West of the Rotunda

This call came in the late fall. Darkness would come soon. So, I set out before finishing my dinner with the girls. Martha would care for them. Light will fade.

The sheriff’s dispatch lady said there was a dead body I needed to investigate out past Bovill. That’s a 45-minute drive to the east.

“Is there a detective there? Can I call him?”

“Just a patrolman sir. The sheriff didn’t assign a detective.”

He was a new Sheriff, and we weren’t getting along.

He did this to me for his four years in office. He even got a friend of his to run against me. We each have four-year terms, mine alternated two years before and after his. But he smiles and talks to me friendly now when we pass in town. He only got the four years, and I quit long after he was gone.

It couldn’t have been partisan animosity. I ran unaffiliated, no party attached to my name on the ballot. Maybe he just didn’t like me. Indeed, we hadn’t met until a few weeks ago.

The blowout down by Julietta might have fixed it.

That was another late evening call a few weeks back. I had gotten a call after dinner from the sheriff’s dispatch that I was needed down in the canyon. No details, just that I was to go to a scene. So, I took off in my rusty Toyota Hilux.

When I made the turnoff in Troy, there were barricades in the road. “Road Closed”.

I went around them like a kid sneaking candy. Then I drove on at 40 mph when I could have been doing 55, maybe feeling guilty.

When I got down to Kendrick and needed to turn right there was another barricade in the middle of the two-lane. “Road Closed”. Very serious, I guess. But I sidled around this one too and went on. The little Hilux fit around such obstructions.  Duty calls.

When I got to the scene it was in fact pretty impressive. Lots of lights, bulldozers, a mash of mud and big basalt boulders across the two-lane highway. I parked and got out. I walked forward, nodding to the deputies I knew until I saw our Sheriff. I went up to him.

I only knew him from his pictures in the local paper. He probably didn’t know me. They never ran the coroner’s headshot.

But then, maybe he did.

He had never introduced himself or called to talk to me. But I hadn’t done that either. I got paid $500 a month with no benefits to do my job, and he got a full-time salary, five figures with health insurance.

But here’s the kicker.

The coroner is the only one who can arrest the Sheriff.

If the sheriff is for some reason subject to arrest, the only person in the county who can do that is the coroner. And if the sheriff dies or absconds, the coroner becomes the sheriff. It’s some sort of chain of command thing. I didn’t know this at the time. I would later. Idaho laws are mind boggling.

I had found out about sheriff summons in my first years, before I had to deal with this guy. I wasn’t even sure what a summons was, but the previous sheriff had the decency to inform me.

Phone call came between patients: “Doc, you’ll get a summons for me tomorrow.”

“Huh?

“I’m being sued, and the summons server will bring the summons to you and then you are supposed to serve me with it.”

“Really? Serve?”

“Yeah, that’s how these things work. I’ll have a deputy down there so you can just give it to him, and he’ll give it to me. Save you the hassle of coming up the hill.”

“Is that legal?”

I heard him exhale and I imagined his girth in his chair. “It follows the spirit of the law, let’s say.” So that’s what I did. Seemed pretty civil.

Serve?

So maybe this sheriff’s animosity was out of fear. But then he would have to be doing something wrong, wouldn’t he?  I didn’t know, despite the summons thing, at the time that I outranked him. I don’t know if he knew this. But I did come to learn this clearly later on. Not then, not at that time in the Potlatch River canyon. I just walked up to him.

It was unbelievable that he was shorter than me. I have always dealt with taller teammates. Basketball, football, volleyball, me being 5’8” doesn’t make me substantial. We have to find other ways.

“Hello Sheriff. You needed the coroner?”

He turned to me, looking away from the bulldozers. He didn’t seem to recognize me but smiled and shook my hand. He looked absent and didn’t say anything. It was like we were at a wedding, and three drinks in, he was meeting a distant relative.

“Hello, my name is Sid Hawthorne, and I am the county coroner and you requested I come to this scene.”

