Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  Working for me are my old partners: Detective Sgt. Jim Wednesday and Detective Poached Yeggs, my nephew who is slowly becoming a good detective.

Poached closed this case on his own, and since we had our first fire pit night of the season, I decided that Poached could report his case by the fire while we roasted hot dogs.

We had a lot of people in attendance.  The Niblicks, Mashie, Pauline, and Baffy, were there.  The Niblicks and the Levys, Jacob and Dinah, were babysitting.  Captain Al and Gisele Hart were present. Jim, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Holiday Wednesday were there.  Poached, Callie, and Scarlet Ibis (Ibie) were there.  Polly Pulice invited Handy Randy, which worked out well since two of his professors were there.  I felt bad for Ruthie Toody, she was the only adult single, but she was having fun.  Easter and Jemima were in attendance.  And then since Blaise and Sophie were there, they invited Margie and Emmett, but it did not feel right without inviting all the MacDougall clan, including Samuel Farquharson.  And to give Cole and Sally Dalton a night off from the children, we extended the invitation to Arabella and Sarah.  Then, since Arabella was there, it made some sense to invite Michael Rowe Casey and his parents, Drs. Elvira and Ben Casey.

Since Poached had a crowd, maybe his story telling method of making a report will get out of his system if he tells the story behind his latest case closure.  Since there was nudity and sexual misconduct in the story, we had all the children under college age get the hot dogs and go into the house where the Niblicks and the Levys were babysitting the preschool children.

I introduced him.  “The lowly detective in homicide in Tracy, Poached Yeggs, has a bad habit of telling a story when he gives his reports, like he is writing a book or something.  So, once a year, we let him tell a story his way to get it out of his system.  Last week’s case was a doozy, and due to its “R” rating, we had the impressionable teenagers go inside.  I assure you who are not police personnel, there is enough naughty behavior in this case to grab your interest.  Feel free to grab another hot dog and roast it on the fire.  We have plenty.  When the story is over, we’ll bring the teenagers and Sarah back out to roast marshmallows and make s’mores.  Poached, the patio is yours.”

Poached got up and bowed.  Captain Hart threw a banana at him.  Gisele said, “That was uncalled for, Al!”

Al replied, “I was just feeding the monkey.”

Poached cleared his throat.  “This is a messy case where only one person was murdered in Tracy, but it goes back forty years to a prior case.  Lt. Deviled Yeggs had been called away to meet with Tuesday and the Organized Crime detectives from Tracy and Stout County.  They were looking into the series of cases this last few months involving organized crime mercenaries from bigger cities.  And Jim Wednesday answered a call about another domestic violence situation that got out of hand.  That left me alone in the squad room, at least for homicides.”

He continued, “Gisele relayed the call that a naked body was found behind a nursing home.  I followed procedure.  Polly and Ruthie secured the scene.  Crime Scene did their thing.  But it was the strangest corpse I had ever seen.  He was lying on his back, completely naked, and completely shaven from head to foot.  According to Dr. Quincy Isles, shaven postmortem for the most part.  Shaved bald, no facial hair including no eyebrows, no hair in the ears or nose.  No chest hair or back hair, no arm or leg hair, and none in the naughty bits area.  I see Jemima and Easy, and I don’t know what else to call that with them here.”

Jemima yelled, “I’m pregnant.  I think we are past not talking about naughty bits.”

Then, Glyce (Naomi to most folks these days) asked, “What about fingers and toes?  Any hair there?”

Poached shook his head, “Nope, no hair anywhere, and let’s keep the interruptions to a minimum.  The M.E. came back with a cause of death of a drug that causes paralysis.  If the antidote is not provided the heart and lungs will be paralyzed.  The guy’s name was Will C. Waggon.  He was a retired nurse anesthetist at the hospital.  I always have trouble with that name.  A Ness The Tist.  Got it!”

