The Harry Starke Series: Books 1-3: The Harry Starke Series Boxset

by Blair Howard

  “Kate, I need to go home, get some rest. Call me when you know something. Okay?”

  “Yes, but I’ll need to talk to you anyway. I need to know exactly what was said during that call. If it’s homicide, it could be important. Your office, late morning, after Doc Sheddon gets done?”

  I nodded, turned, and walked carefully out to where my car was parked. There was no sign of Lonnie Guest, so I got in and drove slowly home; my head was in a whirl.

  Chapter 2

  I hadn’t been at work more than thirty minutes the following morning when my cell phone rang. I was in the outer office talking to Jacque.

  “Hey, Kate. What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to pass along some information about last night. Is that okay?”

  “Shoot.”

  “First, Tom Sattler. He was forty-two, wealthy, divorced ten years ago. The ex-wife is Gloria Sattler; she’s forty-three. They have three children, all girls; Stephanie, twenty-one; Julie, twelve; Nicola, ten. He has a long-time girlfriend, a Wendy Brewer, twenty-six.... Are you taking notes, Harry?”

  “Er... no. Some of it I already know. The rest I was hoping you’d either fax or email. Either that or bring it with you when you finish with Doc Sheddon.”

  “Sheesh. Okay. I’m about to head over there now. It’s almost nine, and he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. When I leave the Forensic Center, I’ll head on over to your office. Maybe we could talk over lunch.”

  Lunch? Wow! It’s been a while. She’s loosening up a little, or is she, I wonder?

  “Sure. We can do that. Where would you like to go?”

  “You pick it, and don’t get any ideas. I still haven’t forgotten your performance with Olivia Hansen and the senator. How is Ms. Michaels, by the way?”

  Damn. I sometimes wonder if the woman isn’t reading my mind.

  “She’s fine. She said she might come down for the weekend. Would you like to meet her?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, and I’m sure as hell she doesn’t want to meet me.”

  “You’ve got her all wrong, Kate. She’s grateful; we saved her ass, and we managed to keep her name out of the media.”

  “Yeah, whatever. I’ll pass, thank you.”

  “Suit yourself. See you for lunch.”

  “Bye, Harry.”

  Two minutes later, the office phone on my desk buzzed.

  “Yes, Jacque.”

  “Amanda Cole from Channel 7 called a few minutes ago. She wants you to call her back. She says it’s urgent.”

  Urgent, my ass. The bitch wants to do another hatchet job on me.

  “I’ll do it later.” Like hell I will.

  “I’ll remind you.” I’m sure you will.

  “Fine. Now, if you don’t mind, Jacque....”

  “I know... hold all your calls.”

  -----

  A little after ten that morning, Kate called my cell phone for a second time.

  “Kate? Is everything all right?”

  “Harry, can you come down to the Forensic Center? I’d like you to hear what Doc Sheddon has to say, firsthand.”

  “I’ll get there as quick as I can. The traffic... well, you know.”

  Doc Sheddon runs the Hamilton County Forensic Center. It’s just a couple of blocks north of the PD on Amnicola. It’s a small department, just himself and a forensic anthropologist. We are actually quite blessed to have it, as small as Chattanooga is. It means we don’t have to rely on the State for what we need, autopsies and the like, thus we can get things done a whole lot quicker.

  I pulled in at the back door of the facility and parked. I glanced at the road sign fastened next to the door and smiled, as I always did. It read Dead End. The good doctor was the king of gallows humor.

  “Ah, Harry,” Sheddon said. “Glad you could make it.”

  The doctor, Kate, and Lonnie Guest were seated at the table in the tiny conference room.

  “Don’t bother to sit,” Sheddon said, rising to his feet. “Let’s go in there. I’d like you to see the body.”

