by John Verdon
The explanation seemed to satisfy everyone except Rodriguez. “I’d want to see the results of some tests before buying into that.”
“You don’t think it was an actual silencer?” Kline sounded disappointed.
“It could have been,” said Thrasher. “But then you’d need to explain all those microscopic down particles some other way.”
“So,” said Kline, “the murderer shoots the victim point-blank—”
“Not point-blank,” interjected Thrasher. “Point-blank implies virtual contact between the muzzle and the victim, and there was no evidence of that.”
“From how far, then?”
“Hard to say. There were a few distinct single-point powder burns on the neck, which would put the gun within five feet, but the burns were not numerous enough to form a pattern. The gun may have been even closer, with the powder burns minimized by the material around the muzzle.”
“I don’t suppose you recovered a bullet.” Rodriguez addressed the criticism to a spot in the air between Thrasher and Hardwick.
Gurney’s jaw tightened. He had worked for men like Rodriguez—men who mistook their control obsession for leadership and their negativity for tough-mindedness.
Thrasher responded first. “The bullet missed the vertebrae. There’s not much in the neck tissue itself that could stop it. We have an entry wound and an exit wound—neither one easy to find, by the way, with all the puncture damage inflicted later.” If he was fishing for compliments, thought Gurney, this was a dead pond. Rodriguez shifted his querying gaze to Hardwick, whose tone was again just short of insubordinate.
“We didn’t look for a bullet. We had no reason to believe there was a bullet.”
“Well, now you do.”
“Excellent point, sir,” said Hardwick with a hint of mockery. He pulled out his cell phone and entered a number, walking away from the table. Despite his lowered voice, it was clear that he was talking to an officer at the crime scene and requesting a search for the bullet on a priority basis. When he returned to the table, Kline asked if there was any hope of recovering a bullet fired outdoors.
“Usually not,” said Hardwick. “But in this case there’s a chance. Considering the position of the body, he was probably shot with his back to the house. If it wasn’t deflected in a major way, we might find it in the wood siding.”
Kline nodded slowly. “Okay, then, as I started to say a minute ago, just to get this straight—the murderer shoots the victim at close range, the victim falls to the ground, carotid artery severed, blood spurting from his neck. Then the murderer produces a broken bottle and squats down next to the body and stabs it fourteen times. Is that the picture?” he asked incredulously.
“At least fourteen, possibly more,” said Thrasher. “When they overlap, an accurate count becomes difficult.”
“I understand, but what I’m really getting at is, why?”
“Motive,” said Thrasher, as though the concept were on a scientific par with dream interpretation, “is not my area of expertise. Ask our friends here from BCI.”
Kline turned to Hardwick. “A broken bottle is a weapon of convenience, a weapon of the moment, a barroom substitute for a knife or a gun. Why would a man who already has a loaded gun feel the need to carry a broken bottle, and why would he use it after he had already killed his victim with the gun?”
“To make sure he was dead?” offered Rodriguez.
“Then why not just shoot him again? Why not shoot him in the head? Why not shoot him in the head to begin with? Why in the neck?”
“Maybe he was a lousy shot.”
“From five feet away?” Kline turned back to Thrasher. “Are we sure about the sequence? Shot, then stabbed?”
“Yes, to a reasonable level of professional certainty, as we say in court. The powder burns, although limited, are clear. If the neck area had already been covered with blood from stab wounds at the time of the shot, it is unlikely that distinct burns could have occurred.”
“And you would have found the bullet.” The redhead said this in such a soft, matter-of-fact way that only a few people heard her. Kline was one of them. Gurney was another. He’d been wondering when this point would occur to someone. Hardwick was unreadable but did not appear surprised.
“What do you mean?” asked Kline.
She answered without taking her eyes off her laptop screen. “If he was stabbed fourteen times in the neck as part of the initial assault, with four of the wounds passing completely through, he could hardly have remained standing. And if he was then shot from above while lying on his back, the bullet would have been on the ground underneath him.”
Kline cast her an assessing glance. Unlike Rodriguez, mused Gurney, he was intelligent enough to respect intelligence.
Rodriguez made an effort to retake the reins. “What caliber bullet are we looking for, Doctor?”
Thrasher glared over the top of the half-glasses that were making their way down his long nose. “What do I have to do to get you people to grasp the simplest facts of pathology?”
“I know, I know,” said Rodriguez peevishly, “the flesh is pliable, it shrinks, it expands, you can’t be exact, et cetera, et cetera. But would you say it was closer to a .22 or a .44? Make an educated guess.”
“I’m not paid to guess. Besides, no one remembers for more than five minutes that it was only a guess. What they remember is that the ME said something about a .22 and he turned out to be wrong.” There was a cold gleam of recollection in his eyes, but all he said was, “When you dig the bullet out of the back of the house and give it to ballistics, then you’ll know—”
“Doctor,” interrupted Kline like a little boy questioning Mr. Wizard, “is it possible to estimate the exact interval between the gunshot and the subsequent stabbings?”
