“What we got?” The doctor was young, short, and plump, with a slicked-back mullet. A tiny snowflake of toilet paper clung to a razor cut on his left jawline.
“Oriental male, forty-five to fifty-five, five-six or -seven. Been dead at least twenty-four hours, judging by the smell,” Pyykkonen reported.
The doctor packed Vicks just below his nostrils, pulled on latex gloves with a snapping sound, and carefully opened the door. “Ripe,” he said without emotion. It struck Service that people who handled human remains handled them with the same detachment that conservation officers handled animals, proof that death leveled all living things. The doctor’s deliberate, efficient movements told Service he was experienced.
“We need the air temp and humidity both inside and outside the vehicle,” the M.E. said to one of his techs, sniffing. “You smell that?”
Service had no idea what the man was talking about. The gasses from the body made it impossible for him to smell anything else except the pervading stench of dead fish. “Just the body,” the tech said.
“I thought I caught a whiff of ammonia,” Pyykkonen interjected. “But I could have been mistaken. This is starting to be a real stinker.”
“Bitter almonds,” the examiner said.
“Cyanide?” Pyykkonen said, perking up.
The doctor leaned into the Saturn and used a Popsicle stick to open the dead man’s mouth, illuminating it with a penlight clamped between his teeth. “I’m guessing HCN or KCN,” the doctor muttered over his shoulder. “Want to take a look here?” he added.
Pyykkonen leaned forward.
“Corroded,” the doctor mumbled, holding the mouth open. “See the blistering?”
The detective nodded.
The M.E. stepped back and widened the beam of his flashlight. “Skin’s red as cherries,” he said. “Consistent with cyanide and this temperature, but we’ll do the slab-and-lab and let science keep us off Wild-Ass-Guess Boulevard.”
Service shined his light on the scat pile in the backseat but made no attempt to collect it until Pyykkonen gave him the go-ahead. The site was hers and his job was subsidiary. Over the last year, he had encountered too many stiffs in the course of duty. His boss, U.P. law boss Captain Ware Grant, was constantly reminding him to stay focused on fish and game law—which was what he wanted, too—but sometimes you ended up far afield.
The homicide detective stood with her hands on her hips, studying the car. “We’ll call this a crime scene until we determine otherwise,” she said. “Death under suspicious circumstances. Rigor is present,” she added. “Which probably means death twelve to thirty-six hours ago. And his arms defying gravity suggest he died somewhere else.”
The M.E. grunted.
Service was impressed at the detective’s pragmatism and wondered what had gone wrong in Lansing for her to lose her job there.
Pyykkonen fetched her camera from her vehicle and began to take photographs of the scene, starting first at the corners of the area she had taped off with long-range shots, and working her way up to mid-range, then close-up shots. She worked silently and methodically, her camera clicking in the dark, the flash illuminating the surrounding area.
“Don’t forget the shit,” Service said over her shoulder.
“It’s all shit,” she said back to him.
After the photographs were taken, another deputy arrived and helped her to lift fingerprints. They then began a long, slow inspection of the interior of the Saturn, using tweezers to collect fibers and hairs and anything else they could find that might help in the investigation.
Eventually Pyykkonen cleared Service to collect the animal scat, which he placed in a plastic evidence bag in a cooler in the back of his vehicle. He found several long hairs mixed in the feces and several scrapes on the leather seating. Scratches? He wondered.
“Got a learned opinion?” she asked.
“Bear shit, I’d say. I’m not sure about the hair. Feels and looks like bear, but the colors are wrong. These are blond, almost white.” He added, “Out West black bears range in color from light to dark, but ours are all deep black.”
“Maybe this fella found a polar bear shitting in his backseat and his heart stopped,” she said.
“That would do it for me,” Service said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll ship the samples off to our lab and Gus can give you a bump when we have results.”
“How long?” she asked.
“Couple of days,” he said, not sure how much work the Rose Lake Lab had these days. “Maybe a week,” he added, amending the estimate.
“No prob,” she said. “The shit’s not likely to be crucial here.” Maybe, Service thought, but you didn’t often find bear scat inside a vehicle. On them sometimes, but not in them. The scat might not be critical, but it meant something, his gut told him.