Denny's Law

by Elizabeth Gunn

  ‘Gotcha.’ Sarah hopped onto a Styrofoam pad and looked around for the next safety zone. She didn’t expect any more guidance from Gloria, who continued working steadily, hitting the flash twice in each spot before she moved three inches and lit up again.

  I suppose she did startle poor Tom a little, she thought. Gloria Jackson had learned the hard way how to defend her turf – she’d survived public schools in Watts and held onto a basketball scholarship at UCLA for two years before she gave up her dreams of world pro touring and got serious about her forensic science degree.

  Moving into the room, Sarah took shallow breaths and chewed her gum energetically for a couple of minutes. It didn’t take much time – her brain had learned to accept gross sights and disgusting smells as part of the job. After that first two minutes of careful breathing she would stay focused on the body and its surroundings, sorting the rich bouquet of odors like a K-9, retaining the useful information it brought her.

  First, the sharp smells of urine and feces. Then cooking smells, still strong in here, especially bacon. And the sweet, slightly metallic aroma of blood. But looking around she saw less blood than she’d expected. Spatters on the tile floor and two area rugs, and the smears on the broken side window she’d seen from outside. Part of a bloody handprint gleamed on the round wood dining table by the window, and a little blood had pooled and clotted in the carpet five feet inside the front door, where the ME knelt beside the body.

  Two other crime-scene technicians were at work in the room. The older one, Sandy, was swabbing bloodstains onto slides for DNA identification. The younger criminalist, whom Sarah didn’t know, was spreading black powder over every surface that might yield latent fingerprints.

  Neither technician looked up from her work so Sarah just said, ‘Morning,’ and read the new one’s name, Jody, off her ID tag as she hopped past them. She followed a line of white safety pads until she reached a spot where most of the body was visible between her and Dr Cameron.

  Safe on her clean spot, Sarah pulled her electronic tablet out of its slot in her day-pack and began to type in details about the scene and the victim in random order as they occurred to her. No use trying to hurry criminalists at a crime scene; they were tasked with being thorough, not fast. Anyway, some quiet time in a corner was not a bad way to start.

  So, now, what have we got here?

  The victim was spread-eagled on his back in a sleeveless T-shirt and khaki shorts. He’d been described to her as ‘an old guy’ but he looked surprisingly solid and fit. His arms and legs were smoothly muscled and strong as if he’d spent a lot of time riding the bike in the backyard.

  No way to judge how his face might have impressed her before this morning. Now it looked pretty much like dog meat. This must have been a helluva fight, she thought. I wonder what the other guy looks like? Besides the battered face and broken window she could see broken pieces of a chair and smashed crockery scattered around.

  The attacker had used a club of some kind – fists alone could not have done that much damage to a face. He must have carried the weapon away with him; she scanned the room twice and saw nothing that would have broken the victim’s nose and cheekbones and put that bloody hole in the right side of his forehead. A broken tooth hung by a glistening thread out of the remnants of his mouth.

  The dead man’s sparse summer clothing had been reduced to shreds – the T-shirt was ripped almost off and the top button of his shorts was missing. He had been wearing flip-flops till the fight started – one was under the table now, the other beneath the cracked window. He wore threadbare but surprisingly clean boxers under the ruined shorts, and no jewelry but a drugstore watch.

  Sarah typed in a description of the clothing and added, Vic fit for his age, prob late 60s.

  Then she added thoughtfully, Can’t see defen wounds on arms/hands. Not alarmed at first?

  In fact – ‘Gloria?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘You take pictures of the front door yet?’

  ‘Yup. Got a bunch.’ She looked up. ‘Nothing broken, is that what you’re wondering? Here, you want to see?’ She reached out a long arm, twisted the latch and swung it open. The door and its latch were both intact. ‘Looks like the invader got in without a fight.’

  ‘’K. Thanks.’

  Gloria closed the door again quickly and locked it.

  Doctor Cameron, the till-now silent man who had not paused to greet Sarah, almost startled her when he said, ‘Gloria, will you help me roll the body, please?’

