Episode 10

As Frank Garza walked out of the Coroner's building he whistled, "It's Not Easy Being Green" because the sights, smells and sounds he'd just experienced made him feel green. His father had worked at a meatpacking plant on Maui and he'd never gotten used to seeing beings that were once living broken down to their individual components. Even gutting fish made him lose his appetite.

Needless to say, it had not been a pleasant experience for him to watch the preliminary autopsy and a few times he found himself regretting having eaten such a large breakfast at Uncle Bud's, especially the double serving of Canadian bacon. More often than he would care to admit he covered his nose and mouth with a bandanna liberally wetted with Absorbine Jr. The smell was foul, but it overcame the smell of the morgue and it kept him from fainting. He thought it odd that he could look at a dead body found in the street or in a car that had had its head half blown off or that had been, in effect, filleted or dressed, but when he watched a dissection he wanted to either scream or punch the medical examiner in the face. There was something about the cold clinical nature of the whole procedure that offended him. Garza considered murderers as either evil or insane. Pathologists were cold bastards who looked at dead bodies as empty husks. But everybody had their job to do.

But he did feel rewarded for enduring his ordeal. In a small plastic bag, labelled and recorded, was the now deformed slug that had killed Matthew Hauser. It was small, either a .22 or a .25 caliber (the ballistics experts would be able to tell him for sure) and, according to the medical examiner, after entering the skull, just behind the ear, had ricocheted twice off the inner dome of the skull, thus effectively, to use the medical examiner's word, "scrambling" the brain. The M.E., after subjecting Garza to the sight of Hauser's face being peeled down and the top of his skull being sawn off, had shown Garza two chipped places on the inside of the skull where the bullet had bounced off. The shot had been, as Tate theorized, from above and behind. The M.E. refused to estimate the distance that the muzzle of the gun had been from Hauser's head. "That's a ballistics job." he'd said. I can tell you that the gun was close and that this man died pretty much instantly."

"It's amazing what these chunks of lead and copper can do," Garza had mused, half to himself.

"Or can't do," the M.E., a talkative joker named Dr. Schmidt, had replied. " We had a guy in a couple of weeks ago who had a .38 Special bounce right off his sternum from point blank range. We found the slug right under his skin a few inches from the entrance wound."


"What killed him, then?"

"Another couple of slugs in the chest. If you ever shoot anyone make sure you get at least three shots off into the chest. Otherwise your guy may play Superman."

"Say, doc," Garza said while looking away from Schmidt's continuing examination of Hauser's body. "Were you here when the widow I.D.'d the body?"


"I was here, but I didn't show it to her. That would have been Mickey. He's one of the grunts."

"Do you know where I can find him?"

The M.E. absent-mindedly waved a bloody scalpel in the air. "He's around somewhere. He's a big guy. Black mullet. Nerd glasses. Just stand in the hallway. He'll walk by pushing something or someone."

"Thanks. And make sure you get the toxicology report to us ASAP. We want to know if this guy was pounding down the brew or pills before he was hit."

Schmidt replied by waving Garza away with his scalpel. "I know my job, sergeant."

Garza left the examining room and stood in the corridor. The hallway still stank of death and he breathed deeply into his bandanna. He half wondered why funeral homes didn't share this stink. After a few minutes a young man standing at least six foot three appeared pushing an empty gurney. He was wearing thick black framed eyeglasses and his unnaturally black hair was worn in a long mullet hairstyle.

"Excuse me," Garza said while approaching the man. "I'm Detective Sergeant Garza. Sycamore Grove P.D. Are you Mickey?"

"Yes." His voice was soft and quiet. Almost a whisper.

"I understand that you were the person who showed Matthew Hauser's body to his widow for identification."

"That is correct."

"What was her reaction?"

"She was upset. She didn't get hysterical or anything like that. She identified the body as that of her husband and then started crying and trembling. She grabbed the arm of the policeman who accompanied her as if he were her savior and he finally led her out of the building."

"There was nothing out of the ordinary in her reaction, then."

