Chapter 9 - After Hours
Questions
This was too much for some of the more emotional people in the room, and a brief commotion broke out, though it was nothing compared to the turmoil in my own mind.
Detective William stopped by around nine the next morning.
“So,” he said, “what about our late-night visitor last night?”
“Could go either way,” I answered. “I wouldn’t bet my life that he’s our guy, but I couldn’t swear he wasn’t either.”
“So you’re still not sure about him?”
“That’s right.”
Detective William nodded, reminded me about the coroner’s hearing, and left. He didn’t mention the hat.
At ten o’clock I got ready to head to the county building. I’d never been to an official hearing like this before, and I felt a little nervous about it. But by the time I’d grabbed my keys and checked myself in the mirror one last time, I’d gotten my confidence back. After all, I was the key witness in a murder investigation. That was nothing to take lightly.
I called an Uber to take me to the hearing, and I left my house with a small crowd of neighborhood kids gathered on the sidewalk, probably hoping to catch some drama. But I wasn’t about to let their curiosity get to me. I kept my chin up and my shoulders straight, the way my father always taught me to carry myself. Doing the right thing isn’t always comfortable, but that’s exactly when people with backbone need to step up.
I walked into the hearing room at exactly ten o’clock and was shown to my designated seat. I usually don’t care about what people think, but I couldn’t help noticing all the eyes on me. I made sure to conduct myself in a way that would make it clear I was a respectable member of this community. I owed that much to my father’s memory, and he was very much on my mind that day.
The coroner was already seated at the front of the room when I arrived, a stern-looking woman in her fifties with sharp eyes and graying hair pulled back in a tight bun. Though I didn’t spot Detective William anywhere nearby, I was sure he was within earshot. I didn’t pay much attention to the other people in the room, except for glimpses of that cleaning woman, with her flushed face and worried eyes, as the crowd shifted between us.
None of Captain Mike’s family was visible in the main room, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. From certain signs, I was pretty sure at least one family member was in the smaller adjoining room where they could hear everything without being seen by the witnesses and jury.
Sarah was the first to testify. She described what I had told her while on night shift and how she’d entered Captain Mike’s with the cleaning woman. She gave all the details about finding the woman’s body in the dining room, and made a point of saying that no one, and here she looked directly at me, had been allowed to disturb the scene until backup arrived from the station.
The cleaning woman went next, and if no one else in that room was watching her carefully, I certainly was. Her behavior in front of the coroner struck me as just as off as it had been at Captain Mike’s. She jumped visibly when they called her name and looked genuinely frightened when they held out the Bible for her to swear on. But she took the oath anyway, and that’s when the real questioning began.
“What’s your name?” the coroner asked.
Since that was something she obviously had to know, she answered quickly enough, though in a way that suggested she thought it was rude of her to ask what she already knew.
“Where do you live? And what do you do for work?” came the rapid follow-up questions.
She said she was a cleaning woman who worked in small businesses, and after that answer, she got this stubborn, defensive look that I thought was strange enough to make anyone watching wonder what was going on. But everyone else seemed to write it off as just nerves.
“How long have you known Captain Mike’s family?” the coroner continued.
“Two years, sir, this coming Christmas.”
“Do you work for them regularly?”
“I clean the restaurant twice a year, fall and spring.”
“Why were you at the restaurant two days ago?”
“To scrub the kitchen floors, sir, and get the storage areas organized.”
“Had you been asked to do this work?”
“Yes, by Robert Murduck.“
“And was that your first day working there?”
“No, sir; I’d been there the whole day before too.”
“You need to speak up,” the coroner said. “Everyone in this room needs to hear your answers.”
She looked around with obvious fear at all the people staring at her. Being the center of attention clearly made her miserable, and her voice got even quieter instead of louder.
“Where did you get the key to the restaurant, and which entrance did you use?”
“I go in back door, and I pick up key from office on Pine Street. I have to go get myself, sometimes they send to me, but not this time.”
