Dead Even

Book 12: Mattie Winston Mystery

by Annelise Ryan

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

In her previous career as a nurse, Mattie Winston's job was to keep death at bay. Now, as a medicolegal investigator, she's required to study death intimately—to figure out causes and timing, and help deduce whether it was natural or suspicious.



In the case of Montgomery "Monty" Dixon, a well-to-do Realtor, there can be little doubt: Broken pool cues do not embed themselves. Monty's body is found in the game room of his lavish house, the walls adorned with photos of Monty and various celebrities. But as Mattie and husband Steve Hurley, a homicide detective, both know, money and connections can't protect anyone from a killer.



The first suspect is Monty's wife, Summer, who claims to have been at a cooking class at the time. When that alibi is served up as a fake, Summer moves to the top of the suspects list, but is soon joined by Monty's ne'er-do-well son, Sawyer, who has racked up gambling debts he hoped his dad would pay off. Monty's twin brother is engaging in shady financial deals. An affair, a Ponzi scheme, a disputed inheritance . . . there are as many motives as suspects, and soon Mattie and Hurley have turned up other, possibly related deaths.

Release date: March 30, 2021

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Death is an unwelcome and relentless stalker in everyone’s life. It comes when it wants, sometimes with warning, sometimes with stealth, disrupting all around it, stealing happiness, contentment . . . one’s very breath. And sometimes, like today, it comes in a bizarre fashion so unpredictable and tragic as to seem completely random. Yet there is little natural randomness here. Based on what I was told when the call came in, this death was clearly planned, aided, and abetted by at least one of us mortals, though I suspect the planning portion lasted about as long as the hot-dog morsel my toddler son dropped on the floor for our dog, Hoover, at dinner a few hours ago.

Death is what I do. My name is Mattie Winston and I’m a medicolegal death investigator in the Wisconsin town of Sorenson. My job used to be forestalling death to the best of my ability. I worked as a nurse in the local hospital for the first thirteen years of my career, six in the ER and seven in the OR. But these days my job is to stalk death much the same way it stalks the denizens of the county I live in. I help determine how death arrived, whether it had any human or other help along the way, and if it did, who or what that might have been.

Apparently, death is a busy stalker tonight, because it’s supposed to be my night off. But Christopher Malone, the person I job-share with, called and begged for help because he already has two other deaths to tend to out in the county. At least the call I’m on is relatively close, a home just beyond the outskirts of town and only a few miles from my own house. It’s a large, sprawling ranch on several acres of land and set back from the road, accessed via a long driveway that splits off and circles around a fountain in front of the house on one side and leads to a three-car garage on the other. It’s an isolated setting, the nearest neighbors on either side being a half mile or so away.

The façade on the house is stone and stained-wood siding, the windows are tall and arched, and outdoor lighting has been strategically placed to highlight an immaculate lawn, tasteful landscaping, and a utility shed that’s bigger than the cottage I called home a few years ago. As I climb the stairs to the front porch, I’m serenaded by a chorus of crickets and cicadas. The smell of lilacs in bloom permeates the air and I know this will cause some pain for Hurley. He hates the smell of lilacs because they were his mother’s favorite flower and there were tons of them at her funeral. He associates the smell of them with her death.

Inside the house, a uniformed officer points the way and says, “Room at the end of the hall.” I follow his directions, taking in the open living room and kitchen as I walk through. Judging from the high-end finishes and state-of-the-art kitchen, the people who live here clearly have money. I walk down a hallway and pass another uniformed officer, Brenda Joiner, and a woman who is leaning against the wall, her head hung down, long black hair obscuring her face.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” I say, and Brenda nods. The woman with her doesn’t move. I open the door to the room at the end of the hall and go inside, closing the door behind me.

