Death in the Orchid Garden by Ann Ripley Page B

it took her a moment to comprehend its meaning. It struck the scientist’s shoulder and ricocheted onto her right hand. “Ow!” she cried, holding her stinging hand with the left one. “What’s happening?”
    The slab of rock, a foot long and only a few inches thick, would have struck her head, she realized, had she not at that moment been squatting back before leaning forward to apply pressure to the victim’s chest. She carefully lifted it off the prostrate scientist and set it aside.
    With an arm out to shield her face, Louise looked up, but could see nothing but navy blue sky. Had the rock just tumbled down, or had someone thrown it?
    Now rescuers were near and lights began to play around her on the rock. A whining siren sounded close, so an ambulance would soon be at hand. Though her hand was badly scraped, she continued her CPR efforts. But in her heart she knew that Flynn was dead.
    She continued pumping Matthew Flynn’s chest until one of the EMTs said, “It’s all right now, ma’am—you can stop,” and gently helped her stand up. She watched as two men lifted Flynn off the ground to put him onto a stretcher. To her horror, his unsupported head lolled unnaturally to one side. She could see the deep, gouged-out wound at the base of his skull.
    â€œOh my God,” she whispered, and put a hand over her mouth. She didn’t believe a fall from a cliff could nearly tear a man’s head off. After reaching this certainty, her mind went numb. An emergency worker quietly led her off the rock and to safety.

14
    Early Saturday morning
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    T he acting coroner, Dr. Henry Bartky, looked soberly over the dead body at Kauai County Police Chief Randy Hau. Hau was dark haired and muscular, with a broad, impassive face that showed no fatigue. This was a good thing, since it was two in the morning and the young chief, only forty to Bartky’s sixty-five, had spent hours that evening questioning witnesses.
    â€œLook, friend,” said the coroner, “as you might already have guessed, your Dr. Flynn’s injuries are not consistent with a fall from that cliff. Sure, you’d think his skull fracture could be due to the fall, but no, I say it was from a deliberate blow.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    â€œI’m pretty sure,” said Dr. Bartky. “Someone may have wanted it to look like an accident, but made a couple of errors. I surmise that after the victim was knocked unconscious, the killer bent his head forward, which gave the person access to the foramen magnum . . . right there.” Bartky pointed to the base of the corpse’s skull.
    â€œAnd the foramen magnum is what?” asked the police chief.
    â€œIt’s the large opening at the base of the skull through which the spinal cord passes to the cranial cavity.” He shot a canny look at the policeman. “Actually, our opening is farther underneath the head than in the great apes”—he cupped his hand near the very base of the corpse’s skull—“which means to hold our heads up we don’t need the huge neck muscles that they do.”
    â€œSo, what about this opening?”
    â€œThe murderer was not ignorant of anatomy—he reached in with some sharp tool and gouged out the brain stem. It probably caused a quick death if the blow hadn’t already killed him.”
    â€œSo the perp wanted to be darned sure he didn’t survive.”
    â€œNo question of it,” said Dr. Bartky. “Probably the killer intended for the body to land in the deep water with all those sharp, submerged rocks, thus providing an explanation for the neck wound. But instead it landed on the very edge of that shelf. In a sense, I’d say what you have here is a murder three times over. When it’s daylight, I’ll venture you find the man’s blood at the top of the cliff. He was bashed, gouged, then shoved off into space.”
    Hau silently mouthed a