look. “Are these palm prints facing the other way? In and out prints?
Is this our guy?” He was thinking out loud, but McNeely replied.

“In the
absence of any other prints in this room it’s a good place to start. This is
going to take a while.”

“You need
a hand?” Ward asked.

“We’ll
just get in each other’s way.”

Ward
looked out of the window. The room, south-facing, looked over two thirds of the
town, yesterday offering views of a crisp winter scene with remnants of snow
clinging to rooftops and pavements hedged with dirty shoveled-up snow heaps
from earlier clearing efforts. Today, the freezing mist blurred everything. An
icy wind blew down from the hills which started ten miles north, the tail end
of a small mountain range that snaked towards Canada, and brought a
harder-than-average winter this year. Fifteen Fahrenheit was normal for a
January day like today: it was five, and long icicles hung like silent wind
chimes from the old man’s window frame.

Ward
returned to the picture. He considered the pushpin for a moment and then
removed it. Expected something to drop from behind the Bermuda picture but
nothing did.

“I think
there was something here,” Ward said. He got up close to the picture to see if
there were any signs that something had been concealed behind it. He peeled
back the corner of the picture and he could see a slight discoloring of the
wall. Something had been pinned there. Something small. He did a rough
measurement with his thumb and forefinger. About the size of a photograph.

“It’s
gone now,” McNeely said.

“We need
the old man’s possessions. We also need to know who’s been in this room since
he died. We need to find out what this pin was holding.”