William Bernhardt - Death Row

“Aw, no one takes that stuff seriously.”

“I do! I’m new here, in case you haven’t noticed. I’m still trying to fit in, to make friends. And I can’t do that when you’re running around trashing me.”

“No one was trashing you.”

“Just shut up and listen. You’re one of the senior men in the department. People look up to you. If you act like you like me, or at least accept me, they will, too. But if you act like I’m a joke-then I will be.”

“I think you overrate my importance.”

“I know how it works. I’ve seen it happen before. And I’m not going to let it happen again!”

Mike dug his fists deep into his coat pockets. “Could we just… calm down here? If I made a mistake, I’m sorry. Let’s just forget it happened and-”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d-what?”

“You’d like to forgive and forget, since you have nothing to forgive. Let me tell you something, buddy. It ain’t gonna be that easy.”

Mike’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I told you I wouldn’t put up with any sexist crap, and I meant it. You’re going on report.”

“Now wait just a minute!”

“Too late, chumley. Too damn late.”

“I have not done anything inappropriate.”

She smiled. “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

“Baxter, if you file a report on me, it could screw up my whole career.”

“Well, I guess you should’ve thought of that before you started talking about your partner’s panties, huh?”

Mike threw up his hands. “Fine. Do your damnedest. No one will take you seriously.”

“Wrong as rain, slick. They don’t have any choice. In case you haven’t heard, sexual harassment is against the law. I could sue the department for big bucks and they know it.”

“Sexual harassment! We didn’t even know you were in the room!”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s called creating a hostile environment. And you and your buddies were in there doing it big time.”

“I can’t believe this!” Mike bellowed. “How in God’s name did I get saddled with such a miserable-”

“Go on, say it,” she dared. “Give my report a blockbuster finish.”

“Arrrgh!” Mike pounded his fists against the wall. “I can’t believe this!” He whirled around. “Was this all you wanted?”

“Actually, no. I wanted talk about the Faulkner case.”

“That case is closed. Forget about it.”

“I don’t want to forget about it. I think you’re wrong.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“I don’t know why you’re so anxious to close this investigation.”

“If you’d seen as many suicides as I have-”

“But this one’s different.”

“They’re all different.”

She grabbed his arms and forced him to face her. “Would you listen to me?”

“I guess that would keep you from starting your report.”

“You know as well as I do that women almost never use guns to commit suicide.”

“Who’s being sexist now?”

“It’s true. Women use poison or pills or slit their wrists in the tub. Which, by the way, she had been in, minutes before her death. There was a razor close at hand. Why would she get out, get a gun, and blow her head to bits? It’s just not what a woman would do!”

“Sometimes people don’t act according to the statistics. Sometimes people do strange things. And this woman was obviously not thinking clearly.”

Baxter held tight to his arms. “Second, her body was found naked.”

“Thanks, I picked up on that already.”

“Doesn’t that seem strange?”

“No. She just got out of the bath.”

“And shot herself? Without putting any clothes on? No way.”

“Why not?”

“Because the one thing a woman knows with absolute certainty when she kills herself is that eventually her body is going to be found. Does she want to be found naked?”

“Evidently she didn’t care.”

“C’mon, Morelli, work with me here. There was evidence at the crime scene that she had just shaved her legs and underarms. That she painted her nails. She does all that to make herself look better-but then shoots herself without putting any clothes on? It just won’t wash.”

“Once again, I will remind you that the woman obviously was not entirely rational. I’ll also remind you that we found marijuana at the scene and that it was in her bloodstream. She was high. You can’t expect her to behave normally.”

“What is this, a scene from Reefer Madness ? No joint is going to make a woman so strung out she forgets to dress!”

“I’m sorry, Baxter. I admire your enthusiasm-sort of-but I don’t agree with your conclusion.”

“The gun was still in her hand.”

“And your point-?”

“My point is that, as we both well know, that’s not how it works. In movies and bad TV shows, they show suicides still clutching the gun, but in real life, even the smallest gun has recoil. And a person who’s just blown a hole in her head is not going to be able to marshal the strength to resist it. Consequently, in most suicides, the gun is found a few feet from the body.”

Mike took a deep breath. What she said was true. But he couldn’t make himself agree with her. “I grant you, that’s typical. But it’s not a dead cert.”

“There’s no such thing as a dead cert. But when all the evidence points in a different direction-”

“Baxter, the paraffin test proved she had fired the gun.”

“The bullet in the ceiling.”

“She missed the first time.”

“Yeah, she missed, but what was the target? Herself-or an intruder?”

“Baxter, you’re living in fantasyland.”

“Am I? Or do you just not want to admit I’m right because that would damage your fragile ego?”

Mike fought to contain himself. “You know, you really are insufferable.”

“I don’t much care. Just so I’m right. And I am.”

Mike felt his entire body tensing like a much-too-tightly-strung guitar. “Look-let’s at least think about this, okay? Give it some calm, reasoned deliberation. Before you file a report.”

“Too late. I already did.”

“What?”

“I filed my report. Explaining my concerns about your rush to judgment.”

“I’m the senior officer on the case!”

“And you filed your report. Which was totally erroneous. So I filed mine as well.”

Mike turned one way then another, as if searching for a rag doll he could shred. “If you’ve filed a report suggesting Erin ’s death might not have been a suicide, Blackwell will have to keep the investigation open.”

“I would imagine so.” She slapped him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, partner. I think we’re going to be working together for a good long while.”

Christina took another sip of her caffe latte and continued burrowing through the miserably thick file. She actually enjoyed bringing her work to bookstores in the evenings, and Novel Idea was just a mile south of their Warren Place offices. To some degree, coming here went against her natural instinct to avoid all things trendy, but hey-if you have to work late, at least you can have something to imbibe scrummier than that sludge Jones called coffee.

Although to get through a file like this one, she might need something stronger than coffee. She was wading through the police reports on the Faulkner home invasion, looking for any scrap of a hint of a detail that might lend some insight as to how to get Ray released. And it was making her sick.

Could there ever have been a more horrendous crime? This case had traumatized her profoundly the first time around, and now the nightmares were starting all over again. She closed her eyes and saw the crime-scene photos appear like some grisly slide show. Every single member of the family murdered, but for Erin, and in brutal and horrifying ways. Both parents, stabbed repeatedly. The father’s leg broken, plus several ribs. Her brother, cut almost beyond belief. Her sister, crumpled on the floor, a lovely polka-dot skirt draped across her legs. The whole family in one bloody heap, except for the baby, who was in the nursery, and Erin, who had been chained down in the basement. One day, they were a happy, normal suburban enclave, and the next-they were virtually extinct. What the hell was the world coming to?