Free The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters Page A

autopsy lights. And standing beside him, waiting for me, is the chief medical examiner of the state of New Hampshire. I stick out a hand in greeting. “Good morning, Dr. Fenton. Afternoon, sorry. Hello.”
    “Tell me about your corpse.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I say, letting my proffered hand float dumbly back to my side, and then I just stand there like an idiot, speechless, because Fenton is here, in front of me, standing in the stark white light of the morgue, one hand resting on the front end of her sleek silver cart like a captain at the tiller. She stares out from behind her famous perfect-circle glasses, waiting with an expression I’ve heard repeatedly described by other detectives, owlish and expectant and intense.
    “Detective?”
    “Yes,” I say, again. “Okay.” I get my act together and give Fentonwhat I’ve got.
    I tell her about the crime scene, about the expensive belt, the absence of the victim’s cell phone, the absence of a suicide note. As I speak, my eyes are flicking back and forth from Fenton to the items on her cart, the tools of the pathologist’s trade: the bone saw, the chisel and the scissors, rows of vials for the collection of various precious fluids. Scalpels of a dozen different widths and keennesses, arrayed on clean white fabric.
    Dr. Fenton remains silent and still through my recitation, and when at last I shut up she continues to stare, her lips pursed and her brow minutely furrowed.
    “Okay, then,” she says at last. “So, what the hell are we doing here?”
    “Ma’am?”
    Fenton’s hair is steely gray and cut short, bangs running in a precise line across her forehead.
    “I thought this was a suspicious death,” she says, her eyes narrowing to two flashing points. “What I’m hearing from you does not comprise evidence of a suspicious death.”
    “Well, yes, no,” I stammer. “Not evidence, per se.”
    “Not evidence,
per se
?” she echoes, in a tone that somehow makes me keenly aware of the basement’s unusually low ceiling, the fact that I’m standing slightly stooped so as not to bang my forehead on the bank of overhead lights, whereas Dr. Fenton, at five foot three, stands fully upright, her spine military-straight, glaring at me from behind the glasses.
    “Per Title LXII statute 630 of the criminal code of New Hampshire, as revised in January by the general court sitting in combined session,” Fenton says, and I’m nodding, vigorously nodding toshow her that I know all this, I’ve studied the binders, federal, state, and local, but she keeps going, “the OCME will not perform autopsies when it can be reasonably ascertained at the scene that the death was the result of suicide.”
    “Right,” I say, muttering “yes” and “of course,” until I can respond. “And it was my determination, ma’am, that there may have been some question of foul play.”
    “There were signs of struggle at the scene?”
    “No.”
    “Signs of forced entry?
    “No.”
    “Missing valuables?”
    “Well, the, uh, he didn’t have a phone. I think I mentioned that.”
    “Who are you again?”
    “We haven’t met, officially. My name is Detective Henry Palace. I’m new.”
    “Detective Palace,” says Fenton, pulling on her gloves with a series of fierce movements, “my daughter has twelve piano recitals this season, and I am, at this very moment, missing one of them. Do you know how many piano recitals she will have next season?”
    I don’t know what to say to that. I really don’t. So I just stand there for a minute, the tall and stupid man in the brightly lit room full of corpses.
    “Okey-dokey then,” says Alice Fenton with menacing cheer, turning to her cart of equipment. “This better be a goddamn murder.”
    She takes up her blade and I stare at the floor, feeling distinctly that what I’m supposed to do, here, is stand very quietly until she is through—but it’s hard to do that, it really is, and as she begins themeticulous stepwise progression of