The Harry Starke Series: Books 7-9 (The Harry Starke Series Boxed Set Book 3)

by Blair Howard

  He lightly sprayed the ends of the barrels and turned on the light. Only the smear on the opposite side of the barrel reacted.

  “Yep, it’s as I thought. Nothing. This weapon was not in contact with the body when it was fired.”

  “How about the rest of the gun—the furniture, breach, and trigger guard? Any spatter there?”

  “I’ll look, but why would you think that there might be?”

  “I don’t think this gun killed him,” I said simply.

  He laid the gun on a nearby table on its right side and misted its entire length. He pulled the binocular back over his eyes and turned on the black light.

  “Hmmm. There’s a little on the edge of the trigger housing, but… well, let’s take a look at the other side.”

  He repeated the process, then stood back.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, as he grabbed a Nikon camera from a shelf on the wall behind his desk. Then, holding the black light in one hand and the camera in the other, he took several pictures.

  “What do you have, Mike?” I asked.

  “High-velocity impact blood spatter: microscopic droplets, mist all over the right side of the stock, forearm, barrel, and breach. It’s also been disturbed—smeared—here.” He pointed to a spot on the forearm. “Somebody grabbed hold of it while the blood was still wet. How the heck did it get spattered like that? More to the point: Who grabbed it?”

  “Mike,” I said, “I think he was shot by someone else, with another gun. I think this gun was leaned against the stump of a tree. I found the stump. There’s blood spatter on it too. From fifteen years ago. How’s that for incredible?” I shook my head. “In your opinion, how far away from the wound would this gun have been for it to have received this amount of spatter?”

  “Six, maybe eight feet.”

  “And the direction?”

  He picked up the gun and laid it down against the arm of one of the chairs, trigger housing facing outward.

  “Is this how you think it rested against the trunk?” he asked.

  “Yes, I think so.” I reached out and adjusted the angle a little. “But more like that.”

  “So,” he said, lowering the binocular over his eyes, then stooping over the gun and turning on the black light. “The droplets are elliptical and some have tails and satellites…. I’d say… that the direction was slightly from left to right and slightly downward, almost horizontal.” He nodded, satisfied.

  “But that makes no sense,” Kate said. “The victim would have had to have been on… oh.”

  “On his knees, or crouched down.” Willis nodded. “Like this.”

  He took two steps away from the gun, turned, crouched, and pointed with his left hand toward the weapon. “See? This would roughly be the angle of the spatter.” He pointed with the other hand. “And this would be the direction from which the shot was fired. I mean, look, these are only approximations. I’d need to see the wound before I could offer a definitive opinion, but you get the idea.”

  “Is there enough there for you to lift for DNA analysis?”

  “I think so. Fortunately the gun has been kept in a paper sack, so the residue shouldn’t be contaminated. Give me a minute. I’ll need some fingerprint tape.”

  Two minutes later we had what we hoped would be four viable samples. I thanked him and took the envelope with the sample inside it from him.

  “I’ll get these off to Lindsey at DDC for analysis,” I said. “How about prints, Mike? If someone grabbed the gun, there would be prints in the smeared blood, surely?”

  “Well there aren’t any. Whoever did it was probably wearing gloves. It’s just a smear. But give me a minute,” he said, getting up from the crouch. “I’ll dust it and see what we have, if anything.”

  He dusted the gun, then said, “There are prints, but they are all overlaid by the blood spatter. They probably are Nicholson’s, but I’ll need comparisons…. Oh,” he said, as I handed him the copy of the autopsy report. “Right. There they are. Okay then. That should do it. I can do the comparisons first thing tomorrow and let you know. Anything else?”

  “Yes, there is. I’d like you to take a look at the clothing he was wearing.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  I shrugged.

  He nodded. “I’ll check it out. Anything else you need?”

  “Nothing I can think of right now, but who the hell knows? If anything else comes up, I can count on you, right?”

  “Always. Have a good one Harry, Kate.”

  Chapter 13

  Wednesday, January 11, 4:30 p.m.