He focused a bit. “Oh yes. Some people were killed in this landslide.” He waves off toward the mud and bulldozers.

“Should I look at them?”

“Uh, no, they’ve been taken off to the hospital in Lewiston.” His vague goes up a bit and he turns back toward the bulldozers.

The hillside and scene are illuminated by the mobile lights, and the multiple generators and heavy equipment are filling the deep valley with their noise. But I notice a tall deputy coming toward us behind our diminutive sheriff.

He’s got the swagger. He stands behind the small man with his hands on his hips, glowering down at us two small men below him. I am the object of this glower.

I too appraised the muddy scene. It looks like some significant uphill precip had washed a shit-ton of Palouse mud with some basalt rubble downhill. And I could believe a car on this road might be a casualty.

“Where’s the car?”

The sheriff still looks absently at the bulldozers, like he doesn’t hear me. I wait and take a breath to repeat with a louder voice and the tall deputy intervenes.  “It’s up here.” And he turns and strides toward the generators and noise and mud.

I follow.

Below the road is more mud and a very muddy vehicle on its side. I can’t even make out it’s color or type. In my memory it’s a 1938 Packard, but that’s got to be wrong.

“They got them out of there?” I’m incredulous.

The tall deputy looks down on me, imperious. “The bodies were recovered. They have been taken to Lewiston.”

I turn away from him and walk back to the sheriff. He’s still gazing at the heavy equipment. When I get to him, I speak loudly, so I can be sure he hears me. “You called me out here to come to a scene and these bodies are not even going to be in our county jurisdiction.”

He slowly pivots his absent gaze toward me, probably not remembering just who I am.

“You don’t need a coroner.” I yelled at him over the generators and bulldozers.

The sheriff says nothing. But the tall deputy asserts himself. “We don’t need your complaints while people are out here risking their lives,” and he waves back at the bulldozers.

I turned and walked back to the Hilux. This would not be the end of me and this sheriff. And his deputy.

Pissing contests between elected officials don’t end well. You will see.

So now I’m heading out to a dead body out of Bovill, with no detective. And Mr. Sheriff is probably finishing his dinner and starting into nightcaps. Or maybe, he’s well past the beginning. Can’t we get petty, us public servants?

I turned north in the hamlet as the dispatcher had indicated and looked for the mill, but the western light was fading. I saw no mill. But ahead of me was a long straight stretch of road going north so I slowed down. It should be close. There was a track to the right and some trailers. I turned in. There was a county patrolman’s rig parked toward the end of the track past the trailers. I had found it.

He was standing by his rig. I’d met this guy before. He was solid.

“So, what have we got?”

He stood with his thumbs on his belt and told me what he knew.

The guy was employed to tear down the mill. He ran a cutting torch all day to cut through the steel beams so they could be sent off for scrap. He had squatted here in his hooch at the end of this lane for the last couple weeks. He hadn’t showed up for work today. No one from work had come to look. But the lady in the last trailer here had noticed he hadn’t come or gone and called it in.

“So, she called you guys?”

“Yeah, a welfare check.”

“So, you were the first to find him?”

“Yeah.”

“When was that?”

“About five.”

“So, you’re getting overtime?”

He looked at the ground. “Naw, Doc. That’s not been approved. I just stayed because I found him, and I thought I should be the one to talk to you.”

I looked at him and shook my head. We shared a grimace. New sheriff.

“You got his ID?”

“Just his name from the mill contractor. I didn’t get his wallet. Waiting for you.” “Well, thank you for this. Is there anything you have seen you think I should know?”

“Not really. Just poverty.”

I look intently at the young patrolman in the fading light. I worry he might be a Democrat in law enforcement. I go elsewhere. “Have you talked to anyone else?”

He also looks to the western fading light and nods toward the closest trailer. “She came out and said she was who’d called it in. Said she was worried about him.”

I pause. “Anything else? Drugs? Guns, alcohol?”

