Ed McBain - Shotgun

Detective Bert Kling went outside to throw up.

Coming down the corridor toward him, Detective Steve Carella saw the look on his face, said, “What’s the matter, kid?” as he brushed past, and then understood immediately. He hesitated before approaching the patrolman stationed outside the apartment door. Then, with a brief nod of resignation, he took his shield from where it was pinned inside his wallet, fastened it to the pocket of his suit jacket, exchanged only the shortest glance with the patrolman, and entered the apartment.

The building was on South Engels in an upper-middle-class area on the northern fringe of the 87th Precinct, not a part of Smoke Rise, nor even in that section of buildings lining the River Harb, but further east and somewhat less fashionable than either. The patrolman had been stationed outside the apartment’s service entrance, so that was where Carella went in. He found himself in a smallish kitchen with an abundance of tile, a spotlessly clean checkerboard vinyl floor, an equally clean, white enamel-top table, and appliances that noisily hummed with age.

The first body was in the living room.

The woman, as the newspapers would faithfully report later, was clad only in nylon panties, but there was not the faintest suggestion of sexuality about her; the image such a description evoked was entirely invalid because the woman was dead, the woman was sprawled in an utterly grotesque posture of lifelessness, her face and part of her skull ripped away by what appeared even at first glance to have been a shotgun blast. She was a woman in her late thirties perhaps, possibly attractive when alive, seeming now only a loose bundle of bones held together by a flaccid skin case. She had soiled herself in death, either in fear before the act, or in a relaxation of sphincter muscles when the shotgun blast tore away half her head. She was wearing a wedding band on her left hand, no engagement ring. She was lying exposed in front of a large sofa slipcovered in a riotous print of hibiscus blooms. Two spent shotgun-cartridge cases were on the rug beside her. Her blood had soaked into the pale-blue tufts of the rug and spread in a wide puddle beneath her head. It was this scene that had sent Bert Kling rushing out of the apartment.

Steve Carella had a stronger stomach, or perhaps he was simply a more experienced cop. He left the living room and proceeded into the apartment’s master bedroom.

A man in undershorts and undershirt was lying just inside the door in an almost fetal position. His entire face and most of his head had been blown away. His thumb was locked around the trigger of the shotgun still clutched in one hand; the barrel of the 12-gauge gun lay close to what remained of his jaw. A single spent cartridge case was on the floor beside his open head, surrounded by several small white objects. It took Carella a moment to realize they were fragmented teeth.

He went outside.

Monoghan and Monroe, the two bulls on mandatory call from Homicide, were standing in the hallway.

“Nice one, huh?” Monoghan said.

“Beauty,” Monroe said.

“Takes all kinds,” Monoghan said.

“More nuts outside than in,” Monroe said.

They had played this particular scene before. Nothing fazed them; they had seen it all and heard it all. They stood in stoic nonchalance against the buff-colored wall of the building’s hallway, both smoking cigars, both dressed in black topcoats and gray fedoras, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of criminal detection. A window at the far end of the hallway, newly washed because this was Saturday and yesterday was when the cleaning service had come to do the building, was open a trifle at the bottom. A brisk October breeze swept the corridor, fresh and clean and reeking of life. Beyond the window, the early-morning sun limned the city’s towers. A haze hung in the distant sky.

“Think the guy went berserk?” Monroe asked Carella.

“Sure,” Monoghan said. “Plugged his wife and then went into the bedroom to give himself the coup d’état.”

“De grâce,” Monroe corrected.

“Sure,” Monoghan said, and shrugged.

Carella said nothing.

“Do us a favor,” Monroe said to Carella.

“Save us a lot of paperwork.”

“Don’t make this a big deal.”

“It’s pure and simple. He knocked her off, and then turned the gun on himself.”

“Don’t make it a federal case.”

“I wonder who heard the shots,” Carella said.

“Huh?”

“It must have happened last night sometime. I wonder who heard the shots.”

“In prime time, nobody hears shots,” Monroe said.

“I also wonder who called it in. Was Kling here when you arrived?”

“The blond cop?”

“Yes.”

“He was here,” Monroe said.

“A little pale around the gills, but here,” Monoghan said.

“Did he say how he got the squeal?”

“Milkman called him,” Monoghan said.

“The milkman?”

“Yeah.”

“How come?”

“Saw the door open, thought it was strange.”

“What door?”

“To the kitchen. The service entrance.”

“It was open?”

“Wide open.”

“What time was this?”

“I don’t know. An hour or so ago.” Monoghan looked at his watch. “About five o’clock, I guess.”

“The kitchen door was open at five o’clock in the morning?”

“That’s what the milkman said. Ask Kling, he took a statement.”

“One thing I hate,” Monroe said, “is these early-morning calls.”

“Anyway, this one looks about wrapped up,” Monoghan said. He met Carella’s eyes. “Right, Carella?”

“You think so?”

“I could draw you a blueprint and write the whole scenario,” Monoghan said.

“Gee, I wish you would,” Carella said. “Save us a whole lot of time.”

“Only trouble is,” Monoghan said, “a homicide belongs to the precinct taking the squeal.”

“Yeah, that’s a shame,” Monroe said.

“So I guess we’ll have to leave it to you fellows, after all.”

“I guess so.”

Monroe took a handkerchief, blew his nose, put the handkerchief back into his pocket and then said, “Carella, let’s close it out as soon as possible, huh?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s an obvious goddamn case, that’s why.”

“Except for the door being wide open at five in the morning.”

“A technicality,” Monroe said.

“You start looking around, you’ll probably find a note the old man left.”

“You think so, huh?” Carella said.

“Sure, they usually leave notes. It’s because they’re filled with remorse—”

“Regret,” Monroe said.

“So they write a note begging the world to understand they’re really only nice guys who just happened to behave bad once in their lives. A slight lapse, you know what I mean?”

“A minor little bit of mischief.”

“Please understand.”

“Please forgive.”

“That’s why they leave notes.”

“You’re sure to find one,” Monroe said. “You just look around, you’ll find one.”

“You think it’ll tell us about that spent cartridge case?” Carella asked.

“Huh?” Monroe said.

“The one in the bedroom alongside the dead man.”

“What about it?”

“He’s holding a 12-gauge pump shotgun,” Carella said.

“Yeah?”

“That means you’ve got to pump it to eject the spent cartridge and get the next one into the firing chamber. Maybe you’d like to tell me how he managed to shoot himself in the head and then pump the gun to eject that cartridge.”