“We’ll take a look at them now.”
Glancing around. “Bill, Norm?”
The three men got up. As we filed out, Amburgey told his receptionist he would not be back today. Her gaze longingly followed Boltz out the door.
Chapter 7
We waited in the bright sun for a break in rush-hour traffic and hurried across the street. No one talked, and I walked several paces ahead of them, leading them around to the back of the building. The front doors would be chained by now.
Leaving them inside the conference room, I went to collect the files from a locked drawer in my desk. I could hear Rose shuffling paper next door. It was after five and she was still here. This comforted me a little. She was lingering because she sensed something bad was going on for me to have been summoned to Amburgey’s office.
When I returned to the conference room, the three men had pulled their chairs close together. I sat across from them, quietly smoking and silently daring Amburgey to ask me to leave. He didn’t. So I sat.
Another hour went by.
There was the sound of pages turning, of reports being riffled through, of comments and observations made in low voices. Photographs were fanned out on the table like playing cards. Amburgey was busily taking notes in his niggling, fussy scrawl. At one point several case files slid off Boltz’s lap and splashed on the carpet.
“I’ll pick it up.”
Tanner unenthusiastically scooted his chair to one side.
“I’ve got it.”
Boltz seemed disgusted as he began to collect the paperwork scattered under and around the table. He and Tanner were considerate enough to sort everything by the proper case numbers while I numbly looked on. Amburgey, meanwhile, continued to write as if nothing had happened.
The minutes took hours to go by, and I sat.
Sometimes I was asked a question. Mostly, the men just looked and talked among themselves as if I were not there.
At half past six we moved into Margaret’s office. Seating myself before the computer, I deactivated answer mode, and momentarily the case screen was before us, a pleasing orange and blue construction of Margaret’s design. Amburgey glanced at his notes and read me the case number of Brenda Steppe, the first victim.
Entering it, I hit the query key. Almost instantly, her case was up.
The case screen actually comprised more than half a dozen tables which were joined. The men began scanning the data filling the orange fields, glancing at me each time they were ready for me to page-down.
Two pages later, we all saw it at the same time.
In the field called “Clothing, Personal Effects, etc.” was a description of what came in with Brenda Steppe’s body, including the ligatures. Written in black letters as big as life was “tan fabric belt around neck.”
Amburgey leaned over me and silently ran his finger across the screen.
I opened Brenda Steppe’s case file and pointed out that this was not what I had dictated in the autopsy protocol, that typed in my paper record was “a pair of nude pantyhose around her neck.”
“Yes,” Amburgey jogged my memory, “but take a look at the rescue squad’s report. A tan cloth belt is listed, is it not?”
I quickly found the squad sheet and scanned it. He was right. The paramedic, in describing what he had seen, mentioned the victim was bound with electrical cords around the wrists and ankles, and a “tannish cloth belt-like article” was around her neck.
Boltz suggested, as if trying to be helpful, “Perhaps one of your clerks was going through this record as she typed it, and she saw the squad sheet and mistakenly typed in the bit about the belt in other words, she didn’t notice this was inconsistent with what you dictated in the autopsy report.”
“It’s not likely,” I objected. “My clerks know to get the data only from the autopsy and lab reports and the death certificate.”
“But it’s possible,” Amburgey said, “because this belt is mentioned. It’s in the record.”
“Of course it’s possible.”
“Then it’s also possible,” Tanner decided, “the source of this tan belt, which was cited in the paper, came from your computer. That maybe a reporter has been getting into your data base, or has been getting someone else to get into it for him. He printed inaccurate information because he read an inaccuracy in your office’s data.”