Marriage had settled me in a way I’d never thought possible.
I’d spent my entire life displaced—not belonging—to my family or community. I always seemed to be on the outside looking in. There was something about growing up in a small town that was hard to explain to people who had never experienced it. You either belonged or you didn’t. You were either someone or you weren’t. And those things were usually determined before birth, depending on who your parents were.
My parents had always been so absorbed in themselves there hadn’t been much time for anything else. For four generations, my family had been a part of Bloody Mary. They’d owned a business and raised their children. But I’m not sure anyone could say they were a part of the community on more than a surface level. Close friends weren’t possible when living a life of deception.
I found it ironic that my home with Jack—a place I finally felt I belonged—was on the same street as the home I’d grown up in—a place I’d never belonged. The same street, but worlds apart. But that place was in the past, at the end of a long stretch of Heresy Road. It was someone else’s albatross now.
My home with Jack was two miles in the opposite direction, down a two-lane country road that was a mixture of gravel and potholes and wound through towering trees. If you rolled down the windows in the car, you could hear the rush of the Potomac River. And at the end of that two-mile stretch, tucked back in the trees on the edge of a cliff, was my paradise. The log cabin structure that Jack had built had become ours.
I loaded my medical bag and a few extras into the back of Jack’s unit, and we headed to the scene. He still hadn’t given me any information, and I wondered if it was intentional so I could see it with fresh eyes, or if he just couldn’t bring himself to tell me about it yet.
The other thing about living in a small town was that in our line of work, you tended to know the victim.
“If you’ll give me the address, I’ll have one of the interns meet us with the Suburban so we can transport the body,” I said to break the silence.
“There’s plenty of time for that,” he said, tapping his index finger against the steering wheel. “The victim is Rosalyn McGowen.”
“What?” I turned to face him, the seatbelt biting into my hip. “Damn.”
When we were kids, Mrs. McGowen had given us cookies and lemonade every day after school at the bakery. There was nothing that tasted better than those cookies. She was a Bloody Mary treasure.
“Quarter,” Jack said out of habit.
“I’m out.”
“I put extra for you in the cup holder.”
“You can’t fund my swear jar. That defeats the purpose.”
“Emmy Lu gave me five dollars out of your petty cash drawer. You’re funding it.”
Emmy Lu Stout was my new receptionist. She was a Bloody Mary native and a dozen years or so older than I was. She’d married her high school sweetheart at eighteen and given birth to five boys before the age of twenty-five. And then when the youngest had graduated high school, her husband had decided to trade her in for a newer model and filed for divorce, leaving her with half the mortgage and bills, and nothing in the joint checking account.
She was just about the sweetest woman I’d ever met and cute as a button, like a middle-aged Gidget with crow’s feet and thirty pounds heavier. I’d hired her on the spot. And I couldn’t really blame her for giving Jack the money out of petty cash. He could pretty much charm anyone into doing what he wanted. And if charm didn’t work, he had other methods, but he usually saved those for the criminals instead of law-abiding citizens.
“You keep your charms off my receptionist, Jack Lawson, or you’re going to end up with a roll of quarters up your—”
“Uh, uh, uh,” he said, mouth twitching. “I only got five dollars’ worth. That temper is going to get you in trouble.”
“I’m shaking in my boots,” I said. “Let’s focus on Mrs. McGowen. I’ll deal with you later.”
“Sounds kinky.”
I couldn’t stop the grin that wanted to spread across my face, so I ducked my head and dug around in my bag for a hair-band. My dark hair was getting to a length that was starting to get annoying. It normally swung just below my chin, long enough that I could pull it back out of my face. But I hadn’t gotten a trim in months and it flirted with the top of my shoulders. I’d like to say it was because I’ve been so busy, but if I was honest, the real reason I hadn’t gotten it cut was because Jack seemed to enjoy the longer length.
“Carl Planter found her this morning,” Jack said. “He lives next door.”
He turned onto Anne Boleyn, which was Bloody Mary’s equivalent of a Main Street. It led directly to the Town Square, which was where the corners of all four cities in King George County met. Businesses had just opened for the day. Sidewalks were being swept and conversations were being had. A line went into the little coffee shop on the corner.
