The Forgotten Read online

  Despite their separation, once he had become an adult a part of Puller had always thought he would see Betsy Simon again.

  Just not like this.

  CHAPTER 14

  Bailey’s Funeral Home was a three-story brick building three blocks off the water and set on a half acre of mostly asphalt with a narrow perimeter of sunbaked grass. Puller parked his car near the front door, got out, and a few moments later entered the building. The air-conditioning hit him in a wave as he closed the door behind him. The place must have been at least twenty-five degrees cooler than outside and Puller was glad he was not paying the electric bill here. But then it occurred to him that every funeral home he’d ever been in had felt abnormally cold, even in New England in the middle of winter. It was like they didn’t have heat, only air-conditioning. Maybe that’s what you were taught in the funeral home business—keep everyone as cold as the clients in the coffins.

  There was a small reception desk set a few yards from the front door. A young woman attired all in black—perhaps another funeral home tactic to show perpetual mourning—rose to greet him.

  “I’m John Puller. I called before. My aunt Betsy Puller Simon is here?”

  “Yes, Mr. Puller. What can we do for you?”

  “I’d like to see her body, please.”

  The young woman’s smile disappeared. “See her body?”

  “Yes.”

  She was only about five feet tall and even in her clunky heels Puller was about a mile higher than she was. He could see her dark roots among all the blonde strands.

  “We would need to see some proof of your relationship.”

  “She kept her maiden name as part of her married one. Do you have that as part of her records?”

  The woman sat back down and clicked some computer keys. “We just have her listed as Betsy Simon.”

  “Who identified the body?”

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “Your records have to show that the body had been identified. The ME would have required that too. You can’t bury someone without confirming they are who you think they are. That might get your operating license pulled.”

  “I can assure you that we strictly follow all applicable laws and regulations to the letter,” she said in an offended tone.

  “I’m sure you do.” Puller took out his creds and showed her his badge and ID card.

  “You’re with the Army?”

  “That’s what it says. You want to kick me to someone higher in authority? You probably don’t want to make this call on your own.”

  The woman looked relieved by this suggestion. She lifted the phone, spoke some words. After a few minutes a man, dressed all in black with a white shirt that was so stiff with starch that it had left his neck permanently red, came out from behind a door with his hand extended.

  “Mr. Puller? I’m Carl Brown, how can I help you?”

  Puller showed Brown his cred pack and explained his situation. Brown looked suitably sympathetic. Puller figured that was taught in funeral home school as well.

  Brown led him off to a side room where there were empty caskets set on long tables. “It’s just that we have so many rules and regulations governing our industry,” said Brown. “We have to maintain the privacy and dignity of the people who entrust their loved ones to us.”

  “Well, her loved ones didn’t entrust Betsy Simon to you. I didn’t even know she was dead until a little while ago. And I didn’t request that her remains be brought here. Who did?”

  “The local police asked that we pick up her body. There are many retirees down here, and many live alone. Their families may be scattered around the country or even the world. It takes time to contact them. But leaving the body in a tropical climate such as Florida’s is not exactly, how shall I say, a respectful avenue to pursue for the deceased.”

  “I understand that an autopsy has been performed on her remains?”

  “That is correct.”

  “And the ME has released the body?”

  Brown nodded. “This morning. Apparently, she found no evidence of a crime or anything like that.”

  “Have you seen the autopsy report?”

  Brown said hastily, “Oh, no. That’s not something that would be shared with us.”

  “You have her contact information.”

  “I can get it, yes.”

  “Has anyone officially identified her body?” asked Puller.

  “Our records indicate that that was done by people on the scene who knew her. Probably a neighbor if she didn’t have family in town. But we would always prefer that family members come and confirm that.”

  “Well, here I am.”

  “Again, without—”

  Puller slipped the photo from his pocket and showed it to him. “I’m on the far right, Betsy is two over from me. It was taken years ago, but I don’t think she’s changed all that much. Look on the back of the photo. It lists all of our names. Is that good enough? I don’t see what other reason I would’ve come all this way to look at a body that didn’t have anything to do with me. The Army pays me to do better things with my time.”

  Brown looked ashamed by this last comment. “Absolutely. I’m sure they do.” He looked around, apparently to see if anyone was in earshot. “All right, if you’ll just follow me.”

  CHAPTER 15

  This room was even colder than the other spaces here, and there was a good reason for this. Dead bodies needed cold for preservation. Otherwise, the process of decomposition made human mortal remains extremely unpleasant to be around.

  Puller gazed down at the long figure on the marble slab. A sheet covered everything except her head. Puller was alone in the room; Brown was waiting just outside to give him some privacy. His aunt’s features were obviously very pale, but they were easily recognizable. He had had no doubt that she was actually dead, but at least now he had confirmation of it.

