Chat - Archer Mayor [6]
The diver had slipped fully into the freezing water by now, barely disturbing its surface except for the bubbles escaping from his regulator. It had once seemed like overkill to Joe, all this scuba gear for a job that might have been achieved with a pair of waders, but Vermont’s waters proved deadly for people who didn’t treat them with respect, and by now he’d become easier with a little more caution holding sway over a mishap, especially for a dead body. Besides, as he’d been told more than once, these calls were good practice for when a life did hang in the balance.
The diver, clearly milking the moment, circled the body, examining it from all sides. They even saw the reflected flash of his waterproof camera as he took a picture.
Eventually, though, he reached out and began shepherding the source of his interest toward shore, where a tall, skinny man waited quietly. This was the death investigator from the medical examiner’s office, who, along with the state’s attorney and the police, formed the judicial three-legged stool on which rested the fate of the unexpectedly dead in Vermont.
Joe nodded, half to himself. “Well, guess we’d better introduce ourselves to the mystery guest,” he said, and moved toward the embankment, where a rope had been rigged to help with the snow’s slippery surface.
The ME’s rep was Alan Miller, a twenty-year EMT whose primary job was as a carpenter. Joe, who’d worked with him a number of times, had always found him to be a quiet man of peaceful demeanor, and sometimes wished that he’d found a happier part-time occupation. Death investigation seemed a dour way to complement the more optimistic pursuit of emergency medicine.
But Miller clearly didn’t see it that way. His face lit up when he saw Joe—or better Sammie, Joe reasonably suspected.
“I didn’t see you two hiding out,” Miller said, shaking hands. “Find anything interesting?”
“Nothing,” Sam responded gloomily, ignoring him in favor of the corpse now being hauled onto the small beach area.
Miller followed her gaze just as the body was rolled over onto its back. “Well,” he said, “maybe we’ll get luckier here, or at least up in Burlington.”
Joe didn’t say anything, hoping he was right. Burlington meant the ME’s office and Dr. Beverly Hillstrom, a prime example of how a state like Vermont could still sometimes attract the very best professionals. More than once, she’d pulled a miracle out of thin air when Joe thought he had run dry of possibilities.
Miller pulled on a pair of latex gloves as he approached the deceased. “Not a very remarkable-looking guy, is he?”
That was hard to argue. The body was waxy-pale and tinged with the blue typical of cold-weather deaths, but he was relatively fresh, possibly dead for under ten hours, and the rushing water had kindly washed away the seepage that a dry corpse produces in short order.
“Looks like a clerk out of an old movie,” Sam agreed.
The man appeared to be in his mid-thirties to early forties, bald with a fringe of hair above his ears and around the back. He was neither fat nor thin, tall nor short, handsome nor hideous. Joe had to agree with Sam—this was a portrait of utter blandness. The Invisible Man in three dimensions, dressed for winter.
Miller was now standing astride him, as if getting ready to squat down and sit on his chest. In fact, he merely hovered so his hands could roam freely just above the man’s surface, carefully unbuttoning and unzipping and peeling back layers of clothing, searching through pockets as they were revealed. He didn’t actually take anything off, but by the time he was finished, most aspects of the man’s anatomy were available for inspection.
But in terms of revelations, despite the treasure hunting aspect of the process, the conclusion matched the introduction—and Sam’s opening appraisal.
As Miller reiterated