Read Online Nothing Lost by John Gregory Dunne - Free Book Online Page B

horse to make the case for DC. A prison electrician wired up the actual piece of furniture. He used AC. A fellow named Kemmler was the first to sit in it. His girlfriend had run into the business end of his axe. He needed a couple of jolts, but it worked. The newspapers said he’d been Westinghoused.”
    â€œYou been reading up, J.J.,” Charley Buckles said disapprovingly. Charley Buckles was the Osceola County medical examiner. And had been for as long as anyone could remember.
    â€œObserving the courtesies of the occasion, Charley.”
    â€œEdison thought it would only take four seconds. He got that one wrong. Took four minutes.” Edison’s fallibility seemed to please Charley Buckles. “Two thousand volts for the first four seconds in this state, a thousand volts for the next seven, then two hundred and eight volts for two minutes. Depending on body weight. Eight amps should take care of Percy.”
    â€œAfter which you take out your stethoscope and do the honors.”
    â€œThey were never quite sure the hot squat would take care of business,” Charley Buckles said. His interest in the way people died was inexhaustible. “That’s why they mandated immediate autopsies. To finish the job, so to speak.” He laughed heavily and leaned toward J.J. Even when he whispered, his voice was like gravel. “I did the post on that Parlance fellow. The pathologist down there in Regent thought it was a little beyond his capabilities. He does mostly highway and hunting accidents. Farmers who get sliced and diced falling into combines they can’t afford that their widows end up handing over to the bank, the odd suicide swinging in the barn, that sort of thing, nothing of the homicide variety.” He paused. “Your dad ever have a homicide out there in Parker County?”
    J.J. shook his head. Charley, why bring up suicides in a barn? J.J. thought of his father and the old single-action Colt he had put in his mouth and triggered with his thumb in the tack room. It was as if his face had never existed. He wondered if swinging from a beam in the barn would have been easier to take. Would he have cut him down or waited for the sheriff?
    No, he would have left him up. Maintained the integrity of the crime scene.
    â€œGood man, Walter,” Charley Buckles said, nodding his head slowly, as if processing what he seemed to have momentarily forgotten, the way Walter McClure had died. He plunged on. “One thing I did not want to do was drive all the goddamn way down to Regent. I can hardly fit behind the wheel of my automobile anymore. I get the wheel pushing in my stomach and it makes me sleepy.” His eyes closed for a moment, and then he snapped awake. “Well, I thought I’d seen just about everything in the homicide line. I’d have to say those two young gentlemen did not like Parlance much. The skinning you know about. He was alive when they did it. Cut out his tongue so he couldn’t scream. Shot off his fingers, stomped his chest with their cowboy boots. He must’ve been some tough bird. It was the hollow-point that took him out for good.” He appraised J.J. “You ain’t going to do this one, are you?”
    Plead ignorance. “It’s up to the A.G.”
    â€œFat chance,” Charley Buckles grunted. “He’s looking at a primary against your wife, she decides to run. The last thing he wants is you on a case that brings Jamaal Jefferson and the president of the You-nited States to Regent.”
    J.J. wondered how Charley Buckles, who spent all his working life with the recently dead, had such perfect pitch for the politics of his home state.
    â€œYou know why I went into the pathology line after I finished medical school?”
    A Charley Buckles perennial. It was easier to pretend it was the first time he had heard it. And it moved him away from the Parlance trial. “Why, Charley?”
    â€œBecause your