  It’s funny how a dead body turns into something other than a person when you see it on the autopsy table, even when it’s someone you once knew. I never did have much in the way of feelings for Tom Sattler; now I had none at all for the sad slab of meat he had become, a little overweight, a little flabby, and a dirty, all-over gray color. The classic ‘Y’ incision to the chest had been stitched closed. Damn, I’ve seen better work on a football. The flap of hair and scalp that had been removed to give access to the skull had been pulled back over the top and stitched closed to hold the cap in place. The brain, sliced into several sections, lay in a stainless steel pan on a table just below the scales; the rest of the organs occupied several more pans on the stainless steel draining board at the sink.

  “First,” Sheddon said, “the cause of death was a single shot to the head. The .22 caliber bullet entered the scull just above and to the rear of the right ear. It disintegrated and scrambled a significant portion of the brain.”

  Thoughtfully, he looked down at the corpse and stroked the top of its head, almost as if he was petting a cat. “As soon as I saw the body, I was perturbed by the wound. It wasn’t a contact wound, d’you see?” He pointed with a pencil. “There’s stippling, tattooing, around it; more of it to the left than to the right, which means the gun was held at an angle. I estimated, even then, that the shot had been fired from at least two inches away from contact, possibly even as much as six inches. We’ll have to wait for ballistics to confirm the exact distance. Then there was the position of the wound. It didn’t look quite right.”

  He looked up at me and said, “Harry, would you do me a favor please? Would you pull your weapon and make as if to shoot yourself in the head?”

  I did as the doctor asked, not a little curious.

  “There, now. D’you see what I mean, Kate, Lonnie? Look where the muzzle of the gun is. The most natural place to put it is right there, where Harry has it, at the temple. Okay, you can lower the gun, but don’t put it away, not just yet.

  “The victim’s wound, as you can see, is a little above and to the rear of the ear. That’s not natural. Not only that, the trajectory of the bullet is angled slightly forward and downward, from here to here.”

  He inserted the pencil into the wound, and adjusted the angle slightly. “Like this. D’you see? That’s not natural either.”

  He removed the pencil, wiped it on his lab coat, and paused for us to digest what he’d just said. It was simple enough.

  “Okay,” Sheddon continued. “Now picture this: he’s standing with his back to the fireplace. He raises the gun to the side of his head, but instead of placing the muzzle against his temple, he holds it two inches away, maybe more, and slightly behind and above his ear, and he angles it slightly downward and forward. Does that make sense? Try it, Harry.”

  I did as he asked, and he was right. In fact, I didn’t think it could be done.

  “Not only that,’ he continued, “if the gun was so positioned, the pressure needed to pull the trigger of that double-action Ruger, combined with the awkward angle of the wrist, almost certainly would have jerked the barrel upward. Hell, he could have missed himself, even from that close range. No! No, no, no. He was shot by a person unknown. Homicide. It was homicide.”

  The good doctor seemed to be very certain and well satisfied with his analysis, and who was I to argue with him? Kate, and even the erstwhile Lonnie Guest, must have felt the same, because they didn’t say a word. I slipped the M&P9 back in its holster under my arm.

  “So, here’s how I think it happened.” Sheddon looked first at Kate, then at me, and not at all at Lonnie.

  “I think he was shot execution style. He could not have been seated; there were no chairs close to the body, and there would have been blood spatter on them if they’d been moved. So I think he probably was on his knees. That would account for the downward angle of the projectile, the placement of the wound, and possibly the gap between the wound an
d the muzzle of the gun. The impact of the shot would have thrown him forward, hence the position of the body.”

  I looked at Kate. She nodded. In spite of myself, I also raised my eyebrows at Lonnie. He shrugged; for once, he wasn’t smiling.

  “One more thing. I say it was homicide,” Sheddon said, as he picked up Sattler’s right hand, “but here’s something else for you to think about. There’s gunshot residue on his right hand, and only one empty casing in the cylinder of the weapon. That, I can’t account for.”

  “So he could have shot himself, then?” Kate said.

  “Nope. I don’t think so, not from that angle, not unless he was a contortionist. I’m recording it as a homicide. Having said that, somebody went to a whole lot of trouble to make it look like suicide.”