  Gloria put her camera down on the floor, said, ‘Sure,’ and worked her way carefully to a spot beside the body, where she stooped to help him. Gloria had once told Sarah that Dr Cameron was the coolest dude on the ME’s staff. ‘So polite and nice,’ she said. ‘It’s a pleasure to work with a guy like that.’

  Sarah had been amused to learn that noisy Gloria, the most assertive of the scene techs, admired the awkward, bony Scot who rarely spoke. But after she’d seen them work together a couple of times she realized that, unlikely or not, she was watching a demonstration of perfect rapport in the workplace.

  Sarah paid close attention as the doctor laid the shreds of T-shirt aside and pulled the pants down. ‘Some lividity has started, in the shoulders and buttocks.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Little over two hours since this was called in. Seems about right.’

  Gloria said, ‘Doc, can you hold his clothes like that while I get some shots? Careful now, don’t let me blind you.’ While Gloria stood over him, shooting one picture after another, Sarah took a couple with her cell phone too. She liked having her own pictures to review while she worked a case.

  ‘Rigor’s just getting started in the hands and feet,’ Cameron said as they laid the body back in its original position. ‘Usually it starts in the jaw, but for this guy, of course …’ He touched a section of pulpy flesh and shrugged.

  ‘Doc,’ Sarah said, ‘I think I saw a wallet in his left pocket – OK if I fish it out of there?’

  ‘Sure, go ahead.’

  She stooped, reached carefully between the doctor’s raised hands and stood up holding the wallet just as Delaney walked into the room. A pale redhead whose skin was ill-suited to summer on the Mexican border, the chief of homicide was burned to a high pink color, skin peeling on his nose and chin. He was in booties and gloved up but still wore the striped shirt and black pants of the baseball game he’d been umpiring at his son’s school when he took the call. It might have looked comical in this setting but Delaney’s aloof seriousness forestalled comment. He could probably walk in wearing a tutu, Sarah thought, and nobody would say a word.

  ‘Ah, you found ID, good,’ he said. ‘Who’ve we got?’

  ‘Driver’s license says Calvin Springer.’

  ‘Good, that matches what I found for this house.’

  ‘Same name on everything else in here – two credit cards, gas card, ATM, discount cards for groceries and the drug store, library card—’ She looked up. ‘Library card? Didn’t expect that.’

  Delaney said, ‘So your victim could read, so what? Well, you might want to check out what he’s been reading. What else?’

  ‘Hundred and forty-three dollars – he wasn’t robbed. Monthly pass on the streetcar. Couple of winning chits from the slots at the Indian Casino. Numbers taped in an inside pocket, looks like bank accounts, or maybe a safety deposit drawer? So far,’ she folded the wallet and dropped it in an evidence bag, ‘the records of the model citizen.’

  ‘Except no Medicare card? Looks old enough, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Come to think of it no social security card either – most people don’t carry that with them, though. Probably find a drawer full of records here someplace.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He scanned the house. ‘Place looks pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? No frills. Don’t see any signs of high life.’

  ‘Nope. Good bike out there tied to an old bench. Decent pickup. Everything says quiet habits, lower middle class. But he sure made somebody cross,
didn’t he?’ The signs of rage in the fight scene were so strong they were beginning to make Sarah’s stomach hurt. This man had waged all-out war in his house, the stakes plainly life or death from the start. Although how could they know who started it? ‘The other guy must have some marks on him too.’

  ‘Guy or guys? We don’t know there was only one invader, do we?’

  ‘No. But it doesn’t look like a gang. The door lock’s not broken – nobody broke in. Will you show him, Gloria?’ Delaney moved carefully to look. ‘And he doesn’t have defensive marks on his hands and arms, see? He wasn’t alarmed until they started to fight.’

  ‘The center panel on the front door’s dented, though.’

  ‘From the inside. Must have happened during the fight.’

  ‘So maybe they knew each other? One of them’s gotta be pretty strong,’ Delaney said, ‘to throw a grown man against a door like that.’

  ‘Probably both. This victim doesn’t look like any pushover, does he?’ Sarah said. ‘The woman who called it in said he was “an old guy.” But he sure looks able-bodied to me.’

  ‘I agree,’ Delaney said. ‘And we don’t actually know which man got thrown against the door, do we?’