The tone of the question seemed to mollify Thrasher. “If the interval between the two were substantial, and both wounds bled, we would find blood in two different stages of coagulation. In this case I would say that that the two types of wounds occurred in close enough sequence to make that sort of comparison impossible. All we can say is that the interval was relatively short, but whether it was ten seconds or ten minutes would be hard to say. That’s a good pathology question, though,” he concluded, distinguishing it from the captain’s question.
The captain’s mouth twitched. “If that’s all you have for us at the moment, Doctor, we won’t keep you. I’ll get the written report no later than one week from today?”
“I believe that’s what I said.” Thrasher picked up his bulging case from the table, nodded to the district attorney with a thin-lipped smile, and left the room.
Chapter 23
Without a trace
“There goes one pathological pain in the ass,” said Rodriguez, surveying the faces at the table for appreciation of his wit in so describing a pathologist, but only the perennial smirks of the twin Cruises came close to providing it. Kline ended the silence by asking Hardwick to continue the crime-scene narrative he’d been providing when the ME arrived.
“Exactly what I was thinking, Sheridan,” Rodriguez chimed in. “Hardwick, pick up where you left off, and stay with the key facts.” The warning suggested that this was not something Hardwick normally did.
Gurney noted the predictability of the captain’s attitudes—hostile to Hardwick, sycophantic to Kline, self-important in general.
Hardwick spoke rapidly. “The most visible trace of the murderer was a set of footprints, entering the property through the front gate, proceeding through the parking area around to the rear of the barn, where they stopped at a lawn chair—”
“In the snow?” asked Kline.
“Correct. Cigarette butts were found on the ground in front of the chair.”
“Seven,” said the redhead at the laptop.
“Seven,” repeated Hardwick. “The footprints proceed from the chair—”
“Excuse me, Detective, but did the Mellerys normally keep lawn chairs out in the snow?” asked Klin
e.
“No, sir. It appears that the murderer brought the chair with him.”
“Brought it with him?”
Hardwick shrugged.
Kline shook his head. “Sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead.”
“Don’t be sorry, Sheridan. Ask him anything you want. A lot of this stuff doesn’t make sense to me, either,” said Rodriguez, with a look that attributed the lack of sense to Hardwick.
“The footprints proceed from the chair to the location of the encounter with the victim.”
“The spot where Mellery was killed, you mean?” asked Kline.
“Yes, sir. And from there they proceed through an opening in the hedge, out across the lawn, and into the woods, where they finally terminate half a mile from the house.”
“How do you mean, ‘terminate’?”
“They stop. They go no farther. There is a small area there where the snow is tamped down, as if the individual was standing there for a while—but no more footprints, either coming to or leaving that spot. As you heard a little while ago, the boots that made the prints were found hanging in a nearby tree—with no sign of what happened to the individual who was wearing them.”
Gurney was watching Kline’s face and saw there a combination of bafflement at the puzzle and surprise at his inability to see any solution. Hardwick was opening his mouth to press forward when the redhead spoke again in her quiet, uninflected voice, perfectly pitched halfway between male and female.
“At this point we should say the sole patterns of the boots are consistent with the prints in the snow. Whether, in fact, they made the prints will be determined in the lab.”
“You can be that definite with footprints in snow?” asked Kline.
“Oh, yes,” she said with her first bit of enthusiasm. “Snow prints are the best of all. Compressed snow can capture details too fine to see with the naked eye. Never kill anyone in the snow.”
“I’ll remember that,” said Kline. “Sorry again for the interruption, Detective. Please go on.”
“This might be a good time for a status report on items of evidence collected so far. If that’s all right with you, Captain?” Again Hardwick’s tone struck Gurney as a subtle mockery of respect.
“I’d welcome some hard facts,” said Rodriguez.
“Let me just bring the file up,” said the redhead, stroking a few keys on her computer. “You want the items in any particular order?”
“How about order of importance?”
Showing no reaction to the captain’s patronizing tone, she began reading from her computer screen.
“Evidence item number one—one lawn chair, made of light aluminum tubing and white plastic webbing. Initial examination for foreign material discovered a few square millimeters of Tyvek caught in the folding joint between the seat and the arm support.”
“You mean the stuff they insulate houses with?” asked Kline.
“It’s a moisture barrier used over plywood sheathing, but also used in other products—notably in painters’ coveralls. That was the only foreign material discovered, the only indication that the chair had ever been used.”
“No prints, hair, sweat, saliva, abrasions, nothing at all?” queried Rodriguez, as though he suspected that her people hadn’t been looking hard enough.
“No prints, hair, sweat, saliva, or abrasions—but I wouldn’t say nothing at all,” she said, letting the tone of his question breeze by her like a drunk’s punch. “Half the webbing in the chair had been replaced—all the horizontal strips.”
“But you said it had never been used.”
“There’s no sign of use, but the webbing had definitely been replaced.”
“What possible reason could there be for that?”
Gurney was tempted to offer an explanation, but Hardwick put it into words first. “She said the webbing was all white. That kind of chair commonly has two colors of webbing interlaced to create a pattern—blue and white, green and white, something like that. Maybe he didn’t want any color on it.”