  It was just after four thirty when Amanda and I arrived at the country club that afternoon. We’d taken both cars and were lucky enough to find two parking spots close to the clubhouse. August was already in the lounge. My dad’s one of those larger-than-life figures who dominates any room he happens to be in; it wasn’t hard to find him. He was seated, glass in hand, talking to Federal Judge Henry Strange and ADA Larry Spruce. The three of them had been friends for longer than I could remember, and friends of mine for more than a dozen years. We were golfing buddies—we played most Sunday mornings, even during winter—and professional allies. It was, I can tell you, a good team to be a part of, and I was especially glad to see them that day.

  “Harry, my boy. Amanda, my love.” August boomed as we walked into the lounge. “I thought you’d gotten lost. Larry and I were just about to go get something to eat downstairs, but this will do fine.” The downstairs he was referring to was the Gentlemen’s Grill and Bar. “But first,” he said, slipping an arm around Amanda’s shoulder and hugging her to him, “we need to get this lovely lady something to drink. George!” He didn’t quite snap his fingers, but he might as well have. “A G&T for the lady—Bombay Sapphire, if you please—and a double Laphroaig—one ice cube—for my boy. Henry, Larry, same again?”

  “Uh, no, not for me,” Strange said. “I need to get on home.”

  “Oh that’s too bad, Henry,” I said. “I was hoping you and Larry would join us. I uh… I have something I’d like to talk to you about—the three of you, that is. How about it. Can you spare an hour?”

  “Well now,” Strange said, beaming. “Since you put it like that. Make mine a Laphroaig too, please, George, but just a small one, straight; no ice.”

  I won’t bore you with what we had to eat that evening. Suffice it to say that it was exceptional, as it almost always is.

  We talked while we ate; mostly they questioned Amanda and me about our extended trip to the Islands. It wasn’t until the meal was cleared away and the coffee on its way that I finally was able to turn the conversation to Peter Nicholson.

  “I had a visitor on Monday, Dad, a friend of yours, so she said. Helen Nicholson.”

  He was silent for a moment, looked at the other two, each in turn. I looked at them too. Their faces were serious.

  “Ah,” he said, finally. “So that’s what this is about. “You’re not getting involved in that, I hope.”

  Now that was not exactly what I was expecting to hear.

  “I already am.”

  He shook his head sadly. “I wish you weren’t, son. I really do wish you weren’t.”

  Strange stared down into his cup; Larry Spruce gazed out of the window.

  “Well,” I said, “I can understand that, but it is what it is. I promised the lady.”

  He sighed, shook his head, waved his hand in the air to get the bartender’s attention, waited until he arrived and ordered a round of drinks, waited until George had gone to get them, then said, “Harry, do you have any idea who you’ll be going up against?”

  I nodded. “I do. I also know that one of them murdered Peter Nicholson.”

  That got their attention.

  “Harry,” Spruce said. “How can you know that? It was almost fifteen years ago. It was ruled an accident, by the sheriff’s office and by the medical examiner.”

  “That’s true,” I said, “But they were wrong—either that or they knew and covered it
up, all of them. The two detectives didn’t like what they found, but they were pressured by Israel Hands to go along with the finding. I’ve already spoken to the surviving detective, Ron Fowler. He told me he never was happy with the finding.”

  “Harry,” Strange said, “I know Ellis Warren better than anyone. The minute he finds out what you’re up to he’ll slap you with every legal restraint he can think of. He’ll rip you a new one… uh, sorry Amanda.”

  She smiled sweetly at him and said, “Judge Strange, I’m a journalist. I’ve heard much worse.”

  That brought a smile to all of their faces, even August’s, but I could tell he was more than a little upset.

  “Look,” I said. “I know them too, all three of them. They’re a nasty bunch of bas….” I paused, looked at Amanda. She was smiling. “They’re not nice people,” I finished lamely. “But come on. You guys have dedicated your lives to doing the right thing. Digging up the truth about what happened to Peter Nicholson is the right thing to do. And anyway, I need something to do.”