“Carl Planter,” I said. The name sparked recognition. “I remember him from school. Didn’t he get expelled for being a peeping Tom in the locker room?”
“That was always the rumor,” Jack said. “Who knows for sure? It didn’t help that he started homeschooling sophomore year. I heard his mom pulled him out because he was spending all his time in the bathroom masturbating to whatever he saw in the locker room instead of in class.”
I curled my lip in disgust. “I didn’t need to know that,” I said.
Jack smiled. “Dickie saw him going into the shower once and said he had raw spots on his shaft because he did it so often.”
“Yikes,” I said. “I didn’t even know he still lived in Bloody Mary. I thought he and his mom moved to Pittsburgh.”
“She did,” Jack said. “Would you want to be known as the mom of the boy who masturbated himself raw? I can’t even imagine how that conversation went.”
“I really appreciate you telling me all this,” I said. “It’ll make things much less awkward when we have to talk to him. I hope his blisters have healed.”
“Maybe it’s like playing the guitar. Maybe it just calluses over after time.”
“Seriously, you’ve put way too much thought into this. I can honestly say that’s something I’ve never seen in all my years as a doctor.”
“There’s always a first for everything. You can count on human nature for that.”
Traffic was heavy as Anne Boleyn merged toward the Town Square and all the municipal buildings. Jack turned on his lights and sirens and watched the traffic part in front of us. He turned away from the Town Square and into a residential section of town.
“Anyway,” Jack said, once he cleared the traffic. “Carl got worried when he hadn’t seen Mrs. McGowen this week. She rarely goes a day without putting out cookies for the kids or taking someone something. He said just last Sunday she made loaves of banana bread for everyone on the street. He carried the basket for her.”
“Poor thing,” I said, heart heavy. Mrs. McGowen was one of the sweeter memories from my childhood. She’d always had a kind word and a little something extra for me. The older I got, the more I realized how many people in the community had taken up the slack for me where my parents had failed. Teachers, neighbors, parents of friends… They’d recognized the lost girl I was and given me what they could.
It was a heartening thought, and I realized I needed to look at my community with less cynicism. That tended to be my first response to everything. Jack’s too. Which wasn’t unusual considering our line of work. Everyone lied. Everyone had an angle.
I thought about Mrs. McGowen and felt a pang in my chest. “I guess it’s comforting to think she’s finally with her husband,” I said. “She always said she was looking forward to the day she could see him again. It’s amazing, though… She spent more years as a widow than she did married to him, but she never stopped loving him.”
Jack smiled. “When we’d go to the bakery after school, she’d talk about him as if he were still alive. When she tried out new recipes or had decisions to make, he always got a say so.”
“She lived a long life,” I said. “She’s got to be well past eighty. She knew my grandmother.”
“Eighty-five and going strong, or so it seemed.”
“It seemed?” I remembered what he’d said about the scene being messy. “What aren’t you telling me that’s going to make me hate my job today?”
“You never hate your job,” he said. “But she had cats.”
I winced. That wasn’t good news. “How bad is it?”
“In our line of work, that’s all relative. But if she had dogs, we’d be dealing with an entirely different situation. Cats have no loyalty.”
“I’ll be sure to put out the PSA.”
“I had the guys contain the cats in the spare bedroom. It’s about as contaminated a scene as you can get. Cheek lasted about ten seconds before he lost his breakfast in the bushes.”
“Gotta love rookies.”
Jack turned on his blinker when we got to the corner of Oleander and Foxglove, and I could see the emergency vehicles parked midway down the street. I could also see Floyd Parker’s green SUV pulled along the sidewalk. He was casually talking to the neighbors who were huddled together in the street. Someone had given him a cup of coffee.
“I hate that man,” I said, feeling my blood pressure spike automatically.
“Look at it this way,” Jack said. “Ever since Madam Scandal started publishing the King George Tattler, business at the Gazette has gone way down. Ernie Myers has been talking about downsizing the staff and going to digital only.”
Ernie Myers was the owner of the Gazette. “That does make me feel better.”
