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← In Episode IV: The Examiner, Judith chatted with (i.e., interrogated) the county medical examiner.
While Beasts of the Field can be read as a standalone story, you may appreciate the characters and their interactions more if you are familiar with Judith’s first adventure, Down in the Holler, in which she investigated a cold case in rural Kentucky. Click here to read Down in the Holler.
“McFerrin County Health Department. How may I direct your call?”
“Hello. I need to speak with Jason Cobb,” Judith said, double checking the name on her laptop screen, “the lab tech in the office of the medical examiner.”
“Well now,” came the slow drawl of the receptionist, “let me send you over, and we’ll see if he’s available.” Jingling music, scratchy and startlingly loud, burst from the phone.
The afternoon was cool outside Judith’s car, where she sat with her Wi-Fi hotspot and the bitter coffee she’d bought from a gas station between Lexington and McFerrin. She glanced at her phone to see if the dog-sitter had sent any updates about Orwell.
Orwell had never before been in the house without Judith, and with inadequate exercise he would be overly energetic when she returned home that evening. It didn’t seem advisable for a dog his size to spend long hours cooped up in a crate, although she had done significant research to ensure that the crate was appropriately large. In the information binder she was putting together for Orwell’s future owner, she made sure to include a chart indicating the appropriate kennel size based on his height and weight. She wouldn’t want whoever ended up adopting him to be ill-informed or unprepared.
The bland jazz hold-music grated on Judith’s ear, and she decreased the phone’s volume a few notches. Dr. Tierney hadn’t responded to Judith’s professional, relatively polite emails and hadn’t answered when Judith had attempted to call her office directly. But Judith wasn’t one to give up until all avenues were exhausted or she wore down whoever she was questioning until they gave her the answers just to get rid of her.
There were two pieces of the medical examiner’s report with which Judith particularly took issue: that Samantha Scott’s body hadn’t been moved after death and that her death had been due to “natural causes”. The latter was obvious; healthy young people didn’t just walk into fields and drop dead for no reason. But the former was more difficult to articulate. Samantha’s body being found, seemingly unmoved, in an already-searched field made both Judith and Tim look ridiculous.
She trusted Tim’s ability to conduct a thorough search of a wide, flat field without missing a dead body. Surely a whole cohort of police officers and their search dogs couldn’t have missed Samantha.
And though she would be the first to admit that her visions were sometimes more abstract than she would prefer, she had seen Samantha in the woods, not the field. Hazy twilight trees, the musky lemon scent of flowers – that had been her vision, not a field of fresh, dry, wind-whipped grass.
The tinny music switched to a ring, and then over the phone came a voice with a depth and resonance that butted up like an ill-fitting puzzle piece against the youthful tone. “Office of the County Medical Examiner.”
“Is this Jason Cobb?” Judith said.
“Ye-es,” the voice said slowly. “Can I get Dr. Tierney for you, or do you want to talk to the coroner? He doesn’t work here full-time, but I can give you his number.”
“No, I want to talk to you.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Can you tell me about the testing that you do during autopsies to determine if any toxins or poisons were responsible for someone’s death?”
“Who is this?”
“My name is Judith Temple. I’m doing research into forensic autopsies.”
“Oh, um. Sure, yeah, I can walk you through that,” Jason said. “You sure you don’t wanna talk to Dr. Tierney?”
“I don’t want to bother her.”
“Good point. Well, uh.” There was a pause on the other line. “You wanna know about just the regular testing, then?”
“Let’s start with that. I’ll likely have follow-up questions.”
“You’ll – okay. Um, so for routine testing we collect samples of blood, urine, vitreous humour, liver –”
“Do you collect additional samples if there’s a suspicion of homicide?”
“For homicide, we’d also collect gastric contents, bile, and hair.”
“And what tests do you run?”
“For routine testing, let me see.” There was the whisper of shuffling paper, and Jason took a breath before rattling off a list. “We look for alcohol, analgesics, antidepressants, antihistamines –”
“Are you aware of any poisonous substances that wouldn’t show up in routine testing?”
“Oh, sure. But most of the time we have some clue as to what we’re looking for, so we can do additional tests. If it seems like death might be due to designer drugs or carbon monoxide or something, then we can do tests specifically for those.”
A strident voice drifted from Jason’s line, but Judith couldn’t make out the words.
“If the cause of death is unclear,” Judith said, “and the medical examiner only does the routine testing, then –”
Jason’s voice came again, muffled as though the mouthpiece of the phone was covered. “It’s a – uh, Judith Temple, I think she said. Has some research questions.”
