Mortal Wounds

by Max Allan Collins

  Grissom turned to her and spoke over the ridge of his muffler. “Finish our coffee and go back to working the crime scene. Just because it snows doesn’t change the job, Sara.”

  Yes, out here in the beautiful snowy woods, Sara was experiencing a true Grissom moment. Only her boss would provide a literal answer to what a billy goat would have easily perceived as a rhetorical question.

  Grissom was asking the Canadian, “What’s the story with the sticks over there?”

  Sara had been wondering that herself.

  “It’s a technique developed by two Saskatchewan game wardens,” Maher said. “Buddies of mine—Les Oystryk and D. J. McGill. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Maher led the CSIs to the stick he’d planted at the downhill end of his line. “It’s a pretty simple theory, really,” he said, gesturing with a gloved hand, as if passing a benediction. “I placed a stake where the bullet entered the snow.”

  Eyes tight, Grissom asked, “Denoted by the beginning of the streak you saw yesterday?”

  “Exactly. Normally, we’d run a string or flagging tape twenty feet to a second stake, aligning it with the streak in the snow that showed the bullet’s path. But with snow this deep, I simply ran the second stake as straight as I could, and planted it without the string.”

  Sara asked, “And the bullet never deviates from the path in the snow?”

  “ ‘Never’ isn’t in my lexicon,” Maher said. “If the slug hit a rock or something, deviation is possible, even probable—but with snow like this to slow the bullet, the path won’t be altered much.”

  Grissom gestured back toward the toboggan. “Which is where your metal detector comes in.”

  “Yes,” the constable said. “Lucky I brought it along for my presentation, eh?…I think we’ll find the bullet within three feet of that line, on either side.”

  “This technique,” Grissom said. “How often is it successful?”

  “Most of the time…‘Always’ isn’t in my lexicon, either.” He turned toward the hotel manager, who was still under the tree, and called, “Mr. Cormier!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Need a favor!”

  Cormier came over. “What can I do you for, Mr. Maher?”

  Pointing just beyond and to the left of the body, Maher said, “Take the shovel and clear me a space in the snow, oh, three by three feet.”

  Nodding, Cormier asked, “How deep?”

  “Down to the dirt, please. We’re creating a control area.”

  “Shovel’s just about my level of high tech,” Cormier said, and marched off to the toboggan, where he fetched the shovel and went over to start digging.

  While Grissom worked on casting footprints, Sara helped Maher get his metal detector assembled and running. Giving him room, she accompanied the Canadian as he and it traveled back and forth over the track the bullet had taken. Every time he pointed at a spot, she placed a smaller stick.

  She’d marked only two spots when he stopped, stared at the ground in confusion, and said, “Well, that’s weird, eh?”

  “What is?”

  “Gettin’ a beep here, on something a whole lot bigger than a bullet.”

  “Any idea what?”

  Maher shook his head. She inserted a stick at the spot and he kept moving. When he finished, four different places had been marked by Sara in that fashion.

  Sara asked, “Now what?”

  “We run the metal detector over our control area,” Maher said.

  She watched as he ran the detector over the bare spot Cormier had created.

  “All right,” Maher said. “It’s clear—no metal in the dirt. Sara, get a garbage bag from the sled, would you?”

  Sara trotted over, grabbed one of the black bags, came back and handed it to Maher.

  As he ripped out the seams, Maher said, “Now we’ll cover the bare spot Mr. Cormier made for us.”

  “Oh,” Sara said, understanding. “We’re going to put the snow we marked onto the plastic, and sift through it.”

  Maher nodded. “But first we dig. You take those two,” he said, pointing at the two marked spots nearest the downhill end of the line. Then he went over and knelt in the snow, next to two spots further up the line. “And I’ll take these two.”

  Sara had hardly begun to dig down when she saw something pink, and froze. “Constable! Grissom!…I think you both better see this.”

  They came over.

  Grissom crouched over her find. “Blood…”

  Maher, hovering, asked, “What the hell’s that doing here?”

