17

Jude

Much to Jude's surprise, he'd gotten an excellent night's sleep. He assumed he would have been up listening to Cope breathe, but he had gone out like a light the second his head hit the pillow. With Wolf and Lizbet spending the night at Ronan's house, the house had been perfectly quiet. He missed not waking up to his daughter's giggles when he changed her diaper and Wolf's breakfast chatter. Cope had needed the rest. He looked much better this morning. Ten's magical chicken and dumplings must have done the trick.

After a quick bowl of cereal for breakfast, Jude and Cope hopped into Fitzgibbon's SUV for their trip to the Essex County Medical Examiner's office. "How were the kids last night?"

"Pissy and exhausted. I think the heat's gotten to all of us." Ronan shook his head. "Six straight days at over ninety degrees is just too much."

"Agreed. What did you end up doing with the kids?" Jude had been feeling a bit testy himself but had chalked it up to Vic Rothschild attacking Cope.

"We tied them up in the backyard." Ronan laughed. "Kidding. Just kidding. I made an ice cream run. Picked up cookies and cream and all the trimmings, hot fudge, caramel sauce, whipped cream, and rainbow sprinkles. Everyone was in a better mood after that, thank goodness, or they really would have ended up outside."

"According to the news this morning, the heat wave is supposed to break when thunderstorms roll through later today," Fitzgibbon said.

"That will be good for my yard too. With Salem being under water restrictions, it's dry and brown. I'm half expecting a tumbleweed to blow through." Jude had been tempted to sneak into the yard and water it after midnight but in the end realized a green lawn wasn't worth depleting the water supply for those who had backyard gardens.

"I know my brain is still a little scrambled, but explain to me what we're looking for at the coroner's office. We have the autopsy report and the photographs taken during the postmortem, right?" Cope asked.

"Possibly some, but maybe not all," Fitzgibbon said, eyeing Cope from the rearview mirror.

"Wait, what?" Cope asked.

"There was a lot of speculation at the time of Domenica's death that coroner was in the Rothschilds' pockets and that maybe the doctor had been paid off to make it look as if Domenica jumped to keep Vic from being arrested and possibly sent to prison," Fitzgibbon said.

"Here's where things get interesting," Ronan jumped in. "Coroners gather all sorts of information they use along with the physical findings in order to tell the story of how someone died. They kept their own records of each case, and back in the eighties, before the law was changed, not every piece of evidence collected had to be presented in the coroner's final autopsy.

"For example, if someone died from a gunshot wound to the chest, the ME wouldn't necessarily add the pictures of the victim's feet. I hated getting incomplete files when I was first assigned to homicide. Since there were no photos of Domenica's back and chest included in the evidence we have, I'm hoping the rest of those photos are in a case file for us to find. Our goal today is to look at the full view of Domenica's autopsy to see if it brings us any closer to determining if this was a murder or suicide."

Jude hoped there would be a smoking gun in the records but wasn't overly optimistic. The case was forty years old. No records were kept on computers back in the day. When they'd gone to get Domenica's case file out of Salem Police storage, it took them hours to find the right boxes. It would be a miracle if there was any trace of Domenica's file at the medical examiner's office.

Twenty minutes later, Fitzgibbon parked the SUV. "Keep your heads, guys," he cautioned. "If the records are only partially there or are gone altogether, it's not the fault of the people here today. Let's not take our bad fortune out on them."

"Hell of a pep talk, Cap." Ronan rolled his eyes and opened the door to the building, holding it for the others.

The smell of industrial-grade cleaners hit Jude's nose the instant he entered the building. He supposed that odor was better than the smell of human decomposition, but not by much. Following the signs, he headed down the hallway until he reached the office of Dr. Christian Halstrom, the county coroner. He rapped on the door.

"Come in!" a loud voice called from inside the office.

Opening the door, Jude saw the doctor sitting at his desk. The man looked as if he were over seventy. His back was stooped, and Jude wouldn't be surprised to see him sitting on a cushion to boost himself up. His silver hair was scraped over the top of his scalp to hide his rapidly advancing baldness. Jude vowed to himself that if he started to lose his hair, he wouldn't resort to such desperate tactics to hold on to his lost youth. "I'm Detective Jude Byrne. I'm here with my cold case colleagues to see the Domenica Fibonacci file."