There were laughs, but no one interrupted.  “Okay, I did the usual panel of interviews at the nursing home.  No one saw Nurse Waggon leave the building.  He did not need nursing care, but he used a room there as assisted living.  And what most people said, he assisted himself to nearly every female in the nursing home, if you catch my meaning.  Every nurse was at her station at the estimated time of death.  So, I thought this was the strangest corpse that I had ever seen.  The M.E. said that he had never seen anything like it either, and what I had not realized was that the corpse was completely clean except for male and female sexual discharges that were placed on his chest, to make sure everyone could see them, and they would not be missed.  The M.E. had plenty for DNA testing.  If the female did the crime, she was advertising that she did it, that is if her DNA was on file.  This was too much like a serial killer.  I had little evidence to go on except for the DNA and that would at least take eight hours if we rushed it.  It would be a while before the next shift came to work.  I needed to make progress before I went back to the nursing home.”

Poached took a break, probably for dramatic effect. “So, I checked the records for corpses that were completely shaven, and a drug causing paralysis, injected intravenously.  I got a forty-year-old case in a medium sized town in California.  There were several people killed in the same manner, most while working in the hospital.  The woman was caught and deemed insane.  But she was released about a year ago.  Now, here is what happened in California that led to a killing spree.”

Again a pause for effect, the fire sent up a shower of embers, as if on cue, but I think Easy was poking around in the firepit.  “Forty years ago, this California town got hit by an earthquake, aftershocks followed, and there were the usual car wrecks and such.  Then, there was a gang war in town.  The little hospital had a fully functioning operating unit.  They kept two nursing shifts working 12-hour days for three full weeks from the earthquake until the gang war was resolved.  Finally, they had a break one Friday night and the nursing supervisor for the three to eleven shift wanted to give her crew a paid day off.  The hospital threw a fit.  They had paid these people so much overtime, a paid day off was out of the question, but they allowed her to call for a four-hour training session of her choice.  No one was allowed to clock out until their normal time, but the weekend call personnel from the day shift would handle an emergency, but there was none that night.  The three to eleven shift had the nursing lounge all to themselves.”

Poached continued, “The crew consisted of the supervisor, two nurses, a nurse anesthetist, two male surgical technicians, and three female technicians.  Everyone was married except for the anesthetist and the youngest female technician.  Those two both have sexual hangups.  Will C. Waggon told everyone that the “C” was for Come, as in Welcome Wagon.  He took all the new female nursing staff employees to bed.  He rarely slept with the same woman twice.  The young female technician was only eighteen.  She got out of high school early and completed a one-year course in being a surgical technician.  Her name was Aurora Rose.  Yeah, I see some people show recognition.  Princess Aurora was Sleeping Beauty.  She was also known as Brier Rose.  Aurora thought of herself as a princess and was saving herself for her Prince Charming.  She loved the looks of Will C. Waggon, but she did not like his reputation.  If he would just notice her, he would realize her princess qualities.  He would stop his fooling around and they could live happily ever after.  That is the setup for the training, but the training was on shaving patients.  I researched it.  They do not do that anymore.  It was thought that shaving the incision area cut down on SSI, Surgical Site Infections, but not long after this incident, there were independent studies of thousands of surgeries.  Not doing anything and using a cream that would remove the hair were about the same, but shaving the area led to an increase in SSI, less than two percent, so maybe an insignificant difference there.  So for the hospitals, not doing anything was cheaper and easier.  These studies were published after the year 2000.  But that was the nursing supervisor’s topic for the training.  But she did some set up first.”

