They waded through deepening puddles of water to the sidewalk in front of the house. As they started to shoulder their way through the small crowd there, someone shoved a spotlight and TV minicam in their faces.
Blinded, Matt started to turn aside when he heard a soft voice saying, “And here at the scene of this bizarre double homicide is Chief of Detectives Damon Clark.” Suddenly a microphone was jammed under Clark’s chin, and the voice inquired, “Just what can you tell us about this terrible tragedy, Chief Clark?”
Matt stepped back out of the light, while Clark squinted and put one hand up to shield his eyes from the glare. When Matt’s eyes adjusted to the dark and the stars began to fade, he found himself looking at a pair of glittering blue eyes set in a model-pretty face, surrounded by carefully coiffed blond hair.
Clark, irritated, asked sharply, “Do I know you?”
Obviously flustered by his lack of recognition, the face answered, “Hillary James, Chief, NewsCast Ten. Is there anything you can tell us about the killings that have taken place here tonight?”
Clark looked directly into the camera and answered, “I don’t expect the media to send rocket scientists to gather the news, Ms. . . . what did you say your name is? Oh yeah, Ms. James, but you should be able to see that I’ve just arrived here. Perhaps if you’ll be so kind as to wait until I’ve at least started the investigation, then I may have some facts for you. Until then, please get out of my way. Good morning.”
Hillary’s mouth dropped open. With an angry motion, she drew her finger across her throat and said, “Cut!” Gone was the soft, almost sexy voice she had used with Clark. In its place was the shrill squeal of the she-cat. “That son of a bitch. Just who does he think he is?” she asked her cameraman, clearly not expecting an answer.
She stomped off toward her car to freshen her makeup, which had become sodden in the mist. Matt heard her muttering something to herself about cutting the bastard’s balls off.
When Matt and Damon entered the house, the smell hit Matt even before the sight of the blood and excrement. He looked around. It was an ordinary, middle-class house, well kept up, with clean carpet and nice furnishings. He shivered, thinking, our houses are places of refuge, where we come after long, hard days fighting to make our way in the world. We’re supposed to be safe, protected once we get home and off the mean streets. Clearly, being home had been no protection tonight.
He and Clark removed their raincoats to keep from dripping water on the carpet. As they passed straight through to the master bedroom, Clark grimaced and said, “Just follow your nose to the murder scene.”
In a bedroom on the left, Matt saw a female officer holding a crying baby, trying to soothe it into silence. Oh shit, I don’t want to see this, he thought. A feeling had been building in him ever since entering the front door of the house. It began as a tightness at the back of his neck, a prickling of the skin there as if the hairs were stirring and trying to stand on end. He was reminded of the night in the emergency room when he’d suffered similar feelings of dread. Was it only the fact that he’d been forewarned that the murders were similar in appearance, or was something else going on here? Matt only knew he was as close to having a full-blown panic attack as he’d ever been. He began to breathe slowly in and out through his mouth to try and calm his sudden fear of what he was about to encounter.
As Clark and Matt entered the bedroom at the end of the corridor, Shooter Kowolski rose and approached them. Shelly and Samantha remained squatted down next to the body of a large man lying on the floor. Shelly looked up, gave Matt a nod, then returned to his examination of the corpse. Samantha glanced up, face expressionless as usual, then back down at the corpse without acknowledging she had seen Matt. He was thankful no one had seemed to notice the sweat beading his forehead and running down his sides under his shirt.
“Helluva way for grown men to spend their nights, Shooter,” quipped the chief.
“Sorry to get you up at this hour, Chief, but this case is a mite outa the ordinary.” He stuck out his hand to Matt. “Hiya, Matt. When I told Damon what we had here, he said he might ask you and Dr. Silver to stick your hands in.” He gave a half grin. “Dr. Silver invited Dr. Scott. Kinda glad he did.”
If Samantha heard this, she ignored it. Matt was struck with a sudden pang of jealously.
Shooter turned and surveyed the scene, his nose wrinkling at the smell and sight.
