6
The body was found lying face down on the cot in his cell at 7:43 a.m. Officer Laherty had entered the cell block at 6 a.m. to check on the inmates and assumed that Donald was still sleeping. The past night had been traumatic for the old man, and Dean was sure he needed his rest, so he let him be. At 7:42 stood outside the cell and called Donald Francis’ name three times before entering. As he approached the bed, he noticed a dark red stain spreading out from beneath the body. “Mr. Francis?” he said quietly and shakily. The man did not stir. He grabbed his shoulder and slowly turned the body over, revealing the source of the stain.
Donald’s throat had been sliced open, revealing the inner workings of his pharynx. So much blood had seeped into the mattress that resembled a macabre sponge, leaving a shallow pool of the sticky red liquid in a depression in the bed left by the weight of the body. Dean’s fright and confusion were only amplified when he turned the body over, revealing a blood stained kitchen knife clenched in the corpse’s hands.
24 minutes later, Andrew Whitman was racing into the Burdock police department and into the western cell block.
“What’s all the hub-bub about?” Terry called from down the hall.
“Shut it!” Dean barked back. He was standing at the end of the Western cell block outside the cell that housed Donald, waiting for Andrew.
He didn’t even stop to acknowledge the other officer before turning into the cell and almost running into a man in a green flannel shirt and blue jeans. He was standing over the body, which had been turned over, and was examining the damage that had been done. “Dr. Blaine, what happened?” Andrew asked, peering over the man’s shoulder at the corpse.
Dr. Ethan Blaine was Burdock’s coroner and one of two attending physicians at the St. Martha Medical Center. He had come to Burdock as a medical student on a work exchange program thirty years earlier and had decided to stay for his residency. Now, he stood looking over the body of one of the first men he had called a friend in this town. “He cut his own throat Andy. He’s stiff, but warm, couldn’t have been dead longer than six hours. The knife he used is right over there,” he motioned to a plastic evidence bag placed on a folding table that had been brought into the cell. Inside the bag was a blood-stained kitchen knife, the same kind that Angeline Francis had used to end her own life the night before.
A shiver went down Andrew’s spine. He swiveled around to look at Dean, who had moved inside the entrance of the cell. “How did he get this? He didn’t have it with him when we brought him in, or when you brought him into the cell, right?”
“No,” the officer said, shaking his head, “he didn’t have anything. Where the hell could this thing have come from?”
“Have you checked the security footage yet?”
“No, I was waiting for you to arrive before reviewing it.”
Andrew turned to the coroner, who was continuing his examination of the body. “Do you have everything under control here Dr. Blaine?”
“Oh yes, I can handle things here officer Whitman” he said without looking up from the body below him. “If you see me on those cameras though, make sure you get my good side.”
Behind the front desk of the police station were seven small screens that provided 24/7 surveillance for the building. Three screens showed the main hall, evidence depository, and offices on the second floor. The other four were all located in the cell block, with two on each end of the hall and two on the ceiling between the rows of cells. The camera facing Donald’s cell was marked D-3 and was currently fixed on the back of Dr. Blaine. The entirety of the cell was in the camera’s view, except for the back right corner, which was obstructed by the wall of the adjoining cell.
Dean logged onto the desk’s computer and pulled up the camera’s records. He found the footage from the previous night and began playing it a four-times speed. When he and Don entered the camera’s view, he slowed it to normal speed. Watching himself trail behind the distraught and tired man, Dean couldn’t help feeling that same sadness he had felt the night before.
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He sped up the footage again and watched for any sign of movement. When he saw Donald wake up and get out of bed, he rewound and slowed the footage to its normal speed. According to the time in the lower right corner of the screen, Donald Francis sat bolt upright at 3:26 a.m., stayed that way for two straight minutes, then slowly got out of his bed. He just stood there staring at the opposite wall for another five minutes. “What do you think he’s doing?” Dean asked quietly.
