Known Dead_ A Novel - Donald Harstad [44]
Peters worked out of a single-story office-laboratory that was well furnished and well staffed. He wasn’t the only pathologist who worked out of that office, but he was by far the best. You could tell from the attitude of the nurses and secretaries, and from the occasional confirmatory questions coming from the other docs. It was amazing. He’d just think about something he wanted, and there it would be, in the hands of a staff person. From tools of the trade to coffee and rolls. And the worst part was, he didn’t demand that sort of thing. They just wanted to do it for him.
Hester and I were ushered in with just a little fanfare, which pleased us both. Peters met us at the main entrance, and we followed in his wake back to a large conference room. Coffee, rolls, napkins, sugar, tea, cream . . . plus two ring binders containing the autopsy records of both Howie Phelps and Bill Kellerman.
‘‘How do you want to start, Carl?’’ Dr. Peters’s way of asking where the problems were.
‘‘Well,’’ I said, fighting off the urge for a second doughnut, ‘‘we have no suspects. Period. So we gotta get to know the people who did this.’’
Peters nodded. ‘‘Let’s do that, then.’’
He opened the autopsy binder for Howie Phelps. Arthur George Phelps, according to the death certificate. ‘‘Turd’’ wasn’t mentioned. The cause of death was listed as ‘‘multiple gunshot wounds, chest, abdomen, and head,’’ with the manner of death simply given as ‘‘homicide.’’ Dr. Peters’s diagrams were there, drawn onto the standard human body outlines—anterior, posterior, left, right, top—with similar views of the skull. The entrance and exit wounds were shown by small round dots in the former, and by larger oblong shaded areas in the case of the latter. Simple, so far.
‘‘Had a little problem with the paths of the bullets,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘I drew lines from the entrance to the exit wounds for each round, and they just didn’t make sense.’’ He grinned. ‘‘Until I discovered that projectile three exited above projectile two. Otherwise, there would have been more than two shooters. But there wasn’t. Three just hit the spinal column more centrally, and was deflected more to the right and up. Almost passed through the channel caused by two, and came out . . .’’ He looked at his notes. ‘‘. . . five centimeters above it.’’
‘‘Sure.’’ Hester half squinted. ‘‘Let’s see, then one shooter was above . . . but according to the diagram was maybe less than a foot higher?’’
‘‘Close enough,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘The ground measurements place the, oh, geographical I suppose, height of the shooter about five to six inches above the target location. If the shooter was taller, a foot could be right. We only have an angle of a few degrees.’’
‘‘How much taller?’’ I asked.
‘‘Well,’’ chuckled Dr. Peters, ‘‘that’s not an easy one. There’s just such a variety of shapes involved in the human body . . . but unless the shooter was deformed,’’ he continued, ‘‘I’d say he was probably four inches taller than little Mr. Phelps here.’’
‘‘Ballpark taller?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘Ballpark taller,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘But fairly reliable. The ground there isn’t quite level. Let’s say about fivenine or five-ten.’’ He looked at me. ‘‘And fairly strong.’’
I looked at Dr. Peters with my eyebrows raised, over the top of my reading glasses. He was waiting for that.
‘‘Not much rise from the recoil. First round hits just below and to the right of the victim’s navel, really, and they travel upward and to the shooter’s left. But not much. Last one entered in the torso just below the victim’s right collarbone. Mean distance of about eleven inches, but a rise of about nine.’’ He paused for a second. ‘‘The principal head wound would, initially, appear to have come from above, but I feel that it, along with at least one of the others, was made while the victim’s body was folding at the waist, as it traveled backward.