“Now tell us about meeting Sarah, the manager, next door on Wednesday morning in front of Captain Mike’s.”
She tried to explain what happened, but she made a mess of it. They had to keep asking follow-up questions just to get the basic facts. Eventually she managed to repeat what we already knew, how she’d gone into the restaurant with Sarah and how they’d found the dead woman under the table.
They didn’t push her beyond that, and I had to sit there and watch her return to her seat, even redder in the face than before, but with this oddly relieved expression that told me she’d gotten off easier than she’d feared. And yet Detective William had been warned that she was hiding something, and by someone he seemed to trust!
Dr. Patel was called next. Her testimony was crucial, and it contained a surprise for me and even bigger surprises for everyone else. After some preliminary questions, she was asked to state how long the woman had been dead when she’d been called in to examine the body.
“More than twelve hours but less than eighteen,” was her measured reply.
“Had rigor mortis set in?”
“No, but it began very soon after I arrived.”
“Did you examine the injuries caused by the falling table and the broken decorative pieces that came down with it?”
“I did.”
“Can you describe them for us?”
She did so in clinical detail.
“And now”—there was a pause in the coroner’s questioning that made us all lean forward—“which of these serious injuries was the actual cause of death?”
Dr. Patel was clearly comfortable in this setting. She looked respectfully at the coroner, then turned slowly toward the jury and answered in a deliberate, authoritative tone:
“I’m prepared to state that none of them were. She was not killed by the table falling on her.”
“Not killed by the falling table? Why not? Wasn’t it heavy enough, or didn’t it hit her in a fatal way?”
“It was certainly heavy enough, and it struck her in a way that would have killed her, and if she hadn’t already been dead when it fell. As it was, it simply damaged a body that had already lost life.”
Since she was putting it so bluntly, many people in the crowd who hadn’t known these details before showed their shock in very obvious ways. But the coroner, ignoring the growing buzz of excitement, pressed on:
“This is a very serious statement you’re making, Doctor. If she didn’t die from injuries caused by the table and debris falling on her, what did kill her? Are you saying her death was natural, and the table falling was just an unfortunate accident that happened afterward?”
“No, sir. Her death was definitely not natural. She was murdered, but not by the falling table.”
“Murdered, but not by the table? How then? Was there another injury you consider fatal?”
“Yes, sir. Suspecting she’d died by other means than what was obvious, I conducted a thorough examination of her body. I discovered a tiny mark hidden under her hair at the base of her neck. When I investigated further, I found it was the entry point of a small, thin piece of metal. It had been inserted by a steady hand into one of the most vulnerable spots on the human body. Death would have been instantaneous.”
This was too much for some of the more emotional people in the room, and a brief commotion broke out, though it was nothing compared to the turmoil in my own mind.
So that was it! Her neck had been pierced, not her heart. Detective William had let us assume it was the latter, but that wasn’t what stunned me most. What really got to me was the skill and cold-blooded precision of whoever had delivered that killing blow.
After order was restored, which happened pretty quickly, the coroner continued with increased seriousness:
“Did you recognize this piece of metal as part of any medical instrument?”
“No. The steel was too cheap and soft to have been manufactured for any surgical or cutting purpose. It was very ordinary metal, and it had broken off clean in the wound. I only found the tip.”
“Do you have that tip with you, the point that you found embedded at the base of the victim’s skull?”
“I do.” She handed it over to the jury. As they passed it around, the coroner added:
“Later we’ll show you the rest of this murder weapon” which definitely didn’t help calm anyone down. Seeing the crowd’s growing agitation, the coroner decided to ride the wave of interest and push forward.
“Doctor,” she asked, “can you tell us how much time passed between this fatal wound and the injuries from the table?”
“No, not exactly. But some time definitely elapsed between them.”
Some time, when the murderer had only been in the restaurant for ten minutes! Everyone looked stunned, and the coroner, apparently sensing the general confusion, leaned forward and repeated emphatically:
“More than ten minutes?”
The doctor clearly understood how important her answer was, but she didn’t hesitate. Her mind was obviously made up.