When I reach the dead man, slumped onto the floor, back against a wall, feet splayed out in front of him, I can’t help but think that life is the one thing money can’t buy. I recognize the victim, not because I know him, per se, but because I know of him. His name is Montgomery Dixon and he’s a well-known, highly successful real estate agent here in Sorenson. I’ve seen his FOR SALE signs all around town for years, all of them featuring his picture in one corner. He also advertises in the local rag all the time, again with his picture plastered on every ad.

My recognition of him won’t serve as an official identification—that will require family identification, a comparison to his DMV photo, and, if they are on file, a comparison of his fingerprints, or perhaps dental records. But all of that will be mere routine because anyone living in or near Sorenson will know the man when they see him, even with his face altered by the flaccid, almost plastic mask of death he wears now. He’s a handsome man, even in death, with a full head of brown hair, brown eyes, and cherubic cheeks. Though they aren’t visible now, I know he has dimples in each of his cheeks. I’m not sure of his age at this point, but I’d guess somewhere in his mid-to-late forties.

In some ways, this scenario resembles other unexpected deaths I’ve seen. There is an odd look of surprise on the man’s face, something I’ve witnessed many times before in sudden death victims. If not for two things, I might think his death was from something like a major heart attack or the rupture of an artery inside his brain, causes that have left that look of surprise on the faces of other victims. One telltale sign that this is not the case is the darkening pool of blood spreading out around him. Trails of it have run down his T-shirt, pooled in the lap of his sweatpants, oozed over his hips, and seeped down into the cracks of the hardwood floor. The other clue that this was not a natural death is the broken shaft of a pool cue protruding from the man’s chest near the area of his heart. I’ve seen people die a lot of different ways, but death by cue stick is a new one.

I set down my scene kit, open it, and remove a small video camera. A cursory exam of the victim is enough to tell me that there is no need for the EMTs, though I wonder if they were here already and left, or if they were never called.

“Devo,” I say to the uniformed officer standing guard near the door to the room. “Was EMS called?”

Devo, better known as Officer Patrick Devonshire, is busy looking at something on his phone. His distraction annoys me—we’ve become a society of downward-looking, phone-obsessed people—but in his case, it’s a necessary evil. Devo doesn’t do well with blood, guts, decay, or any of the other fun things my job may entail. If he sees or smells any of these for any length of time, the odds of him barfing on my crime scene are better than good. The phone is his way of keeping his mind otherwise occupied and his stomach contents where they belong. He barely looked at me when I entered the room a few moments ago, and now he answers my question without taking his eyes from his phone.

“They were called. A guy came in and checked the vic for a pulse, shined a light in his eyes, and then said he was fixed, dilated, and already cold. Then he stated the time and left. That was at ten twenty-eight.”

“Only one EMT?”

“There were two of them, but only one touched the guy.”

“You got their names?”

“Of course,” Devo says with a hint of indignation.

“Where did the EMT touch him to check for a pulse?”

“On his neck,” Devo says. “Right side,” he adds, anticipating my next question and making me smile.

“And did he have to lift the victim’s eyelids?”

“Nope. Poor guy’s been staring wide-eyed like that the whole time.”

I make a mental note of all of this because it’s possible the EMTs might have left trace evidence behind, and then I shoot a quick video of the body where it is. The narrow end of the cue stick, about three feet of it, is on the floor beside the victim’s left foot. Where it was broken from the rest of the shaft, there are sharp, jagged shards of wood. The broken end of the remaining, thicker portion of the stick—the weapon of choice—is embedded in the man’s chest.

A scan of the rest of the room reveals two beer bottles on a side console table—one empty, one with a small amount left in the bottom—a second cue stick atop the red-felted pool table, five pool balls on the table’s surface, including the cue ball, and the remaining balls in a tray at one end of the table. I get all of this on camera thinking that between the balls, the cue sticks, and the beer bottles, there should be a wealth of fingerprint and DNA evidence.

