HEINZ NOONAN
and
Captain Heinz Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, was enjoying a moment of blessed silence while the rest of his staff was off at lunch. The noon hour was special to the Captain because it allowed him an hour of bliss when he was not being harassed by his Commissioner, pestered by prosecutors, badgered by his staff, henpecked by his wife via cell phone, pick-pocketed by his twin sons or pressured to make a chess move when all he wanted was to study the board longer. That was exactly what he was doing when the call came in.
“This better be important,” he said to the caller. “I’m in the middle of a lunch I’m not eating, a chess game I’m not winning, a week that’s getting longer and a headache that’s getting larger.”
“Sorry about that,” said a strange voice. “I know how you feel. I’ve got a missing cadaver, a rebus in a cartouche instead of a death certificate and an extortion demand. Frankly, I could use a little help.”
“For you,” said Noonan, “I’ll skip lunch. Who’s this?” The name he got was Egyptian, Ramsus Heliotrophis. “You’ve got to be Egyptian.”
“Actually, I’m Bulgarian. My father was a classical scholar. My mother was Greek. Sort of. Actually they were both born in New York so I guess that makes me an American.”
“Just like the rest of us. Whacha got?”
“I’m calling from Westmoreland, Montana; we’re a little town outside …”
“I thought all towns in Montana were small.”
“Well, we’re even smaller than that. We have a police force of one. Me. Does that give you a clue? We don’t have things like this happening here a lot.”
“It would be safe to say that what you’re talking about doesn’t happen a lot anywhere.”
“I hope not. This is Captain Heinz Noonan, isn’t it?”
“In the flesh.”
“My Captain . . .”
“I’ve heard any wild story you’ve got before. Go ahead and tell me what you’ve got.”
“Yesterday we had a traveler check into the local hospital with a fever which the doctors attributed to a festering sore on his thigh. We get these things all the time during hunting season. Someone slips on a rock, cuts themselves, the cut becomes infected, fever goes up, they think they are going to die so they go to the hospital.”
“But this one did die.”
“Oh, yes. He did die indeed. About 6 hours after he got to the hospital. Early this morning. The doctors had pumped him full of all kinds of good stuff, that is, anti-infection medicine and whatever else doctors have on hand.”
“You haven’t had a lot of medical experience, have you?”
“Not an hour’s worth. I’ve never had to go to a hospital in my life – except to take a deposition or see a sick friend.”
“Who was the victim?”
“Don’t know that either. Male, 50s, 5’ 6 ½”, white, bald, overweight, incredibly large feet for his size. No tattoos, old hernia scar. The injury was about a foot long and an inch wide. It wasn’t a clean cut like a knife would make, more jagged. Not straight. He said he had slipped on a rock. He walked in so the bone wasn’t broken.”
“What did he die of?”
“No one knows for sure. The medical people took some tissue samples before he was taken across town to the morgue. That’s when things began to get crazy.”
“How so?”
“I was on my way back to the hospital when . . .”
“You took the body to the morgue?”
“Yeah, like I said, we’re a small town. I came over to the hospital around midnight to see the guy and file a report.”
“Why? Was there a crime involved?”
“Not that I could see. But I check things like that. Just in case. A stranger comes to town who was injured. I check. I’m careful.”
“Good for you.”
“By the time I got there, he was dead. The night staff signed the death certificate for a John Doe . . .”
“He had no ID?”
“Not a scrap.”
“How did he get to the hospital?”
“Drove. We’ve got his car. Nothing in it that could identify him. Wiped clean for prints, our first clue that something was amiss. His fingerprints came up blank – even after we ran them past the FBI. We ran a check on the plates and called the owner. The old owner. The car had been bought three weeks ago in Portland for cash. The buyer’s name turned out to be a phony.”
“Where does the rebus in the cartouche fit in?”
“You remembered that, eh? I had to look up both words.”
“If I’m not mistaken, a rebus is a message written in symbols, like an eye and a heart and the letter u for ‘I Love You.’ A cartouche is one of those vertical ovals with the name of a pharaoh inside.”