He smiles a small smile. “Not really.”

“No foul play?”

He slightly gusts a laugh. I’m treating him like a detective, and he knows, and I know he isn’t. “Not that I could see.”

I look down again, though the darkness hides the dirt at our feet. “Thanks, I’ll go look.”

I head back into the trees toward the end of the lane.

His hooch is visqueen.

Black plastic sheeting formed into a tent between trees, strung with cord. There is a small fire pit outside his tent with some garbage around it. No booze or beer bottles, but I notice some cigarette butts. I don’t see any roaches.

I raise the plastic flap and the first thing that impresses me is his size. Lying on his side, his body almost fully occupies the weak plastic tent. His left arm is under his head, and his face is black. It’s not a black I had seen before.

If it weren’t for the black, I’d say he might have appeared peaceful. Death doesn’t turn the face black. Black comes in death, but not to the face first, not in this position. And not that color. It was like he had bent over a sooty fire. And indeed, he had, for days.

There were little votive candles in front of him, now burned out. He had a weak sleeping bag, but no real pad beneath him that I could see. There was no way I was going to be able to move him. From my perspective he was 350 pounds plus. I looked down at his arm under his head and protruding toward the little candles. His forearm was bigger around than my calf, his upper arm like my thigh.

It had been cool in the days, and pretty cold at night. The chill was coming on as I looked at him. He did not stink, and he wasn’t bloated, just huge. I bent down and tried to move his upper arm that laid along his mass. It was stiff, full rigor still, though the fingers were loosening.

I do the best I can to get his wallet from his pants pocket. The denims are so dirty they feel like oiled canvas. He has ID and three dollars.

I went back to the deputy. “I’ve done what I can. Here’s his wallet. Name fits. Could you call dispatch to have the funeral home come pick him up?”

“Sure thing.” He gets on his radio.

“Make sure you let them know his size. Might take a couple people to load him.”

He nods to me between the radio conversation.

I wait till he’s finished and say, “I want to go talk to this lady here.” I nod at the trailer. “You don’t have to wait for the funeral home. You can go.”

“I’ll be OK.” He says.

“I’ll be here. You can go.”

He shakes his head. Some guys are real solid. I hope they last.

I go toward the trailer. Single wide up on blocks with straw bales around it. Warm lights inside and the porch light on. I knock.

I can hear the steps inside, solid but slow. When she opens the door, I can hear a TV in the background. She’s big too. “Yeah?” she croaks out.

“Hello. I am Dr. Hawthorne the county coroner. You called in concerning the man in the hooch out here. Can I talk to you about that?”

“So, he’s dead, huh?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She exhales like she might have been saying “Sheeeiut” and follows with, “Come on in.” She moves away from the door, conveying my entrance.

I step up and in.

It’s cozy, but small, though, like I said, she’s big. She has moved to the room with the TV, though she politely shuts it off and then sits in her throne, the recliner. I stood. The small kitchen was behind me. It was neat, though the floor vinyl was pretty worn. Hell, it’s a trailer. The hall heading west would be the bathroom and bedroom. I wondered for a second about septic but let go of that.

“So, you knew the deceased?”

She lit a cigarette. The ashtrays were frequent and full. “Yeah, I knew him. He came in here a couple weeks back and set up his camp.” Her voice is like an idling McCullough.

“He was working at the mill?”

She took a drag. “Yeah, cutting steel for them. Ran a torch all day. Tearing the place down.” Another puff. “You see his black face? Cutting steel with that torch. He warn’t no nigger!” and she laughed loud and exhaled toward the ceiling.

“Had he seemed sick recently?”

Here she paused. Fiddled with the ash and looked down. “Yeah.”

She paused, so I did too. Leave space.

She looked both ways fast like something had passed, then, “He was just trying to get by. They didn’t pay him shit, but he thought if he could get this done, he’d get his own trailer down in Nevada.”

“That’s where he’s from?”

