Damage Control

by Robert Dugoni

  “I had my mammogram this morning.”

  “Oh yeah. How’d it go?”

  “They’re going to call me,” she said, no longer interested in providing details.

  “You don’t know? So what are you so worked up about? Wait for the results and go from there.” He pushed a strand of hair from her face and kissed her on the lips. His hand caressed her thigh. She wanted to forget about Dr. Neal, Marvin Crocket, and the damn presentation. She wanted to be lost in pleasure again. But she had also come to realize she no longer wanted Grant to bring her there.

  “I’m going to take that shower,” he said and left the room.

  A moment later, she heard the water and closed the binder. She set it on the nightstand, reached up, and turned off the light. Then she rolled over, pulling the covers around her.

  5

  JAMES HILL’S LUCK ran out. His euphoria over finding a parking space within two blocks of his Green Lake home dissipated with the first drops of water splattering on his windshield and hitting the roof and hood with dull pings. The weatherman had predicted an evening thunderstorm. Normally, you could throw darts and come up with a more accurate five-day forecast. Damned if this wasn’t one of the few times he’d gotten it right. It was Murphy’s Law. If James had remembered his umbrella or found a spot directly in front of his home, it would have no doubt been clear skies. But street parking in his neighborhood was tough to come by. Four miles from downtown Seattle, Green Lake had become a trendy residential district.

  No chance to wait it out. The raindrops were starting to fall frequently. He stepped from the car and hurried around behind, popping the hatchback to gather his students’ briefs, balancing them in a stack. His leather briefcase felt like it had an anvil in it. Thunder rumbled across a blue-black sky, and a strong wind ruffled the pages of the top brief and brought the smell of the cherry blossoms. He closed the hatch and started up the sidewalk. Pink petals sprinkled it like a wedding aisle. The windows of his neighbor’s Craftsman cottages reflected blue flashes of light. James envied their time watching mindless television. He wouldn’t have that luxury. He’d had one of those nonstop days—three classes, a faculty meeting, and two hours of office time that his students had used to the last minute.

  The thought hit him like a drop of water—Dana. She hadn’t called him back. At one point during the day he’d picked up the telephone but became distracted, then forgot. He hoped her silence didn’t mean bad news. Though she had tried to disguise it, he’d heard the anxiety in her voice. They had been old enough to remember their mother’s mastectomy and subsequent treatment that had left her weak and thin. James regretted mentioning his own problem, but he was at a crossroads. There was no one else he trusted, and he sensed things coming to a head quickly.

  The rain peppered him. He quickened his pace past a couple bundled in rain gear, out walking their dog. He turned right down Latona Avenue. The rain, as if sensing that he was nearing shelter, took one last shot at him. His students would wonder if he’d used their briefs to clean up a spill. He climbed the steps to the front porch. His home had a driveway and detached garage, but both were presently clogged with the building materials for his remodeling project and the remnants of his furnishings from the ten-room house on Capitol Hill that he’d sold when he quit the law. On nights like this, he longed for a garage to park in. He rearranged the stack of briefs, retrieved his key, and unlocked the door, stumbling into the entryway. The legal briefs spilled across the hall table, and several slid onto the floor, where he dropped his briefcase. He removed his glasses, spotted with rain, placed them atop the pile on the table, and found his cell phone, punching in Dana’s number. He hung his leather coat on the staircase banister as her phone rang, and started down the hall when she answered. She sounded half asleep.

  “Dana, I’m sorry to call so late; I meant to call earlier, but I got tied up. How was your mammogram? Is everything okay?”

  “They took tests today.” Her voice faded. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  He stepped into the living room at the back of the house. “Are we still having lunch? Your secretary said you were free. Dana?” She didn’t answer. The light from the back porch filtered into the room through the French doors that opened to a patio garden. It shaded everything black and gray, like an old movie. “Dana?”

  “I’ll call you.” Her voice was a faint whisper.

  “All right. Sorry to call so late. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, James.”

