“I don't think so.” Sam gestured toward the bartender for another scotch. “Paul has already warned me off.”
“Word on the street is that Paul’s in trouble. Could be tempting.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“I know a lot of things about the law firms in this town,” Veronica said.
“Well, I don't think you have to worry about me on this one. This is the end of the line for me. I’ve got nowhere left to go.”
“I would hope you wouldn’t take it. Whoever takes it on is going to be the most unpopular man or woman in the county. Whoever did that to Emily needs to fry. Let them bring in one of those shoulder-pad-wearing shrews from down in Cheyenne. That’s the difference between practicing in a city and in a small town. Here, we all have to get along.”
“Speaking of which, word I got is that you hated Emily’s guts, and she felt the same about you.”
“That's just small-town gossip. It’s true that we had our differences, but that was because she wasn’t particularly good at managing her schedule, which screwed with my boss’s docket—and I don’t like anyone dicking with my boss’s docket,” she said, giggling.
“Come on, Veronica, she slept with your ex-husband while you were married. You can’t tell me that you don’t hold a grudge over that.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve got my own sources.”
“Touché.”
“You wouldn't be normal if you could just let that go. That’s not how love works. No one gets over that kind of stuff.”
“Kind of like you not getting over getting hurt?” she said, sipping her wine. “That was weird the other night. Tell me what happened, Sam.”
“Yeah, like that,” he said, too quickly. Then, “I don't want to talk about it. I haven’t talked about it for ten-plus years, and I’m goddamned not going to start now.”
“So, let me get this straight: you can talk about my personal life, but yours is off limits—is that how this works?”
Sam took a couple of deep breaths. “Veronica, I don’t want to argue. I am just not ready to talk about it yet. I want you to know I tried to set up an appointment with the VA, but at this clinic it’ll be six weeks before they can see me.”
“Good. You need to talk to someone. Maybe then you wouldn’t drink so much. Maybe you wouldn’t take so many pills.”
Sam looked at her steadily until he shifted his eyes and met the waiter’s, mouthing, “Again, please.”
15
“The body is that of an un-embalmed, well-developed, healthy, white female of slender build. Body length is sixty-seven inches. Estimated weight is one hundred twenty-five pounds.” Dr. Ronald B. Laws had a voice-activated microphone attached to his lab coat so he could record his findings as he made them. Laws had done a residency in pathology some years ago before turning to internal medicine, and now contracted with “Doc” Fish—the elected coroner—to do the actual work of pathology for the county.
“The body was found no more than thirty-six hours following death; post-mortem decomposition, therefore, is underway,” Laws continued. “The head is normal, the pupils round and equal; the irises are brown. The nose, ears, jaw, chest, abdomen, and extremities are normal. The neck and throat sport an incision approximately four centimeters in width and running from jawline to jawline.”
Punch stood nearby, watching. “Detective Polson, would you assist here?” Laws asked. Together, the doctor and detective moved Emily Smith’s body into a semi-reclining position. Laws then placed a plastic object shaped like a block underneath the body, near her upper spine. “Okay, let her down.”
This resulted in the chest protruding upward and her arms falling to the sides, like a whole chicken ready for deboning. As Punch watched, the doctor made a Y-shaped incision, with the branches of the Y just under each breast and the base of the letter near her pelvis. Since the blood in her body had long since coagulated and settled, there was no bleeding. “The organs are in normal location and have normal relationships,” Laws dictated after a quick inspection.
Wielding the scalpel, the doctor warned Punch, “You’re not gonna like this; you might want to have a seat.”
Punch nodded, determined to hang in there. “I’ve seen ’em before, Doc.”
“Whatever,” was the response, and the dissection, or “internal examination,” began, whereupon the doctor proceeded to remove, weigh, measure, examine, and comment on the internal organs of what had once been a vibrant young woman—somebody’s little girl.
Punch hung in there for an hour or so, but the tedious nature of it all got to him, and he pulled up a chair and sat down. He half-listened as the doctor dictated the findings as he went along, choosing instead to review his notes on the case so far. At last, Laws stood up, straightened his back, and retrieved a saw from the small table behind him. It was, he informed Punch, time to examine her brain.
“Doc,” Punch said, standing and looking at Emily. “I’d love to stay, but I’ve got things to do.”
“What?”
“I dunno,” Punch said. “I’ll think of something. Call me.”
16
“Mr. Hadley? I’m Officer Jensen from the Custer Police Department,” Jensen said through the crack in the door.
“Lemme see your badge, boy,” was the response. Looking from the daylight into the darkness in the house, all Jensen could see was a white sleeveless T-shirt and silver hair. He could smell the bourbon, though. Excellent. Another drunk who saw and heard things no one else did. Jensen was busy, with the boss and half the department all over him. He really didn’t have time for this. Nonetheless, he showed the guy the badge, just as he might someone who would actually know what he was looking at.
“Mr. Hadley, you called and said you had information that might help us?”
“I did.” Hadley opened the door to reveal a remarkable mess of an apartment. “I think I seen him, but I wanta be put into that there witness pro-tection program ’fore I says anythin’.”