There was a scrabbling from the other end, and a new voice ran sharp through the phone. “Don’t call here again,” Dr. Tierney said, her words pulsing with fury. “If I hear from you again, I’ll file a police report, do you hear me?”
Apparently that was a rhetorical question, because before Judith could answer, Dr. Tierney slammed down the phone, and the line went dead.
“No dog today?” Tim smiled as Judith strode into the office, though the bags under his eyes were even heavier than they had been the week before.
“My neighbor is a part-time dog-sitter, so she’ll feed Orwell and take him for a walk.”
“Has she sent pictures?” Duffy turned around in his seat.
“She has,” Judith said. “I’m not entirely sure why. I know what he looks like.”
“Can I see?”
“I suppose.” Judith pulled out her phone and opened the messages from her neighbor.
“Aw, look at him.” Duffy’s wide grin accentuated the rolls beneath his receding chin. “He’s a happy boy. Loves being outside.”
Tim rolled his chair over and craned his neck to look at the photo.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to adopt him?” Judith said to Duffy. “He behaves well around children.”
Duffy gave a smiling shrug and scooted his chair back to his desk. “Looks like he’s content where he is.”
“Well, I’m not dog owner material.” Judith turned toward Cathy, who hadn’t yet acknowledged Judith’s presence, and made a vague gesture offering to show her the picture of Orwell. She did not particularly care to interact with Cathy, but she was aware that it was poor etiquette to exclude someone from a group conversation. When Cathy gave no sign of noticing her, Judith slid the phone back into her purse and turned to Tim. “The lab tech at the county medical examiner’s office informed me that most autopsies only undergo a routine battery of toxicology tests, but that those tests won’t detect every possible toxin or poison. They can run additional tests, but I have a suspicion that Dr. Tierney only did routine testing for Samantha Scott’s samples. Speaking of which, were you able to get in contact with Dr. Tierney’s previous employer?”
“Yeah.” Tim sighed and rested his elbow on his desk. “McFerrin PD is still pushing to close the case and say there was no foul play, but this might stall them a bit. No hard proof from her office in Lexington, but there were rumors that she was hooked on Ritalin. She quit before anyone started an official investigation.”
“Her old office told you all this?”
“The receptionist was chatty.”
Duffy chuckled. “Tim has a way with receptionists.” Whipping around in his chair, Duffy cocked his head at Tim. “Are you gonna have to get a warrant now? That’ll be awkward.”
“Why would it be awkward?” Judith said. She looked at Tim, who, though his back was partially turned, had an odd, scrunched expression on his face.
Duffy raised his eyebrows. “Tim didn’t tell you?”
“That question is far too cryptic for me to extrapolate what Tim did or didn’t tell me. There’s no way for me to answer accurately.”
Tim cleared his throat. “Dr. Tierney, Duffy, and I all went to McFerrin County High School, and we…overlapped by a few years.”
“That’s to be expected, since you’re all roughly the same age, and there’s only one high school in the county,” Judith said, nettled by the strange smirk on Duffy’s face.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “And, you know, in high school we sometimes make…questionable decisions.”
Tim trailed off as though in thought. Duffy watched shamelessly from his desk, and Cathy finally raised her eyes from her computer.
The familiar, disconcerting frustration of being the only one missing the joke rolled over Judith.
Duffy scooted his chair a few inches closer to Tim. “You need me to say it?”
“No, Duffy, I don’t need you to say it,” Tim said, his voice unusually aggravated. “Heather and I dated in high school. There. I’ll get a warrant to look into her financials because that’s my job. Nothing awkward about it.”
By the time Judith’s senses alerted her to the fact that everyone was watching her, she wasn’t quite sure how long she’d been staring into space. Her skin, particularly in her fingertips, was a bit cold, but she took a shallow breath and continued the conversation in her most crisp, professional tone. “Is it possible to request a second opinion?”
Tim’s eyes were wide and bewildered.
“On the autopsy,” Judith said.
“Oh – yeah.” Tim rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Especially if anything pops on her financials.”
“Presumably you won’t be able to give me the details about that, as this is an ongoing investigation.”
“Yeah, no, it’s – it’s confidential.” Tim’s voice was quiet. “But your tip about the Ritalin has been really, really helpful.”
“That is why you brought me on as a consultant.” Though a mild panic jolted through her at how robotic she sounded, the words pushed their way out like a freight train. “I’m gratified to have been of service. I’m going to go. For research. I’ll do more research. And then home this evening. I can’t leave Orwell too long.”