Poached put his hands out as if he was spreading a tablecloth on an imaginary table.  “Since they were working really hard and very long hours, she gave the three men pep pills for the three days leading to the training session.  When everyone got to the nursing lounge for the training, she had lemonade prepared and everyone was required to drink the lemonade.  She chose lemonade in that she knew everyone liked it.  Only after they had finished off the lemonade did she announce that the topic of training was shaving.  What she never told anyone was that the lemonade was laced with something like a date-rape drug.  They would remember what was going on, but their inhibitions would be totally gone.  They might even get ideas they never had before.  Someone asked how the entire shift would train on shaving but only the technicians did that.  The supervisor announced that everyone had to strip, and the technicians would do each other and the nurses, just the area covered by underpants.  Because the medicine was kicking in, all but Aurora started stripping and giggling, but Aurora was hesitant to strip.  She did, but she lagged behind everyone.  The nurse supervisor said that Aurora would shave her.  While that was going on, she got the two female technicians to shave the two male technicians.  Then they switched while Aurora went on to the two nurses, and then finally Will C. Waggon.  He was starting to get aroused, but that added to the laughter.  But no one had shaved Aurora.  The younger male technician shaved her.  Then the nursing supervisor said that she was getting itchy.  One of the other nurses volunteered to help her with the itch, by rubbing the naughty bits.  As the suggestion started clicking in everyone’s head, they paired off.  The young guy who had just shaved Aurora mounted her. The other guys grabbed someone, and the ladies fondled each other.  May I point out that there are only two living witnesses to all this, Aurora and a janitor that was going to clean the nursing lounge.  When the janitor saw what was going on, he watched through the crack in the partially opened door.  As it turned out, everyone had done things to everyone else except for Nurse Waggon, who came to Aurora, and said, “Do you wish for me to rescue you from all this?”  She jumped into his arms, and they were intimate until after midnight.  You see, the pep pills were really male enhancement drugs.  It was the nursing supervisor’s idea for some fun, and to get Will and Aurora together.  She would either see him for the jerk that he was, or they would fall in love.  What happened was that somewhere along the abuse leading up to Will saying what he did, she had a psychotic break.  Him saying what he did put her totally into the dream world.”

Glyce asked, “I know you said not to interrupt but since the participants were married, what happened when they got home?”

Poached laughed, “That was in the detective’s notes too.  The two male technicians slept with their spouses until they actually fell asleep about two in the morning, when their “pep” pill wore off.  The ladies went home suggesting to their husbands that the thing that their husbands wanted to do but the ladies never allowed them to do – well this was their lucky night.  No one ever said what had happened that night.  But since Nurse Waggon could not welcome new nurses without hair down there or the itchy stubble growing back, he stayed with Aurora for about six weeks.  But once he had hair, he told her that they were finished unless he had a night when there wasn’t a new employee to sleep with.  At this point, Aurora snapped.  It took her about a week to steal the medicines from around the hospital, but then she approached the nursing supervisor after the shift was over.  She suggested that they find a bed and repeat the orgy, just the two of them.  The nursing supervisor agreed and when Aurora was making her feel really good, she injected her with the paralyzing drug.  She talked to the mute woman until she passed away, shaving her entire body.  She gathered all the hair as her keepsake and parked the nursing supervisor’s body into a recovery room space, to be discovered in the morning.  The hospital tried to keep it a secret, and that night Aurora lured two technicians, one male and one female, and one of the nurses.  Each time, she killed and shaved her victim and then moved them into a storage area next to recovery so that the others did not know.  With four of the nine people in the nurse’s lounge that night dead by the same method, they shut down the 3-11 shift.  The remaining nurse, and the two remaining technicians that Aurora had not yet killed were laid off or moved to the day shift.  Will C. Waggon figured out what had happened and him refusing Aurora’s plea for the two of them to be faithful to each other was the cause.  He moved to Tracy and changed his name.  He could wait, but for the other three, they thought nothing of commiserating with Aurora at a coffee house or late-night eatery.  She lured them into an alley, one at a time and killed all of them, except for the nurse anesthetist, who was out of reach.  The police finally added up the evidence and the murderer had to be either Aurora or Nurse Waggon.  The janitor came forward to give an idea of what was going on, Aurora’s princess syndrome, Waggon’s hopping into bed, and the nurse supervisor’s idea of the two single people doing it with each other.  For a while, the other orgy participants, according to the janitor, stopped for a while and were watching Waggon and Aurora, and they were cheering them on.  Aurora took little time before she confessed to everything, but then her lawyers managed the insane plea.  At that point, the anesthetist pulled out his real identity and got a job with the biggest hospital outside T.R.U.S.T. Medical Center.  He worked there, sleeping with the other nurses that would allow him to do so, until his retirement, but he never stopped sleeping around.