“Mr. Hadley, why don’t you tell me what you know, and then I’ll make a determination whether or not your information is helpful, and whether you might need protection as a result.”
“I ain’t sayin’ shit lessen I git protection,” said Hadley, scratching at his armpit like an old, gray ape. “And I want a re-ward.”
Jensen’s eyes had adjusted. “Mr. Hadley,” he said, looking over the old man’s shoulder. “Is that marijuana in that frisbee under that chair behind you? Because if it is, I’m gonna have to arrest you and take you downtown and ask you a whole bunch of questions about where you got it, et cetera.”
Hadley turned and considered his living room, then faced Jensen again. “Well now, Officer, I don’t see any reason why we can’t work something out. . .” Hadley trailed off, realizing things hadn’t gone quite the way he had planned.
Jensen had pushed past Hadley and was now in the living room. He bent over, cleared a place on the couch by moving a pile of empty beer cans and a pizza box, and somewhat reluctantly sat down. “Now, tell me what you know, Mr. Hadley,” Jensen said. “Beginning with why you waited several days to call.”
Lucas and Punch were in Lucas’s office several days after the discovery of Emily’s body. Press queries were incoming, and the mayor was getting impatient, so Lucas had called Punch in for an update. “So, what do we have?” he asked, sipping coffee from a mug with a handle shaped like a pistol grip.
“It looks to be pretty straightforward,” Punch opined. “No sign of a break-in; nothing is missing as far as we can tell; killer cut her with a purpose.”
“So, someone she knew,” Lucas said.
“Starting to look that way,” Punch said. “Way I see it, she let the guy in, something was said, and at some point he lost it.”
“He?”
“I think so. Never known a woman to do something like that. Besides, she was slender, but the word is that she was a fitness fanatic. She wouldn’t have been a pushover.
”
“Speakin’ of which, anything back from the lab? Prints?”
“Lots of prints—maybe a half dozen distinct sets so far. One’s hers, of course—even I can see that, but the rest are unidentified right now. Cale is running them through the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System to see if we can get a match, but so far we don’t have squat.”
“AFIS? That’s just bad guys, right?”
“Not anymore. Nowadays, you buy a gun, work in a bank, or do any number of other jobs you get fingerprinted. All the records end up in the database.”
“So our guy could be a first-time offender and we might have a shot?”
“Or even a never-offender, if he ever bought a gun or did any security work,” Punch said, and then, with a devious grin, added, “Or was a cop.”
“Jesus Christ Almighty! Don’t even think that—gives me the runs just thinking about it!” Lucas took a deep pull from a can of soda on his desk. “Blood?”
“What I said before: most of it was hers. Some—what was in the sink—maybe wasn’t.”
“So maybe he cut himself?”
“I figure either his hand slipped when the blade got wet and he washed up later, or maybe she got to him first—like I said, she was no wilting lily, by reputation.”
“Weapon?”
“All of her kitchen knives are accounted for, and her mom said she didn’t have anything else around the house.”
“So, premeditated?”
“I’m thinking so, yeah. Looks like he brought it with him and left with it.”
“Boyfriends?”
“Mom and secretary don’t know. We’re asking around.”
“Pictures of the gawkers?”
“Yeah. Jensen had the photogs go outside and shoot crowd shots every half-hour or so in case our boy is a ghoul.”
“Anything?”
“Not yet.”
“Phone records?”
“We’re working on it. Can’t find her cell.”
“What about the neighbors?”
“Jensen got a call about an hour ago; guy lives in the next stairwell. He’s on it; I haven’t heard anything yet.”
“So, tell me what your gut says, Punch. This a pissed-off boyfriend, or do we have a weirdo running around?”
“I can’t tell yet, Chief. I don’t have enough yet to even hazard a guess. I only hope—"
“Hope ain’t a method, Punch,” Lucas interrupted. “We need to know, and we need to know ASAP.”
“I know that. I’m on it. There’s nothing more I can do right now.”
“I don’t need to tell you, Punch, that this is a big deal. The city council is in an uproar. There’s an election pending. I want this mess wrapped up and put before the public wrapped in a big red bow long before that—got me?”
“Gotcha, Chief.”
“Just remember something. Come election day, if this case is still open, detective or not, you could very well find your ass checking parking meters on Yellowstone Avenue in a new administration.”
Cale Pleasance had been a fingerprint examiner for almost twenty years, and he was, as he liked to say, “in all modesty—a damned good one.” He’d been the on-duty examiner, so he’d gone to the scene and pulled a number of the fingerprints himself. There were fingerprints everywhere, which, contrary to what one sees on television, was to be expected. He’d lifted as many of those as he could and dusted for latent prints just in case whoever had done this had been dumb enough, or panicked enough, to leave behind his or her prints. He’d then glue-fumed the hallway where the body was found to pick up additional latent prints. Finally, he’d treated some of what he saw as the clearer prints with gold nanoparticles and attached cotinine antibodies; this could tell him if the individual who left the prints was a smoker.