Clark followed his gaze, nodding. “That’s all right, Shooter. I’ve always told you to follow your instincts, so I guess I can’t complain when you do.”
Matt studied the scene while they talked. The bedroom was like the rest of the house, comfortable, but not extravagant. There was a double bed against the far wall, with the man’s body lying on its side next to it, and the bloody remains of a nude female spread-eagled on top of the covers. The bedside table on the man’s side of the bed had a drawer open, and a lamp and alarm clock had been turned over on its top.
Clark and Matt approached the body of the man, Matt unconsciously putting off examining the remains of the woman as long as he could.
“Why don’t you brief us on what’s so weird about this case and why it’s so special?” Damon asked Shooter.
Shooter placed a hand on Clark’s shoulder and stopped his progress toward the body. “Okay, Chief . . . Matt. Let’s start with how the perpetrator got into the house.” He motioned for Shelly and Sam to follow and led them all toward the front of the house. He knelt before the front door, and they gathered around to look over his shoulder.
“Look here,” Shooter said, pointing to the twisted wreckage of the doorknob. The crumpled metal was covered with black dust from the fingerprint crew, so he used a pencil to point to the splintered wood around the metal insert of the doorknob. “The knob itself is crushed, and the metal stem is twisted almost in half. The intruder didn’t bother to pick the lock, just grabbed the knob and ripped it outa the door.”
Clark leaned a little closer. After a moment, he looked at Shooter and whispered, “Jesus. . . . Any chance he used a pry bar or tool of some sort?”
Shooter shook his head, “Naw, we got fingerprint smears all over the knob, and no metal scrapes or scratches. This was one strong motherfucker—” He stopped and glanced at Sam, murmuring, “Sorry,” then continued. “And he didn’t seem to care about how much noise he made either.” He stood up and faced the small group. “That metal didn’t come out quietly, you can bet on that.”
Matt folded his arms, thinking, I wonder how strong a man would have to be to trash a door like that?
Shooter interrupted Matt’s thoughts. “Come on back to the bedroom, it gets better.”
They followed him back down the hall, reminding Matt of a bunch of interns following a department chief on rounds. In the bedroom, Shooter bent over the body of the man and again pointed with his pencil. “You can see right here,” he said as he pointed to the man’s right hand, which still held a pistol. “He musta heard the noise of the door and got outa bed and grabbed his gun, probably from that bedside table.”
Clark bent down for a closer look. “What is that, a three fifty-seven or a forty-four?”
Shooter consulted his notepad and said, “A Blackhawk forty-four magnum. This guy was serious about home protection.”
As Clark frowned at the levity, Shooter went on with his briefing. “We haven’t moved the gun yet, but if you take a deep whiff, and ignore the other smells, you can tell that he got off at least one shot, maybe two.”
Matt stood up and sniffed the air. As Shooter said, he could detect the faint, acrid aroma of cordite. He hadn’t noticed it before because of the other, more pungent odors in the room. He saw Sam had her nose raised to the ceiling, like a bloodhound questing for the scent of an escaped criminal. His mind wandered for a moment, appreciating the smooth line of her neck, and the way her hair glinted in the harsh overhead light.
Shooter moved to the wall opposite the bed and pointed to a hole about five feet above the flo
or, just above a TV set on a small table. “Here’s where the bullet he fired entered the wall.”
Clark approached the wall with his head down, eyes searching the carpet. “I don’t see any bloodstains. Evidently the guy missed his target,” he muttered.
Sam frowned and scratched her head with a pencil. She leaned in and stared at the hole. “I don’t think so, Chief Clark.” She crooked a finger. “Come on over here and look closely at the entrance hole in the wall.”
As they put their faces close to the hole, Sam said, “See those little stains around the hole, kind of rust colored? And right next to it there appears to be a tiny piece of tissue and cloth fibers.”
Clark stepped back, eyebrows raised, while Shelly stepped forward for a better look. After a moment, he nodded at Sam. She took a small plastic vial out of her bag and used a scalpel to scrape the fibers and stains into it.