Floyd and I had a long, complicated history mostly made of bad decisions on each of our parts. I was working on being a forgiving person and looking to the future, but I’d be lying if I said I’d be upset if a truck fell on his head. I’d even do his funeral for free.
Foxglove Court was a cul-de-sac street of older homes with plenty of yard and lots of trees. It was the kind of street where the sidewalks were cracked and the lawns were well-manicured. Box shrubs lined the front of most houses and screened-in porches held rocking chairs and hanging plants. American flags were attached to eaves and waved proudly in the summer breeze. I noticed a couple of the houses had Jack Lawson for Sheriff signs in their yards.
The thought of the November election already had my guts knotting. I wasn’t sure I was cut out to be a politician’s wife, but I didn’t really have a choice at this point. The county needed Jack and I was going to do everything in my power not to embarrass him.
I still worried if my parents’ criminal past would hurt him when it was dragged up during election time. There was no doubt it would be dragged up. Floyd Parker at the Gazette would do everything he could to cost Jack the election.
“You fall asleep?” Jack asked, waving a hand in front of my face.
“Sorry, got lost in thought.” And then I nodded toward the signs. “Looks like you have some supporters.”
“Relax,” he said, seeing my tension. “We’re not here to win over constituents. We’re here to do a job. I’m not worried about the election, and you shouldn’t be either.”
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered under my breath.
I recognized most of the officers that were standing outside of the gray house with white trim. Officer Chen was stationed just outside the screen door on the steps, her uniform crisp and her hands folded in front of her. She was small in stature, but I wouldn’t have tried to go through her. She’d been a transplant from Atlanta and had a lot more experience than most of the officers with the King George Sheriff’s Office. I’d seen her take down a drunk man more than twice her size.
I’d saved myself some time by putting on my coveralls at the house, and I’d taken Jack’s advice and put on two pair. I was never sure what I might have to kneel in. I grabbed my bag and slung my digital camera around my neck, and then followed Jack toward the front door. He was getting an update from Officer Chen.
I nodded to some of the neighbors and realized I didn’t recognize most of them. It reminded me how quickly Bloody Mary was growing. Everyone wanted to move here from the city for better schools and lower cost of living, but the irony was the influx of people were making Bloody Mary lose the small-town feel.
I did see Carl Planter standing close to another man, comforting him, and they had the kind of stance that told me they were intimate partners. It was easy to see the groupings—families and close friends clung together—some weeping softly. Everyone knew Mrs. McGowen and she’d be missed. And Floyd Parker stood there like a poisonous toad.
I turned away from the onlookers and watched as Chen checked her notebook several times while she reported to Jack. She must have been the first officer on scene. Detectives Nash and Martinez were standing in the driveway, razzing Officer Cheek. Cheek was an unusual shade of green and his face was covered in sweat. He didn’t look like it would take much to lose the rest of his breakfast.
“Good luck, Doc,” Martinez called out. “I’ve got twenty riding that you won’t barf. Do me proud.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Martinez,” I said. “Just so you know, I’ve never barfed at a scene, but I hope you didn’t make the bet with Nash. He still owes me twenty from the World Series.”
“There was a budget shortage,” Nash said. “Double or nothing next World Series. You’ll get your money, Doc.”
“Knocking up that girl at the bar doesn’t count as a budget shortage, dumbass,” Martinez said, laughing. “That’s called child support. I told you she was nothing but trouble, but you never listen. Only thinking with your—”
I tuned out their good-natured ribbing and nodded to Officer Chen. There was sweat on her upper lip, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the heat that was already saturating the day or because of what she’d seen.
I climbed the three steps that led to the screen door of the porch, then stopped and put on blue booties over my sneakers. I handed Jack a pair as well and latex gloves, and then blew into mine before slipping them on with practiced ease.
“I got confirmation of the deed on the way back from the house. Residence legally belongs to Rosalyn Neeley McGowen, aged eighty-five as of last month. Home purchased in 1953 by Henry Herbert McGowen.”
He held open the screen door for me and I walked onto a neat little porch with two rocking chairs. The screens that enclosed the porch looked fairly new. In fact, the whole outside of the house was in excellent upkeep, and I wondered if neighbors volunteered to help her out or if Mrs. McGowen had a regular handyman.