  Thunder rumbled across the sky, and the rain pecked at the shingled roof like the beaks of dozens of birds. He pulled the chain to the lamp on the end table, bringing forth a tapered beige light. The room looked off-balance and unfamiliar, things out of place, books on the floor, pillows strewn from the couch. The floor creaked behind him. He turned and caught a glimpse of the long hair and thin face. “Who—”

  The object swept across his vision, striking with a sudden sharp pain. His body spun as if on a swivel. Blood splattered the African tribal masks on the wall, their hollow eyes bearing witness. He stumbled backward into the couch. His legs buckled. The second blow knocked him forward like a felled tree, his face impacting hard against the wood-planked floor. Then the sky opened—-pellets of water beating on the roof and the glass panes of the French doors. And the blows cascaded down upon him.

  6

  IT WAS GOING well. Hell, it was going great. She felt the high one feels on a good run, her body moving in effortless rhythm. Her words flowed with confidence. Her hand gestures offered just the right amount of emphasis. The faces around the marble table looked on attentively. Most people took notes. All ignored the pastries and the smell of freshly roasted coffee. Ordinarily, associates despised the mundane drudgery of practice group seminars because they could not bill the time to a client. Seminars represented a lost chunk of their day that the partners didn’t consider toward yearly bonuses and compensation.

  Marvin Crocket sat at the head of the table next to Don Burnside, the president of Corrugate Industries. Burnside smiled, giving Dana his undivided attention. A good-looking, distinguished man with flags of gray at the temples, Burnside had made a point to introduce himself to her before the presentation. When she excused herself to pour a glass of water, she knew he would find an excuse to continue their conversation. She saw it in the sparkle of his eyes, the toothy smile, and the extra moment he had clasped her hand. Dana had played her part, smiling warmly while maintaining a professional demeanor. Now she was dazzling him with her mind. Crocket would invite her to lunch and add another client to his considerable stable. It was all he cared about. For a few hours, all would be forgiven.

  The door to the conference room crept open. As the person entering came within Dana’s peripheral vision, she recognized Linda. She lost her train of thought. The words stopped flowing, and her voice became indecisive. She had yet to use a notecard, and now she had no idea where she was in her presentation. She paused and looked up at Crocket and Burnside with a pained smile. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  Burnside reacted like a man dancing with a beautiful woman when the music abruptly stopped. Crocket looked like he’d bitten into something distasteful but covered it by clearing his throat and trying to sound casual. “We’ve been going about forty-five minutes. Now would be a good time for a short break.”

  Dana ushered Linda to the reception area as the attendees reached for the Danishes and filled their mugs with coffee. They stepped around a mahogany table of neatly arranged magazines to a large potted palm in the corner of the room.

  “I’m really sorry,” Linda said before Dana had time to chastise her. She clearly looked uncomfortable.

  Dana suppressed her anger. Staff was underappreciated when things went well and abused when things went wrong. “What is it?” she asked, exasperated.

  “Your husband is on the phone.”

  Tension burst across the back of Da
na’s neck. She spoke from between clenched teeth. “Tell him I’m in a meeting and will call him later.”

  “I did. He insisted that I get you.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Dana saw Crocket lumbering toward them, gaining momentum like a ball pushed downhill. “What the hell is going on? Can we move this forward?”

  “I’m afraid I have to take a call, Marvin.”

  “Now? You have to take it now? Who the blazes is it?” He looked and sounded apoplectic.

  “My husband,” she said reluctantly.

  Crocket rolled his eyes and pulled at the taut sleeve of his cuffed shirt to view the face of his Rolex. “Bad timing. This is very bad timing.” He stormed away.

  Dana started for the telephone in the small alcove off the conference room. Linda said, “He told me he wanted to speak with you in your office, in private.”

  Dana nearly growled. She stormed around the corner. It likely had to do with Molly—the school had called and Molly was sick and had to be picked up. Or Grant needed a clean shirt or an errand or some other goddamn thing he couldn’t or wouldn’t do for himself.