“You’re telling me this perp takes a through-and-through hit from a forty-four magnum and is still able to do this?” Clark asked, extending his arm to point to the bodies.
Shooter shrugged. “See, I told you it was weird, and we’re not even to the good part yet.”
“There’s more?”
Shooter took Clark by the arm and ushered him to the male’s body. “Look at this guy, Chief, he weighs two hundred pounds if he weighs an ounce.” He leaned over the corpse and pointed to the man’s face and neck, which was twisted at an acute angle.
Shelly squatted down next to the man. Sam handed him a pair of latex gloves, which he pulled on. He took the head in one hand and slowly moved it around in a small circle, while feeling the back of the neck with the other. The sound of grinding and crunching as the broken bones were moved sounded obscenely loud in the stillness of the room. He looked up, handing Matt a pair of gloves. “Take a feel, Matt.”
As Matt bent to examine the body, Shelly said, “Tell me what you think.” Sam frowned, but he shook his head and nodded at Matt again.
Matt examined the face, noting a laceration on the right cheek and some extravasation of blood around the sclera of the right eye. Palpating the back of the neck, he could feel the bony fragments of several crushed vertebrae and the laxity of the neck that only comes if the supporting ligaments and tendons of the neck are torn loose. “It looks like one blow to the right side of the face resulted in a broken neck, at least two vertebrae, and almost instant death,” Matt said, without looking up.
Shelly sighed. “Matt, you keep this up and I’m gonna make you a medical examiner.”
Matt reached down and pointed at the ragged laceration on the man’s right cheek. “That means the perp is left-handed . . .”
Sam interrupted to say, “Or he hit him backhanded.”
Matt glanced up at her through narrowed eyes. “Do you think he could break this guy’s neck with a backhanded blow?”
Shooter cleared his throat for attention, shrugging and looking toward the front of the house. “Matt, I suspect the son of a bitch who tore that door apart with his bare hands and could take a forty-four magnum slug and keep going could do damn near anything he wanted to.”
Clark grunted and straightened up. He walked to the other side of the bed where the woman’s body lay, muttering under his breath, “No shit.”
Matt heard him gulp once and figured he was trying to swallow the bile that rose in his throat at the sight of the corpse. It wasn’t a very pretty sight, and in spite of Matt’s training, he felt nauseated. The prickling on the back of his neck went into high gear, and he shivered slightly as he looked at the body.
The chief asked Shelly, “Doc, do you see any sign of sexual assault?”
Shooter stayed on the other side of the room, as if physical distance could help him keep emotional distance from the mess on the bed. Matt glanced over at him, noticing the pain in his eyes. Matt knew it was tough being a cop. Shooter couldn’t afford to show that it affected him, that his heart ached at the horror that was perpetrated in this house. Cops were supposed to be phlegmatic, unemotional, deductive. Matt, who knew Shooter better than most, knew of his deep empathy with victims. Empathy he could never show to other cops, or he would never live it down.
Shelly repositioned the body on the bed. Gently, almost as if he were dealing with a live patient, he pried the legs apart. Sam reached down and held the legs steady while he probed the labia and vaginal area. From where Matt stood, he could see no evidence of bruising or tearing.
“There’s no evidence of sexual assault that I can see from this preliminary exam,” said Shelly. He and Sam both felt of the extensive lacerations and bite marks around the neck and shoulder and examined the left breast, which had a large chunk bitten out of it.
Shelly looked at Damon, forehead wrinkled and eyes narrow. “Ordinarily, I’d expect a little more blood spread around the room in view of the extensiveness of her injuries, but in view of our findings on the other case, I find I’m not at all surprised. However, I’ll know more after the full examination at the morgue.”
He asked Sam if she had anything to add. When she shook her head, he waved Matt over and indicated that he wanted him to check their findings. Matt repeated the exam, but found nothing he hadn’t mentioned.
Clark looked at his watch and yawned. He stretched his neck and back muscles and looked around the room again. “Shooter, do you think someone stoned on PCP or coke would have the strength to do this?”
“I don’t know, Chief. Angel dust’ll make you plenty crazy and awfully strong, but I’ve never seen it make anybody do this.”
