Conklin made the short walk from the back exit from the Hall of Justice lobby, along the breezeway to the ME’s office in under two minutes. He was thinking about this murky case of a dead woman who was not actually dead, and a John Doe who was gunned down in flagrante delicto.
Conklin reviewed Sackowitz’s case notes one more time. He’d written that no weapon had been found at the scene of the crime and that the John Doe’s wallet was missing. He and Linden were still working the hotel angle, trying to get an ID on the dead man.
If they could figure out who the John Doe was, they might be able to learn why he was shot in the first place.
Was the John Doe the target? That would make Joan Murphy a victim of circumstance. And why hadn’t the shooter finished off Joan Murphy? She had witnessed the crime, after all. Had the shooter assumed that she was dead?
Could be.
According to the reports, she’d been covered with blood, both hers and the John Doe’s. Her muscles had gone rigid. Her breathing and pulse had hardly been there, and were so delicate that they’d become undetectable. Apparently, neither the cops nor the ME techs had ever seen anything like this before, and Murphy’s deathlike state had fooled them all. How scary was that?
Conklin pulled open the double glass doors to the ME’s office as another question popped into his head. Why hadn’t anyone heard the shots?
But he shook his head, clearing out his mind. There were several people waiting in the reception area to see Claire: some were cops, others legal aides and administrators who worked at the Hall. He needed to get control of this situation before it got out of hand.
The receptionist knew Conklin, so as soon as he saw him he said, “She’s waiting for you, Inspector. Go on in.”
Conklin knew his way around the ME’s office and took the main corridor, which led to the autopsy suite in the back.
Claire was gowned and masked. Her assistants were backing her up as she worked on the postmortem assessment of a young boy with a visible head injury. She saw Conklin come in and covered the child with a sheet. Then she shucked her gloves and put on a clean pair. She picked up a large brown paper bag from an empty table and said, “Let’s go into my office, Richie.”
As he stood with her in her office, Conklin watched Claire open the paper bag on her desk and take out the large, blood-red leather handbag with what looked to be expensive stitching and details.
Claire said, “This purse belongs to Joan. I also have bags of her clothes and those belonging to the John Doe. But let’s look at the contents of her handbag first.”
She began taking items out of the handbag. There was a nice-looking wallet, a makeup case, keys, and an assortment of other commonplace items.
“This is a pricey bag,” Claire told Conklin. “It appears that Mrs. Murphy is a woman of means.”
She handed over the wallet. Conklin opened it and looked through the contents.
Claire said, “Look at this.”
She was pointing to a photograph under plastic of a man and woman at a resort, their backs to the ocean. Claire flipped the sleeve over, and Conklin read the inscription. “Robert and Me, Cannes, Second Honeymoon, 2016.”
Claire said, “Notice the necklace Joan is wearing in the photograph. That pendant is a helluva big diamond. There is a similar enormous rock in her engagement ring, and the wedding band is encrusted with other precious stones. Look at all the glittering bangle bracelets. Joan clearly likes her diamonds.”
“A girl’s best friend, right?”
“That’s what they say. But, Richie, no jewelry was found on her person or in her bag.”
“She was robbed.”
“That’s my first guess.”
Conklin made notes, then said, “What do you say, Claire? Can you introduce me to Mr. Doe?”
“I’m dying to meet the man myself,” said Claire.
They walked back to the autopsy suite and Claire pulled open the drawer next to the one that had been vacated recently by Joan Murphy.
Conklin found the unknown man to be as described. He was a white male who seemed to be in his thirties. He had a slight paunch and a lot of chest hair. From his conservative haircut and manicure, Conklin guessed that the guy was some sort of businessman. He looked like he could be a sales executive of some sort.
Conklin told Claire what Sackowitz had put in his case notes. “He was found naked, lying on the naked body of Mrs. Murphy.”
Claire said, “That seems right. Looks to me like he took the first two shots to his back. Then, he probably turned to face the shooter and that’s when he got this one to the underside of his biceps. It went through the muscle and into the chest. That could have been the slug that stopped his heart forever.”
Conklin said, “So, who do we think was the shooter? Mrs. Doe? Did she get someone to let her into the room so she could kill her husband? It’s a logical explanation. An obvious one. Or could it have been Mr. Murphy, who killed the man cuckolding him? Is that why his wife was spared?
“And if the motive was a domestic beef,” Conklin continued, “why take the jewelry? Was it staging, to make the shooting look like a robbery?”
Claire listened as Conklin continued theorizing out loud. He said, “Or was it, in fact, a robbery? A stranger gets into the room or he was waiting in the room. He gets the loot and John Doe’s wallet. But why didn’t he give Mrs. Murphy a shot to the head so she couldn’t testify? Was he convinced she was dead?”
Claire cut off his musings, saying, “Here’s my theory. Anyone would have been convinced that that woman, Joan Murphy, died in that hotel room. You see, there’s an unusual condition called ‘catalepsy.’ If this is that condition, it’s my first experience with it. I know that death is a many-part process. Different parts of the body cease at different times. Skin lives for twenty-four hours after a person dies, for instance.
“So, catalepsy is a nervous condition that looks like death even though it’s an attenuated slow-down. If Mrs. Murphy had not been refrigerated overnight, she would have suffered brain death and she would have died.”
“Okay, so what causes catalepsy?”
“Could be a number of things. Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, cocaine withdrawal. It can be a side effect of an antipsychotic. And one of the most common causes can be traumatic shock.”
Conklin said, “She had to be pretty traumatized, all right. You think her memory will ever come back?”
Claire shrugged and said, “It’s possible. Let me know, will you? I can’t really explain it, but I feel somewhat attached to Joan. I want to know what happened to her and why.”