Free The Mourning Sexton by Michael Baron Page B

“That is not possible.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Several years back, I worked on two infant fatality cases involving rear-facing seat restraints in the front seat. As a result, I became somewhat of an expert on air-bag design. There are not many of us, and Sam Avery most certainly is not one. I learned that all air bags have multiple vents in the back. Without exception. The vents are an essential design element that ensures that the bag stays inflated for less than half a second. Which is not to say they can't cause injury. Air bags inflate with explosive force—explosive enough to have knocked this young lady unconscious, perhaps even given her a concussion. But the bag would have deflated a fraction of a second later.” He shook his head. “She did not suffocate against an air bag.”
    “But you still believe that she suffocated?”
    “That's my opinion.”
    “How? And when?”
    Granger picked up the medical examiner's report and adjusted his reading glasses. “Do you see this observation?”
    He turned the page toward Hirsch and pointed to a line of text.
    “Petechial hemorrhages,” Hirsch read aloud.
    “Exactly. Petechial hemorrhages in the eyes.”
    “What are they?”
    “Red splotches in the whites of the eyes. The usual cause is the restriction of blood flow in the head area. Here, I would venture to say that the cause of that blood flow restriction is linked to this observation.”
    He pointed to the phrase
slight compression of soft tissue of neck.
    “What does that mean?” Hirsch said.
    “I can't be one hundred percent certain without an autopsy, but in my judgment the most likely cause of death was manual strangulation.” He shook his head sadly. “I'm afraid there would have been plenty of pain and suffering.”
    Hirsch tried to grasp the implications.
    Granger leaned over one of the morgue shots with the magnifying glass, studying her neck. “It's barely detectable in the picture,” he said, frustrated. “They should have taken a close-up.”
    He sat back and gazed at Hirsch.
    “David, based on what I've reviewed here, I'd say that it is more likely than not that someone strangled that poor girl. Strangled her, stuck her behind the wheel of that car, and then drove it into a tree. You wouldn't need much of an impact to trigger the air bag. Moreover, if you were seated in the passenger seat and could brace yourself for the moment of impact, you could actually run the speed up high enough to do some impressive damage to the front end of the vehicle without seriously injuring yourself.”
    Granger removed the reading glasses and studied Hirsch. “I suppose one could try to construct another scenario out of this evidence, but this is the one that seems most likely to me.”
    He put his glasses back on and peered at the front page of the medical examiner's report.
    “Judith Shifrin. The name sounds familiar.” He looked up. “Who was she?”

Part Two
“Take care, your grace, those things

over there are not giants but windmills.”
    Sancho Panza to Don Quixote

CHAPTER 9

    “D oovid?”
    The hoarse whisper registered somewhere along the edge of his consciousness.
    “Doovid.”
    Louder this time.
    Hirsch looked up from his prayer book. Mr. Kantor stood before him, eyebrows raised. He was holding out the
pushke
. Hirsch fumbled for his wallet, removed a pair of dollar bills, and stuffed them into the silver box. Mr. Kantor nodded and moved down the aisle.
    Hirsch tried to focus on the service, but his thoughts kept returning to yesterday's meeting. Granger refused to elevate his cause-of-death scenario above hypothesis. Nor would any competent pathologist, he assured Hirsch. Without an autopsy, no one could be certain that Judith Shifrin had been murdered. The existing evidence was strongly suggestive but incomplete. The only potentially conclusive evidence would have been a fractured hyoid. Manual strangulation occasionally fractured the hyoid, which was a small bone in the neck