Double Whammy

Most Florida counties employ a full-time medical examiner, or coroner, to handle the flow of human dead. Rural Harney County could not justify such a luxury to its taxpayers, so each year the county commission voted to retain the part-time services of a pathologist to serve as coroner when needed. For the grand sum of five thousand dollars Dr. Michael Pembroke was taking his turn. The job was not unduly time-consuming, as there were only four thousand citizens in the county and they did not die often. Most who did die had the courtesy to do so at the hospital, or under routine circumstances that required neither an autopsy nor an investigation. The few Harney Countians who expired u

When news of Robert Clinch's death arrived at the laboratory, Dr. Pembroke was staring at a common wart (verruca vulgaris)that had come from the thumb of a watermelon farmer. The scaly brown lump was not a pleasant sight, but it was infinitely preferable to the swollen visage of a dead bass fisherman. The doctor tried to stall and pretend he was deeply occupied at the microscope, but the sheriffs deputy waited patiently, leafing through some dermatology pamphlets. Dr. Pembroke finally gave up and got in the back of the squad car for the short ride to the morgue.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Dr. Pembroke asked, leaning forward.

"It's Bobby Clinch," the deputy said over his shoulder. "Musta flipped his boat in the lake."

Dr. Pembroke was relieved. Now he had a theory; soon he'd have a cause-of-death. In no time he could return to the wart. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

The police car pulled up to a low red-brick building that served as the county morgue. The building had once been leased out as a Burger King restaurant, and had not been refurbished since the county bought it. While the Burger King sign had been removed (and sold to a college fraternity house), the counters, booths, and drive-up window remained exactly as they had been in the days of the Whopper. Dr. Pembroke once wrote a letter to the county commission suggesting that a fast-food joint was hardly the proper site for a morgue, but the commissioners tersely pointed out that it was the only place in Harney with a walk-in freezer.

Peering through the plate-glass window, Dr. Pembroke saw a pudgy man with a ruddy, squashed-looking face. It was Culver Rundell, whose shoulders (the doctor remembered) had been covered with brown junctional moles. These had been expertly biopsied and found to be nonmalignant.

"Hey, doc!" Culver Rundell said as Dr. Pembroke came through the door.

"Hello," the pathologist said. "How are those moles?" Pathologists seldom have to deal with whole patients so they are notoriously weak at making small talk.

"The moles are coming back," Culver Rundell reported, "by the hundreds. My wife takes a Flair pen and plays co

"Why don't you come by the office and I'll take a look."

"Naw, doc, you done your best. I'm used to the damn things, and so's Jea

Culver Rundell ran a fish camp on Lake Jesup. He was not much of a fisherman but he loved the live-bait business, worms and wild shiners mainly. He also served as official weighmaster for some of America's most prestigious bass tournaments, and this honor Culver Rundell owed to his lifelong friendship with Dickie Lockhart, champion basser.

"Are you the one who found the deceased?" Dr. Pembroke asked.

"Nope, that was the Davidson boys."

"Which ones?" Dr. Pembroke asked. There were three sets of Davidson boys in Harney County.

"Daniel and Desi. They found Bobby floating at the bog and hauled him back to the fish camp. The boys wanted to go back out so I told 'em I'd take care of the body. We didn't have no hearse so I used my four-by-four."

Dr. Pembroke climbed over the counter into what once had been the kitchen area of the Burger King. With some effort, Culver Rundell followed.

The body of Robert Clinch lay on a long stainless-steel table. The stench was dreadful, a mixture of wet death and petrified french fries.

"Holy Jesus," said Dr. Pembroke.

"I know it," said Rundell.

"How long was he in the water?" the doctor asked.

"We were kind of hoping you'd tell us." It was the deputy, standing at the counter as if waiting for a vanilla shake.

Dr. Pembroke hated floaters and this was a beaut. Bobby Clinch's eyes were popping out of his face, milkballs on springs. An engorged tongue poked from the dead man's mouth like a fat coppery eel.

"What happened to his head?" Dr. Pembroke asked. It appeared that numerous patches of Robert Clinch's hair had been yanked raw from his scalp, leaving the checker-skulled impression of an under-dressed punk rocker.

"Ducks," said Culver Rundell. "A whole flock."

"They thought it was food," the deputy explained.

"It looks like pickerel weeds, hair does. Especially hair like Bobby's," Rundell went on. "In the water it looks like weeds."

"This time of year ducks'll eat anything," the deputy added.

Dr. Pembroke felt queasy. Sometimes he wished he'd gone into radiology like his dumb cousin. With heavy stainless surgical shears he began to cut Robert Clinch's clothes off, a task made more arduous by the swollen condition of the limbs and torso. As soon as Clinch's waterlogged dungarees were cut away and more purple flesh was revealed, both Culver Rundell and the sheriffs deputy decided to wait on the other side of the counter, where they took a booth and chatted about the latest scandal with the University of Florida football team.

Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Pembroke came out with a chart on a clipboard. He was scribbling as he talked.

"The body was in the water at least twenty-four hours," he said. "Cause of death was drowning."

"Was he drunk?" Rundell asked.

"I doubt it, but I won't get the blood tests back for about a week."

"Should I tell the sheriff it was an accident?" the deputy said.

"It looks that way, yes," Dr. Pembroke said. "There was a head wound consistent with impact in a high-speed crash."

A bad bruise is what it was, consistent with any number of things, but Dr. Pembroke preferred to be definitive. Much of what he knew about forensic medicine came from watching reruns of the television show Quincy, M.E.Quincy the TV coroner could always glance at an injury and a

The pathologist signed the death certificate and handed it to the deputy. Culver Rundell read it over the lawman's shoulder and nodded. "I'll call Clarisse," he said, "then I gotta hose out the truck."