  Her hair had been tidied up and it lay flat against her head. Puller reached out and touched several of the white strands. They felt bristly, harsh. He took his hand back. He had seen many dead bodies in various states of decay, many far worse than his aunt’s condition. But she had been family. He had sat on this woman’s knee, listened to her stories, eaten her cooking. She had helped him learn the alphabet, come to love books, let him play in her house, make noise at all hours. But she also had instilled in him discipline, purpose, and loyalty.

  His old man had earned the three stars, but his older sister could very well have done the same, Puller thought, if she’d been given the chance.

  He estimated her height. About five-nine. She had seemed like a giant to him when he was a boy. Age had probably shrunken her as it had her brother. But she was still tall for a woman, as her brother was for a man. He had not seen her in a long time. He had not really regretted that in adulthood, as there were many other things to occupy his time. Like fighting wars. And finding killers.

  But now he did regret it, losing that connection with a woman who had meant so much to him growing up. And now it was too late to do anything about it.

  And if he had kept in touch with her would she be lying here on a slab? Maybe she would have contacted him sooner, let him know directly of her concerns.

  You can only play the guilt card so much, John. The fact is I couldn’t have saved her, no matter how much I might have wanted to.

  But maybe I can avenge her, if she was murdered. No, I will avenge her.

  He examined her remains in a more professional manner. This included a meticulous probing of her head. It didn’t take long to find it. An abrasion, a bruise really, over her right ear. It was covered by her hair, but clearly visible when he lifted the strands out of the way.

  Her scalp had been cut open and her facial skin pulled down during the autopsy to provide access to the brain. He knew this from the sutures on the back of her head. Puller also knew that a Stryker saw had been used to open her cranium so the brain could be taken out, examined, and weighed. A Y-incision had ope
ned her chest. He could see a few of the sutures resulting from this. All major organs contained therein would have received this same processing and scrutiny.

  Puller looked back at the abrasion. A blunt force trauma possibly inflicted by a third party, or it could be from where she had fallen and hit her head on the stone border of the fountain. There was a small cut, but he doubted it would have bled much. It was not in the area of the scalp, which had a superhighway of small blood vessels, all of which bled like a bitch from even a small slicing of the skin. He had seen one possible blood mark on the stone surround. But any blood that might have leached into the water would have quickly dissolved.

  The ME must have concluded that the bruising had been caused by the fall and impact with the stone. Blunt force trauma, particularly to the head, almost always led to a finding of death by homicide, but apparently not in this case.

  He wondered why.

  Bullock had said that the official cause of death was asphyxiation. Naturally that could occur from many things, such as diseases like emphysema or illnesses such as pneumonia or accidents like drowning. Criminally, death by asphyxiation only could be caused by three things, Puller knew.

  They were: strangulation, drowning caused by another party, and smothering.

  He gazed closely at her neck, looking for any signs of ligature marks. But the skin there was unblemished. And there was no venous engorgement—enlarged veins that would occur around the injury site due to the pressure and constriction of the blood vessels. When you squeezed something, it swelled.

  The other indicator of strangulation was not something Puller could see: an enlarged heart, particularly the right ventricle. He checked her lips for cyanosis, a blue discoloration around the lips that occurred with strangulation. There was no sign.

  Next he lifted the sheet and checked her hands. There was no evidence of cyanosis on her fingertips. And there were no defensive wounds or marks. If someone had attacked her, it did not seem that she had fought back. If she had been immobilized quickly she might not have had the opportunity to do so.

  He next checked her eyes and the area around them for petechial hemorrhaging, pinpoint reddish spots caused by the pressure on blood vessels. He found none.

  So smothering and strangulation were probably out. That left drowning, which was what the ME had cited as her cause of death. But was it an accident, or did she have help?

  Drowning had a number of different stages and left some forensic residue. When a person found himself in trouble in the water he typically panicked and flailed about, using up precious energy and causing lost buoyancy, resulting in the person going under. Then the person inhaled more water, which increased the panic level. They would hold their breath. Then pink foam would be exhaled when they had to take a breath and took in even more water. Respiratory arrest would ensue, and then would come the final battle, a few quick breaths to find air, and then it was over.

  Is that what happened, Aunt Betsy? thought Puller.

  If she had hit her head and been knocked unconscious before going into the water she would not have felt any panic. But if she had been conscious, but unable to lift her head out of the water because she was either too weak or disoriented, or because someone was holding her head under, it would have been a terrifying way to die.

  It would have been like waterboarding, only with the finale tacked on.