Clark stepped into the hall and looked around. The other officers were all in the front room or out on the porch, smoking and drinking coffee. He came back into the bedroom and shut the door. “Listen, Shooter. You were right to call me out tonight. It’s very similar to the one the other night with her throat ripped out . . . too similar to be a coincidence. We may have the beginnings of a serial killer here, and that’s one headache I don’t need right now.”
He stood silently thinking for a moment, rubbing his chin and clicking his lighter, looking around at the crime scene without really seeing it.
Finally, he put his hand on Shooter’s shoulder and said, “I want you to seal this crime scene up tight, and it’s your ass if any of those reporters outside get wind of what we have here. I’m going out now and I’m going to make like it was a residential robbery, nothing out of the ordinary . . . you got it?”
Shooter nodded. “No sweat, Chief. I’ll make sure the guys working the scene understand it goes out as a routine burglary that went wrong.”
Clark waited for Shelly and Matt to finish their examination and for Sam to collect their specimens, then walked with them down the hall. “How about me treating you guys to a very early breakfast down at Brennan’s?”
Matt looked at his watch. It was close to six in the morning. Of course, the time didn’t much matter. For a chance to eat at the exclusive Brennan’s, Houston’s premier New Orleans eatery, he would’ve gotten up much earlier. “Okay, if it’ll get me some answers about what’s going on here and why you called me in on this.” He looked over at Shelly and Sam. “Dr. Silver and Dr. Scott I can understand since he’s the acting ME and she works with him, but why me?”
“No problem. I’ll meet y’all there in about ten or fifteen minutes, as soon as I deal with the press out front,” Damon said. He stopped and held up his hand. “Let me go out there first and draw their fire. While they’re busy with me, y’all can sneak out to your cars and avoid any tricky questions until we’re ready to answer them, okay?”
After they nodded their understanding, Clark stepped out into the mist and was immediately accosted by Hillary James and her crew. Shelly and Sam and Matt watched from the shadowed doorway as Clark looked around. Other than several officers and the NewsCast 10 crew, there were no other people present.
Hillary signaled her cameraman to turn on the lights. She approached Clark, false smile firmly in place. Before she could ask him any questions, he asked he
r, “Tell me, Ms. James, how did you happen to find out about this . . . occurrence?”
The smile vanished from her face as if it had been switched off. “Uh-uh, Chief, remember the Constitution and freedom of the press? That means I don’t have to reveal my sources to anyone.”
Clark smiled with his mouth but his eyes remained locked on hers. He reached in his overcoat and withdrew his gold cigarette case. Dipping his head, he cupped his hands around his lighter and lit the cigarette, the glow from the flame reflecting off his glasses and hiding his eyes. He looked up, exhaled smoke from his nostrils, spreading and blending with the fog and mist, and said, “Actually, it doesn’t say anything of the sort, Ms. James, and the fact that many good reporters have gone to jail in order to protect their sources proves it.” He turned to walk away, taking another drag on his cigarette. In an offhand manner, he spoke to her over his shoulder, his words punctuated by puffs of smoke in the mist. “However, if one of my sources got me out of bed at four in the morning for a routine robbery and homicide, I’d be pretty angry about it.”
Following him down the walk, her hair now wet and stringy, James hissed, “What do you mean routine robbery and homicide? I was told this was some sort of cult or gang killing. I was told it was a regular slaughterhouse in there!”
Clark stopped and turned to face her. “Excuse me? Are you telling me one of my officers called you and described the crime scene to you?”
She stopped and bit her lip, looking like a coyote caught in a trap. Matt, watching from the doorway, thought he could see the wheels turning as she stared at Clark without answering. Finally, she said, “No, what I meant to say was that I overheard the officers talking about it as they left the house.”
Damon laughed, and, in a sarcastic tone, said, “You had better learn to lie a lot better than that, Ms. James, or you’ll never get anywhere in TV.”
As he got in his car and drove off without another word, Matt made a mental note to tell Shooter that he had an informant on his staff.
Night Blood Page 10