“Hell, I don’t know. But that’s what he said. Nevada.” And she did the looking both ways thing again.

Pause.

“How did he seem sick?”

Long draw and she stared at me with the inhale. “You know.” She glared. “You’re a doctor, ain’t you?”
I looked down to the worn vinyl and laughed a bit. “Ma’am, I am only getting to see this man after he is dead. I am asking you to tell me how he seemed before he died. Your observations will help me understand this.”

She exhaled toward the bathroom and continued her glare at me. We paused together there for a while.

“When he first came, he asked about squatting there. I told him about the landlord. Didn’t think he’d even know, lives in California. So, he set up.” Another puff. “We would have breakfast. Cooked another egg for him. I got to know him some. Damn, he worked hard.” She shook her head. “And now you want to know why he died?” The glare.

I smiled, as soft as I could. “It sounds like you knew him some.”

She waved the butt before her. The pastel housecoat covered her chest and breasts and belly and thighs. Her round, worn face, framed with oily stringy hair softened from her grating pronouncements. “Yeah, I knew him a bit.” She looked me in the face. “It was that work that killed him. Sure, he was fat, but then so am I.” And she laughed like a choked chain saw. “But running that torch all day, breathing in those gases, that’s what did him in.”

“So, he was having a hard time breathing?”

She laughed, and then coughed, then spit sputum into a Kleenex. “Hell, honey us fat people always have a hard time. I offered him my CPAP.” She laughed soft for a while.

“Did he have a fever these last few days?”

She seemed to jolt. “You know, he might have. Sweaty for dinner.”  The both-ways look again. Was this sincere or just her feeding me what she thought I wanted? Get me out of here.

“So, he seemed sick last night at dinner?”

She stubbed out the cigarette. It took a great effort to shift that body forward. She concentrated, then shifted back, coughed a bit, shallow and nodded. “It’s not like I knew he was sick or nothing, Doc. I just noticed he was weaker, slower, and he was sweaty at dinner last night. He didn’t eat much. He said he was feeling tired.” She stared at me with both her hands on the armrests.

“I guess I should have looked after him better.”

Here, I looked down to the worn and chipped floor. I shook my head. “Ma’am, I don’t come here to burden you. I am glad you could get to know him some. It sounds like he was a hardworking man living on the edge. Maybe we all should look after each other a bit better.”

Still standing, but done now, I looked down again at the vinyl squares. “Thank you,” I said to her, looking her in the eyes. And I let myself out.

The deputy stayed, I guess, until the funeral home came. I was gone by then.

Cause of Death: Pneumonia

Manner of Death: Natural

It’s not that I have anything against mobile homes. Folks gotta have a place to live. But I’ve had some bad experiences in mobile home parks as the county coroner. Is it the nearness to poverty? Is it the thin walls and lack of privacy? Is it the mud and detritus we pile up and our neighbors observe and resent? I can’t say I know. But I have seen some of it.

This call came to me on a rainy fall evening, after dinner, before the little girls were going to bed. The city dispatch lady told me I was needed south of town. It was in a mobile home park. She gave me a number.

My little rusty Hilux had new wiper blades, so I was doing great heading south. I had not asked any details, any name. Maybe that was because I was new to this and wanted to seem on solid ground. I knew my way in the rainy dark.

Or thought so. I turned into the entrance of the mobile home park and then started to wonder.

No numbers were visible, the cars half obstructed the graveled, muddy street between the single wides. Some had a light on, most just a slight glow from curtained windows. Some all dark here at 730 PM in the wet cool fall on the Palouse.

I kept going, expecting a city patrol car to be my clue. Down one line, around the dark turn at the bottom and back up another. Then the next loop. A lot of people lived here in this dense plot of sloping soil down by the creek. Over the coming years I would return here again. And again. I could tell all those stories now, but I need to find the scene.

On my third loop I saw the patrol car. The light shone from the newer single wide porch.

An officer stood there in the drizzle, probably wondering where the hell I was. Do all three loops to find the scene? Jezus.