She moved toward the door.
“If I don’t see you before you head out,” Tim said, “let me know when you make it back okay.”
“Yes.” Judith shoved through the tinkling door and escaped into the cool air. Her body flushed hot, her skin was cold, and she was breathing quickly for some strange reason.
By the time Judith pulled onto the winding northbound road toward Lexington, the sunlight was a sorbet orange line rimming the mountains. Shadows fell heavy on the tree-lined road, swathing it in darkness while the last hint of evening light lingered above the hills.
Even though Judith didn’t have a “way with receptionists”, as Duffy claimed Tim had, she was shocked by the amount of information some people were willing to spout off to curious strangers. When Judith had arrived at the McFerrin County Health Department to ask a few innocent questions, the disgruntled county receptionist had made a punctuated grunt at the mere mention of Heather Tierney’s name. Judith usually was not adept at interpreting grunts, but the noise had been too emphatic for even her to miss.
She had floundered for a few moments trying to decide on an appropriately open-ended statement, before settling on, “You don’t sound very…fond of her.”
“Can’t find a hundred and twenty bucks to raise my salary by ten cents a month, and then all of a sudden, boom, they find all this money to make a whole new job for a medical examiner. Typical.”
“Typical?” That was a trick she’d learned in an online negotiation course. Repeat the last word or two of a person’s statement, add a rising intonation, and wait for them to elaborate. For such a concrete, easily applied technique, it saved Judith countless conversational headaches by keeping the other person talking without requiring further response from her.
“Just the kinda thing they do ’round here.”
“‘They?’”
“Rob Tierney, mostly,” the receptionist said, her voice turning acidic. “He’s the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners. When he says ‘Jump,” the rest of the board says, ‘How high?’”
“Rob Tierney? Is he, by any chance, related to Dr. Tierney?”
The receptionist snorted. “Her daddy.”
Judith paused. “What does the Board of County Commissioners do?”
“Figure the county budget, make new programs. Decide who doesn’t get a raise for fifteen years and who gets a whole new job outta thin air.”
“The county medical examiner job was created for Dr. Tierney?”
“The coroner used to just refer any suspicious deaths up the pipeline to Lexington ’cause we ain’t got enough murders ’n such to justify payin’ a full-time medical examiner. So I don’t know what Morticia does all day.”
“I thought her name was Heather.”
“Huh?”
Back outside the County Health Department, Judith had slipped away from the main entrance and written detailed notes about the receptionist’s claims, with a reminder to herself to type them into an email for Tim. Perhaps tomorrow. Or the day after.
Unwanted images of adolescent Tim – probably long and lanky, eating his mother out of house and home, spending his time engaging in whatever sports teenage boys play – and Heather Tierney, lithe and obnoxiously beautiful, top of the class, the subtle breed of bully who makes herself the teachers’ golden girl. How long had they dated? When did they break up? Why did they break up? Did Tim…lose his virginity to Heather Tierney?
Why did she care? It had no bearing whatsoever on Samantha Scott’s case, particularly now that Tim would be getting a warrant to investigate Heather more closely.
Shaking her head, Judith focused her eyes on the darkening road and turned her thoughts instead to her theories about the case, plowing past her lingering questions about Tim and discarding them like piles of unwanted snow. The last bright orange glow faded behind the tops of the mountains, leaving a fast-encroaching blackness that swallowed Judith’s little car until suddenly she couldn’t see anything beyond the white-yellow cone of her headlights.
Right now the primary person of interest was Dr. Tierney. If she truly was involved, then based on the current information, Judith could see three likely options: 1) Dr. Tierney murdered Samantha for reasons unknown, 2) Dr. Tierney assisted or otherwise aided and abetted Samantha’s murderer, or 3) Dr. Tierney was either bribed or blackmailed into falsifying information in Samantha’s autopsy.
Judith didn’t approve of jumping to conclusions or following instinct in defiance of the facts, but she favored the third option. She hadn’t sensed anything relating to Samantha’s murder when she did her reading on Dr. Tierney, although Judith knew better than anyone that her visions didn’t always show her the full picture. But she had sensed the tight, pressing worry about money. Dr. Tierney was in need of money, exceeding her income in her new, probably lower-paid, position. Possibly someone had paid her to conceal incriminating details about Samantha Scott’s death, details that would have been revealed by a thorough autopsy.
But who?