  -----

  Kate dropped Lonnie and her car off at the PD and I picked her up from there. The drive to Henry’s Cafe, just off Highway 58, took less than ten minutes. We talked as we traveled.

  “Harry, why did Sattler call you instead of the police? If he was in trouble, surely that would be the natural thing to do, unless he had something to hide.”

  “I don’t know. He said he didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. Said it was important. He wasn’t particularly excited, as I remember it, a little agitated maybe, but then I hadn’t seen him in five years, so I wouldn’t necessarily know what his state of mind was. There’s something else: the timing. Whoever killed him must have gotten very lucky. I could only have missed him by a few minutes.”

  We pulled into the lot outside Henry’s. The cafe was quiet, which is why I’d figured it was a good place to talk. We ordered coffee and sandwiches, and took a booth by the window.

  “What do you remember about Sattler, Harry?” Kate asked, stirring sweetener into her coffee.

  “Hmmm. Not a whole lot. It was a long time ago, back in ‘92 when we graduated. I remember him as being confident, enthusiastic, one of those people that no matter what you say, they’ve always done it better and more often. You know the type, right?”

  She nodded.

  “I think he tended to exaggerate, embellish, was not always truthful, but people grow up, they grow out of that sort of stuff. I lost track of him when he went off to college. Northeastern, I think it was. He studied finance. After that I saw very little of him. I’d bump into him every now and then, at the club, or a restaurant. He always went out of his way to say hello. You know how it is.”

  “And you don’t know what he did for a living?”

  “As far as I know, he was a banker or something like that. Where and for whom, I have no idea.”

  “Okay.” Kate handed me several pieces of paper, clipped together. “Here’s what I know. As I told you earlier, he was divorced about ten years ago. His ex-wife, Gloria Sattler, took him for a wild ride and ended up with a healthy settlement and substantial alimony. She just about cleaned him out.”

  “He must have recovered, though,” I said, flipping through the papers. “That home must have cost close to a million.”

  She nodded. “Gloria is forty-three. The three children, all girls, live with her. He lived alone. He has a girlfriend, Wendy Brewer, twenty-six. We know nothing about her, yet, but we will. Gloria has a boyfriend, fiancé, whatever. His name is Richard Hollins. He’s...twenty-five years old. Nice one, Gloria. We don’t know much about him either, yet.”

  I gave her the raised eyebrows look.

  “The top page,” she nodded at the papers on the table, “is a list of Sattler’s known close contacts. The other two pages are just the little background we have so far. We have a lot of work to do. You in?”

  I looked at the list; just six names, including Sattler’s children.

  “Oh yeah. I was in the moment I got the call from him. He wasn’t a friend, but I still need to know what happened. If he killed himself, that’s one thing; if he was murdered.... What about the scene? Did CSI. find anything?”

  “Not much,” Kate said. “There was a single hair under the body; fair, eight and a quarter inches long. Could have been there for a while, maybe not. Plenty of prints; at least ten individuals. The techs have only just gotten started, but they already know that most of them are his. Some will belong to his girlfriend and daughters, but there are at least a half-dozen others, all of which we have yet to identify. We should have something later this afternoon. Yours, just partials, were on the outer knob and two bell pushes.” She paused and thought for a moment.

  “There were two computers in his office: a desktop and a laptop,” she continued. “There’s nothing on them; fingerprints, yes, but no files, photos, nothing. All of the drives appear to have been wiped clean. He might have done that himself, but probably not. That sort of handiwork indicates a pro, or at least someone who knows what they’re doing. There were no external drives, disks or flash drives present. That’s also unusual. Most people do external backups these days. I do, and not to the Cloud either. I don’t trust it. I back up to DVDs. I bet he did, too.”

  I nodded. “What about phones, iPads? He had to have at least a cell phone.”

  “Nope, nothing like that. There’s a house phone. If he had them, they’re gone. It looks like the house was searched, by a pro. Everything appears to be in its place. The clothes in the drawers and closets appear to be undisturbed; everything is neat and tidy, but here and there, especially in the unoccupied rooms, there are marks in the dust where something has been moved, but not quite replaced where it was. Sattler didn’t clean much. There’s no telling what the killer was searching for, but it wouldn’t be too wild of a guess that it was the computer backups.”