Rodriguez chewed on this like a stale gumdrop. “Proceed, Sergeant Wigg. We have a lot to get through before lunch.”
“Item number two—seven Marlboro cigarette butts, also without human traces.”
Kline leaned forward. “No traces of saliva? No partial fingerprints? Not even a trace of skin oil?”
“Zero.”
“Isn’t that odd?”
“Extremely. Item number three—a broken whiskey bottle, incomplete, brand label Four Roses.”
“Incomplete?”
“Approximately half of the bottle was present in one piece. That and all remaining shards recovered add up to somewhat less than two-thirds of a complete bottle.”
“No prints?” said Rodriguez.
“No prints—not a surprise, really, considering their absence from the chair and cigarettes. There was one substance present, in addition to the victim’s blood—a minuscule trace of detergent in a fissure along the broken edge of the glass.”
“Meaning what?” said Rodriguez.
“The presence of the detergent and the absence of a portion of the bottle suggest that the bottle was broken elsewhere and washed before being brought to the scene.”
“So the frenzied stabbing was as premeditated as the gunshot?”
“So it appears. Shall I continue?”
“Please,” said Rodriguez, making the word sound rude.
“Item number four—the victim’s clothing, including underwear, bathrobe, and moccasins, all stained with his own blood. Three foreign hairs found on the bathrobe, possibly from the victim’s wife, yet to be verified. Item number five—blood samples taken from the ground around the body. Tests in progress—so far all samples match the victim. Item number six—bits of broken glass taken from the flagstone under the back of the victim’s neck. This is consistent with the initial autopsy finding that four puncture wounds from the bottle glass passed through the neck from front to back and that the victim was on the ground at the time of the stabbing.”
Kline had the pained squint of a man driving into the sun. “I’m getting the impression here that someone has committed an extremely violent crime, a crime involving shooting, stabbing—more than a dozen deep stab wounds, some of them delivered with great force—and yet the killer managed to do this without leaving a single unintentional trace of himself.”
One of the Cruise twins spoke up for the first time, in a voice surprisingly high-pitched for the macho look of the body it came from. “How about the lawn chair, the bottle, the footprints, the boots?”
Kline’s face twitched impatiently. “I said unintentional trace. Those things look like they were left behind on purpose.”
The young man shrugged as though this were a tricky bit of sophistry.
“Item number seven is divided into subcategories,” said the genderless Sergeant Wigg (but perhaps not sexless, observed Gurney, noting the interesting eyes and finely sculpted mouth). “Item seven includes communications received by the victim which may be relevant to the crime, including the note found on the body.”
“I’ve had copies made of all that,” announced Rodriguez. “I’ll hand them out at the appropriate time.”
Kline asked Wigg, “What are you looking for in the communications?”
“Fingerprints, paper indentations …”
“Like impressions from a writing pad?”
“Correct. We’re also doing ink-identification tests on the handwritten letters and printer-identification tests on the letter that was generated through a word processor—the last one received prior to the murder.”
“We’ll also have experts look at the handwriting, vocabulary, and syntax,” interjected Hardwick, “and we’re getting a sound-print analysis of the phone conversation the victim taped. Wigg already has a preliminary take on it, and we’ll review that today.”
“We’ll also go over the boots that were found today, as soon as they get to the lab. That’s all for now,” concluded Wigg, tapping a k
ey on her computer. “Any questions?”
“I have one,” said Rodriguez. “Since we discussed presenting these evidence items in order of importance, I was wondering why you placed the lawn chair first.”
“Just a hunch, sir. We can’t know how it all fits together until it all fits together. At this point it’s impossible to say which piece of the puzzle—”
“But you did put the lawn chair first,” interrupted Rodriguez. “Why?”
“It seemed to illustrate the most striking feature of the case.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The planning,” said Wigg softly.
She had the ability, thought Gurney, to respond to the captain’s interrogation as though it were a series of objective questions on paper, devoid of supercilious facial expressions and insulting intonations. There was a curious purity in this lack of emotional entanglement, this immunity to petty provocation. And it got people’s attention. Gurney noticed everyone at the table, except Rodriguez, unconsciously leaning forward.
“Not just the planning,” she went on, “but the weirdness of the planning. Bringing a lawn chair to a murder. Smoking seven cigarettes without touching them with your fingers or your lips. Breaking a bottle, washing it, and bringing it to the scene to stab a dead body with. Not to mention the impossible footprints and how the perp disappeared from the woods. It’s like the guy is some kind of genius hit man. It’s not just a lawn chair, but a lawn chair with half the webbing removed and replaced. Why? Because he wanted it all white? Because it would be less visible in the snow? Because it would be less visible against the white Tyvek painter’s suit he may have been wearing? But if visibility was such a big issue, why would he sit there in a lawn chair, smoking cigarettes? I’m not sure why, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the chair turned out to be the key to unraveling the whole thing.”
Rodriguez shook his head. “The key to solving this crime will be police discipline, procedure, and communication.”