by William Kerr
“What?” Matt asked.
Holding the blood spot on the shirt next to Matt’s nose, Lundgren asked, “Smell anything?”
Matt sniffed several times before answering, “Onions…or garlic. Garlic.”
Good said, “Thiopental sodium, commonly known as Sodium Pentothal.” Looking at Lundgren, she asked, “Right?”
“Most likely. An ultra quick-acting barbiturate. Unconscious within thirty to sixty seconds after being administered. The duration of unconsciousness also relatively short. In minutes, dependent on the dilution and amount injected. In this case, whoever did the injecting apparently squirted some on the shirt upon entry or when exiting the skin, or we probably wouldn’t be able to smell it.
“As for the other injections and what they might have contained,” Lundgren went on as Matt shouldered his way back into his shirt, “you vomited when you regained consciousness, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else? Irregular heartbeat, difficulty breathing, intraocular pressure as though your eyes were swollen and about to explode, muscle weakness and/or pain, excessive salivation?”
Matt nodded. “All the above, except I don’t know whether or not it was additional saliva or vomit, but yeah. Worst part, I couldn’t breathe. What do you think?”
“A skeletal muscle relaxant. Anectine, for example, otherwise known as succinylcholine chloride, used in surgery in combination with certain anesthetics. Several cases on record where people have been immobilized with succinylcholine, then murdered. Or simply overdosed. Paralyzes all muscles, including the diaphragm. If you were overdosed with succinylcholine, you’re lucky to be alive. We’ll leave it up to the lab people to make the determination, but at least that gives us a starting point.”
Slapping the top of his forehead with the flat of his palm, Hammersmith spit out, “I’m not believing this shit. If anybody stuck a needle in Berkeley’s arm, it was him or somebody working with him.”
Matt shook his head in disgust. “That makes absolutely no sense, Hammersmith. If I dosed myself, where’s the hypodermic? Or two or three of them. And if it was somebody working with me, he’s not much of a buddy, leaving me here with a gun in my hand.”
Fay Lundgren looked hard at Matt, her eyes searching for answers that neither could give. “Maybe you’re telling the truth, but I’ve got the same question you had, Mr. Berkeley.”
“What’s that?”
“Rather than go to the trouble to make it look like you murdered your wife, why didn’t they simply kill the two of you?”
CHAPTER 36
The sound of his name being shouted and the glare of portable Klieg lights for television cameras forced Matt to hold an arm over his face. A barrage of questions were thrown by hungry media reps as two uniformed policemen, none too gently, ushered him out through the front door of the house on Fourth Avenue North. They stopped when Matt heard Fay Lundgren call, “Hold it, officers. Yes, you two. Where are you taking him? Detention center downtown Jacksonville or the Jax Beach facility?”
Before either of the two officers could answer, Detective Sergeant Terri Good’s voice called, “Jax Beach. Penman Road for interview, then the detention center, but I can’t give you a particular time frame. Depends on length of the interview and Mr. Berkeley’s cooperation. Why?”
“Understood, but the bodies are going downtown with me for autopsy. If Mr. Berkeley’s to be kept in Jacksonville Beach for any length of time, I want him to officially identify his wife before he leaves the house.”
Oh, God! Seeing Ashley in that place, that bedroom, was the last thing Matt wanted to do. Not now. Not yet. “Do I have to? Now?” he asked, his voice cracking with emotion.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Berkeley. I realize how difficult it may be, but I need a formal identification, and I think you’d rather do it before we perform the autopsy.”
“I’ve got calls to make,” Good said. “Hammersmith, you go with them.”
Sucking in a loud intake of breath, and letting it out slowly in an effort to steel himself, Matt shuffled back inside the living room despite the two policemen’s sudden hold on his arms. “Where the hell you think I’m going?” he asked belligerently. “Handcuffed and with these plastic straps around my ankles? I can hardly walk, let alone run away.”
“Shut up, Berkeley,” Hammersmith ordered from the doorway leading to the hall and bedrooms. “Why do you need him, Doc? I already told you who she was.”
“Mr. Berkeley’s next of kin. You’re not. Don’t argue.” To the policemen, she ordered, “Put these booties over his shoes.”