“I have no idea,” Andrew said as he analyzed the man on the screen, “maybe he just couldn’t sleep. But why would he be acting so weird?” After standing motionlessly, Donald moved again, this time to the corner that was hidden from view. “What’s in that corner?” Andrew asked sternly, though he knew the answer.
“Nothing, it’s just an empty corner. The toilet is further along the wall there, and the sink is to the right of that. There’s nothing for him to see or do over there.” But apparently there was, because he did not re-enter the frame for another sixteen minutes. When he did, he slowly walked back towards the head of his bed. When he got there, he stood still for another two minutes before moving his pillow and taking something from underneath it. He was standing with his back towards the camera, looking down at what he had just grabbed. Then, he did something that would have sent Andrew and Dean to their knees if they weren’t already sitting down. He turned around, faced the camera, and looked into it, as if he were looking at the two men sitting there now, rather than the night watchman who was probably dozing off the previous night. He raised his hand to the camera, revealing a kitchen knife clenched in it. When he did, another shiver ran down Andrew’s back. Still staring at the camera, he calmly sat down on his cot and raised the knife to his throat. He made a quick and precise cut which immediately set him into convulsions; he fell back, grabbed at his throat with his free hand, and fell face-down on the mattress, pinning his arms beneath him. He writhed and twitched on the mattress for a few seconds before suddenly stopping and lying motionless.
The two men sat in silence for another ten minutes, watching the seconds on the time go up while the image on the screen remained completely still. Eventually, Dean closed the window, and all that was staring at the men was a blue and white desktop showing the Burdock Police Department logo. The image of the dead man lying face down on the mattress hung in Dean’s mind, but all Andrew could think about was the knife. Where had it come from? How was it placed under his pillow without anyone knowing?
A thought suddenly struck Andrew, leaving him in a cold sweat. He stood up and quickly paced to the door of the evidence room.
“He-hey! Where are you going now?” Dean asked, still in shock from what he had just witnessed on screen.
Andrew didn’t pause or turn around to answer, “Evidence! Pull up the footage of the evidence depository from last night.” Before the other officer could pose a follow-up question, he was already headed downstairs.
When he opened the door to the evidence depository, which was under the protection of two heavy locks, Andrew saw nothing out of the ordinary. The room was large and contained many aisles full of filing cabinets and boxes. Three long tables stretched down the middle of the room, each with three chairs on either side. The dates on the containers ranged from 1930’s to the present day, though there seemed to be remarkably few files from after the new millennium. The file Andrew was looking for would be near the front, because it was only created the day before.
He walked down the first aisle of cabinets on his right and pulled open the top drawer. In it were nothing but cases of arson and burglary. He closed it and peered through the second cabinet before finding a file labeled “FRANCIS – APRIL 17, 2012”. He stared at the file for a long time, or what seemed like it, before pulling it out. It was a simple yellow manilla folder, but given the circumstances, its blankness appeared ominous. Andrew pulled the file from the cabinet and felt something crinkle inside it as he did. He walked to a nearby table and carefully placed the file on it, then took a seat. For a minute he just stared at the folder, afraid of what he would find inside. When his anticipation and anxiety both reached their climax, he opened the file. Inside was a few sheets of paperwork giving the details of what had occurred at the Francis house the previous night. Sticking out from behind the papers was a sliver of plastic: the edge of an evidence bag.
Dean watched as the other officer sat staring at the envelope, with the same acute attentiveness he gave to the dead man lying on his bed. After reviewing the footage of the evidence depository from the previous night, he could find nothing amiss; the only person who had entered the room the night before was an officer who had forgotten a file on a table. He switched to the current footage of the evidence depository and watched Andrew sitting in silence on the camera. “Come on, do something man! This shit is killing me,” Dean said quietly to himself.
The man on the screen took a deep breath, grabbed all the papers in the folder, and moved them to one side. Dean watched as a look of absolute confusion and horror spread across Andrew’s face. He peered down at what the officer was looking at, and the same look struck him just as hard. The evidence bag was empty. The knife Angeline Francis had used to kill herself the previous night was gone.