Макс Коллинз: No One Will Hear You

“Crime scene team and the coroner,” the young officer said, looking a trifle pale, “are already inside.”

“Thanks,” Amari said.

The door stood widely ajar.

Trailed by Polk, she went into a well-lit room with gaudy silver brocade wallpaper and white furnishings, including a bed where a sheet had been spread over a body. Two youngish crime-scene techs in blue disposable coveralls were at work — a male on the far side using an alternative light source to comb the floor for clues, a female dusting for prints in the bathroom.

Devin Talbot, a veteran assistant coroner, gave up a rumpled smile, seeing Amari. He was a compact, balding fortysomething man, with a halo of brown hair and sorrowful brown eyes.

“Anna, how the hell are you?”

“Doing fine, Dink,” she said. “Back from vacation, I see.” She didn’t know the history of the nickname, but Talbot had been “Dink” for as long as Amari had known him.

“How do you like my tan?” he asked. He was just a little paler than a fish belly. Probably went all the way to his den to read.

She said, “Thought you were George Hamilton for a second there. Let’s have a look at your customer.”

Talbot looked past her at Polk. “Close the door, will you, son?”

The young detective did so.

Talbot lifted the sheet and pulled it back to the victim’s waist.

Caucasian, probably early to mid-thirties, with short blonde hair and wide-set blue eyes staring at the ceiling. Red marks stood out on both wrists. The sheet beneath was soaked in blood, crisp and black from drying now, and Amari’s eyes immediately were drawn to two gaping wounds in the man’s chest.

“Knife?” she asked.

“Honking big knife,” Polk interjected before Talbot could answer.

Talbot offered up the same condescending smile he would give a child who had spoken out of turn. “If our weapon is a knife.”

Polk asked, “What makes you think it wouldn’t be?”

The coroner pulled the sheet back farther.

The victim’s genitals had been cut off.

“Not much bleeding,” Amari said, matter of fact.

“Postmortem wound,” Talbot said. “Our killer wanted to keep the mess to a minimum — he waited for the blood to begin to settle before he took the genitals.”

Polk asked, “Blood to settle?”

“You know this stuff, LeRon,” Amari said, mildly impatient. “Heart stops beating, gravity takes over, blood starts seeking the lowest levels.”

Polk nodded. “Yeah, I know, I knew. It was like... rhetorical.”

Amari let her young partner get away with that as she studied the wound. “Were his genitals somewhere here in the room?”

“Gone,” Talbot said with a shrug. “My guess is, the killer took everything with him.”

“A trophy?” she said.

“Damn messy one,” Polk said.

“That was rhetorical, LeRon.”

“Oh. Right. Sure.”

A killer specializing in emasculation of victims, combined with taking the genitals as trophies, had all the earmarks of someone who might strike again.

And again.

Polk was asking, “Who the hell does something like that to a guy?”

“Someone filled with rage,” Talbot said. “The uniforms who were here, when we got the call? They already had a name for him.”

Polk asked, “What?”

“Billy Shears,” Talbot said.

“Great,” Amari said. “I hope no media heard that.”

“Billy Shears?” Polk asked.

Amari turned to him. “The Beatles? ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’?”

Polk shrugged. “Before my time.”

“I thought you said you had Rock Band.”

“Yeah, but not that ancient-ass crap.”

Suddenly Amari felt very old.

Talbot said, “Anyway, the vic was stabbed twice in the chest... then the killer waited.”

“How long?” Amari asked.

“Twenty minutes, maybe,” Talbot said. “Doesn’t take as long for the blood to settle as people think.”

“There is some blood down south,” Polk noted.

“Yes,” Talbot said patiently, “but not nearly as much as if he’d been alive when this happened.”

“Let’s not go there,” Polk said with a shiver. “What the hell was our killer doing with himself, while he waited for the blood to settle?”

Talbot shrugged.

The female crime-scene tech, hearing this conversation, emerged from the bathroom. Taller than Amari, with red hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was fair and freckled and wore no makeup. Her nameplate read RYAN.

“Judging from the odor,” Ryan said, “the killer just sat back and had a cigarette. It’s a nonsmoking room, but that didn’t stop him.”

“Butts?”

“Nope. Must’ve flushed ‘em.”

The blond male crime tech, McCaffrey, was (like his partner) a stranger to Amari.

“Nothing out here,” he said. “No fingerprints, no footwear impressions in the carpeting, nothing.”

“What,” Polk said, “was he was freakin’ barefoot?”

“No,” Ryan said. “Probably wore shoe coverings, like ours.”

She held up a foot to indicate the clear plastic booties.

“Ours say ‘Police’ on the soles,” Ryan said, “so our prints don’t get confused with the criminals. But even in the bathroom on the tile floor, the electrostatic print lifter couldn’t find any footprint. This tells us something.”

Amari asked, “Which is?”

“The perp is knowledgeable. And way careful.”

Amari turned her attention to Talbot. “Dink, is this D.B. Jeff Bailey?”

“Why, is that the name on the register?”

“Yeah,” Polk said.

McCaffrey called over an answer: “No ID! I bagged his clothes already.”

Amari looked down at the body, the close-clipped blond hair, the blue eyes. A third of the men in California looked like this. Hell, McCaffrey looked like this. A glance to the vic’s left hand revealed a wedding ring.

Somewhere, someone was missing this man. Probably a female who might or might not be surprised that her husband had died in a hotel like the Star Struck.

Amari said, “All right, he’s a John Doe till further notice. When we get back to the office, we’ll run his prints, check with Missing Persons, track Jeff Bailey... LeRon, you know the drill.”

Polk nodded.

“The killer wasn’t nervous or ill at ease spending a bunch of time with a dead body.” She shook her head. “Stabbed like that, and no noise? The neighbors didn’t hear anything?”

Ryan said, “From what I got while the uniforms were clearing the rooms? Nobody heard a damn thing.”

Talbot added, “No defensive wounds on his hands or arms, but the ligature marks on his wrists tell us he was tied up.”

“Kinky sex?” Polk asked.

“Or a captive,” Amari said.

“Is it possible,” Polk said, “he was dead before he could scream?”

“Probable,” the assistant coroner said. Talbot pointed to the lower of the two wounds. “This blow is almost certainly the first one — up and in, probably piercing the heart, the liver, and/or one of the lungs... and God only knows what else.”

Polk asked, “And this other blow?”

“That one was anger. More show, less lethal.”

“Adding insult to injury.”

“That’s right. Though what I take to be the second blow was delivered with enough force to crack the sternum and bleed like hell, it would not have been as immediately fatal, had it come first.”

Amari said, “And if the chest blow came first, someone would’ve heard him scream?”

“Yes,” Talbot said. “If our John Doe was healthy when that higher blow was struck, it would have hurt like hell, and he’d have let the world know.”

“Our vic was surprised?”