With the front door closed behind them and the crowd noise only a muffled roar, the officer on his right bent over to lift Matt’s feet one at a time. While Matt braced against that officer’s back, the second policeman took the blue paper booties from Fay Lundgren and worked them over Matt’s shoes. Finished, both men stood, took Matt by the arms, and started toward the back of the house.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Matt said, “but I believe one of you lost something.”
The two officers stopped at once, hands flapping against shirt pockets, then, starting at the buckles of their leather equipment belts, each rapidly searched backwards along the various pieces of mounted equipment. When the officer Matt had leaned on for support touched his empty holster, he yelped, “Oh, shit!” and jumped away from Matt.
Holding the weapon by the barrel, Matt handed the Glock 9-millimeter semiautomatic with the near-black finish to the officer, saying, “You need to be more careful. If I was the murderer you think I am, I could’ve and would’ve shot both of you.”
“And I would have put one between your eyes,” Hammersmith said from the doorway, his body in a firing stance, weapon aimed directly at Matt.
“Between the eyes? Come on, Detective, that’s not where they taught you to shoot the bad guys, is it?”
“Come on, you two,” Lundgren said. “Quit playing games and grow up.” Tilting her head toward the two uniformed policemen, she added, “Wait out here. Don’t need any more busy little hands and feet disturbing the crime scene more than it’s already been.”
With Fay Lundgren leading the way, Matt entered the bedroom and shuffled to the foot of the bed. What had been a dimly lit bedroom the night before was now a room drenched in the incandescent glow of three massive, tripod-mounted floodlights. Their brightness only added to the grotesque surrealism of the scene. Before him on the bed lay the two bodies. A heavily blood-blotched sheet had been thrown over all but the shoulders and faces of both bodies—for his benefit, he assumed. On the headboard and wall just behind and to the right of the bed, blood formed curious stain patterns as though some neurotic artist had sprayed red paint with a splatter gun. Beside the bed was an overturned night table and lamp, its light still burning. Two blue coverall-clad crime scene technicians on hands and knees worked in different parts of the room with small, high-powered penlights, searching meticulously for whatever minute evidence might be present.
“Jesus!” he muttered, squinching his eyes shut. He dug at them with the knuckles of his fingers as though what he had seen could be hidden behind the curtain of multicolored stars created by the rubbing. Once he opened his eyes, however, the reality was still there.
He stared at what had once been his wife, the woman he had loved so deeply, the woman whose body and soul had been one with his.
Fay Lundgren’s voice was soft at his side, yet her words demanded an answer. “Mr. Berkeley, is that your wife?”
For a moment, it was as if he had lost his voice. Finally, he heard himself say, “Yes…that’s Ashley, my wife.”
“Her full name?”
With eyes closed, he answered, “Ashley Anne Berkeley, maiden name, Peake.”
Hammersmith elbowed his way past the two crime scene technicians and asked, “The man? You know him?”
Matt studied the man for a moment as Fay Lundgren pulled the sheet up and over Ashley’s face. “There’s something familiar. A man I sa
w in Germany, but with his face half mush, who knows?”
“Name’s Striker,” Hammersmith said. “Like yours, a South Carolina driver’s license in his wallet.” The detective pointed to the trousers folded on the chair. “We also found this.” He reached toward a line of small, clear plastic packages lying on top of the dresser, picked up one, and held it for Matt to see. “Telephone index card with the name of Roger Fitzwellen, Vienna, Virginia, phone number and address. Sound familiar?”
Matt bit his lower lip, thinking about Sam Gravely and Sam’s friend Fitzwellen. “The man who murdered Fitzwellen and Sam Gravely? If so, the gun you found in my hand is, or was, probably his if it matches the weapon that killed Sam and Fitzwellen. I’d also bet he’s one of Henry Shoemaker’s people.”
“C’mon—not that Shoemaker thing again,” Hammersmith ridiculed. “Gimme a break!”
“Shoemaker?” Fay Lundgren asked, surprise written on her face. “The Henry Shoemaker?”
“A long story,” Matt answered before asking, “The other package on the dresser? That one.”
“Cigarette butts. What of it?”
“Ashley doesn’t…didn’t smoke, and neither do I. As I told you, there was somebody else in this room, and they did the killing, damn it.”
