Super Meals: Part Seven

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The county coroner’s office was a red brick building across the street from the bigger of two hospitals in town.  Mimi pulled into the parking lot, went to the front door and flashed her badge at the security guard there, who let her in.

She had her .357 in her shoulder holster, but she’d also grabbed the pint of scotch and tucked it into her pocket.

Winding her way down the halls and to the refrigerated basement, she recalled the last time she’d come down here. It was to collect the report on the body of a 14-year-old girl who had been murdered so she could add the details to the case and properly charge the suspect they’d been holding in custody.

When Jane the coroner told her everything that their suspect had done to the girl, Mimi drove back to the station, dragged him from his cell into an abandoned interrogation room, and hit him so hard she broke her hand.

That was why she’d brought the bottle with her this time. It wouldn’t make the reports any different, but they’d be easier to hear if she could numb out the pain.

She reached the examination room and walked in, grabbing a surgical mask from a box mounted on the wall and slipping it over her face. Jane looked up when she heard Mimi enter, and she waved her over.

“So what’s the story here, Jane?”

“Hello to you too, detective.”

Mimi smiled under her mask, and Jane noticed her eyes crinkle and go soft, which made her smile as well. Mimi’s smile always melted Jane a little bit, even when they went through their rough patch and eventually broke up. Now they were just good friends, but Jane still loved to see Mimi smile.

“Sorry, I’m just…” Mimi started to say.

“I know,” Jane answered. “They’re not making it any easier for you, are they?”

Mimi sighed and said “No, they’re not. But I think the captain is starting to see it, which is why he gave me this one. It’s pretty open-and-shut, right? He’s a hobo found dead under an overpass. Exposure?”

Jane looked at Mimi for too long without saying anything, so Mimi asked “Right?”

Jane pulled back the sheet, revealing the hobo’s face. He was older, Jane estimated he was in his mid-60’s, with the beard you’d expect to see on a homeless man. She rolled his head to one side as she began to speak. “When he was brought in, there were several things that were noted by the EMTs who bagged him. The two most relevant points were the facts that he had recently vomited, and he was bleeding from the rectum and ears.”

“Gross,” said Mimi. “But what is that particularly pertinent to the case?”

“Because of the recent gastrointestinal distress relative to his time of death, I did a chemical analysis of his stomach contents…”

“Yeah, I know, that’s why you called me here,” said Mimi.

“I’m getting to that,” said Jane. “There was evidence that he’d recently eaten —“

“I’ve read the report,” said Mimi. “He had a bunch of fast food. We found the trash —“

“But that’s my point!” snapped Jane. “When I opened up his stomach, there was no food in there. I’ve seen more than my share of half-digested food, and what was in his stomach more closely resembled what you find in those gel-filled sneakers. And look at this…” She pulled the spotlight down to focus on his ear and handed an otoscope (the thing doctors use to look inside your ears) to Mimi.

Mimi took it and looked in his ear, which was raw, red, and to her untrained eye, looked like it had exploded. “Okay,” she said. “What am I looking at?”

Jane raised the spotlight up and said “Look, the human body hears sound by soundwaves entering the outer ear, vibrating the bones inside, then sending those vibrations through the liquid of the inner ear, and then those vibrations are carried along your auditory nerve to the brain where we interpret the sound.”

“But this guy’s ear looks like it blew up inside,” said Mimi.

“Exactly. When I examined him more closely, I saw that he wasn’t just bleeding from the ear, he was leaking cochlear fluid…” Jane looked up and saw the blank look in Mimi’s eyes. “That’s the fluid in the inner ear that transmits sound to the auditory nerve. I did a more thorough examination and found that the bones in his ears were 50% thinner than normal, and the cochlear liquid in his inner ear was 200% thicker.”

“Okay…great. So?”

“At the time he died, this man could hear twice as much as any other human being on the planet, from twice as far away.”

Mimi’s mouth dropped open under her surgical mask. Jane stood there, waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t. Finally Jane said “I’m sorry, darling, but I’ve already included it in my report. This isn’t going to be the easy, open-and-shut case you were hoping for.”