Three walls of the room are covered with framed photos, the fourth wall holds a cue stick rack next to the door with four sticks in it and two empty slots. I walk around and study the pictures, all of which have been taken here in this room with the pool table in the background. They all feature Montgomery Dixon and one or two other people, most of whom are also recognizable because they are members of the rich-and-famous elite. There are pictures of Montgomery with governors—current and past—and other politicians, including a high-ranking and well-known senator. There are pictures of him with a famous hotel magnate; with a B-level movie star, who owns a vacation home not far from here; with a well-respected movie producer; and with some less famous, more local dignitaries, such as the mayor of Sorenson, a couple of doctors I know, and a local artist, who recently earned national acclaim with his unique sculptures. Clearly, Montgomery Dixon rubbed elbows with some very powerful, wealthy, and important people.

I set my camera aside, pull on a pair of gloves, and then do a cursory exam of my victim. His skin is cold to the touch and the flesh on his jaw and neck is stiffening, indicating he’s been dead for a couple of hours. I glance at my watch and a quick mental calculation gives me a rough estimate of his actual time of death being between eight and nine p.m., as opposed to the one declared by the EMTs. I note a shiny substance on the left side of Montgomery’s neck, which puzzles me, and I get a swab sample of it. Next I set out a thermometer to get an ambient room temperature and then I carefully lift the lower right hem of Monty’s shirt and insert a second thermometer through his skin and into his liver. While the thermometers do their thing, I examine the hands and secure paper bags around them. By then, my temperature readings are ready and I record them in my notebook, noting that they also support a time of death that is around two hours before the time the EMT noted.

With that done, I abandon my victim for the moment, shuck my gloves and bag them, grab both my still and video cameras, and venture back out into the hallway, leaving Devo in the room. Brenda and the woman are still standing in the hallway, though now the woman is looking at me, allowing me a better look at her. She has a slender build, shoulder-length black hair, large green eyes, and a near-perfect manicure, though judging from the way she’s gnawing away at the side of her thumbnail, it won’t be perfect for long. I see resignation on her face and something else . . . fear perhaps?

“Hello again,” I say, standing before the woman and smiling. “You are Mrs. Dixon, correct?”

She nods. Her eyes are red-rimmed, but currently dry. “Please call me Summer,” she says, a statement that strikes me as oddly social for the occasion.

“And that is your husband, Montgomery, in there?” I say, nodding toward the room I just left.

“Monty,” she says in a dull voice. “Everyone calls him Monty. He hates the name Montgomery.” She pauses and lets out a nervous titter. “Though I don’t suppose it will bother him much now, will it?”

I give her a wan smile. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I say. “I’m sure this must be quite a shock to you.”

She says nothing, looking away from me and down the hallway as if she’s planning her imminent escape.

“My name is Mattie Winston. I’m a medicolegal death investigator here in Sorenson. I work with the police and my boss, Dr. Izzy Rybarceski, the medical examiner. Our job is to figure out what happened to Monty.”

“That’s rather obvious, isn’t it?” Summer tuts impatiently. She rolls her eyes, looks longingly at the cigarettes and lighter she is clutching in one hand, and then shows them to me. “Do you mind?” she asks in a pleading tone.

I do mind, but it’s her house and, technically, I don’t have the right to tell her no. But I do have a plan to forestall her. “I don’t want to do anything here in the house that might potentially compromise evidence,” I tell her. I turn to Officer Joiner. “Brenda, would you run out to my car and grab an evidence pack and a scrub suit from the back? They’re stored in the right wheel-well area.”

Brenda nods and disappears. I turn my attention back to Summer Dixon.

“There will be a detective arriving here soon who will need to talk with you. But before that happens, I need to gather some items from you as part of our investigation.”

“What items?”

“Well, the clothes you’re wearing, for one. I know it’s a bit awkward, but it’s very routine in cases like this. There might be evidence on the clothing of anyone who has had contact with the crime scene or the victim.”

Summer looks righteously offended. “Are you suggesting that I killed Monty?”