"Ah, yes, I spoke with a Detective O'Mara yesterday. He was quite angry that I couldn't lay my hands on a decades-old file. Ah, well, that's the gift of youth, I suppose." Dr. Halstrom sighed and pointed to a box sitting on a chair opposite his desk. "That's the Fibonacci file. Feel free to go over it in the conference room across the hall. I gave it a once-over and couldn't find any detail that would indicate if her manner of death was suicide or murder."

"Thanks, Doc." Jude grabbed the box and closed the office door behind him. He hoped there was a piece of evidence in the box that would give them something to accuse Vic Rothschild of. The man's emotions were obviously out of control, and after spending a night in the county jailhouse, he could well imagine it wasn't going to take much to push Rothschild over the edge to get him to confess.

Ronan opened the door to the conference room and flipped on the lights. "It's so cold in here. Do you think the ME would let me move in here for a week?"

Jude snorted. "You realize the morgue fridge is just down the hall, right? I wouldn't be caught dead in this building after dark."

"I'm with Jude," Cope said.

"Why the hell would I want to spend the night in the morgue when I've got a gorgeous man in my bed?" Fitzgibbon shook his head before turning his attention to the file. "Okay, Pandora, show us what's in your box."

Jude took the lid off and saw two file folders. One held the autopsy notes, and the other 8x10 color photographs. "Shit, that's it. There are no biological samples and no other evidence here."

"It was asking a lot for physical evidence to still be here forty years later." Fitz shook his head. "If memory serves, the old building that housed city records and the evidence freezer was flooded during the perfect storm back in October of 1991. A lot of evidence was lost in that disaster. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Domenica's biological samples were among the casualties." He reached for the file containing the autopsy and coroner's notes.

Ronan grabbed the photographs and started flipping through them. Cope stood behind him, looking over his shoulder. "Bingo!" He laid out three photographs of Domenica's back. "These aren't in the autopsy file we have. Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to help us."

Domenica's entire back was black and blue. There were large chunks of flesh missing, which Jude assumed could have been from the fall or from animal predation during the three days she spent in the water.

"Shit," Fitzgibbon muttered. "She was found floating on her back, which meant all the blood settled there. It's not possible to see if she had handprint bruises from a shove. Are there pictures of her chest?"

"There are two, but she's not bruised or chewed. I swear it's the only part of Domenica that wasn't marked in some way." Ronan shook his head. "This poor woman."

"There's more," Fitzgibbon said. "And it's worse. Much worse."

"What could be worse than being shoved off a cliff by your husband in the middle of a hurricane?" Jude found himself wishing he could take the question back. He suddenly didn't want to know what other horrors Domenica suffered at the hands of her husband.

Fitz shook his head sadly. "I've got the medical report from her time at the psychiatric hospital. Domenica was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, which, in layman's terms, is schizophrenia combined with the highs and lows of manic depression. The big red flag here is the bipolar rage. Apparently, Domenica wasn't just a danger to herself but to others as well."

"Jesus," Cope muttered.

"I've been looking into the drugs Domenica was being given." Fitzgibbon held up his phone. "She was on Haloperidol and Risperidone, both of which are antipsychotics, and was on a high dose of Valium to keep her calm and pliable."

"That's awful. Poor Domenica." Jude's heart broke for the young woman. "Is that all, Fitz, or are there more horrors waiting for us?"

"There's more." Fitzgibbon took a deep breath. "Due to her violent outbursts, she was physically restrained in her hospital bed. The doc treating her recommended Vic Rothschild employ the use of restraints when she was released from the hospital. He also prescribed the same pharmacological meds to keep Domenica drugged to the gills."

"Do you think that's why you're having a hard time reaching Domenica, Cope? Could all those heavy-duty meds be affecting her ability to communicate?" Jude asked.

Cope nodded. "It's definitely possible."

"Why did Rothschild bring her home?" Ronan's voice rose as he spoke. "Why wouldn't he have just had her permanently committed?"

"He brought her home to kill her," Jude muttered. What other explanation was there?

Fitzgibbon shuffled the pages of the medical report back into the folder and placed it in the box. "Let's go ask Rothschild. Maybe this is the piece of evidence we need to get him to give up the real story of what happened that stormy night."

If Jude had his way, Vic Rothschild wasn't going to know what hit him. Between what the vile man had done to his own wife and to Cope, Jude was coming for him.

Rothschild wasn't even remotely prepared to handle this storm.