  He glanced at the doorway behind which Brown was waiting. He wanted to do a complete examination of his aunt’s body, but if Brown walked in and found the sheet off and Puller poking and prying around the woman’s naked body, things might get a little weird. And Puller might find his butt in a jail cell accused of all sorts of perverse behavior.

  He would just have to take it as faith that his octogenarian aunt had not been raped. But he did slide the sheet partially off her and performed a cursory examination of her arms and legs. At the base of her right calf he found another bruise, maybe from her fall. If so, that supported the theory of an accident. He put the sheet back and looked down at her.

  He drew out his phone and used the embedded camera to take pictures of his aunt’s covered body from various angles. Not exactly up to crime scene protocol standards, but he had to work with what he had.

  He could learn no more here, but Puller found himself unable to look away from his aunt, unable to leave her just yet.

  It had long been a family rule that Puller men did not cry under any circumstances. Puller always had adhered to that rule when fighting in the Middle East, where he’d had the opportunity to weep over dozens of lost comrades in arms. Yet he had broken the cardinal rule back in West Virginia when he’d watched someone he’d grown close to die. Maybe it was a sign of weakness. Or maybe it was a sign of his becoming less of a machine and more of a human.

  At this point he didn’t know which.

  As he continued to stare down at his aunt, he felt the creep of moistness around his eyes. But he did not allow it to build. There might be time to grieve later. Right now he had to figure out what had happened to Betsy. Until he had conclusive proof that said otherwise, the letter she had sent had convinced Puller that her death was not an accident.

  His aunt had been murdered.

  He left the dead behind and walked back to the living.

  But he would not forget her. And he would not fail her in death, as perhaps he had in life.

  CHAPTER 16

  Puller got the name of the medical examiner, Louise Timmins, from Carl Brown, and then left Bailey’s Funeral Home. As soon as he stepped outside the heat and humidity hit him like a DU round from an Abrams tank. After the frigid interior of the funeral home it was quite a shock. He took a breath, shrugged it off, and kept moving.

  He had a number of leads to run down. First, the medical examiner, where he hoped he could get a copy of the final autopsy report. Second, he had to try to track down whether his aunt had a lawyer and whether there was a last will and testament. And he had to talk to her neighbors, in particular the one who had identified her body. The neighbors in fact might know the name of Betsy’s lawyer, if she had one. And the methodical way his aunt had led her life told Puller that she probably did.

  He put the address of the medical examiner into his GPS and found it would take him past his aunt’s house. He put the Corvette in gear and drove off. He liked the way the car rode, although getting his tall body in and out of the low-slung vehicle was proving to be more difficult than he had thought.

  Maybe I’m just getting old.

  Twenty minutes later he pulled the car to a stop at the curb across from Betsy’s house. He took a few moments to look up and down the street for Hooper and Landry lurking but saw no sign of them. He unwound his long legs and got out. As he did so he saw a short, big-bellied man walk by on the other side of the street. He had a tiny dog on a long leash. It looked like a round ball of flesh with fuzzy cowlicks all over, riding on twigs masquerading as legs.

  When the man headed to the house next door to Betsy’s, Puller hurried across the street and caught up to him as he was putting his key in the lock.

  The man turned and looked startled. Puller could understand that, but there was something more in the man’s features.

  Real fear.

  Well, Puller was a big guy and a stranger and he had busted in on the man’s personal space. But Puller thought he knew why the guy seemed to be shivering in ninety-plus-degree heat.

  He was the one who called the cops on me.

  Puller whipped out his cred pack and showed his ID card and badge. “I’m with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division,” he said, and the man immediately stopped shaking. “My aunt was Betsy Simon. I was told of her death and came down to check into things.”

  The man’s face showed his full level of relief. “Oh my goodness. Then you’re John Puller Jr. She talked about you all the time. Called you Little Johnny. Pretty ironic considering your size.”

  The innocuous comments deepened the guilt Puller was still feeling. “T
hat’s right. Her death was quite a shock.”

  “It was to me too. I found her body. It really was awful.” He looked down at the dog that sat quietly next to its master. “This is Sadie. Sadie, say hello to Mr. Puller.”

  Sadie gave a little yap and lifted her right paw.

  Puller smiled, bent down, and shook it.

  “I’m Stanley Fitzsimmons,” said the man. “But my friends call me Cookie.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I used to be in the bakery business. Desserts specifically.” He pointed to his belly. “And as you can see, I sampled everything I made. Would you like to come in? It’s the hottest part of the day and neither Sadie nor I are really heat people. I only had her out because she had to use the bathroom and I needed a bit of exercise too.”

  “If you’re not a heat person, why move to Florida? I’m assuming you came from somewhere else.”