“You are a very sharp man.”
“No, I’ve got twins who are still in school. Where does the rebus in the cartouche fit in?”
“Well, the body disappeared. When we realized that the body was actually gone as opposed to misplaced, the hospital file was empty except for a sheet of paper with a rebus in a cartouche.”
“What did the rebus say?”
“It’s not very complicated. It has a dollar sign followed by a C and an M which obviously means someone wants $100,000. Then there was a phone booth, a fasces and a sun dial ‘set,’ if that’s what you’d call a certain time on a sun dial, at 1 pm, an hour from now.”
“Fasces? That’s the bundle of sticks with a ribbon wrapped around it, right?”
“Yes. We have a statue in town with fasces so we assume that the person wants us to be at the phone in front of the statue at 1 pm today.”
“That seems pretty obvious to me too. Why are you calling me?”
NOW THAT'S A GOOD QUESTION.
WHY WAS NOONAN BEING CALLED?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
TAKE A GUESS BEFORE YOU READ ON.
“What are we paying for?”
It wasn’t often by Captain Heinz Noonan was stumped for an answer. But in this case he was. This case, like so many others, had been referred to him because of the unusual nature of the crime. Vanishing cadavers were nothing new. But paying ransom for a John Doe cadaver was something entirely different. A cadaver wasn’t worth much. Medical schools didn’t even bother to buy them anymore. Organs had a value, but only when the body was moribund and the transplant specialists could do the preliminary lab work and find a donor. Noonan supposed there was a black market for organs, but even if there were, time would still be critical. Once the individual succumbed, the organs had to be handled immediately. The only true value a cadaver had was its insurance and estate; but those had to be in-place before the person became a corpse.
But someone had stolen an unidentified cadaver and was now demanding $100,000. Why? That was a good question? Why put the ransom demand in a rebus in a cartouche? Why not just leave a note?
“Captain Noonan?” Heliotrophis was still on the line. “What am I paying $100,000 for?”
“That’s such a good question I don’t have an answer for you,” replied Noonan. “I don’t know. I’d also have to say your perp is being very clever. First, I doubt that body snatching is a felony, particularly if there are no relatives to complain. A cadaver has no value as a unit and the organs are worthless unless medical tests were made on the person before he became a cadaver. Were any such tests made?”
“Not that I know of. I’ll check with the hospital but I would doubt it. He didn’t go into the hospital to die; just to get well.”
“So much for medical care these days. Have you thought about going to the phone booth to ask the perp what he – or she – wants?”
“Well, yes. But why bother?”
“I don’t have an answer for that either.”
“Tell you what. Go talk to the perp and see what he wants. Then call me back if you still have a problem.”
Two hours later Noonan got another call.
“Captain Noonan? This is Ramsus Helio . . .”
“Yes, I know who you are. Did you have a little chat with your perp?”
“Yup. He was an older man, probably in his late 70s or early 80s, six feet tall, white hair, jeans and pull over, carries a cane even though he doesn’t appear to need it, has a Midwestern accent and has mismatched socks.”
“Clearly he wasn’t on the phone.”
“He was at first. He called me from a cell phone and when he was sure I was alone he told me to meet him in a clump of trees.”
“And?”
“He wants $100,000 or he will have the corpse appear in bizarre locations. Maybe hand will appear in a punch bowl at the Chamber of Commerce. An arm might show up in a butcher shop window. The head might appear on a stick outside City Hall. I asked him what that was going to prove and he said that the bad publicity would be enough to make Westmoreland the laughing stock of Montana, if not the United States. But,”
“. . . for $100,000 he would be willing to let you know where the corpse is and save you all the trouble and embarrassment.” Noonan finished the sentence.
“Pretty much so. Just to show that he was serious, he told me he was going to salt a story with the Helena paper about a cadaver being misplaced. He assumed I would be getting a call from the Enterprise and Tribune later this evening.”
“So this is extortion?”
“Sounds like it to me. Now I’ve got a crime and a perp.”