“No, I’m not. But your presence here has exposed you to the crime scene. Evidence can be easily transferred at times, and you’d be surprised what we can pick up from the clothing of people who are present. We had one case where a cat hair transferred to the clothing of a family member, even though there were no cats in the house. Turned out that cat hair was left behind by the killer and got attached to the family member’s clothing. It helped us solve the case, but if all we’d focused on was the evidence immediately on and around the victim, that bit of evidence might have been overlooked and a killer would have gotten away with it.”

This story isn’t totally true. It did happen, just not to me. It’s something I saw on a true-crime show I watched on TV, but Summer doesn’t need to know this. All she needs to know, or rather believe, is that my reason for wanting to collect her clothes isn’t necessarily related to any suspicions I have toward her. I do have suspicions, of course. As the spouse of the victim, odds are high that she is the culprit based on statistics alone.

“So you need me to go and change into something else?” Summer asks. There is an eagerness to both her voice and her expression that puzzles me for a second. Then I realize she likely sees it as an opportunity to sneak in a smoke.

“I will need you to change, but not into any of your own clothes. Officer Joiner is getting some paper scrubs you can put on.”

This earns me a pout. “Can’t I just put on my own clothes?” she whines.

“I’m afraid not.” I give her an apologetic look, even though I don’t feel particularly empathetic toward her at this point. There is something off about this woman. “We need to search the house for evidence and that includes the rest of your clothing. Until that’s done, I’m afraid it’s all off-limits.”

Summer’s pout deepens, and when she opens her mouth, I sense another objection coming. I quickly head it off by giving her a new annoyance to focus on. “Do you have somewhere you can stay for the next few days?”

It doesn’t take her long. Her jaw drops, and her tone shifts from whiny to plain old irritation mixed with disbelief. “Are you telling me I can’t stay in my own house?”

“I am. For a few days anyway. For now, your house is a crime scene we need to process, and that means limiting access to it. Hopefully, it won’t be for very long.”

Summer rolls her eyes again and huffs irritably. “Unbelievable,” she mutters under her breath. She is squeezing the life out of that pack of smokes, enough that I’d be surprised if any of them are still intact.

I hear the front door open and close and Brenda appears at the end of the hallway. “I saw a guest bathroom out in the main living area,” I say to Summer. “We can do this in there.”

“Whatever,” she says irritably, pushing away from the wall. “Let’s get it over with.”

She walks with quick purpose down the hall, across the main living area, and into the bathroom. Brenda and I follow her. As guest bathrooms go, this one is generous in size, but it’s still cozy with three of us in this one small room, once I shut the door. I slip my still camera into my pocket and set the video camera on the counter area around the sink. I don a fresh pair of gloves, hand a pair to Brenda, and then open the evidence kit Brenda brought in with her. Brenda opens the plastic-wrapped paper scrubs while I remove a folded square of paper resting atop the other items in the evidence kit and unfold it. When I’m done, I place the three-foot-square sheet on the floor and tell Summer to stand at the center of it. She does so, and I then remove a folded paper bag from the evidence kit and open it.

“Drop your cigarettes and lighter in here, please,” I tell her.

She gives me a look of smug disappointment, one that makes me think she has another pack stashed somewhere. She drops the items into the bag, and I grab another one.

“Please remove your shoes and place them in here,” I say.

She quickly steps out of the shoes—cute black ankle boots with three-inch spike heels and bright red soles—with a huff of annoyance. She bends over to pick them up and drops them in the bag. “I better get those back,” she says with a hint of threat and indignation. “They’re Louboutins and they set me back more than eight hundred bucks at Nordstrom.”

Her comment triggers a flash of jealousy and irritation in me. I can’t imagine spending that much money on a pair of shoes, and even if I could, I’d never be able to wear them. My feet are a size twelve, double-E width, and expensive, fashionable designer shoes don’t come in Sasquatch sizes. Plus, I’m six feet tall in my stocking feet. Put me in a pair of spike heels and I’d be subject to jokes about Amazonian women and thin air all night long.