I parked the Hilux behind a neighbor’s rig, since there really was no street parking. I shuffled to the slick steps and greeted the patrolman. “Detective Frye is inside.” He nodded to the door. I went through. The detective turned from some folks in the well-lit living room and ushered me back out into the drizzle.

Here, by the glaring 60-watt porch bulb he told me the story. We were on a slick 2×6 deck with a railing. This was a significant home improvement in this area.

“This is a bit long so you gotta stay with me on this.” He started.

The deceased is in the back bedroom, he went on. He gave me a name, and age, 26-year-old male. Maybe some trouble with drugs, no trafficking.  It seems there had been a confrontation this evening.

The deceased was recently married to a younger woman, maybe girl and they had just had their first child. This marriage had been forced by the father when the younger girl had become pregnant. It turns out our deceased’s wife was 17, probably 16 at the moment of conception. But she and the deceased seemed to be making a go of it.

I wondered if “the deceased” was going to be the litany of this story. But Detective Frye soon lapsed into calling him by his name. I appreciated he was trying to do the respectful thing.

But tonight, it seems another man had made a complaint to the father who had forced this marriage. It sounded like the dad was a real patriarch, though I never met him. Detective Frye told me I wouldn’t, since the old man was downtown at this moment giving his statement.

This evening the patriarch had received the complaint of another man, probably another patriarch, that his daughter, just 16 had been impregnated by “the deceased”. And there must be justice. The patriarch had agreed and had come to this single wide to confront his errant son to insist he make things right.

The young bride with the infant, and the patriarch’s wife, the mother of the deceased had witnessed the confrontation. The old man had insisted the son come with him to the police station to make a statement. Son had agreed, “I’ll do it Dad.” But he needed to go get his coat. He went into the back bedroom, and they all heard a shot. Dad checked, then called the cops. And so, we are here.

I’m getting drizzled on. Detective Frye has a hat. I ask, “So you think they are all telling the same story, old man and wife and mom?”

He nods.

“Let’s go look.”

I wipe my feet again on the welcome mat as the door is opened. I first go to the living room. An older woman is sitting by a young dark-haired woman with an infant in her arms. I introduce myself and tell them my purpose. The older woman looks at me with a glance of derision and the young woman doesn’t make eye contact. Coroners are rarely welcome.

We walk back down the narrow hall. The floor feels soft, like walking on a hay loft, or maybe a weak stage for some traveling troupe. It may hold up tons, but it gives with a good stomp.

The path to the bedroom goes past the bathroom. The door open and the light is on, white and clean. Detective Frye opens the bedroom door and moves to the side so I can go in.

All the floors are carpeted. But the springiness isn’t just the shag. It just feels soft. The strong odor of blood hits me. Warm blood is unmistakable. I had learned it early on in the operating room, but before, as a child I had toured our towns slaughterhouse. Seeing the rubber booted Mexicans handling the hanging carcasses, the pools of blood they waded in, had given me a strong reaction. And this smell is deep in my memory.

The red, pink splattering over all the white of the walls, the ceiling, the bedspread, the dresser almost came off as a design touch. But it was not consistent with the motif.

I turned from the wide dark red pool on the shag toward the crumpled body beyond. I didn’t want to go there just yet. I looked at some pictures on a dresser just inside the door.

Somebody had paid a photographer to enshrine the images. The dark-haired bride smiled but the skinny groom looked stiff, wan, strung out. There was another portrait with her holding the baby. He looked even more drawn, more quartered, more desperate, though grinning. And there were red splatters that masked the smiling family portrait.

That was all I would know of his face. For it was not present on his body. Few appreciate what a deer rifle does at close range to the human head.

He wore polyester pants and jacket, like he might have just gotten off work. He was lying on his front, back up at the foot of the bed. The red pool soaked the carpet from under him to the middle of the dresser. There was no way I could not step in it. I could see the butt of the rifle off to his left, the rest under him. I looked at Detective Frye. He winced; maybe like I was. I got closer, stepping into the red goo. There was going to be little room to turn him over between the foot of the white now splotched-pink fluffy queen bed and the dresser.