  “Okay,” Larry Spruce said. “I’ll bite. What makes you so sure it wasn’t an accident?”

  “I’ve been to the scene. I’ve looked at the photos. The scene looks staged to me; I just don’t buy it. He supposedly fell on his shotgun and shot himself for God’s sake. That’s what Warren, Myers, and Harrison said that day, but that kind of thing just doesn’t happen, and if it ever did, it would be a chance in a billion. Bowden, the ME, and Hands both took their story about what they thought had happened and used it to close the investigation down. There never was one. Amanda, tell them.”

  “Tell them what? All I could find at the station was a couple of minutes of raw footage. I was still at Columbia in 2001, but it seems their stories were good for us, too.” She paused, turned to me and said, “Why don’t you talk to Charlie? If anyone can help you, it’s him.”

  “Pit Bull Charlie? I would… but he and I aren’t on the best of terms. Not since he came sniffing around after that number you did on me.”

  That made them all smile, including Amanda. It was no secret that Amanda and I had gotten off to a rocky start.

  “Rocky” my rear end. I couldn’t stand the sight of her.

  It was four years ago when she interviewed me, supposedly for an on-air profile—I’d made the national news for the second time and she was an anchor at Channel 7 TV. The profile turned into a hatchet job. Talk about tearing someone a new one; she did a hell of a job on me and I swore she’d never get the chance to do it again.

  Ain’t it funny how life has a way of turning things around?

  A week after the piece aired, Pit Bull Charlie Grove, Channel 7’s customer advocate—make that Channel 7’s nosey son of a bitch—came bouncing into my office as if he owned the place. He was wanting to do a follow up, only it was me that did the following, with a boot up his ass as I tossed him out into the parking lot.

  “I remember that piece, Amanda,” Spruce said with a grin. “You were a bit hard on him, as I recall.”

  “Hard?” I asked. “Hard? She….” I looked at her. “She’s more than made up for it since,” I said with a wry smile. “And she’s going to handle Pit Bull Charlie for me, aren’t you, my love?”

  “How about we do it together? It’s time you two buried the hatchet.” She saw the look on my face. “No, not in his head. Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll handle him, but you need to talk to him yourself. Hearsay is not what you need, now is it?”

  I had to admit she was right, so I agreed and asked her to set it up, and then turned the conversation back to the three stooges.

  “Look,” I said. “I know Judge Warren well enough. We’ve clashed a few times, and I can handle him. Harrison? Well, I’ve had drinks with him and his wife on occasion. All three of them are members here, but Myers…. I’ve met him too, more than once, but you know him best,” I said, looking at August. “I’m having lunch with him tomorrow. What do I need to know?”

  He thought for a moment, then said, “You need to know he’s a sly son of a bitch, a liar, and that he has a violent temper. Be very careful what you say to him, and never meet with him alone. Always have a witness present, and take everything he says with a pinch of salt. I’ve run up against him four times. I beat him in court once, and forced settlements on him the other three times. He’s never forgiven me for it. So you being who you are puts you at a disadvantage. Be careful, son.”

  I nodded, then I looked at Henry Strange, my eyebrows raised.

  “You want to know about Harrison, I suppose,” he said.

  “You’re a federal judge. You must have had dealings with him.”

  “Many times, and I don’t like him, although I have to say that for the most part I’ve found him to be a straight shooter. He’s an expert in financial and criminal law. He’s a small man, and I’m not just talking about his build, although it applies. What I’m saying is, he has that chip on his shoulder, and he’s mean with it. He’s tough and he’s a winner, Harry. You’ll have your hands full with him… if you can get him to talk to you at all. Look. I have to go, but before I do I want you to know that I think you’re right. Mrs. Nicholson, bless her, needs closure, or justice, especially if what you say is true. That being so, you can count on me for whatever help you need, provided you don’t ask me to cross any lines. Now, I’ll bid you all a good evening.”

  We watched as he headed out of the lounge and down the stairs, then Larry Spruce said, “Same goes for me, Harry. Whatever you need, provided it’s on the up and up.”