“Rest assured, Mr. Berkeley,” Lundgren said, “we’ll make every effort to extract saliva and skin cell samples from the ends of the cigarettes for DNA to check against both your wife’s and your DNA as well as that of the deceased male on the bed.”
“You won’t get a match, not from Ashley or me.”
“I can’t believe we’re wasting this much time,” Hammersmith said, then barked, “C’mon, Berkeley, let’s go.”
“Wait a minute,” Matt said, resisting Hammersmith’s grip on his arm. He closed his eyes and again saw the room as it had been when he’d first entered—the bedside lamp, the man and woman on the bed, both on their backs, the sudden recognition…but there was something else. Ashley’s arms and legs were spread V-shaped toward the head and foot of the bed, respectively. “Tape,” he said.
“What about it?” Fay Lundgren asked.
“Duct tape. Ashley’s wrists were taped to the posts, trundles, or whatever they’re called at the top of the bed. Her feet, the ankles, were taped to the posts here on the footboard.”
“In your dreams,” Hammersmith chided.
“Goddamn it, I’m telling you—she was lying on the bed, wrists and ankles tied to the top and bottom of the bed. He was on his back, moaning. He was still alive, I’m sure of it.”
Fay Lundgren walked to the side of the bed, lifted Ashley’s right arm from beneath the sheet, and studied the wrist. “Hummm.” Matt flinched, his knuckles white from squeezing the top rail of the footboard. He looked away as Fay Lundgren pulled Ashley’s left arm free, closely examining the wrist. She then systematically folded the sheet up from the bottom past Ashley’s feet and examined the ankles, both visually and by touch. “I agree,” she said.
“Agree with what?” Hammersmith demanded.
“We need photographs—wrists and ankles. There’s scouring of the skin on both wrists and ankles; in other words, raw. Also, signs of some kind of adhesive.” Re-covering the arms and feet with the sheet, Lundgren moved back to Ashley’s head. “Her lips are raw. Some of the skin tissue missing. I’d say her mouth was also taped.” She asked the technicians, “Tape? Masking? Duct? Packaging?”
Both technicians answered simultaneously, “No.”
Matt suggested, “Under the bed?”
A moment of silence before one of the technicians dropped to his knees, pulled back the dust ruffle on Ashley’s side of the bed, and focused the beam of his small penlight into the darkness beneath the frame. Flattening his body to the floor, he stretched one arm beneath the bed, pulled it back, switched off the light, then stood. “Sorry, Dr. Lundgren,” he said, quickly shoving a crushed ball of gray duct tape into a plastic evidence bag. “Behind some cartons up near the wall. Guess we missed it.”
Hammersmith exhaled a lung full of air, venting his frustration over the finding.
Ignoring Hammersmith, Matt shuffled slowly around the foot of the bed, stopping after only a few steps, not wanting to get any closer to the pool of drying blood on the floor next to Striker’s side of the bed. “I know you want to believe I did this, Detective, but you’re wrong. And there’s one more thing.”
“What now, Berkeley?”
“The man—he was alive when I came in. I heard him moaning even before I opened the door. Almost a gurgle, like his throat was full of water. That table and lamp were upright. The lamp was the only light in the room.”
“So?” Hammersmith asked.
Pointing toward Striker’s head, Matt answered, “Now he’s got what looks like an exit wound through the upper mouth and nose, and in that case, there should be an entrance wound through the back of the neck. Right?”
“Correct,” Lundgren said.
Matt then pointed to the wall. “There’s blood on the wall by the bed. The bedside table and lamp are turned over, but the lamp is still burning. I’d say the man was alive, tried to get off the bed, and the shooter got him in the back of the head.”
“You’re crazier than hell, Berkeley,” Hammersmith blurted. “I’ve had enough. We’re wasting time.”
“Go on, Mr. Berkeley,” Fay Lundgren said, ignoring Hammersmith. “Since there were tooth and bone fragments in the wall, I like your theory.”
“If you’d move the man’s head on the pillow, Doctor,” Matt said.
Stretching across Ashley’s body, Lundgren tilted Striker’s head back until the vacant eyes seemed to stare toward the ceiling. “Now what?”
Matt moved as close as he dared without stepping into the rapidly coagulating wash of blood on the floor.