I bent over him. There was just the back of his scalp left. Two long shreds of skin hung from the back of his neck. The white ceiling above was stippled with red to a pink. In the center of the splotch was a dark hole where the jacketed round had left the single wide, through the acoustic ceiling tiles, then through the metal roof out into the wet night above.

“If you lift him up, I’ll clear the gun.”

I bent and grabbed his polyester jacket on the left and raised him as best I could. For some reason, maybe the blood made the floor feel more solid here. I pulled. The shreds of the back of his head drooped, and the movement made a sucking sound as the pool of blood beneath let him up. The detective pulled the bolt action rifle back and out.

It was then I looked ahead to a crib next to the bed. The flesh, the floppy mask of the skinny, scared young mans face laid there, looking up at me.

Somehow, the ballistics and trajectory brought the shards of the explosion here, to the crib. This shred had none of the worry, none of the sorrow in the portraits. It was just a flaccid, mobile mask, like someone might pull on for a masquerade party, with nothing behind it, just ready to fit the wearers face. It lay still in the white, small crib next to the big empty bed.

I said goodbye to the two women in the living room. Another derisive glare and another averted glance, and I was out onto the wet porch.

“Do we need an autopsy?” The detective asked. They always want an autopsy.

“No” I said. “I can call this.”

Cause of Death: Gunshot wound to the head.

Manner of Death: Suicide

Earl is trying to talk me into seeing this as an accident. “See, he could have pulled the shotgun this way by the muzzle across the seat. With the truck canted over on the slope like that it would be about right to hit him in the temple.”

I use all my patience not to laugh. I like Earl. He’s a good detective. He’s been out here on this back road in the dark for hours, taking pictures, setting up lights. He wants this to be an accident. It just isn’t. I have got to tell him so, one way or another. Kindly.

The call had come around 2AM. Dead asleep, not on call for my group, no lady in labor, so I was sound, dead asleep. But I still keep the skill of waking briskly whenever needed. The nice dispatch lady asks me to go to a scene in the far north of the county. For once, I know the location as she describes it. I used to hunt up past there. “Plus” she says, “You’ll see all the lights.” What? “They got all the night lights set up to investigate the scene.”

Sure enough, when I got there about 45 minutes later, in the chill of a dark late winter night, the whole valley glowed from the generator driven work lights. Their hum, roar, mutter kept a constant crowd noise in this isolated spot.

As I pull up, between the Sherriff’s Department rigs, I see a dirty four-wheel drive truck kind of on its side, down below the road. The passenger side is up against a tree. It doesn’t look like a wreck or a rollover, just like the little truck is tired and leaning on its right two wheels to take a break.

There’s a body back behind the truck, up on the road. I can’t really see it because they’ve thrown a red tarp over it. But there’s a blood trail in the gravel I can see leading from right outside the driver’s door to the tarp.

The road is gravel here. The pavement ran out a quarter mile back. The truck is off the outside of a turn. The drop off is steep, as is the uphill cut bank. If that little tree hadn’t held, she could have tumbled a few times before she landed in the river below. But instead, she’s on two wheels, the uphill ones up in the air. I can’t imagine rocking out of this stuck spot.

Earl tells me the story. “Well Doc, it looks like he got off the road here and couldn’t get back up on. See the spin marks under the tires? Hell, that little tree is starting to bend a bit since we got here. These uphill tires are six inches higher than they were. See, we think he reached across the seat to get his shotgun after he got stuck and it went off right in his hand.”

Rushing the story, a bit. I’m groggy. It’s cold. The lights make your breath a cloud at their angle. My nose is dripping. Back up a bit. Keep getting the story.

“Earl, who called it in?”