I focus on her perfectly manicured toes, polished in a shade of red that looks like the one my stylist, Barbara, once showed me that’s called Charged Up Cherry. We laughed over several of the polish color names during one of my earlier appointments with her, back when her “salon” still made me nervous. It helped to break the tension for me. I should probably tell you at this point that most of Barbara’s customers are dead and her salon is in the basement of a local funeral home. She started out as a mortuary cosmetologist—someone who does makeup for the dead—but then received specialized training in facial reconstructions. Since Barbara can put Humpty Dumpty back together again, I suppose it’s no surprise that she manages to make me look as good as she does. I’ve been going to her for nearly four years now. She serves her living clientele in the same place where she takes care of the dead ones, and does her best work on you when you’re lying down. The creep factor of this got to me a little in the beginning, and that’s how we ended up laughing at nail polish names, including the Silent Mauvie shade she was applying to a deceased woman that day, something that in my nervous state struck me as hilariously appropriate. These days, I consider it no big deal to lie down among the dead to get beautiful, but I can’t deny that Barbara has been an acquired taste for me.

My Barbara flashbacks allow me to swallow down my irritation, so I open another bag and have Summer remove her slacks and place them in it. She does so without complaint and next she removes the nylon knee-highs she is wearing. When I ask her to take off her underwear for the next bag, she balks.

“Why on earth do you need my underwear?”

“Please, Mrs. Dixon,” I say in my best calm voice. “This is awkward for all of us, but it has to be done.”

Her lips thin to a barely visible line and she removes her panties with such vigor I half expect to find them ripped later. As soon as she drops them in the bag, I grab another one and we repeat the process with her blouse and then her bra. Once she is naked, Brenda hands her the paper scrubs, which she pulls on with prideful nonchalance, as if trying now to convince us that her nakedness is no big deal. Her body is trim and taut, and if I had a build like hers, I might take my time and show off my body, too. But I have a build that an ER patient I once cared for referred to as that of a “sturdy girl.”

As Summer fidgets with the paper scrubs, I notice something. There is a sheen on her hands, and she is leaving faint, oily stains on the paper scrubs wherever she touches them. I take out an evidence swab and run it over both of her palms and in between her fingers.

“What’s that for?” she asks.

“There’s some sort of oily substance here,” I point out.

Summer stares down at her hands, turning them over a couple of times. “Right,” she says, nodding slowly. “Olive oil, I imagine. I attended a cooking class this evening. That’s where I was when . . .” She doesn’t finish the sentence, but she doesn’t need to.

“There also appears to be a small puncture wound on your right palm,” I say, swabbing that as well. “I need to take a picture of it.”

Once again, Summer stares at her hands, focusing on the palm of the right one as I take my camera from my pocket and prepare for the shot. Once I’ve taken several pictures of the wound from different angles, I slip the camera back into my pocket and then take the small brush that’s in the evidence kit and hand it to Summer. “Run this through your hair, please,” I tell her. She does so impatiently, and when she’s done, I have her drop it into a bag. Then I pick up the video camera and hand it to Officer Joiner.

“You can step out now,” I tell Summer.

“You didn’t make some kind of movie of me naked, did you?” Summer asks, eyeing the video camera.

I can’t tell if she’s concerned or titillated at the prospect.

“No,” I assure her. “I just brought it in with me because I want Officer Joiner to have it when you leave this room. She’s going to record your interview with the detective on the case.”

Brenda opens the bathroom door and Summer walks out. Brenda follows and I fold up the sheet of paper Summer was standing on, making sure the upper surface is all to the inside, and bag it. I quickly seal and label all the bags I’ve collected, and when I’m done, I carry them out to the living room and set them on the floor along one wall. Summer and Brenda have settled onto stools at the large granite-topped island that separates the kitchen from the living area, and I join them.

