CHAPTER 20
Diminutive, intense, levelheaded, Gaston B. Marshall became a pathologist by default and county coroner by fiat. When Vee Jansen, the coroner since 1949, died of a heart attack in 1995, Gaston inherited the job.
In other counties, especially above the Mason-Dixon line, county commissioners might have grumbled at having such an ancient coroner as Vee Jansen performing autopsies. This would have been superseded by a new wave of grumbling as a much younger man assumed the duties. But in central Virginia, in this county, where everyone claimed everyone else as shirttail cousins, Gaston was readily accepted when he became coroner. He was a homeboy. Gaston B. Marshall, a professor of medicine at the university, now had two jobs. The extra stipend from the county was useful. Gaston was the father of three grade-school children. The university, for all its grandeur, paid poorly.
The other good thing about this job was Gaston was left to his own devices. If he wanted students to assist him, no one quibbled. If he wanted to utilize his findings in his lectures, names of the deceased changed, he could do it. Being county coroner proved a rich source of teaching material. His students could see things they might not see at the university hospital. During one autopsy of a drunken gentleman, well born but bone idle, when he attempted to lift out the liver it literally disintegrated in his hands. If nothing else, those students witnessing the diseased liver would think twice before drinking too much.
On the Sunday the body was recovered from the river, he had but one assistant, a female intern utterly enraptured by pathology, Mandy Collatos. Perhaps the appeal was you were always right but one day late. In the case of Guy Ramy their findings were twenty-one years late almost to the day.
Walter Lungrun stood in scrubs over the stainless-steel table, the channels on the side sloping downward for drainage.
Ben Sidell, a by-the-book man most times, wanted Gaston to see the drum, so he delivered that as well. It sat near the table. A large double sink, also stainless steel, ran along the wall.
All three physicians wore thin rubber gloves.
“You know if there hadn't been punctures in the drum I believe he would have been mummified.” Mandy was proud that they had extracted the skeleton doing precious little damage to it, no easy task.
“Yes.” Gaston finished placing the bones in their proper position. The major joint areas had come apart when the skeleton was removed, much as a joint pulls out of a chicken leg. Plus the anvil in the bottom of the drum had broken bones probably on the drop into the river. The drum had settled after that.
Walter watched intently.
“Dr. Marshall,” Mandy said, pointing to two ribs, left side.
Gaston bent down, his upturned nose almost touching the graceful, thin rib bones. “Uh-huh. When a body has been out this long, you hope for the best. We were lucky Nola was buried in red clay. It preserved her longer.”
“The methods of killing were different for these two,” Walter said.
“Yes. Interesting . . .” Gaston noticed that Guy's right shinbone was shorter than the left and thicker. “Old break.”
“Casanova Point-to-Point Races. Late seventies,” Walter said. He marveled at the body's ability to knit itself back together.
“You were there?”
“Actually, I was. My mother took me. I was always crazy for horses. Guy crashed a timber fence. No fault of his own. The jockey in front of him bobbled in front of the jump, flew off, and Guy's horse braked hard.” Walter smiled slightly. “He threw Guy straight into the timber. He was out foxhunting the next week in a cast. At least that's what I heard.”
A knock on the door made Gaston pause in his examination. “Come in.”
Larry Hund, the dentist, entered the room. He was carrying a folder. “Still has a jawbone.”
“Larry, we see a lot of strange things in hereâincluding one another.” Gaston motioned for him to step up to the table.
Larry pulled out the dental charts and swiftly checked the teeth, most still in the jawbone. “Guy Ramy.”
Gaston and Mandy, nothing if not thorough, finished up in another hour, obsessively checking and double-checking, measuring bones, making detailed notes.
Larry inspected the drum before leaving. “Boy, someone wanted him to stay put. Got an anvil in there.”
“But he didn't stay put, did he?” Gaston yanked a paper towel off the dowel.
“I don't know how you can do your work.” Larry smiled. “It's one thing when bare bones are on the table. But when you have to cut into a corpse that's been out there for days or weeks . . .”
“You get used to it, but I don't think any of us look forward to working on a body exposed for a few days. When it's hot, one day will do it. I can smoke cigars, shove Vicks VapoRub up my nose or camphor oil, the damned stench still gets through. After they've been out a week, unless, of course, they're frozen, it actually begins to improve.”
“What's the fascination?” Larry rarely had an opportunity to talk to Gaston like this.
“Answers. I can often get the answers and, in the case of wrongful death, clues to the killer.”
“Well, I don't know about this one.” Larry picked up his folder. “How will you ever find the killer?”
“I don't know.” Gaston sighed.
Mandy put the body in a cooler drawer, slid it shut with a thunk, and inserted a paper card in the small slot in the front, with a number on it.