As far as Tim and the McFerrin PD had been able to discover, Samantha Scott didn’t have any enemies. She didn’t even have a jealous ex-boyfriend lurking in the background. She had been a mostly-blind young woman alone in the world. If it wasn’t due to natural causes, then the most likely explanation seemed to be that her death had been the work of someone who had seen a young woman wandering alone and had made an opportunistic, murderous decision. Someone who could bribe a medical examiner and fool the police.
A light in her rearview mirror startled Judith from her thoughts. A car drove close behind her down the pitch-black, winding road. Judith sighed, letting out a quiet huff of frustration. She hated having someone tailing her on these isolated two-lane roads, driving too close, making her fixate on her speed instead of having time to think.
Judith checked that she was going approximately the speed limit and did her best to focus on Samantha Scott’s case rather than on the car rumbling too close to her bumpers.
If the bribery theory was correct, then the culprit had to be someone who could afford to pay off a medical examiner, which eliminated the majority of McFerrin County’s residents. Was there a wealthy killer living somewhere in the tree-choked hollers? If Dr. Tierney had falsified the reports – and Judith grudgingly had to admit that as yet there was no proof that she had done any such thing – then it was possible that she’d been under the influence not of bribery but blackmail. There were rumors, damaging secrets that, if proven true, could ruin her career. And anyone, rich or poor, could be capable of blackmail. The blackmail theory did not do much to narrow the possible field of suspects, but it did seem promising.
The car behind Judith pressed forward with a noisy, mechanical growl until it was inches away from the trunk of her car. Its headlights shone into Judith’s rearview mirror, stinging her eyes with the glare. Her juddering heartbeat thumped in her ears.
With a strange detachment, Judith noted that her hands were cold and her fingertips numb, a sudden rush of energy thrumming through her arms and legs. Her body flooded with an instinctive, evolutionary panic.
But it was just a car, just an impatient driver on a dark, twisting, lonely road. There was no reason to panic.
Judith slowed down. If they were so impatient, she’d make it clear they were free to pass her. If they didn’t want to do that, then they could just deal with her responsible driving speed.
The blinding headlights concealed the car’s driver. She crept along, and the car behind her slowed as well, staying near, making no move to change lanes.
They weren’t going to pass her?
Judith sped up again, resuming the normal speed limit. The car – a truck, perhaps – stayed right on her bumper. Her heart beat so loudly it nearly drowned out the hum of her car’s engine. She glanced at her purse, at her phone. She could call Tim. But what could he do? She was still within McFerrin County limits, but she was at least 30 minutes outside of McFerrin township. She was deep in the hollers now.
It was probably an agitated driver, nothing more. If they didn’t want to pass her, then they could just learn to practice patience. She was helping them, really. Giving them an opportunity to build character.
The truck’s engine rumbled, and it pulled even closer, until the glow of its headlights melded with hers.
She should call 9-1-1. But where was she? She hadn’t seen any mile markers recently. What was the closest town? She couldn’t stop to pull up her phone and figure out her location, not now with that car bearing down on her. Maybe she should just call anyway -
A roar came from behind her, and the truck swerved into the empty oncoming lane, thundering up beside her car.
They were passing her, finally. She could drive at her own pace, could stop panicking about strange cars.
As the truck, tall and wide and long, pulled even with her little silver car, it slowed, matching her speed, and Judith’s heartbeat rushed faster, sending a cold jolt of electricity cascading down her body.
She could slow down, but then what? She couldn’t turn around on this narrow road, not before the truck could reverse and smash into her, or the driver might –
With a screech and a convulsive crunch, the truck slammed into the side of Judith’s car.
It was quiet, strangely silent, and there was the guardrail, smashed to curled metal from the force of her car. An embankment, steep and slick with wet grass, grass that was above and beside her – she could see it through the shattering windows. Balloons buffeted her, but how were there balloons in her car, it didn’t make sense. Rolling, twisting, bone-shuddering thuds, the world splintering around her, until the spinning stopped and the car crumpled like ripped, fragile foil, and a sickening smash echoed in Judith’s ears.
Thank you so much for taking time to read Beasts of the Field!
→ Keep reading! Episode VI: The Recovery
Oh no.
Oh no.
That's not good.
Way to ratchet up the tension. I am legitimately worried now!
(Also, my new theory of the case is that it's Heather Tierney's dad, Rob, but I don't know why. Only that one should never underestimate the villainies of county politics.
Also, I really hope that Tim is going to give Judith a hug if she makes it out of this, because she needs it! I felt so bad for her during this episode.