  Reflexively, they all glanced back toward the snowy hump of the body almost ten yards uphill; but the victim wasn’t talking.

  Maher looked from Grissom to Sara. “Didn’t you say the only blood was near the body?”

  “That’s right,” Sara said. “We didn’t see any this far down.”

  Grissom asked, “Could this patch of blood have already been covered by snow?”

  “I don’t think so,” Sara said. “Not in the time between our hearing those shots and coming onto this crime scene.”

  Maher’s expression, in the fuzzy cameo created by the parka, was thoughtful. “Could be someone covered it on purpose, hastily kicked snow over it…. Besides those footprints, you see any other disturbed snow?”

  Grissom said, “No,” and Sara shook her head.

  Then she asked her boss, “Do you have one of those bug specimen bottles on you?”

  A small bottle materialized in Grissom’s gloved palm; he handed the container over to her.

  Using the cap, she shooed the pink snow into the bottle, then closed it. She handed the little bottle to Grissom and went back to her digging, only now she was more careful, much slower, searching every inch to make sure she didn’t miss any evidence. Maher went to work on his spots, and Grissom returned to footprint duty.

  Stripping off her gloves, she started digging with her fingers, not trusting the shovel or even her gloves to keep her from contaminating any more evidence. The cold and wet of the snow was kind of refreshing at first, but it only took a couple of minutes before her fingers turned red and the tips started to numb up.

  She was just starting to think taking off the gloves was a really dumb idea when she touched something hard.

  Her hand jumped out of the hole as if she’d been bitten by a snake.

  “Are you all right?” Grissom asked, running over to her. He sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Something metallic,” she said. “Not small…”

  They both looked toward Maher, working at his own spot; but his eyes were on them, as well. The constable came over and drew a forceps from a pocket. “Can you get it with this?”

  “Should be able to.” She accepted the tool, inserted her bare hand and the forceps down into the hole. Maneuvering carefully, she worked the ridged jaws around the object. Squeezing, she dragged the object out of the snow, like pulling a tooth. It felt heavy and came out slowly. When the object finally appeared from the snow, they all froze, as if the cold had finally caught up with them.

  Only it was not cold, rather shock.

  “A knife?” Maher asked, as if he wanted confirmation of what his eyes had shown him. “You said our vic was shot.”

  “He was,” Grissom said.

  Sara held up the knife in the jaws of the forceps, squinting at it. The thing wasn’t that big—blade no more than four inches long.

  “Our victim was shot, all right,” she said. “And so…how do we explain this?”

  “More blood,” Grissom said, almost admiringly.

  A pink sheen covered much of the blade.

  They all traded looks.

  “There’s no knife wounds in the body, right?” asked Maher.

  “None plainly visible,” Grissom said. “Does this mean our killer took defensive wounds away from this scene?”

  All three looked up the hill to where the body lay, almost thirty feet away. Still not talking…

  “Blood,” Maher said. “
How is that possible?”

  “There’s not much blood here,” Sara said, meaning both the knife blade and the snowy stuff she’d gathered.

  “Which means?”

  It doesn’t start out as a chase. The victim-to-be and a companion come partway up the hill together. They’re talking, arguing even, and a verbal confrontation turns ugly and physical…and the vic-to-be stabs the companion, who pulls a gun in self-defense…

  …and now it’s a chase, beginning somewhere down the slope. The companion is running and shooting, and by the time the two reach this point, the killer’s missed twice, two wide shots. The vic drops the knife, in the process of trying to escape, running for his life; but he only makes it another ten yards, before he catches a bullet in the back and goes down. Then the companion goes to the fallen victim, dead now, and decides to disfigure or disguise the body. The killer goes back to the hotel, collects the gas can, and returns for the impromptu funeral pyre.

  “It plays out similarly with three participants,” Sara said with a shrug.

  Grissom and Maher were both nodding.

  “It’s a scenario that suits the evidence we have,” Grissom said. “Let’s keep working and get some more data, and see what we can build from that…. Sara, put your gloves back on. We don’t want to have to amputate your fingers.”