“Anyone else in here?” Larry was curious.
“No, it's been quiet.” He finished toweling off. “You did a good job on Nola, by the way. I don't remember if I thanked you. So many teeth were missing. I don't know if her killer smashed her skull in first or hit her in the face first.”
“Do you think it's weirdâpathology?” Mandy asked Larry.
“In a sense,” he honestly answered. “The typical response to death is aversion, even repulsion.”
“True,” Gaston agreed. “I had to overcome that myself in med school. But then, I remember it as clear as yesterday, we were in lab working on the circulatory system and I was lifting up the aorta, like rubber those cadavers, and I stepped back to look at the body. The arteries and the veins were a tracery of life. It was beautiful. I looked at bodies differently after that, and let's face it, I wasn't meant to be a plastic surgeon. No bedside manner.”
“Yeah, you don't have to talk to your patients,” Walter said, smiling. He regularly dealt with people in acute distress.
“Right,” Larry laughed at Gaston and Mandy, “your patients don't talk back.”
“Oh, but they do,” Gaston countered, “they do.”
CHAPTER 21
Aunt Netty, cross with Uncle Yancy, trotted over to Target's den. The last quarter of the moon, a thin melon slice in the Prussian blue sky, pulsated with feeble light.
Target, a hefty eight pounds if he was an ounce, sat near the main entrance. His mate, Charlene, was eating blackberries curling over the fence line near the edge of the woods about a quarter of a mile from the den. Just beyond that fence, rolling pastures swept up to the farm road and then on to the kennels.
Their three cubs this year, half grown, had left early to set up homes around Wheeler's Mill. Roughneck Farm, After All, and Foxglove, filled with reds and grays, were reaching the saturation point. Target and Charlene knew that the old, nasty red who had lived underneath the mill had succumbed to old age. The place needed foxes, and it was better to get their cubs established early before the reds farther south got the bright idea to move in.
Plentiful game meant the young ones would be fine for food. Also, Walter Lungrun occasionally put out dog food supplemented with liquid wormer as well as tasty bits of sweet feed. The molasses flavor was delicious.
“Netty, you've got on your mad face.”
Target laughed at his sister.
“Yancy's in one of his hoarding moods. He's burying
dead crickets, which is the dumbest thing. Chicken, rabbit pieces, yes. But crickets? That run on the first day of
cubbing has affected his mind.”
“I thought it was being married to you,”
Target wryly said.
“What a pathetic attempt at humor. I wouldn't be sitting here laughing. Tuesday, Sister will take out more
puppies and she'll have Dragon in the pack. He wasn't
with them Saturday or Yancy would be a goner for sure.”
“Sister ought to draft out that hound. He's too fast.
He'll ruin the pack.”
Target knew for a pack of hounds to be good they should run together. Dragon pushed ahead too far.
“It's his second year. She'll give him the year to see if
he improves. And you know she loves his blood, lot of
Piedmont blood in her D line.”
Piedmont Fox Hounds, founded in northern Virginia in 1840, was the oldest organized hunt in America.
Henry Hudson brought hounds with him when he discovered the river that now bears his name. American settlers hunted with hounds almost from the founding of the first surviving colony in 1607. But Piedmont was the first hunt organized in the modern sense, and those who wore its colors, old gold, could be forgiven a bit of swagger.
“He's an arrogant hound,”
Netty said.
“I got my revenge last year when I lured him into a
copperhead.”
“He'll never forget it, which is why I'm here. To remind you that Tuesday, Sister will cast hounds this way
and Dragon will be with them. I'd stay in my den if I
were you.”
“Ha! I'll break his neck yet.”
“Unless he breaks yours. He's fast, Target, and he's
seventy pounds of hard muscle to your eight. He can
snap your neck in a split second if he bumps you and
rolls you. He has that kind of drive.”
“Netty,”
Target said, incensed, standing up.
“I'm almost as fast as you are.”
She wanted to say,
“but not as smart.”
Instead, she cajoled him.
“True enough. I'm just giving you a heads-up.
The whole pack is faster, and if Bitsy hadn't been around
it really would have been a near thing for Yancy, the
damned fool.”
“Wonder why Sister is breeding for more speed? They're
already fast enough and I must commend her and them
for their nose. Boy, she has really improved the way they
track a scent.”
Target mentioned the ability of a hound to scent.
“She has, and let's not forget, we've had more moisture this year. That's going to help them, too. We'd better
be on our paws. I know neither Sister nor Shaker wants
to kill any of us, but accidents happen.”
“If I have to die I'd rather die that way than from
mange.”
Target flicked his tail. Netty's infernal and constant advice irritated him.