“Did you ask about the rebus in the cartouche?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. He said that he created the logo – he called it a logo – from clip art on a computer. That way he didn’t have to cut and paste anything. He was going to use the logo as his sign, his signature. Every time he left a body part he was going to leave the cartouche. That way everyone would know that there were more body parts to come.”
“Did the man seem of sound mind to you?”
“He sounded like my grandfather with the old let-me-give-you-some-good-advice.”
“He wants cash?”
“He gave me a choice. Cash or gemstones. He said he’d check the gemstones before he told me where the body was.”
“Did he give you any kind of a time line?”
“He wants the money by noon tomorrow or the hand will be in the public domain – his term – by midnight. He also told me that the body isn’t being refrigerated so it’s going to get very stinky very fast.”
“I don’t know if I can help you but let me think about it. For starters, check the station buttons on the car radio. That might help you pin down where the cadaver has been since he bought the car in Portland. How many doctors work at the hospital and where do the tissue samples go after they’ve been taken? You said the death certificate was taken; did you mean just the death certificate was missing or all the paperwork – and specifically the intake paperwork? Does the Westmoreland hospital use a computer to log patients in and out or is that done with paperwork? One other thing. See if any of the paperwork they use at the hospital is done with a red pen or on a form that has red ink.”
“Red ink? Why?”
“Trust me.”
“Some of those questions I can answer. The hospital has about ten doctors but only one is a regular. The rest are physicians who all have private practices in town. We don’t get that many emergencies so we don’t need a big staff at the hospital. The hospital is computerized but all of the intake information is done with paper. Then it’s shuttled up to the business office where someone logs it into the computer. As far as I know, all of the paperwork on the cadaver was in the same folder so it’s all gone. But I’ll check to be sure. The tissue samples are sent across town to a private lab. They’re pretty good at finding common diseases but if they don’t know what they are looking at, it goes to a more sophisticated lab in Portland or Sandersonville.”
“Check on the paperwork and the tissue samples and get back with me, OK?”
“You got it.”
The return call came less than 15 minutes later.
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“Let me guess. There is nothing in the tissue samples, all the paperwork is gone, the radio stations were set for Portland and the hospital recently changed some of its forms from red ink.”
“You are amazing! How did you know that?”
NOW THAT'S A VERY GOOD QUESTION.
HOW DID NOONAN KNOW THAT?
DID YOU GUESS IT WOULD HAPPEN?
WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
Noonan continued, “Let me see if I can piece this together for you. There never was a person who died in the hospital.”
“But I saw the paperwork! I saw the body!”
“Yes you did. You saw a dead body. But that was not the person who showed up at the hospital. What I think happened is that your white-haired gentleman showed up late in the afternoon. He limped into the hospital with some superficial injury, self-inflicted, by the way. He was checked in and was put in a room. Because the hospital is so small, it has a staff change at night. The day doctor goes home and since there were no emergencies that night, no night doctor came on board. It was all nurses, none of whom had seen the white-haired man come in. Late at night he slipped out of his room with the paperwork and replaced himself with a cadaver. The cadaver had probably been stolen out of a morgue in Portland a day or two ago. Our perp just wheeled the body into his old room. It would not have been too hard. He probably stole some hospital uniforms. He was in and out in a matter of minutes. Then he switched the paperwork. .”
“But that meant he would have had to know the working of the hospital very well.”
“Not really. All he had to know was that the computer was only used after the patients had been in the hospital for a day or two. He only had to have one night. I’m sure he stole the paperwork he needed. That wouldn’t be too hard. Hospital paperwork is pretty generic.”
“So the nurse checked on the patient, found the cadaver, assumed that the cadaver was the patient. She took tissue samples and signed the death certificate.”
“Right. Then you took the body to the morgue. Nobody watches a morgue in a small town. What are they going to steal? The minute you were gone, the white-haired gentleman snatched the corpse, replaced the paperwork with the rebus in the cartouche and wheeled the body out the back door. The tissue samples came back normal because the cadaver died a natural death. You’ll be able to determine that when you get the cadaver.”