“Well, we got his name. Seems he came by and saw this guy dead on the road and the shotgun by him. He was worried someone shot him and might still be around, so he drove on. Called it in from Potlatch.”

“What time?”

“That was around ten.” And I’m here at 3AM. And these guys much longer. I appreciate that.

“Did he know him? Did the guy who called it in know the guy?” I gesture toward the tarp.

“No.”

“Anybody else see him today?”

“Well,” Earl shifts, “Somebody said they saw him with a passenger go through Potlatch this afternoon.”

“Jesus, Earl, you think somebody was with him when this happened?” I’m not being real kind here. I should have done better. But Earl plugs on.

“Not really, no sign of it. Course, the ground is frozen, and we wouldn’t see any tracks.”

“Who is this guy?”

He gives me the name, struggling with the pronunciation.

“You guys know him?”

“Well, yeah. He’s been taken in a time or two, mostly for drunkenness. Last time he was wacko, doc. He had to go to the State Mental Hospital for a time. Seems he’s got some mental problems, plus he drinks.”

“Where does he live?”

Earl smiles. “Up here somewhere. No one knows, really. When we took him in before he wouldn’t tell us where he was staying. Some of the guys are pretty sure it’s up one of these logging roads. I figure he’s built himself a hooch out here in the woods and just comes to town now and again. He’s a real looney, doc.”

Earl smiles at that, knowing I love medical terminology.

“But get this, doc. Look at all these papers we found on his front seat.” He goes over to the back of one of the rigs and pulls out a plastic Ziplock with the papers. “These describe his diagnosis, what the VA is treating him for and all his disability forms. Seems he was working with this lawyer in town to get the disability he wanted. And right here on top is the notice that he got it. Dated just last week. So, the guy should have been as happy as a pig in shit.”

I look down at the frozen gravel, almost white in the glare.

 I know this story.

The disability dance so many do for so long, and then what does it mean? I have watched patients fight, so sure they were right to get “their disability”, like it was a possession kept from them. Then, when granted, this long sought determination, it gives so little. But the fight, at least was over. And their touchdown dance was as pitiful as their chronic pain. This long-sought determination of permanent disability granted that they would receive a measly $759 a month was not a real victory. It was a sentence. But that’s maybe another story. Why is this guy dead?

I keep asking Earl questions. I’m putting off going straight to the body.  “Any family? Is he from here?”

“No, family back east somewhere. We don’t got no next of kin. But we’re going to call his lawyer in the morning, see if he knows anybody to contact.”

I’m feeling tired. And it’s cold. But I’m trying to respect the work my colleagues have done. They have put a lot of information together. “Can I look at those papers?” I take the Ziplock, but then ask, “Any booze in the truck, any medications?”

“Look for yourself, doc. Brandon, open up the door for him, would you?”

The deputy who has been standing by us goes to the driver’s door and opens it upwards.

The tilted cab is strewn with empty beer cans, Copenhagen tins, pop cans, candy bar wrappers, booze bottles and old papers. And mud; mud on the floor, mud on the pedals. It was like he couldn’t help but track it in. He lived in it when it wasn’t frozen. Or dust.

“Jesus.” I say again.

“Hate to find his hooch.” Brandon grins.

“Hell, it’s probably booby trapped, as crazy as this guy is.”

I look at the papers. Lots of government forms from VA hospitals with lots of diagnoses: Post traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit disorder, alcoholism, depression, personality disorder, chronic low back pain. There were the lists of drugs prescribed, but it looked like more miss than hit. I doubted any drug was going to cure what this guy suffered with.

“Where’s the gun?” I ask Earl.

He goes and gets it from his rig. Evidence. Pump action 12 gauge.

“Loaded?”

“We cleared it.”

“How many shells?”

“Four left.”

“Prints?”

Earl winces. “No.”

None? I look up startled.

“No but he was wearing gloves, doc. You’ll see.”