  “Makes sense. Did any of the neighbors see or hear anything?”

  “No one heard anything, and they wouldn’t, unless they were inside the house; a .22 doesn’t make a whole lot of noise. One of the neighbors thought she saw a dark-colored SUV, possibly black or blue, backed in the drive all the way to the garage doors, but couldn’t remember what time. She thought it was around six o’clock, but it could have been later. We know he was still alive then, because he didn’t call you until nine-thirty.”

  “If he was alone when he called me,” I said, “someone must have been able to get in and out quickly. Either Sattler let him in, or he had a key. Either way, he knew his killer.”

  “Him?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Could have been a woman. It could also have been more than one person. What do we know about the girlfriend?”

  “Wendy Brewer? Not much. There’s a photo; well, there was a photo of them together on the living room couch. It was on the piano. We took it to get copies made; I’ll make sure you get one. She’s somewhat plain, not much of an improvement on the wife, just younger. She looks nicely put together, in the photo. With his resources, he could probably have done better. We’ll need to talk to her.”

  “How about the wife, Gloria? I met her a couple of times at the club, but I didn’t know her. She seemed... okay, I guess. Not bad looking, but not carrying her age too well either; a bit too nouveau rich, acted like she was better than she was, but that’s understandable. As I recall, she came from a working class background. Our boy Sattler married beneath himself.”

  “Christ, Harry. You’re such a snob, sometimes.”

  I grinned at her. “You never complained.”

  “Yeah, those were the days,” she said, dryly.

  “Sarcasm, Kate. It doesn’t become you.”

  “Hah. Okay, so she’s as good a place as any to start, but... I wonder....”

  “So, what’s the plan?”

  She looked at her watch. “It’s after eleven. I need to get back to the PD, make some calls. I think we need to talk to Gloria Sattler, this afternoon, if possible. Why don’t you go back to your office and see what you can dig up on the victim? I’ll give you a call later on. If you find anything, you can call me.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 3

  I dropped Kate off at the PD, a
nd then drove downtown. I arrived back at my office at a little after noon. I have a small suite close to the courts and the law offices in Chattanooga. I own and operate a private detective agency, Harry Starke Investigations.

  I started the agency some eight years ago, when I quit being a cop. I have a Master’s degree in Forensic Psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson; I joined the CPD right after I graduated. I regarded my time there as a continuance of my education rather than a calling, but I did make a lot of friends while I was a sworn officer. Today, my client list includes just about every lawyer and judge in town, and even more in the big cities beyond – Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham.

  Because of where I was educated – I went to McCallie, one the top private schools in the South – I enjoy a unique advantage over my competition. I know and have access to most of the movers and shakers in this fair city of ours, a fact that’s resented by many of the folks in high places in the city government, and not just one or two of the lower ranks in the PD. Screw ‘em. I’m good at what I do. I’m expensive, discreet, thorough, and I produce results. It’s like that old saying, ‘it’s not always what you know; it’s who you know,’ and, among others, I know my father, August Starke, very well indeed.

  My father? You have to know who he is. Hell, his ads run on most TV stations almost every day. Even I get fed up with that stupid jingle, so I know you do, too. Still, it works. August Starke is a lawyer, a very good one. He specializes in tort, which is a classy word for ‘personal injury.’ He is, perhaps, my greatest asset.

  I parked the car, strode quickly around to the front of the building, hit the outer office door with the palm of my hand, sweeping it open before me. The bang of my hand on the steel doorframe startled everyone, causing them all to look up.

  “Hey, Ronnie, Tim,” I said, as I swept by. “My office, bring something to make notes. Mike, I need a coffee: Italian Dark, black. You can sit in, too.”

  Mike Rogers is my intern. He’s a geeky kid with an ambition to become a PI. Right now, he’s a criminology major at U.T. Chattanooga.