“He tried to get out of the way, but he wasn’t fast enough. He’s on the floor, bleeding and dying or already dead. There…” Matt pointed to the large crust of blood next to the bed and the overturned bedside table. “The shooter stands over him—his shoes, or at least one of them, in the spreading blood. To finish the man off before lifting him back on the bed, or just for good measure, the shooter pops him one more time through the forehead. The seventh bullet Detective Sergeant Good said you haven’t found? It’s either somewhere in the guy’s brain or in the floor, hidden by that pool of blood.”
“Goddamn fairy tales,” Hammersmith snorted, grabbing Matt by the shoulder and pulling him toward the door. “C’mon, Doc, let’s get outta here and go home.”
“Are you finished, Mr. Berkeley?” Lundgren asked.
“Look at the gunshot hole in the forehead. Straight on. If I did all my shooting from the foot of the bed as Hammersmith says I did, the entry of the bullet would have been at an angle, possibly ricocheting off the skull and into the wall behind the headboard. Also, I’ll bet there’s unburned propellant particles around the hole, embedded in the skin. Tattooing as you people call it. That means he was shot through the forehead, dead-on at close range, possibly from no more than a foot or two away, while he was on the floor.”
Nodding to the shoeprints moving away from the blood, Matt finished, “The prints show a sole with tight ridges and some kind of design on the bottom of the heel. My shoes have plain soles and heels and, as Dr. Lundgren has shown, no blood. To make a long story short, I was set up and the man or woman wearing those shoes is your killer.”
Hammersmith scoffed, “I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, there were two of you, and I’ll bet my next paycheck the other one was your buddy Steve Park.”
“You lose,” Terry Good said as she stepped into the room.
“What the hell do you mean?” Hammersmith blasted back.
“Just that. Park left with a van full of scuba equipment, taking six divers on a dive trip to the Keys yesterday afternoon sometime after Berkeley called him from Newark International. Pending good weather, the trip’s been planned for the past month. I just spoke with him at the Best Wes
tern in Key Largo. This morning and afternoon, he and his people were on a boat belonging to Silent World Divers, diving a couple of sunken Coast Guard cutters. He’s gonna cut the trip short and be back here tomorrow afternoon.”
“Don’t know why you’re so anxious to hang me, Hammersmith,” Matt said. “Suppose because I’m the handiest guy around, but I did not kill Sam Gravely or the man from the Smithsonian, and I sure as hell did not kill my wife.” Matt took one final look at the sheet covering the outline of his wife’s body. With chin quivering and a failed attempt to hold back the tears, he touched one of her feet and vowed, “I love you, Ashley, and whoever killed you, I’ll get them if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
CHAPTER 37
Six Days Later
Saturday, 3 November 2001
Park shook Matt’s hand and clasped his shoulder as he entered the dive shop. “I’m sorry, Matt. If only I could’ve—”
“Not your fault, Steve. Not a damn thing you could’ve done and, besides, you were in the Keys.”
Taking Matt by the arm, Park guided him toward the office in the rear of the store. “But if I’d been here…”
“You’ve got a business to run. Taking people on dive trips is part of it.” As they entered the office, Matt added, “And even if you’d been here, there was no way you could’ve kept Ashley from doing what she did. The main thing right now is I’m pretty damn sure the AFI people will still try to take me out, one way or the other. And since you’re also part of the equation…”
“Gotta admit, I’ve been giving that some thought, but where have you been? Three days ago, I went down to the detention center to see you, but you’d already been released. And your face?”
“Should’ve seen it before I got the stitches taken out. As for being released, evidence showed Ashley was tied to the bed, raped…” Matt paused, momentarily closed his eyes tight, trying to shut out the imagined horror, pain and helplessness Ashley must have endured. Taking a deep breath, he continued, “…and shot, along with a man named Striker, who did the raping and who they’re now sure killed Sam Gravely and that Fitzwellen guy. But why’d they kill Striker?” he asked, the question directed more to himself than to Park. Answering his own question, he said “He must’ve outlived his usefulness or known more than he should have.” Sighing, Matt went on, “Not sure why they didn’t kill me. Apparently I was set up to take the fall for Ashley’s murder. An over-the-top way to do it, but it would still have taken me out of the picture.”