She had a point there. Sixty percent of men who commit suicide use a gun—I knew this because I’d done a lot of reading about suicide—but only 30 percent of women. And a shotgun? Rare for a woman, I was sure, and difficult. Ernest Hemingway had turned a shotgun on himself—he’d fired both barrels of a twelve-gauge, in fact, a feat that required not just long arms but also quite a lot of desperation and determination and coordination—but Hemingway was a six-footer. I tried to recall Angie’s height, but without much success. “Was your sister tall? Did the coroner measure her arms to see if she could’ve reached the trigger?”
Angie sighed. “She was only five three. But it was a short-barreled shotgun. Eighteen inches. She could have done it, but she didn’t. He did.”
The conversation was difficult for me. Clearly Angie was devastated by her sister’s death, and I wanted to help her, but I doubted I could corroborate her theory. “Why do you think her husband killed her?”
“Because he’s an asshole. Because he’s controlling and manipulative and aggressive. Because he fits the profile of an abusive domestic partner. Because they had a fight the night she died.”
“An argument fight, or a physical fight?”
“Borderline,” she answered. “They were out at a nightclub, and he got mad because she was talking to some other guy. He dragged her out of the bar and shoved her into the truck and laid down a bunch of rubber in the parking lot. There are witnesses to that part. Next morning, he claims, he found her body on the sofa.”
“He didn’t hear the shotgun go off in the night?”
“He says he dropped her at the house and went back out. ‘To think,’ he says. Yeah, right. And supposedly, when he came home a couple hours later, he walked straight through the living room without seeing the bloody mess on the sofa, and went to bed. Thought she’d gone somewhere, he says. Thought maybe she’d come down to see me. Didn’t find her in the living room till he got up a few hours later. So he says. Bullshit, I say.”
“His story sounds weak,” I admitted. “But the fingerprints on the gun—hard to argue with those, unless you’ve got some evidence to refute them. Some way to show that he put her hands on the gun.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s driving me crazy that I didn’t have a chance to work the scene.”
“Is that because it would have been a conflict of interest for you?”
“It’s because she lived a half hour north of Tallahassee, in Georgia. The Cheatham County Sheriff’s Office worked the scene, if you could call it ‘working.’ The investigator didn’t exactly go over things with a fine-tooth comb—I’ve talked to him, and trust me, he’s no Sherlock Holmes. And the coroner swallowed her husband’s story hook, line, and sinker. So they released the scene only a few hours after the 911 call. There are photos, but only a few, and they’re not great. I’d’ve taken dozens, but the guy who worked it took seven. Seven pictures of my sister’s death.” She sighed again.
“Was there an autopsy?”
“No. Apparently the coroner took one look at her body and ruled it suicide.”
“Any chance you can persuade him to let a good Florida M.E. take a look?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve got a better shot at winning the Florida lottery . . . and I don’t even buy tickets. You think a Georgia coroner would take a chance on a Tallahassee M.E. coming into his county and revealing him to be an incompetent idiot? Not bloody likely. Besides, it’s too late. The body’s already at the funeral home. She’s being buried tomorrow.”
My mind was racing—a condition I found pleasing, fascinating, and slightly—very, very slightly—worrisome. Before Angie had phoned, I’d felt sluggish and depressed. I was behind schedule in grading the Human Origins exams, not because I’d been stupendously busy, but because I knew that once the grades were posted, I’d be finished until fall, and things would get quiet—unbearably quiet—on campus. I’d told myself that I would use the summer lull to begin writing a journal article recounting an experiment I’d conducted, using sonar to find submerged bodies. But the truth was, I was having difficulty generating any enthusiasm for the task; in fact, so far, all I had to show for hours at the computer keyboard was a blank screen. I’d written a hundred or more opening sentences, but I’d deleted each one after rereading it. In my mind’s eye, I saw the summer opening up before me, and frankly, the opening looked a lot like a yawn. I’d probably end up spending most of the summer pretending to write, all the while casting guilty glances at the phone—the damnably silent phone.
Now, though, the phone had rung, bringing me a forensic case, and I felt like a new man: energetic, engaged, and alive with a sense of purpose. I was sorry that the case was the death of Angie’s sister. But I was glad that there was a case.
“Angie, I have an idea,” I said. “Do you know any good lawyers in Georgia?”
“No, but I know a lot of bad ones in Florida,” she answered. “Does that help any?”
“Probably not. Let me call somebody who might be better connected. Maybe he could help us get a court order authorizing a forensic examination.”