  ‘Good point.’ There was silence in the room for a couple of minutes while they both scrutinized the muddle of broken furniture and dishes in the middle of the room.

  The victim must have been eating breakfast when the killer arrived. Shards of his breakfast plate were on the floor near the table, a fork nearby holding the drying remnant of a fried egg. Sarah was thinking, did the attacker knock? Maybe. Because the victim got up out of his chair, pushed it back toward the wall … opened the door? Let the visitor in and then … what? The visitor said something. Or did something?

  Then the fight started and one of them … maybe grabbed the chair that’s broken over there. They had a big skirmish by the side window, broke the glass … looks like the victim broke free at some point and ran toward the front door. Trying to get outside?

  Or … scanning again, she saw something – a shadow? – underneath the string of dried red peppers that hung by the front door. She hadn’t thought about it before because a string of drying peppers was so ubiquitous in Tucson houses it was no more noticeable than windows and doors.

  ‘Gloria, can you reach that ristra? Just move it a few … Yeah, there. That’s what I thought.’ There was a leather belt hanging beneath the peppers, its buckle hooked over the same wooden peg. A holster hung from the belt with the butt of a handgun showing.

  ‘Ooo-eeee,’ Gloria said. ‘Ain’t that a hole in the boat?’ She had been packing up by the front door where she shot the last pictures. Now she stooped to her bags, muttering, ‘Damn, gotta get all my stuff back out …’

  Delaney held the string of peppers up so Gloria could photograph the weapon from both sides where it hung.

  A soft leather belt and matching holster, dark oxblood finish, tooled in a quietly elegant geometric pattern, held a stainless-steel Smith & Wesson revolver with a rubber stock.

  Delaney pulled the gun out, said, ‘Hmm, very nice weapon.’ He swung the cylinder out. ‘A .22 10-shot. Cylinder’s full, though.’ He sniffed. ‘Nice and clean. Didn’t get used in this fight, apparently. Might as well disarm it right away, get pictures and bag it, hmm?’

  ‘Here,’ Gloria said. ‘I’ll put a drop cloth on the kitchen counter.’ They passed the revolver from one gloved hand to another. As Gloria laid it out, Delaney dictated the description while Sarah took notes. ‘Smith and Wesson revolver, Model 617, K-22 Masterpiece, has a four-inch barrel with a satin stainless-steel finish and a Hogue Rubber stock. Ammo is .22 Long Rifle, rim-fire, of course. Let’s see, what else?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t need to go in this description,’ Sarah said, ‘but I’ll put in my report that this is a surprisingly luxurious item to find in the bare-bones dwelling of a threadbare man.’

  ‘Agreed. Now where did I put—’ Delaney was patting his pockets with his left hand.

  ‘Here,’ Sarah said, passing him an evidence bag.

  ‘Thanks. Ah, the number’s not filed, that’s nice. The lab will tell us if this weapon’s been to any other crime scenes we have on record.’

  ‘Sure. But it’s not going to help us with this case, is it? You seen any evidence of gunfire, Doc?’

  ‘Not so far.’ Cameron stood up, massaged his knees and sighed. ‘But I can’t say what killed him yet, either. You’re going to have to wait for the autopsy on this one.’

  ‘Getting his head reduced to cat food wasn’t enough?’ Delaney said. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody beat up this bad.’

  ‘I know. But … well, I don’t want to say more until after I get him on the table. Be patient.’

  Delaney said, ‘OK. But so far the evidence matches what the caller said. She heard a big fight with yelling but she didn’t hear any gunfire.’

  ‘All that blood over there by the window, Doc,’ Sarah said. ‘Isn’t that evidence of a horrendous beating?’

  ‘Spatters,’ the doctor said. ‘Might have been a fairly even fight there for a while, so we got a lot of streaks and spatters. But look, this guy’s head is beat to a pulp. Seems like there should be more blood here around the body.’

  ‘So what are you saying? That maybe he was already dead before the last blows landed? That’s pretty weird.’

  ‘Unusual, too,’ Cameron said. ‘Ordinarily it takes time to die from a beating, no matter how severe.’