The team had taken the victim’s prints at the scene, and Pleasance had a copy of those on hand for the sake of comparison. Accordingly, he’d been able to quickly eliminate about ninety-five percent of the visible and latent prints as belonging to the suspect, simply because they were those of the victim.
The unidentified prints he was left with were located on common items, to include lamps, wineglasses, the open bottles of wine in the kitchen and bedroom, the bedposts up by the headboard, the handles to the entry door, the window sash in her bedroom, three shot glasses, the bathroom taps, and the towel rack. There were also a couple of unknowns on the refrigerator handle and a vase full of dead flowers on the kitchen countertop.
Now he had to submit the prints to AFIS to see if any of the donors had a criminal record, had been in a sensitive position, required a special license for work, or had ever worked with children, the infirm, or had been or currently was a member of the military. Based on his experience, it would take AFIS a little time to give him an answer, so Cale decided to get a cup of coffee while he waited. He was pouring it when the phone rang.
“Custer Police, Technician Pleasance. May I help you?”
“Yo, Cale. Jensen here. You got anything? Punch and the chief are on my ass.”
“Just kicked things off to AFIS. All I know right now is you got six or seven sets of prints in the house, and one set belongs to a smoker.” Cale took a careful sip from the steaming cup. “You in touch with her folks or relatives?”
“We’re tryin’,” Jensen said. “Why?”
“I’m thinking if you can talk with them, find out the last time—if ever—they were here. If we can get a set of prints from them, maybe we can start eliminating a lot of these unknowns.”
“Okay, I’ll talk with Punch. Call me as soon as you know something, okay?”
“I’ll do it.”
“Have you ever seen a doctor?” Veronica asked. She and Sam were having lunch at a small café near the courthouse.
“I’ve seen a lot of doctors,” Sam said. He knocked on what should have been his leg with his knuckles.
“I’m sorry. I meant—”
“I know what you mean. Look, they took my leg on a hospital ship somewhere on the Red Sea. I got shipped out of theater to Frankfurt, Germany. There’s a big hospital there. They got me stabilized and worked up, and I got sent from there to Walter Reed, near D.C. Spent almost a year there recovering physically, learning how to use this.” He pointed at the leg. “And they sent me through counseling, and the like. Saw lots of docs.”
“That must have been terrible. You are a hero, Sam.”
“I’m no hero. A guy like Corporal Jenkins, who ran through gunfire to drag my ass to safety—that’s a hero. I was a guy doing a job who got blown up and shot. A guy who got his men killed—”
“Stop it!” Veronica whispered. “You can’t blame yourself.”
Sam looked at her for a long moment. “I fought against a medical discharge, but at the time and given my specialty, well, the Army said I had to go or change my specialty. I didn’t accept that very well, so I went on a bit of a bender when I got the news.”
“That’s understandable.”
“I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do next. I’d never really thought beyond the Army. Fortunately, a guy I knew was friends with the admissions officer at a law school nearby. They pulled some strings and I got in.”
“That was good of them.”
“It was. Without my disabled vet status, I doubt I’d have gotten in.”
“Did you enjoy law school?”
He laughed. “Show me someone who enjoys law school and I’ll show you someone who’s as crazy as a shithouse rat. I finished in the middle of my class, which wasn’t bad since I was generally three or four beers to the good during class.” Seeing her look of horror, he added, “It was night school.”
“So that makes it better?” she asked.
“It does.” Sam finished his sandwich, wadded up his napkin, and dropped it on his plate. “Anyway, while I was in school I tried the mental health counseling thing, but I wasn’t getting much out of it and there were a lot of guys who needed it more than me, and sinc
e there was limited space I just kind of decided to let someone else see if they could get anything out of it.”
“Who could need it more than you?”
“Lots of guys.” He looked at the floor. “You don’t know the extent of damage to some of these guys and gals. I mean, I’m screwed up, but I’ve got so many advantages over so many of them . . . It’s hard to explain, but I’m okay.”
“Are you?”
“I am, really. Just had a bad night. I have some of those.”
“Hey, Judge, what do you know about that murder?” O’Hanlon asked Howard. They were tipping a few, and O’Hanlon was feeling a little loose.
“You know I can’t talk about pending cases,” Howard said.
“Well, I suppose not,” O’Hanlon said. “Think you’ll get it?”
“If they find the guy, I could do his initial appearance and then preside over his preliminary hearing.” Howard took a long pull from his glass. “If I didn’t recuse myself.”
“Why would you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You never know. Could be someone I know.”
“Well, I hope they find the guy. It’s creepy, some guy killin’ a lawyer and all—especially a good lookin’ one like her.”
“Yeah.” Howard raised his glass to the bartender. “Another round for my friend and me, Pete.”
17
“Get a description?” Punch asked, hoping beyond hope it was a black guy or a Hispanic, not because he was racist but because there were relatively few of each in town, and it would make finding the suspect much easier. What Punch decidedly did not want to hear was that the suspect was a white, blue-collar-type male with facial hair and driving a white 4x4 pickup, because that description would fit most everyone in town.
“You bet,” replied Jensen.
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