“What makes you think the cadaver is still in town?”
“It has to be. Just in case he has to use an arm or a leg.”
“This is all very bizarre. What you’re telling me is a fairly intricate plot. How could one man do it? What about the fingerprints?”
“Everything was done by one man. Getting hospital records, the actual forms, is not difficult. Our perp might have even come in with a lap top a small scanner. He must have had a computer because the rebus in the cartouche had to be computer-generated; he didn’t draw it. Then, getting a cadaver into a hospital is not difficult either, not in a small town, particularly if you’re dressed like an employee. A cadaver just looks like a sleeping patient. All he really had to know was that the hospital didn’t log in it’s paperwork on computer for a few days and that the morgue was accessible.”
“What about the fingerprints? They came up blank.”
“They came up blank because they were not on an active list. What you told me was that you ran the fingerprints after the apparent death of the John Doe. Before you took him to the morgue. That was in at three or four in the morning, a dozen hours ago. NCIC does not work that fast – unless it is asked to pull up someone from an active file, someone who has a record or is in law enforcement. A regular Joe will take a little more time to find – if they ever find him. Not everyone has their fingerprints on file. Our perp was counting on that. The John Doe may have been identified by now but you won’t know it because the initial call is going to go to the hospital.”
“Why not me? I’m the one who put in the request.”
“Whoever the John Doe is, someone is going to check up on his death. He might have been a police officer, for instance. If he shows up dead twice in two or three days, someone is going to contact the hospital to make sure their paperwork is accurate. Or maybe there was a mistake in reporting the first death. It’s going to take a day or two for you, the hospital and NCIC to figure out what happened. By then, your perp expects to be gone.”
“And $100,000 richer. Anything else you can tell me about the perp?”
“Your perp had mismatched socks. That’s a sign of colorblindness. People who are colorblind can’t see red. So he has some connection to the hospital paperwork. Maybe he was a printer or record keeper in Portland, working for a company that handled the hospital’s forms. Maybe he worked for that sophisticated lab in Portland where you send your difficult tissue samples. He’s been planning this caper for years. The minute the hospital forms changed from red ink, it was his moment to strike. He might have even made the recommendation; I’d check that out.”
“That’s a lot of speculation.”
“Maybe. But if I’m right, I’m going to save Westmoreland, Montana $100,000 – and if you don’t find him quickly, he’ll be gone. I’ll bet he’ll wait no longer than noon tomorrow to get his money and gems. He probably figures that by then the hospital will figure out they’ve been conned. Whether or not he’s got the cash, he’ll be gone. Maybe he’ll drive a thousand miles and try the scam again.”
“That still leaves me with the initial problem. Where’s the corpse?”
“That will be the easiest to find. Your perp is using an RV. It’s the only thing large enough to house a refrigerator that could contain a body. Does the hospital have any kind of exterior security cameras?”
“Not inside or outside.”
“Another reason the perp chose Westmoreland. That’s too bad. Otherwise you’d have a picture of the RV, maybe even its license plate.”
“Do you have any idea how many RVs we have here this time of year? It’s hunting season, remember? We have six or seven RV parks within the city limits of Westmoreland along and maybe 20 or 30 other places an RV can park. That doesn’t include Wal-Mart parking lots, abandoned warehouse parking areas, camp grounds, vacant lots, wide spots on the road, whatever.”
“Your perp needs a lot of power. Look for his RV to be near a power source. His will be the RV with an empty tow bar and a small motorcycle.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he’d have to have used a tow bar to pull the car you found from Portland. He’s not going to ride to and from an extortion pickup in an RV. He’s alone so he’s got to have another means of transportation. Ergo the motorcycle. He shouldn’t be that hard to find.”
But by then Noonan was talking to a dead phone. “Kids,” he sighed as he hung the receiver, “I wonder what they would have done at the Chamber of Commerce if a severed hand had shown up on the cold cut tray?”
HOW DID YOU DO?
COULD YOU HAVE SOLVED THIS ON YOUR OWN?
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