The Day the Music Died by Ed Gorman

Author:Ed Gorman [Gorman, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Music
ISBN: 9781843957416
Google: xlFRAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00H8GCKI4
Barnesnoble: B00H8GCKI4
Goodreads: 19485940
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1998-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

17

I DIDN’T HAVE FAR to go to find the morgue; it’s in the basement of the courthouse.

They try to disguise it as much as possible. There’s a nice-looking middle-aged receptionist. There’s a waiting area with a plump, comfortable wine-colored couch; a table filled with current issues of magazines; and a coffeepot that’s always percolating.

Doc Novotony is a distant relative of Cliffie, Sr., and as such his credentials have been questioned a few times. Exactly what is the Cincinnati Citadel of Medinomics, anyway? And exactly where is the Thayer Medinomics Hospital where he interned? The state medical board wouldn’t give Novotony his license until he battled them all the way to our state supreme court, which decided, be-grudgingly, that Novotony was more or less qualified to practice medicine here. But it was a split decision, with the minority report being pretty scathing.

Cliffie, Sr., installed Novotony as the county medical examiner. Novotony then proceeded to shock everybody by being a pretty decent M.E. with but two failings—anytime Cliffie, Sr., wanted results to come out a certain way, that was exactly how those results came out.

And then there’s the matter of how he dresses.

Iowa isn’t the equal of Texas in its football fervor but for some folks around here, it comes damned close. Doc Novotony, all 260 pounds and five-foot-six of him, is a good example. No matter what the occasion, and I include funerals here, you almost always see him in his black-and-gold Iowa Hawkeye football jersey and his black-and-gold cap and his black slacks with the thin gold piping down the side. He gets kidded a lot, but apparently not enough to change his clothes.

He came out to greet me after Rita, his secretary, had walked back to tell him I was here. He has psoriasis on one side of his face. It has spread over his hands. He has obligingly dispensed with handshaking. He smelled of death, or those morgue chemicals that I associated with death. They smell the same in the places where they put animals to sleep. I took a cat in once and followed the vet back to his special death room. I wished I hadn’t.

“Hear you had a little trouble last night, McCain,” he said. Then smiled. “Little skinny-dipping with that pretty Mary Travers, huh?”

Rita shook her head and rolled her eyes. She always looked embarrassed by her boss.

“Too bad you got the eye for Pamela Forrest, McCain,” Doc Novotony said. “That Mary’s a good-lookin’ gal. Plus she’s got some nice wheels on her, if you know what I mean.”

Rita did some more eye-rolling.

“I just said that to get Rita’s goat,” he laughed. “Got to liven this place up a little bit.” He picked up Rita’s package of Chesterfield’s and lit one. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me a carton,” Rita said. This time she shook her head, but I sensed genuine amusement with her boorish boss. He wore you down and won you over. Like professional wrestling: you watched despite all your best judgment.

“I’m here about the girl in the canoe.

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