As she’d done almost every
working day for the past year, Dr. Aparajita Chatterjee, medical examiner for
Polk County, Iowa, closed her file on the geologist Clyde Renner but let it sit
on her desk for a full ten minutes, simply thinking about what the autopsy
results implied, wondering who she should ask for an independent interpretation
of the results, and sometimes shaking her head. She’d never seen a case like
this one—so simple and obvious yet so complex, with so many people involved and
such an unsatisfying set of conclusions, especially with those traces of
veterinary pharmaceuticals in his blood. The unusual mix of attorneys, donors,
and hackers who showed up at the college immediately after Renner’s death, and
the apparent reasons for their interest in Renner’s work, only added to Dr.
Chatterjee’s feeling that there was more to the scientist’s demise than just a
routine heart attack and stroke.
The deceased had been delusional,
that much was clear from the interviews and the conditions under which he was
found, but there was nothing in the results that actually showed, at least convincingly,
that his mental state was a significant contributor, or even an immediate one,
to his death. Dr. Chatterjee struggled with that last conclusion, based only on
statistics from similar cases over the previous decade. There had been times,
in the past year, when she’d let her imagination run wild, and in the process
found herself thinking not like the cool, analytical, pathologist she was, but
almost like a writer working on her fantasy novel about a perfect murder.
According to the interviewees, the man had no friends or close colleagues in
his department at the small college where he reigned over a geology department
filled with typical scientists and a couple of subdued staff members, women
paid a pittance and expected to perform daily miracles, especially in the case
of that accountant. Dr. Chatterjee had detected no outright hostility in any of
these people, only a silent anger and an unspoken sense of relief that Clyde
Renner was dead.
Renner’s mental condition,
inferred from what his colleagues had said about him and what she’d found in
his house, was no worse than others she knew about. Although infested with
fleas and bedbugs, and cluttered with empty vodka bottles that should have been
in the trash, or recycled, the house at 409 Cherry Lane, where he’d been found
in the kitchen lying next to his starving and dehydrated Irish setter, was not
the worst she’d ever been in to deal with a body. Her files contained cases of
true psychotics—including serial killer victims, suicides, women who’d been
beaten to death by their husbands, and kids who’d overdosed on whatever
combination of drugs happened to be in vogue among the young and stupid. Yet
there was something about the Renner case that just refused to disappear from
her thoughts and resisted the closure that a medical examiner needs in order to
proceed with a clear mind to the next unexpected death under suspicious
circumstances.
She opened the file again, for
maybe the two-hundredth time, and read through all the interview transcripts,
her own assessment of Renner’s blood chemistry and histological specimens, and
the descriptions of his home provided by those who’d had early access,
including that guy from Homeland Security, the FBI agents, Renner’s son, and
the nice but decidedly small-town policemen. Dr. Chatterjee’s education
included an undergraduate degree, with honors, from Harvard, medical school
also at Harvard, a residency in pathology at Johns Hopkins, and a doctorate in
molecular biology from Case Western Reserve. None of this education, or her
subsequent experience, seemed to help her forget about Clyde Renner, put the
file away, and get on to the next challenge.
Dr. Chatterjee looked out her
office window at the sleet and snow moving sideways, blanking out the familiar
scene that told her she was at work: industrial buildings, a warehouse, and
run-down frame houses. She needed to go home before she was locked in by the
blizzard. She looked at her watch; 10:23 AM. She would never forget the time
when her smart phone played its familiar tune, or the number that was now
displayed on the small screen in her hand.
This excerpt is the prologue from THE STITCHER FILE, which is the second of the Gideon Marshall Mystery Series. It's available as an e-book from all the regular online sources.
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