  Ruefully, Maher said, “Looks like our vic was one of those poor bastards who brought a knife to a gunfight.”

  “Not much of a knife, at that,” Sara said.

  “Still,” Grissom said. “Pretty big for a pocket knife.”

  “But not big enough,” Maher said, “to go up against bullets.”

  Moving in from the sidelines, Cormier asked, “Is…is that blood the killer’s?”

  Maher said, “Good chance of it.”

  “Don’t mean to tell you experts how to do your job,” the hotel man said. “But can’t you just get the killer’s blood type from that, and identify him?”

  “In a lab we could,” Grissom said. “Not out here.” He spread his gloved hands, indicating the forest. “Anyway, the blood on that blade froze overnight, and the red cells will all have ruptured. If we had the lab, we could type it through the plasma, but not under these conditions.”

  Going back to work, they carefully emptied the snow from the other holes one shovelful at a time. When they had emptied twelve-inch circles around each of the markers and placed the snow on the spread-out garbage bag, Maher went over the smaller pile again with the metal detector as Sara and Cormier watched.

  When Maher got a hit, Sara dropped to her knees, and slowly sifted through the area. After a moment, she found it. Holding it up, she stared at the tiny ice ball with the dark, lead center. “What happened?”

  With a little grin, Maher said, “Snow happened. The hot bullet melted it, then the condensation froze around the cartridge as it slowed the bullet down.”

  They repeated the process with all the snow from the places they’d marked, but they found only one more bullet and a coin, a quarter.

  “Here ya go, Gordy,” she said, flipping the quarter to the Canadian.

  “Not that much less than I usually get,” Maher said, catching it.

  “Yeah,” Sara said, with a grin, “but that’s American.”

  “Good point, eh?”

  Moving over to Grissom, Sara said, “Two bullets. When I get the ice off ’em, we’ll have a better idea what we’ve got.”

  “Good work,” he said. Then, rising from the print he was working on, he picked two different left-foot castings from the line he’d done. “What do you think of this?”

  She studied the castings. “They’re the same boot.”

  He nodded. “Two different sets of tracks made by the same boots. One killer, two trips out and back.”

  “That confirms my reconstruction.”

  “Far as it goes…We need more evidence.”

  Maher joined them. “How are the castings coming, Dr. Grissom?”

  “Finished. Just getting ready to pack up.”

  “All right. I’ve got the bullets. Don’t think there’s anything else we can do here.”

  Sara asked, “What about the body?”

  Maher gave Grissom a hard look. “What do you think, Dr. Grissom? Are we done with the scene?”

  Grissom glanced around, eyes tight with thought; then, slowly, he nodded.

  “I agree,” Maher said. “I suggest we take the body with us…which is part of why we brought the toboggan.”

  “Hold on!” Cormier called from the sidelines, where he’d been listening. “How come you can take the body now, when you couldn’t before?”

  “Before,” said Grissom, “it was part of an active crime scene. Now that we’ve worked the scene, we can remove the body.”

  Shaking his hooded head, the old man walked away.

  Maher glanced toward the sky, saying, “If we can pack up quick enough…”

  “We have a shot at the parking lot,” Grissom finished.

  “Let’s go sledding, then,” Sara said.

  Grissom and Maher carefully dug out the body, wrapping it tightly in the space blanket and binding it to the toboggan. As they worked with the remains, Sara gathered up the tools and added them to the load. Within fifteen minutes, they were starting back down the slope.

  Again, Cormier was in the lead, Maher dragging the toboggan, Grissom and Sara bringing up the rear, making sure their package stayed wrapped up. As they trudged along, they discussed what to do with the body.

  When they reached the edge of the parking lot, its scattering of vehicles so topheavy with snow they resembled big white mushrooms, the CSIs were still hashing over the subject.

  Maher said, “Maybe we should just bury it in the snow again.”

  Sara made a face. “We just dug it out!”