The front door was bright red and cheerful, but I could smell the stench of death that permeated from the space within. I could also hear what sounded like screams of torture. Jack opened the front door and I covered my ears.
“Good grief, what is that?” I yelled over the screeches. “It’s awful.”
“Cats,” he said. “Animal control just pulled up.” He closed the front door again to drown out the sounds.
I blew out a breath in relief and moved to the side so the two animal control officers could get through with cages. It certainly explained why Cheek was looking a little green around the gills. Cats were predators by nature. Beloved owner or not, the cats would only wait so long before their carnal nature took over and they decided to feast.
Jack was right. She should have had dogs.
A minute or two passed and one of the officers opened the front door and ran to the side of the house. Sounds of retching could barely be heard over the screeches. Jack pulled the door closed again to drown them out.
The other officers came back out, carrying two cages with a total of seven cats. The cats’ hair was matted with blood and they were all spitting mad.
“Sorry, Burg,” Jack said to the officer.
“No worries. I did two tours in Iraq. There’s not a lot that fazes me.” He held up one of the cages. “What should we do with the cats?”
“Take them to my lab,” I told them. “We might have to swab them for particulates and check fecal matter for any remains.”
“The interns are going to love that one,” Jack said, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“I just got assigned new ones last week. I hope they have a stronger constitution than the last one they sent me. If that boy had fainted one more time in the lab, I was just going to leave him there.”
Virginia Commonwealth University sent me interns every semester. I’d had a few decide they needed to choose a different career path after spending time doing what I do. We’d had some pretty interesting cases over the last several months, and my name was appearing frequently in the papers. I was starting to get business from all over the county now, and I was having trouble keeping up with everything. Which was the reason I’d hired a receptionist.
I texted Emmy Lu so she could get all hands on deck and arrange for the Suburban to be here for transport. I also let her know she needed to find a place for a bunch of angry, bloody cats.
“Man, I really wanted to have steak tonight for dinner,” Jack said. “Seeing those cats is almost enough to make me change my mind.”
“I won’t tell anyone you’re turning in your man card,” I said. “But steak sounds good to me. I have a feeling lunch won’t be happening today.”
I’d been dealing with the dead long enough that nothing really bothered me anymore. It was easy to become desensitized to the horrors that can happen to the human body, but my humanity and compassion remained because I could see the affect death had on the living. Fortunately, I’d just gotten used to the smells.
“Does Mrs. McGowen have any family?” I asked Jack.
“None that I know of. She’s been alone since her husband died. I don’t ever recall her talking about any other family, but we’ll see if anyone else has information.”
I followed Jack through the front door and into a tiny entryway that opened into the living room. It was a shotgun style house, with the dining room and kitchen directly behind it, and a hallway to the left of the dining room.
“I worked a mass shooting in DC that looked a lot like this,” Jack said.
It took a second for my brain to translate what my eyes were seeing.
“Holy sh…crap,” I corrected. “It’s amazing how much blood is in the human body.”
“It’s even more amazing how much of a mess seven cats can make in a tiny house. What does it say about me that the cat poop bothers me way more than the blood?”
“It means you’re normal. But look on the bright side, you get to assign your officers to collect it all and bring it back to the lab.”
He grimaced. “I’ll put Nash in charge since he still owes you the twenty. You can call it even.”
Jack’s eyes started watering and he pinched the bridge of his nose. The ammonia in the cat urine was overwhelming. I pulled out two surgical masks from my bag. It wouldn’t kill the smell completely, but it would let us do our job without passing out.
Under normal circumstances, the room would have been cheerful, and I imagined, tidy. There was one small yellow-striped couch and a denim blue La-Z-Boy in the living room. Yellow Priscillas hung at the windows and a small television was set up on a TV tray. There was a desk pushed against the wall and an upholstered chair beneath it in a floral print.