"Sergeant, everything about this place is out of the ordinary. Everyone reacts differently. I've seen women curse their husbands to hell for dying of heart attacks and mothers bless their sons for being killed by the cops in shoot-outs. If you want to know if Mrs. Hauser grieved at the sight of her husband's body, the answer is yes. That's all I can tell you."

"Excuse me for saying so, but you seem rather sensitive to be working at a place like this."

"I'm working my way through morticians' school."

"What's the difference between a mortuary and this place? They are both about dead people."

"The mortuary is about was was and what is hoped for. This place is about what is. I prefer the former."

As Garza got into his pick up truck he referred to Tate as a bastard for make him attend the medical examination while planning to invite him to his next luau the following Saturday. And he looked forward to interviewing Angel Grant. Perhaps talking to a blond bit of fluff would get the stench out of his nostrils.

************************************

"Amen," they said in unison.

Sergeant Washington, wearing street clothes instead of his uniform, knelt by his seated wife, Anita, who was still wearing a lightweight bathrobe. He held both her thin hands in his and leaned down to kiss her fingers.

"Are you sure you feel up to going to the meeting this afternoon?"

"I'm as fit as I can," she replied smiling down and stroking his cheek. "If I start feeling too tired I can just find a place to lay down for a spell. Don't worry about me. I'll be okay."

Washington stood, his knees cracking, and poured two cups of coffee, placing one on the kitchen table for Anita and holding one in his hand while leaning against the kitchen counter. At the moment Anita was wearing a turban to cover her bald head. Her thick black hair had been one of her prides. But the cancer treatments had taken that from her. The thinness of her face along with her almost ink black skin and the turban reminded him of the pictures her had seen of Ethiopia and Somalia as a child. Not the countries as they now were, which he considered sad, hellish places, but the exotic places that existed when the world was big. Anita had always been slender, some thought thin, but the chemotherapy had made her lose her appetite and made her nauseous. For a while she had bordered on the gaunt; almost death-like. But, for whatever reasons she had managed to re-gain some weight and those few pounds, visually at least, seemed to pull her back from death's door.

Anita took a sip of her coffee and sighed with pleasure. Charles had never been much of a cook, but he did know how to make a good cup of coffee. He attributed it to the eggshells he put in the grounds.

"Do you think Brother Ray will be at the meeting today?" she asked.

"Who knows?" Washington shrugged. "He said that he would be there, but I don't think he'll make it until the evening session. The investigation he's working on may take up all his time. He's been up since three or four this morning and I'm pretty sure that he's still going on it. If he does show up I wouldn't be surprised that he won't be so dog tired that he'll start snoring during the preaching."

"Then he and I can sleep together," Anita laughed.

Washington gave her a stern look and then smiled. "I don't know what it is between you and him. If I didn't know any better I'd think you two were in love with each other. I've never seen him talk to any other woman the way he talks to you."

"I am in love with him. He's my second favorite man in the world besides you. He likes me because I was the ear he talked to when his wife left him. All I did was listen and not say anything and that's what he needed. Sometimes to make a friend all you have to do is listen."

"But that was a long time ago. What? Ten years or more?"

"Brother Ray has a long memory and an appreciation for kindness shown. He's like you in that way. He's a good man who appreciates a good woman." She laughed again.

"You are that, 'Nita. And I'm keeping you to my own bad self."

"I'm all yours, big man. No man for me but my Charles."

"Good. Otherwise I'd have to kill Tate. And then I wouldn't get my pension when I retire. C'mon. Let's get ready for the meeting. I want to hear Elder Jenks. I've heard he's good."

Washington helped Anita to her feet and walked out of the kitchen with his arm around her waist. She stopped and looked up at him.

"Charles," she said. "Do you think Brother Ray will be able to find the man who shot that Hauser? From what you told me he only has a body and a gun to work with."

"Tate's like a dog after a fox. No stopping him until he's got the fox out of the hole."

"Good. That Hauser was just a bad preacher who made good preaching lies. But that doesn't mean that he deserved what he got."

"Don't worry about it, 'Nita. If Ray doesn't get his man, God will. Justice always prevails, even if not only on this earth."

"Justice," she mused. "You and Brother Ray always looking for justice on this mean old ball."