  She slammed her office door and snatched the receiver, knocking the telephone off the desk. The cord dangled over the side. “What the hell is it? I am in the middle of a meeting, and Crocket is about to explode.”

  “Dana, I’m sorry. I know you’re in your seminar.”

  “Was, Grant. I was in my seminar. Now I’m standing here talking to you while Crocket makes notes in my file about why the shareholders should fire me. Is that what you want, because—”

  “Dana, I have bad news. I think you should sit down.”

  “No, I’m not going to—” She caught herself. The tone of his voice was not demanding. It was not confrontational. He sounded passive, almost timid. A tremor had caused his voice to flutter. I think you should sit down. Her heart pounded with a jolt of adrenaline. Fear. “What’s wrong? It’s not Molly.”

  “No, Molly’s fine.” He paused.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s your brother.”

  “James?”

  “I’m afraid it’s bad, Dana. It’s very bad. The police caught me in the driveway. I’m still at home.”

  “Home? What are the police doing at our house?” She felt like she’d walked into the middle of a conversation. “Grant?”

  “Your brother is dead. He was murdered last night.”

  7

  DETECTIVE MICHAEL LOGAN sipped a cherry-flavored Slurpee and carried a half-eaten foot-long hot dog topped with onions and relish. The top step sagged. Logan stepped off it, then reapplied his weight. The ends of the board lifted to catch the heads of the raised nails. Dry rot was prevalent in the older Northwest homes. The constant damp never gave things a chance to dry out. Wood wasn’t intended to last forever. The whole staircase would have to be ripped out and replaced, which was likely the reason for the lumber and construction materials in the driveway.

  Neighbors had gathered along the sidewalk, standing alongside television crews behind the police barricade. The reporters held microphones, rehearsing their stories for when the morning news anchor went live to the scene of what appeared to be a homicide in Green Lake. Murders in suburbia were always big news.

  A uniformed officer stood just inside the doorway of the home, holding a clipboard. Logan exchanged his Slurpee for a pen and signed his name to the log. It recorded the crime scene detail—who came in and out of the home. The list included the uniformed officers first on the scene; Henry Rodriguez, the evidence technician; Carole Nuchitelli, from the medical examiner’s office; the crime scene technicians who would remove the body; the crime scene photographer; and the forensics team. Logan took back his Slurpee and bit into the hot dog, working the flow of relish into his mouth as he stepped into the entry. Papers lay scattered on the floor next to a well-worn briefcase, the large kind that lawyers favored. The papers had apparently toppled from a stack on the table. A black leather jacket hung on a banister. Logan walked down the hall to a room at the back of the house, where the crime scene detail moved in a rehearsed dance around the victim—a man, judging from the khaki pants and brown loafers sticking out from behind the couch.

  “Oh, God,” Logan said, stepping farther into the room.

  Carole Nuchitelli looked up at him. “Welcome to the party.” She fitted the right hand of the victim with a plastic bag. She’d already tagged the ankle and placed the contents of the man’s pockets in Zip-loc bags next to her on the floor. Blood had puddled and rolled with the sag in the dark wood and matted the man’s hair a deep burgundy. His head was fractured and swollen. Nuchitelli pointed with a latex-gloved finger. “Nice breakfast. Don’t get any of that crap on my victim.”

  “Lunch. I’ve been up since five; it’s noon for me,” Logan said, studying the scene.

  “And you chose that?”

  He crumpled what was left of his hot dog in the plastic wrap and shoved it in his coat pocket, no longer hungry. “You know me, Nooch. I have to eat six times a day just to keep the weight on.”

  “Poor baby. Why couldn’t I get a metabolism like that?”

  Nuchitelli stood, and they stepped back to give the crime scene photographer room. Logan noted nothing wrong with her metabolism. At nearly six feet, with strawberry-blond hair that reached the middle of her back, and the legs of a college volleyball player, the King County medical examiner was a sharp contrast to the brutally ugly crime scenes where she and Logan met.