Poached said, “And now for about thirty-eight years later, Will. C. Waggon is doing his thing at the nursing home and Aurora is tested as being ‘cured’ of her condition and released.  She changed her name, and she moved to Tracy, having found where Will C. Waggon was living.  She had the skills they needed at the nursing home, and they did not bother doing a background check.  They were too hard up for help on the night shift.  Aurora, now calling herself Zelda, gladly slept with Will C. Waggon.  Since there were no new hires for a while, they became an item.  Zelda was roughly forty years older.  She had died her hair.  The retired anesthetist did not recognize her.  But true to his nature, the nursing home hired two new women nurses for the night shift, and he told Zelda that he had to move on.  Zelda suggested one more time, off in the woods as a farewell fling.  She had moved a mattress out earlier in case he went that route.  She had water jugs to wash the body.  As they were having a fantastic time together and they had already reached a climax, she revealed who she was.  By then, she had already given him the shot and he was unable to move or talk.  She enjoyed telling him how she had dreamed of this day for forty years, and all he had to do was be faithful to her.  When she told us what she had done as I was simply interviewing everyone of the nursing staff, the M.E.’s questions started getting answered.  The way the ground around the body was not disturbed but the body was so clean.  She shaved him while on the mattress.  She shoved him off the mattress and almost all the trace evidence remained on the mattress that Aurora (Zelda) tossed into a dumpster five miles away.  But at this point, Aurora wanted to not take the insanity plea.  She wanted to pay for the last murder.  Even with a light sentence, she’ll not survive her stay in the prison.”

Poached bowed.  The folks around the fire applauded.  Ruthie said, “Oo!  Oo!  We only get one story like that each year?”

Then the teenagers emerged from the bushes and flocked around Poached, “That was a great story!  Tell us another one!”

I looked at Sophie who said sheepishly, “Well, Daddy, I read his official report and when I told the others that he was going to tell a story about an orgy, they all snuck out of the house except for Emmett and me.  But then, we snuck out to keep an eye on them.  They were being good, but they heard everything.”

I simply shook my head.  Leave it up to teenagers, and they’ll find a way.  Later, Pauline admitted that the little ones were giving them some problems and they thought the teenagers were in the den watching a television that was turned up a little louder than usual, probably to mask their escape.  Pauline was very upset.  That was one of her ways of escaping when she wanted to act out as a P.K.  She knew the tricks, but she was distracted.

Glyce just shook her head.  After the kids had all had sex education, they did not hear anything new, and Poached kept it as clean as he could, considering the circumstances.

But then, I thought.  Michael and Arabella would be getting that class next semester, and in Margie and Blaise’s skipping school years, they both missed that stuff.  As everyone was marshmallow roasting, I shook my head.  Maybe this will all work out anyway.  They all have very good parents who teach them proper boundaries.  Maybe let the parents who were not here know what happened and have the parents ask some key questions.  One big one was why Aurora had her psychotic break in the first place.  She wanted to have only one sexual partner, her Prince Charming, but she was violated.  And then, her Prince Charming was not faithful to her.  In a way, Poached taught them a valuable lesson, just in a naughty way.

Credits

I have no credits that I can think of other than the following story I have already told.

My wife worked at a hospital in Port Arthur, Texas, one that no longer exists.  She had been wronged by her latest boyfriend, never giving me those details, but I think the guy came out of the closet a few years later.  Anyway, she swore that she would never date anyone again.

About that time, I moved into an apartment complex very close to the plant where I worked.  After about two months, the landlady wanted to play matchmaker.  Her husband was a surgical tech on the same shift as the woman I would marry.  Two girls were suggested for me to date, but the other one had not yet gotten her divorce, so that left only one as far as I was concerned, and she and her family were in a folk singing group, singing at the Texas Folklife Festival in San Antonio, Texas.  So, I would have to wait for the date.  I was sold on her being a singer.  I had also given up on ever dating, but this was my landlady, so one last try.

When my future wife got back to town, her workmate told her the wonderful news, and she had a fit.  No way would she ever date again.  He begged.  She still refused.  He offered bribes, and she refused them until he suggested that he would shave the naughty bits of all the male patients for the next two months, just for one date.  She agreed to that, and we were dating steadily before he finished paying off his bribe.