  ‘You think maybe the killer went on beating a dead man? I don’t like that at all,’ Sarah said. ‘That means we’re looking for a crazy guy.’

  ‘Or somebody so mad he’s out of control,’ Gloria said.

  ‘Not sure I buy that,’ Delaney said. ‘He wasn’t too looney to sneak out of here, was he? Nobody’s reported seeing him go, have they? He must have had blood all over himself, too.’

  ‘Yeah – how did he do that? A helper, maybe,’ Sarah said. ‘Somebody waiting with a car?’

  ‘Or he lives right here in the neighborhood,’ Gloria suggested, zipping lids on her bags.

  ‘And he’s probably watching us now? I like that even less,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Before you go scaring yourselves to death,’ Cameron said, ‘you might consider waiting for the lab reports.’

  ‘You’re the one who started this,’ Sarah said, ‘saying there’s not enough blood.’

  Cameron rolled his eyes up and said, ‘When will I learn to be silent?’

  Oh, now I’ve done it, Sarah thought. If Cameron gets any quieter than he’s been so far, we’ll be working with a mute.

  A message squawked into the coil in the doctor’s ear as he did a full-body stretch, groaning after too much time on his knees.

  Delaney, watching his angular body reach for the ceiling, said, ‘You finished for now, Doc?’

  ‘Yes,’ the doctor said, ‘and the pick-up team’s just arrived. This must be the driver now.’ Somebody was rattling the front-door latch.

  But when Delaney unlocked it Jason Peete stuck his head in and said, ‘The meat wagon’s right behind me – you ready for them?’ Even for Jason, he looked unusually animated in skin-tight biking shorts and a wife-beater shirt. ‘Better be close because the mother of all rainstorms is right behind them.’

  ‘Ready to go,’ Cameron said, gimping toward the door, still stiff. ‘Wait, though, I better tell those drivers to come in the back …’

  ‘They can’t get the ambulance back there,’ Delaney said. ‘Tell them to park at the curb in front and come to the front door. We’ll work it out somehow.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Jason said and streaked across the yard.

  When he knocked on the front door a couple of minutes later, Gloria opened it, letting in a gust of wind filled with dirt and trash. On the doorstep, Jason stood with two storm-buffeted men who were struggling to set up the legs on a gurney.

  Delaney said, ‘Now, you can’t bring that thing in here. You’ll have to carr
y the body out on a stretcher.’

  Grumbling, the ambulance drivers ran back to their vehicle and returned with a stretcher. They fumbled with the assembly, looking up anxiously at the sky. Big drops of water had begun plinking into the dusty yard and lightning flashed along the horizon.

  In the house, they bagged the body, lifted it onto the stretcher and carried it quickly outside, not paying much attention to Gloria’s pleas about where to put their feet.

  The doctor gathered his own tools and ran to his car, saying he’d better get to the morgue before the streets in the low end of town flooded.

  Jason helped the ambulance crew get the body shifted onto the gurney in the yard. Grunting, they heaved it into the van. As soon as the ambulance was rolling Jason ran full tilt for the house and threw open the door. As he jumped back inside he was lit from behind by a dazzling bolt of lightning that split the blackening sky and gleamed off his shaved head. ‘Holy shit, guys, that was close!’ His words were drowned in thunder as a gale-force wind shook the house.

  Delaney stuck his head out to look, pulled it back in completely disheveled and said, ‘Highway Ten is disappearing into a dust cloud.’

  ‘I am out of here,’ Gloria said, zipping up her gear bags one last time. She bolted out to her car, running with the bags clutched close to her chest.

  The house was briefly quiet inside. Small puddles began to form as rain and grit blew in through the cracked side window. Delaney, on his phone, began begging the repair team he’d called earlier to come right away. ‘It’s essential we seal this window before the storm blows it out entirely!’ Sounds of protest came over the phone. ‘I know you can’t handle plywood in this wind but we can’t let the house get flooded either. Bring some plastic sheeting and we’ll seal it on the inside.’

  The two remaining technicians, relieved of the need to work around a body, put on fresh gloves and went right back to their chores, chattering as cheerfully as sparrows about a TV series whose back seasons they were both binge-watching on TV.