  “Bad one,” he said.

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “Scale of one to ten.”

  Nuchitelli considered the body and sighed. “Beatings are always the worst. With gunshots and knife wounds, it can be pretty clean. But beatings…” She paused. “It’s the savagery. It’s the thought that someone stood here and administered each blow. It’s sick. I’d give it an eight.”

  “How many blows you estimate?”

  “More than ten. Twelve to thirteen.”

  “Fear or rage,” he said.

  Nuchitelli nodded. “We haven’t been out here much.” She was referring to Green Lake. “Can’t remember the last time. But it didn’t take you long to find the fast food.”

  Logan had been reassigned to the North Precinct six months earlier. Normally, he worked with a partner, but his was in New Jersey for a son’s wedding. The North Precinct wasn’t as busy as the South Precinct. Logan had been transferred when he was promoted to homicide, after working eight years with the robbery and sexual assault units.

  He shrugged. “All I had time for.”

  “You’re breaking my heart.”

  “Breaking it? Hell, I’ve been trying for three years to capture it.”

  Nuchitelli smiled and shook her head. “Right. Talk about taking work home with you.”

  Their flirtation was innocent. Logan wasn’t looking to complicate his life by dating a professional acquaintance. He just liked to make Nooch smile. Smiles were rare for the men and women working homicides.

  “Besides, you’re too old for me,” she said.

  “Easy. I hit forty last week, and I’m sensitive about it.”

  “You’re not sensitive about anything.”

  “Ouch again.”

  She considered him. “Forty? You don’t look that old.”

  “Are you trying to be nice or mean?”

  “I meant it as a compliment. I would have guessed thirty-five. You’d probably look even younger if you didn’t put that crap in your system. You must have the metabolism of a jackrabbit.” She picked up a plastic bag and handed the object to Logan.

  He weighed it in his hand. “Marble. Solid. Probably six pounds.”

  “Definitely the murder weapon.”

  The statue was carved with the face of an African tribal warrior. It had no flat surfaces. Pulling a print would be impossible. Logan considered the rest of the room. Blood-splattered wooden masks and tapestries hung on the walls. On a table below them, stone carvings of elephants, lions
, zebras, and giraffes had toppled over. They, too, were spotted with blood. Logan took out a handkerchief and picked up a marble statue similar to the one in his hand. It had the carved face of a female. A matched set.

  “Get pictures of this wall, Jerry,” he instructed the photographer before turning back to Nuchitelli. “So what do we know?”

  She took another breath and let out a burst of air like a broken steam pipe. “The initial blow appears to be across the face, but the majority were administered to the back of the head. Given the savagery of the beating, I’d say someone came here with the intent to kill and surprised him in the dark.”

  “Good guess,” he said. “But I don’t think so.”

  She shrugged. “Okay, Sherlock, go ahead, give me your best shot.”

  Logan always professed to be able to figure out a crime scene in five minutes. “The perp didn’t come here intending to kill him. The victim surprised him, and he panicked. That’s why the perp hit him so many times. It was fear.” He walked back into the hallway, toward the front door. Nuchitelli followed. He pointed at the stack of papers. “He comes home, drops that stack of papers on the table, and puts down his briefcase. That tells me he didn’t hear anything until he got back there, and since the killer didn’t just run out the back door, either he didn’t hear the victim come home or he wasn’t in that back room.” He pointed to a room next to the back room, then stuck his head in. The dresser drawers were open, clothes strewn from them and from the closet. Books had been toppled from a bookcase. “He was likely in here.”

  “Maybe he was lying in wait,” Nuchitelli suggested.

  “Maybe, except then he would have likely brought his own weapon.” Logan walked back to the body. “He came up from behind. The victim turned and got hit while standing, which explains the blood on those masks six feet up the wall.” Logan pointed. “Was that light on?”