“Wouldn't we all. Here's to old age! But take your
medicine. Sister spends good money on that stuff and
now she's putting it on dog kibble instead of stuffing it
inside dead chickens. It's easier to get at.”
“I do eat the damned stuff, Netty!”
Before he could cuss her out and tell her to stop mothering him, Athena, talons spread, swooped over them.
“Hoo hoo hoo.”
She laughed as they both flattened. She turned and landed on the lowest limb of the slippery elm.
“Good evening.”
“Athena, you scared the wits out of me,”
Netty grumbled as she dusted herself off.
“Why, Netty, I don't think that's possible.”
Netty, somewhat mollified, said, “You're looking well.”
“Shrews, I've been eating shrews. Does wonders for
me. Well, Target, cat got your tongue?”
“No, it's good to see you. I hear you helped out Uncle
Yancy the other morning.”
“St. Just was calling the hounds on after they'd lost
scent.”
“I'll kill him if it's the last thing I do.”
“You know, Target, that's what he says about you,”
Aunt Netty said, adding her two cents.
“I'm here with the news. Guy Ramy's body, sealed in a
fifty-five-gallon drum, was dredged out of the James this
morning. A red-winged blackbird watched the whole
thing.”
“Blackbirds, crows, ravens,”
Target snarled,
“can't
believe a word they say.”
“Don't let your hostility to the species blind you to the
truth,”
Athena sagely counseled.
“You're quite right,”
Aunt Netty agreed, and wanted to kick her brother hard with her hind leg. One needed to pay court to Athena. She stared crossly at Target.
Although full of himself, he wasn't stupid.
“You are
right, Athena. I hear the name, St. Just, and my blood
boils. He killed my son.”
“And you killed his wife. You're even. Be done with
it.”
She raised herself to her full height, as she'd been leaning down to speak to the foxes. Athena, at two feet tall, was undeniably regal.
Target weighed his next words.
“Yes, but I think it's
gone beyond that. I don't think he'll stop. After all, he
called the hounds on Uncle Yancy.”
“I know. My concern is that you don't endanger other
animals with this blood feud. There's enough going on
now. Finding Guy Ramy is not a good omen for any of us.”
“The humans are already stirred up about Nola Bancroft.”
Aunt Netty moved over to sit beside her brother.
“The human who killed these two knew enough to put
them where vultures couldn't get them or dogs dig them
up. He or she knows a little something about animals.
Right?”
“Yes.”
Aunt Netty nodded her head.
“And although none of us were born then, we know
from the humans' incessant talking that Nola and Guy
disappeared after the first day of cubbing in 1981. A full
cycle. Cubbing has just begun.”
She leaned down toward them again.
“And if they turn up something or someone
gets a notion, they'll start digging, literally. They'll disturb our dens and nests and flush game. They'll make
a mess.”
“I'd better tell the cubs at Wheeler's Mill,”
Target thought out loud.
“I already did. And Bitsy is telling Butch, Mary Vey,
Comet, and Inky.”
Athena mentioned the gray foxes.
“Do you really think it's that bad?”
Target wondered, not wanting to challenge her, just wondering.
“Actually, I'm afraid one of them's going to snap.”
Athena's low voice dipped even lower.
“Bitsy, Inky, and
I saw Ralph Assumptio, crying, parked by the side of
the road.”
“That's it. He's the killer, then,”
Target declared.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
The brown bird cast her golden eyes upward as a blue heron, late, headed for home.
“My
point is they are all feeling the strain.”
“Do the hounds know?”
Aunt Netty asked.
“Yes. Bitsy is telling them.”
“Who cares if they know?”
Target didn't dislike the hounds, but he felt them an inferior member of the canine family because they allowed themselves to be domesticated.
“Are you argumentative tonight or thickheaded?”
Netty nudged him on his shoulder.
“The hounds are closer to the
humans than we are.”
“And the killer is a foxhunter as surely as I am the
Queen of the Night.”
A little while after Athena had left, Charlene returned. Target and Netty filled her in, then they all discussed what Athena meant about the killer being a foxhunter. They weren't sure.
Athena had been figuring. There had been no reports of struggle. If there'd been a fight in a car or truck, someone would have noticed the blood and the damage to the vehicle. If someone had sold their vehicle immediately after the disappearance, someone would have noticed that, too. Both Nola and Guy willingly followed or climbed into the vehicle of their murderer. Nola's car was left at the Burusses'. Guy's was parked downtown on the street. Athena had gathered all this with Bitsy's help by listening to the humans talk on their porches or on the phone, windows open.
She had just been sharing all this with Bitsy, sitting on a crossbeam in Sister's barn. Bitsy nodded.
“Guy and
Nola knew their killer.”
Athena added,
“And trusted him.”