“Get somebody to take this thing apart,” Baker ordered. “How long will it take to dismantle it?”
“The whole thing?” Alan Dale asked.
“No, just enough so we can see to work.”
About ten minutes or so,” Dale told him, “if all you want me to do is open a lid over the track.”
Dale started to summon the lounging stagehands who were clumped in a subdued group on the far side of the stage. I’m sure he intended to put them to work on the decking, but Baker squelched that idea in a hurry.
“No. Just you,” he said to Dale. “I don’t want any unnecessary fingerprints.”
“It’ll take a lot longer,” Dale said.
“That’s all right,” Baker returned. “It’ll be worth it.”
Alan Dale pulled a small battery-operated drill from his tool belt and slid under the decking. We heard the rat-a-tat-tat of the power drill as it loosened the bolts. Meanwhile, Doc Baker sauntered over to us.
“I don’t know why you guys didn’t have brains enough to take up that decking before I got here. Nobody could have gotten under there.”
I managed, barely, to keep my mouth shut. None of the smart-ass remarks I could have laid on Doc Baker right then made it past my lips. Of course, he was right. It would have made a hell of a lot more sense for us to have gone ahead and had Dale raise the planking before Baker got there, but I’ve worked with the medical examiner too many years not to know that that would have pissed him off too. Nobody pleases Doc Baker in the middle of the night. It was far better for him to have made the decision himself after he got there, even if everything was delayed a good forty-five minutes.
After several long minutes, Dale finally raised one corner of a section of decking. “Have somebody come take this, will you?”
Two of the stagehands came over, but they did so with considerable reluctance. By now, everyone who was still in the theater knew there was a body lurking under the decking, and no one was eager to be the one to uncover it.
Baker directed the stagehands to take the section of decking and lean it against the back wall. A few minutes later, another section came off. As the lid opened up, the stench became more pronounced. Only in the movies do people die with their eyes and mouths closed. Only there is death a sanitary, odorless, painless process.
When the last section of decking came off, Alan Dale erupted from the opening and made for the fresh air outside the alley door on the other side of the stage. For two cents, I would have joined him.
Impervious, Doc Baker hopped down from the decking into the opening and motioned for the photographer to follow. I saw the look of horror on her face, but she eased her way into the opening behind him. Soon intermittent flashes from the camera told us she was doing her job.
Sergeant James, Agent-in-Charge Wainwright, and I moved slowly to the edge of the opening. It was bad, as bad as anything I’ve ever seen. It was Dan Osgood. His face was recognizable, but that was about all.
The worm-gear drive, moving in its track like the spiral center piece in a meat grinder, had pushed the body ahead of it, even as the gear itself had torn into him. Eventually his body had been caught between two supporting struts that stood on either side of the track. The pressure of the body, stuck between the struts, had created enough countervailing stress to force the worm gear from its track.
It was a terrible way to die, a horrifying way to die. Doc Baker pulled himself up out of the hole onto the decking, shaking his shaggy head.
“Why didn’t he try to get away?” I asked.
“Hands and feet were both tied,” Doc Baker answered. “Not only that, it looks as if he was probably out cold.”
“Drugged?” I asked.
Baker nodded. “I imagine.”
Now the photographer, too, was climbing out of the pit. In the stark light of the stage, her face was ashen, but there was no other visible sign of distress. “I’m done, Dr. Baker,” she said, moving past us to the sidelines.
“I’ve been told we’ve got a positive ID,” Baker said to Sergeant James. “Is that true?”
The sergeant looked at me. “What do you think, Beau?” he asked.
“It’s Dan Osgood, all right,” I answered. “Is his wife still down at the department?”
Sergeant James shook his head. “No. I sent her to her mother’s in a cab a while ago.”
“You working this case, then?” Doc Baker asked me.
Sergeant James answered for me. “No. Beau and Big Al already have their hands full.” He turned to the DEA agent in charge. “Wainwright, are you going to want this to be a joint investigation?”