  The Canadian nodded, saying, “Yes, but the killer set it on fire for a reason…”

  Grissom said, “And you’re worried that by bringing it into the hotel, we’re giving the killer a chance to finish the job.”

  The constable shrugged. “It is a consideration.”

  “If we bury it outside again, we’ll have to set up another rotating shift,” Maher said, “to guard it from predators.”

  “Please God,” Sara said, the hotel and its promised warmth so nearby, “let there be another way.”

  They had reached the shoveled area near the rear door of the hotel, parking the toboggan alongside.

  Grissom looked toward the manager. “Mr. Cormier, do you have a walk-in cooler?”

  Cormier snorted a laugh. “Can’t run a hotel this big without one…. You’re not…?”

  Cormier’s eyes followed Grissom’s to the blanketed body strapped to the toboggan.

  Grissom asked, “Does the cooler have a lock?”

  “Well, padlock, yeah, but—”

  “Who has keys?”

  “Me, the Missus, and Mrs. Duncan, she’s the head cook. But you can’t seriously—”

  “What about the fry cook?” Maher asked. “What’s his name?”

  Cormier said, “Bobby Chester. He doesn’t have a key. Usually, he only works during the day, and the Missus or me is always around. But gentlemen, you can’t honestly be considering…”

  Grissom and Maher were trading looks.

  Then Maher said, “Mr. Cormier, we’re going to have to ask you to collect the keys and give them to us.”

  The hotel man was shaking his head. “You can’t really be suggesting we stow that…corpse, in the walk-in cooler?”

  Grissom and Maher just looked at him. Sara, astounded herself, was enjoying watching this play out.

  “There are sanitary issues,” Cormier was saying, “there are laws we’d be breaking…”

  “Not more serious than murder,” Grissom said. “We have to insist. We’re commandeering your cooler.”

  “Tell me this is some sick joke,” the hotel manager said. “What would I tell the health inspector?”

  Maher said, “Mr. Cormi
er, it’s really the only option that makes sense.”

  “But the guests, what will they say?”

  “You’re not to tell them,” Grissom said. “The fewer people that know what we’re doing, the better.”

  “Well, now,” Cormier said, “finally we agree on somethin’!”

  Maher smiled pleasantly, but in an entirely businesslike way. “Would you get us that padlock key, please?” He turned to Grissom. “We really should start to hurry on the parking lot.”

  The hotel man sighed and it hung in the air. “Be back in a few minutes.”

  Cormier started away, and Sara called out: “Sir!”

  He turned. “Yes, Ms. Sidle?”

  “You might not want to mention this to Pearl.”

  The hotel man’s eyebrows rose, then he nodded, saying, “Good thought, Ms. Sidle. Good thought.”

  They watched as the dejected-looking Cormier went inside.

  Maher asked Sara, “What’s this about Mrs. Cormier? We got another suspect?”

  “If our host really wants to keep the news about a stiff in the cooler from the guests,” Sara said, “he’ll be wise to keep it from his wife…. She’s one of the few communications systems around here not affected by the storm.”

  “Ah,” Maher said.

  “Now about the blood on that knife blade,” Sara said.

  Maher and Grissom faced her.

  “What about it?” her boss asked.

  “That waitress, Amy Barlow? She’s got a bandage—cut on her hand.”

  Grissom nodded, remembering. “She said she got it slicing onions in the kitchen. Do we believe her?”

  Sara shrugged. “She’s the only person I’ve seen with a cut.”

  “There’s the waiter,” Maher said.

  Sara frowned. “The one who dropped the tray?”

  “Spot on his sleeve, eh?”

  Sara smiled. “Oh, you noticed that…. I couldn’t tell what it was. He’s working with food and liquids, so that stain—”

  “Might have been blood,” Maher said. “Could explain why he dropped that tray. Weak arm, sore arm.”

  “Have we narrowed the list of suspects,” Grissom asked, “or increased it?”

  Maher shook his head. “We still don’t really have any significant evidence pointing toward anyone.”

  Sara asked, “Is there any way to cross-match the blood on the knife?”