Summer is leaning forward, elbows on the countertop, face buried in her hands. I’m about to say something when I hear the front door to the house open and the man who walks in makes my heart skip a beat.

My husband, Steve Hurley, emerges from the foyer and steps into the great room. In addition to being my husband, Hurley is also a homicide detective here in town. I knew he was coming here because we were at home together when the call came in, though Hurley had just arrived mere minutes before after spending the evening at the police station. The other homicide detective in town, Bob Richmond, had been called out to assist on one of the county deaths, along with Christopher, because the sheriff’s department had more than it could handle alone. This sort of cross-jurisdictional aid is common in rural areas, and our office has been responding to calls in the county for over a year now, part of a plan to channel all the autopsies and suspicious deaths through us at the medical examiner’s office. It’s a move in the right direction, but staffing is always a challenge. So, while my husband understood the need to step up on his night off, he, like me, was none too happy about it, even though we both understand it’s the nature of our work.

We have two kids and, normally, when we’re both on call and need to go out, my seventeen-year-old stepdaughter, Emily—Hurley’s daughter from a previous relationship— babysits for our toddler son, Matthew, who is almost three. But as luck would have it, it’s a Saturday night and Emily is out on a date with her longtime boyfriend, Johnny Chester. That meant we would have to wait for my sister, Desi, to come over, since it was after ten and Matthew was already in bed for the night.

Hurley and I considered doing rock-paper-scissors to see who would go right away and who would wait—since the site was secured by our own police officers, it didn’t matter as long as one of us got there reasonably soon—but in the end, Hurley said he wanted to be the one to go second. He hadn’t had any dinner and he wanted to grab something quick and easy, like a sandwich, while waiting for Desi to arrive. Most of the time, we take Matthew to Desi’s house for babysitting needs outside of regular work hours, but Desi has always insisted that she come to us if Matthew is already down for the night rather than wake him up and drag him out. She says it’s healthier for the kid this way, though I suspect she has an ulterior motive. Matthew doesn’t wake up happy, and once he’s up, it’s hard to get him back to sleep. I’m sure the short drive to our house at any hour is less of a hassle than dealing with a cranky, fussy kid.

I’m glad Hurley is finally here. He walks up to Brenda, Summer, and me in his slow, gangly way, quickly sizing up the scene before him. He moves in on Summer’s right side, and she raises her head to check him out.

“This is Mrs. Summer Dixon,” I tell Hurley. “She’s the wife of our victim.”

“Hello, Mrs. Dixon,” Hurley says in his deep, soothing voice. “I’m Detective Steve Hurley and I’m here to try to determine what happened to your husband. I’m sure this must be a huge shock for you.”

I watch Summer’s head go up and then down as she eyes Hurley from the top of his head to the bottom of his shoes. I can’t see the expression on her face, because her back is to me, but I can imagine what it looks like. I’ve seen it dozens of times on the faces of other women who meet Hurley for the first time. Or the second time. Or the bazillionth. Hurley makes quite an impression with his tall, lean build, thick black hair, and cornflower-blue eyes. He gives Summer a hesitant smile and I know I’m right about her reaction to him. Hurley has that pleased, but slightly uncomfortable, look he always gets when he’s ogled by a woman. Unless I’m the one doing the ogling—then his expression is altogether different.

Hurley and I don’t try to hide the fact that we’re a married couple, but we don’t advertise it, either. And the fact that we have different last names—a bit of a thorn in Hurley’s side, if truth be told, since Winston is the last name of my ex—helps obscure the situation. I’m often amused by other women’s reactions to Hurley when they don’t know I’m his wife. Though I have a feeling that Summer’s reaction would be the same regardless.

“Please call me Summer,” she says in a breathy voice. Then she turns in her seat, facing forward, and assumes a beleaguered posture and tone. “Can we just get on with it?” she whines, massaging her temples. “Do what you have to do and let’s get this circus over with. Pleas. . .