But this was far from normal circumstances. Blood smeared the walls, and there were outlines of perfect paw prints on the couch and chair. No surface was spared. There were droplets of blood on the ceiling, and I could only imagine how it had gotten up there. Where there wasn’t blood there was feces, and the rugs and upholstery were saturated with urine. Just to complete the decoration, a light misting of cat hair covered everything. I already wanted to take a shower.
“How’d Carl discover the body?” I asked.
“Chen was first on scene and talked to Carl before she went in to look at the body. He told her Mrs. McGowen usually gets the mail at four o’clock every day. That’s the same time he gets home from work, but he worked late on Monday so he missed her. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he said he was home like clockwork, but he didn’t see her. He got worried and checked her mailbox this morning and saw it was full, so he gathered it up and went and knocked on the door. He has a key in case of emergencies and let himself in when she didn’t answer, thinking she might have been sick or hurt. He took one look, closed the door, and called 9-1-1.”
It sounded like Carl had handled things calmly and efficiently. I guess I’d expect that from a person who could rub themselves raw masturbating. Someone with that kind of dedication could get the job done.
“Stop thinking about it,” Jack said.
“I can’t,” I confessed. “It’s like staring at an ant pile after it’s been kicked. I’ll never be able to look at Carl the same.”
I’d had little dealings with scavengers and human remains, but it happened from time to time. A body left too long in the woods or in the water would always have some animal marks. And I’d once seen a body that had been eaten by rats in the morgue of Augusta General. They’d even eaten bone, and the identity of the victim had been almost impossible to determine by normal means.
I tried not to pay too close attention to the interior of the house as we made our way toward the bedroom. I’d learned humanizing the victim too much made it harder for me to do my job. It was already hard because I had such fond memories of Mrs. McGowen. But I couldn’t look away from the photographs that covered the walls. Pictures of two young people madly in love at different stages in their lives. There were no modern photographs. It’s like time had stopped for Mrs. McGowen when her husband had passed away.
As we entered the hallway, we faced an extra large mirror, and I could see my full reflection. The only part of me not covered was my eyes and the top of my head.
“The room on the left belongs to the cats,” Jack said. “Their litter boxes and food and water bowls are in there. There’s one of those play things they can climb on and a bunch of toys scattered about. Oddly enough, it’s the cleanest room in the house.”
I followed Jack toward the room on the right. There was another door adjacent to the master bedroom, and I assumed it was the bathroom. Jack confirmed it.
“That’s the bathroom,” he said and then opened the door where Mrs. McGowen’s body lay.
My feet squelched into the carpet the moment I stepped into the room, and I was determined not to look down. It was better to focus on the body lying in front of us than anything else.
Death was never pretty. There were deaths that were peaceful and those that were violent in nature. But the beauty of life was always absent. Death had left Mrs. McGowen unrecognizable.
It made sense to assume at first glance that she’d taken a fall that had eventually ended her life. It happened all the time to the elderly, especially to those who lived alone. They’d fall or have a stroke or heart attack, and there’d be no one there to call for help. They’d sometimes lay for hours or days before finally succumbing to death. It was always sad to find those cases, and in my own mind, one of the most horrible ways to die. Broken, alone, and forgotten.
I’d also learned through the years to never jump to conclusions.
Jack and I had established a rhythm since we’d been working together in an official capacity. I knew he’d already drawn his own conclusions, just as I knew he’d pick up on things that I wouldn’t and vice-versa. He let me enter the room and then got out of the way. This was my time now.
Mrs. McGowen, what was left of her, was crumpled on the floor like a ragdoll against the wall, only a few feet inside the door. A round Queen Anne table leaned haphazardly against a reading chair, and a white ceramic lamp lay broken on the floor next to her. The tattered remains of her dressing gown were soaked with blood—almost black in color.
“Why is her dress moving?” I asked. I already knew the answer, but I was hoping it was just a hallucination.
“Insect activity,” Jack said. “Apparently, Mrs. McGowen wasn’t running her AC yet. The last couple of days have been pretty warm.”
“There’s going to be no tissue samples left for me after the cats and maggots. I won’t be able to do anything other than take measurements and x-rays.”