  “Thanks, Larry,” I said. “I appreciate it. “Dad, it’s time we left too. I have an early start in the morning. We on for Sunday?” I was talking about our weekly outing on the golf course.

  “Of course.”

  “How about you, Larry? Will you be able to make it?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Good. We’ll see you both then.”

  An hour later we were back home on Lookout Mountain.

  ***

  “Harry, are you sure you want to do this?” Amanda joined me at the picture window and handed me one of the two glasses she was holding. “Your friends looked worried.”

  I continued to stare out of the window. It was a fine, cold, clear night. The sky was an unbroken field of stars. The city below, a carpet of twinkling lights. “Our friends? Yes, they’re worried, and yes, I want to do it; I’m going to do it.”

  I slipped my arm around her waist and pulled her close; she put hers around mine, laid her head against my shoulder, and whispered, “I know.”

  Chapter 14

  Thursday, January 12, 9:00 a.m.

  Thursday morning turned out to be one of those rare winter mornings when you realize just how lucky you are to be alive. I’d made the outbound leg of my two-mile run in darkness, but as I came back through the gate it was getting light, and by seven dawn had broken in a blaze of yellow, pink, and orange, though the sun, a great red ball, had barely cleared the edge of the horizon.

  I left home early that morning, determined to be in the office by eight, and I was, though Jacque and most of the rest of the gang, even Tim, had beaten me there and the place was already a hive of activity.

  I grabbed a sixteen-ounce mug of coffee, went to my office, turned on the logs, and settled in for ten minutes with the Times Free Press, but it wasn’t to be. My backside had barely hit the leather when there was a knock at the door and Tim walked in, grinning like a damned Cheshire cat.

  I put down the newspaper, looked up at him, and sighed. “What is it?”

  “Here you go,” he said, dropping the plastic bag with the 8mm tapes on my desk and handing me a sleeve of DVDs. “All done.”

  “All?”

  “Yup. They were all fairly short. I did half of them here last night, then took the rest of them home, along with an AVC cable, the Pinnacle device, and the software, and finished them there.”

  AVC cable? Pinnacle device? What the hell are those? Hah. Better if I don’t ask. “Great
, well done,” I said. “Thank you, Tim. I’ll get to them later. Right now….”

  “Gotcha. I have other stuff I need to get done too. If you need me, you know where I am,” and, much to my surprise, he walked out of the office, closing the door behind him. Usually I had to cut him off, or he’d go on and on and on…. It was who he was. I smiled after him, over the rim of my cup, then grabbed the DVDs and riffled through them. They all were neatly labeled with title and run time. I looked at my watch. It was almost eight thirty; no time to do anything with them now. I had an appointment with the medical examiner and I wanted to arrive early.

  I picked up the phone and buzzed Jacque. “You ready to go?”

  She was.

  The Hamilton County Forensic Center on Amnicola is a small, unimposing, one-story building about a block away from the police department. The small forensic unit it houses is lorded over by my old friend Dr. Richard “Doc” Sheddon: a small, round-shouldered, heavy-set man in his late sixties, almost totally bald, with a round, jolly face, and an attitude to match. He was also a master of his craft, though for some reason I could never quite put my finger on, he also reminded me of Bilbo Baggins.

  He was at his desk when we arrived, a cup of coffee in one hand, the corner of the spread-out daily Times Free Press newspaper in the other. I knocked on the door; he looked up, folded his paper, and stood up.

  “Hey, Harry, how’s it…” and then he saw Jacque. “Whoops. My bad. How are you Jacque? Harry, sorry I couldn’t make it out to your wedding. From what I heard it must have been one heck of a wing ding. I know Leo Martan well; good friend; haven’t seen him in years though. So, what is it you want to talk to me about?” All that, and never a pause to draw a breath or let me say a word.

  I looked at him, stretched out a hand to Jacque, and accepted the file she handed me.

  “Peter Nicholson,” I said.

  “Nicholson? Peter? Don’t know any Peter Nicholson. I knew a Chester Nicholson. Heart surgeon at CHI Memorial. Good one too. Died about five or six years ago.”