Page 27 of A Rose of Steel
“You have to be the medical examiner.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes you do.”
“Why do I have to do that?” I’m sure my tone came off a little nastier than I intended. “I can’t take a job I have no intention of keeping.”
“And you don’t have to take it permanently. But, if this is a murder, I’ve got to investigate.”
“Yeah, I think we’ve just established it is murder. And you just told me that you can do it without me.”
“Yes. I can. And I will. Investigate that is. That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
“If you don’t help me then guess who will be legally obligated to do an inquest?”
“Who?” I said, but no sooner than I let the words out of mouth, then I remembered who. “That old Hoot Owl that’s who, huh?” I said and chuckled. “Auntie Zanne.”
In Texas, where my Auntie Zanne reigned supreme, a Justice of the Peace didn’t need a law degree, or any degree for that matter, and could be voted in–elected by popular vote. And she was popular.
A resident of Texas since migrating with her parents from Louisiana in the forties, Suzanne Derbinay was a member of the board of directors for the Tri-County Chamber of Commerce, and ranking member in a host of ladies’ auxiliaries and clubs, including the Red Hat Society, the founding member of the Roble Booster Club, and the Distinguished Ladies’ Society of Voodoo Herbalists. And as the founder and proprietor of The Ball Funeral Home & Crematorium, where there was a natural, steady influx of clients and their families, along with an abundance of calendars and refrigerator magnets to boast her services, Babet Derbinay, was a household name.
She won the election in a landslide.
As part of her duties as the Justice of the Peace, or “JP” in political-ese, as Auntie explained to me, she oversaw minor civil and criminal matters, and as she tried to do on that fateful day, conduct marriage ceremonies among other things.
Those “other things,” I soon learned included conducting inquests.
An “inquest” according to the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure meant an investigation into the cause and circumstances of a death and a determination as to whether the death was caused by an unlawful act. On top of that, she could lawfully go around and obtain evidence needed to initiate a criminal prosecution.
The only thing that could stop her was me. That was, if I were the medical examiner.
That same law that gave her power, limited her in counties which had one. While negotiating to help redesign the ME office, I’d learned a thing or two about the structure of Texas law as it concerned their doctors who determined whether the manner of death was natural, accident or homicide.
The State of Texas had no say over medical examiners, it was the County Commissioners Court, and the controlling statute required that counties with a population of more than a million folks had to have a medical examiner office, while counties with a population of less than a million could opt to have one. Sabine County, where Roble was located, Shelby County and San Augustine County combined, had little more than 45,000 residents, but the three counties had decided together to have their own ME office and had hired a medical examiner. Up until a month ago that had been Dr. Harley Westin—Doc Westin to everyone who knew him.
I thought about my feisty little auntie and how pushy and secretive she’d been during the last murder investigation. She had taken the murdered victim being discovered in her place of business as a personal assault to her reputation, and accused Pogue of having had a personal vendetta against Josephine Gail, wanting to frame her for the murder. She kept up the façade for nearly the entire investigation, and all the while contended that my poor Aunt Julep, Pogue’s mother, was the culprit.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“The autopsy,” he said.
“Okay,” I nodded although he couldn’t see me. “I can do that.”
“And nothing else, Romie.”
“What does that mean?”
“I want to solve this case myself. Last time you convinced me to go away then you took over the entire investigation.”
“I did not,” I said defensively. “You’d signed up for that conference before I’d even come back to Roble.”
“Yeah, you did. However it went, in the end it made me look incompetent.”
“Incompetent to whom?” This was all in his head.
“Everybody.”