I moved farther into the bedroom. It wasn’t an overly large room, but there was space for the queen size bed. It had a white ironwork headboard and footboard with ornate finials at each post. A wedding ring quilt in different shades of purple covered the bed, and there was a lamp on the nightstand to the left of the bed, along with a notebook, pen and a rotary phone. But the nightstand on the right was empty.
The nightstands each sat in front of a window with lace curtains that did nothing for privacy, but gave a beautiful view of the backyard garden. Purple lilac bushes surrounded the perimeter of the backyard, which was why I assumed she felt comfortable with lace curtains since the bushes were as dense and tall as any fence could be.
I took initial photographs, getting several of the positioning of the body, and then moved in closer. The carpet was saturated with blood, so I dug in my bag for the clear plastic tarp and laid it next to her so I could kneel down.
“The cats did a number on her,” I said. “If she does have any external wounds, they’ll be difficult to find unless damage was done to the bone.”
I took more pictures, starting at the head, and then let the camera drop against my chest. “The cats wouldn’t have let her body go cold before they started scavenging,” I said. “They’d start with soft tissues areas first. Eyes and lips and earlobes.”
I gently turned her head so Jack could see. All that was left of her face was the skeletal remains. Her silver hair lay on the floor like a small animal. “The maggots would have done the soft tissue work between the face and the skull, burrowing in and releasing the skin and hair follicles. That’s why her hair is on the floor. And seven cats would make short work of her.”
I moved down the torso with the camera, and then zoomed in where the stomach should have been. I’d never been squeamish about the human body. Death was a reality, and there were limitless ways for the body to die. I didn’t get the opportunity to see much of those variations working for King George County, but when I had been working hundred hour weeks as an ER doc at Augusta General, I’d seen all kinds of things. But I really hated maggots.
The truth was, very little of my work dealt with homicides, but that’s what excited the press, so when I did have one I always got news coverage. Most of the bodies that came across my table were regular people who lived everyday lives and then died a normal death. Sometimes, there was no explainable reason for a healthy thirty-year old man to die. And sometimes there wasn’t much left to work with at all, just like with Mrs. McGowen. But those were the cases that interested me most.
I tried to ignore the constant moving beneath the remains of Mrs. McGowen’s housecoat, but I couldn’t avoid it forever, so I carefully cut open her clothes, the fabric hard with dried blood.
“There are two stages of insect activity,” I told Jack. “The eggs would’ve been laid and hatched within the first twenty-four hours of her death. But it could’ve been sooner with the heat, accelerating the process. A few of these maggots are mature adults, but most have just been hatched, which means she’s been dead long enough for a second generation. In normal temperatures, you’re looking at six to ten days. But with the heat, maybe three to five.”
And it was hot in the house. The AC wasn’t on, the windows were shut tight, and though I’d seen ceiling fans in a couple of the rooms and there was a box fan in the corner, they weren’t on and there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze.
“We still have to canvas the neighborhood and see if anyone saw her after her banana bread delivery, but that timeline works if she died sometime late Sunday or early Monday morning,” Jack said. “The bed is made and she’s in her night clothes, so she either hadn’t gone to bed yet, or she was already up for the day.
“It’s easy enough to lose balance and take a header at her age. I’ll check her for broken bones once I get back to the lab and can do x-rays. If she broke a hip or a leg, she wouldn’t have been able to get back up. The pain could’ve sent her into cardiac arrest, though her heart is missing so it’s just conjecture.
“Let’s say you’re right and she tripped and fell. We have to assume she was incapacitated to the point that she couldn’t even make an attempt to reach the phone. Look at the way her body fell. The way she’s facing, as if she were entering the room. If she’d tripped, she would have fallen forward, right? Maybe breaking her fall with her hands. But she fell backward and to the side, away from us.”
“So maybe a stroke or heart attack,” I said, seeing it clearly. “She just dropped where she was. Her left side would be pretty banged up from hitting the table, and she’d probably have hit her head against the wall or floor.”
“I want you to look for things that might not result in a death from natural causes.”
I raised my brows. “You think she could’ve been murdered?”
That had not been what I was expecting. But Jack was a hell of a cop, and if he was asking, it was because he had a reason. Sometimes the reason was only his gut, but it was enough for me.