“Yes. Definitely more than ten minutes.”
That was the bombshell that hit me from her testimony.
I thought about what I’d seen on that POS system, but I kept my expression completely neutral. I was getting better at staying composed through all these revelations.
“This is an unexpected finding,” the coroner said. “What evidence do you have to support this timeline?”
“Very straightforward medical evidence that’s well-established in the field. There was far too little blood for those injuries to have occurred at or near the time of death. If the woman had been alive when the table fell, or even if she’d only been dead a few minutes, the floor would have been covered in blood from such severe trauma. But the bleeding was minimal, so minimal I noticed it immediately and reached my conclusions even before I found the fatal puncture wound.”
“I see. And is that why you called in two other doctors to examine the body before it was moved?”
“Yes. In a case this significant, I wanted my assessment confirmed.”
“And those doctors were…”
“Dr. Martinez from the medical center, and Dr. Chen from the urgent care clinic on Oak Street.”
“Are these doctors here today?” the coroner asked an officer nearby.
“They are, ma’am.”
“Good. Let me ask you a few more questions first. You said that even if the woman had been dead only a few minutes when she received these crushing injuries, there would have been much more blood. What’s your reasoning?”
“Within that timeframe, let’s say ten minutes, since that number’s been mentioned, the body hasn’t had time to cool down significantly, and the blood vessels haven’t stiffened enough to prevent substantial bleeding.”
“Is a body still warm ten minutes after death?”
“It is.”
“So your conclusions are based on established medical facts?”
“Absolutely.”
There was a long pause.
When the coroner continued, she said:
“These discoveries complicate the case, but we can’t let that discourage us. Did you find any identifying marks on the body?”
“One, a small scar on the left ankle.”
“What kind of scar? Describe it.”
“It appeared to be from a burn. It was long and narrow, running up from the ankle bone.”
“You said the left ankle?”
“Correct.”
“Did you show this mark to anyone during or after your examination?”
“Yes. I pointed it out to Detective William, to my two colleagues, and I mentioned it to Robert Murduck, the son of the restaurant owner where the body was found.”
This was the first time Robert Murduck’s name had been mentioned in the hearing, and I felt a chill seeing all the sideways glances and meaningful looks it triggered in the crowd. But I couldn’t dwell on that, the testimony was getting too important.
“And why,” asked the coroner, “did you mention it to this young man specifically?”
“Because Detective William asked me to. The family and Robert Murduck himself had expressed concern that the victim might be his missing wife, and this seemed like a way to settle the question.”
“And did it? Did he confirm it was a mark he’d seen on his wife?”
“He said his wife had a similar scar, but he wouldn’t acknowledge that the victim was her.”
“Did he examine the scar himself?”
“No. He refused to look at it.”
“Did you ask him to?”
“I did, but he showed no interest.”
Probably thinking silence would emphasize this striking fact, the coroner paused. But there was no silence, an anxious murmur rippled through the crowd. I felt sorry for Captain Mike’s family, whose reputation was being damaged by Robert Murduck’s behavior.
“Doctor,” the coroner continued after the noise died down, “did you notice the color of the victim’s hair?”
“Light brown.”
“Did you save a sample? Do you have a specimen with you?”
“I do. At Detective William’s request, I cut two small locks. I gave him one and brought the other here.”
“Let me see it.”
The doctor handed it up, and in full view of everyone present, the coroner tied a string around it and attached a label.
“That’s to prevent any mix-ups,” the coroner explained, setting the hair sample on the table in front of her. Then she turned back to the witness.
“Doctor, thank you for your valuable testimony. Since you have other obligations, we’ll excuse you now. Please call Dr. Chen.”
Since Dr. Chen and the doctor who followed simply confirmed what Dr. Patel had already established, that the table had fallen on the woman some time after the fatal wound was inflicted, I won’t repeat their testimony here. What I was wondering now was whether they’d try to pin down exactly when the table fell by using evidence from that POS system I’d noticed.