There’s still blood on the barrel and the pump handle. I’m standing in the road facing the driver’s side of the truck as it tips upward. At my feet is a bit of the blood and the trail leading back toward the tarp. I look up. There is a canopy of fir and spruce and cedar above, glaringly illuminated by the yammering lights. The cedar boughs hold bits of fat and blood smears that shine different in the tangent light. I scan. Bits of skull are across the cab and hood, as well as blood.

Not much of his head left, I guess.

No.

“Why did you move the body?”

“Had to get the lights in here, doc. Plus, he was kinda blocking the road.”

“Show me where he was lying.”

Earl and Brandon shuffle about, showing me with gestures where the body lay, where the gun was, what they had found.

“Let’s see him.”

We go back to the tarp. The light isn’t too good here. It’s crossways. I try to imagine their description of how he laid, and the gun.

“We gotta get him back into the light. I need to see what’s left of his head.”

Earl and Brandon and I drag him back toward where he was on the gravel by his rig. I put the vinyl gloves on in the cold so I can mess with his shredded head. I turn the shoulders so I can see his right temple. The skin left there is torn and ragged.

“Now show me how you think this happened.” I say to Earl.

He gets a hold of his eagerness and backs the story up to the beginning as he sees it.

“Well, we think he was actually headed out to town, see. There’s tracks up there on the cut bank where we think he turned around.” We all walk up beyond the glare about 40 yards to where there are fresh tire tracks in the uphill dirt. “So, as he’s headed out to town about nine or ten or so, he decides he’s forgot something, maybe and he turns around.”

“Any money on him?” I ask.

“Nine dollars.” Earl pauses. No robbery.

He continues. “Well, he’s drunk and can’t make this turn and drives off the downhill side here. He tries to drive out, but she won’t grab. So, he gets out to go get help. He thinks to grab his shotgun out a the front seat and it goes off as he’s pulling it toward himself.”

“And hit’s him right in the temple?” I ask, skeptical.

“Well, yeah.”

I exhale and shake my head. “Sorry Earl, that is a contact wound on his temple. He, or somebody, was holding that gun against his head when it went off. No powder burns, no distance from the muzzle to the skin. So, Earl, if no one else was here, and you don’t think this is a homicide….do you think it is?”

“No.”

“Then I’ve got a hard time seeing this as an accident. If he’s pulling the loaded shotgun toward him the shot would have gotten his arm, neck, the whole side of his face, and he’d have powder marks. But the blast hit him square in the right temple. Contact wound, or very near. The muzzle was less than an inch from his skin, maybe even up against it. Plus, look at all that spray.” I gesture toward the cedar branches with blood and brains above.

“I think he pulled the gun out, racked a slug in the chamber, put the butt on the ground, bent his head over the muzzle and pressed the trigger with his right finger.”

Earl and Brandon were quiet. “But why would he do that? When he just got all that money from disability and all? And his truck ain’t totaled. We could pull it up outa there easy enough. What’s the reason for suicide?”

I looked down at the frozen gravel. I thought of all the stories, the reasons, all the patients I have worked with as they struggled with their disabilities and whether they could get “Their Disability”. I had some idea, but I really didn’t know just how the brain, now gone from this dead man might have worked. And I kick frozen gravel.

“Earl, I’m not sure I know. I’ll talk to his lawyer in the morning. I know him. Maybe he’ll have an idea. But the scene says this was a suicide.”

I turn and walk back toward the Hilux, then turn back to them in the glaring, raging lights. “I’m gonna go. I’ll ask the funeral home to run his blood. I’ll talk to you guys in the morning.”

His lawyer was little help. “No way he’d kill himself now. We worked on this for two years getting him his disability. He should have been as happy as a pig in shit.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Thursday, four days ago. I gave him the final determination papers.”

“He seem okay then to you?”

“Yeah, he was fine. He was happy the judge had decided for him, and he would be getting regular money.”

“Thanks.”

Blood alcohol 280

Cause of Death: Shotgun Wound to the Head.

Manner of Death: Suicide