Faye Kellerman - Double Homicide

“Has the shooting team been down here yet?” Artles asked.

Little, tinkling voice. Smooth, shiny chestnut hair. It took all of Dorothy’s will not to mimic her.

“No, I don’t think so. Not that anyone would tell me anything.”

“Okay.” Artles’s voice rose even higher. “I just wanted to know if I should move the body or-”

“The paramedics did CPR,” Dorothy snapped. “His shirt is open, and those are bruise marks on the chest. They obviously tried to revive him. They must have moved him at that time, because the splatter patterns are not consistent with the position of the body. See here… all the blood on the tabletop. Looks to me like he fell forward, and then the EMTs turned him over. I know the photographer has come and gone. So just do what you need to do.”

Dr. Tiffany regarded Julius’s inert body. Her lip curled. “I’m sorry. I must look like a doofus. I just didn’t expect to recognize the victim.”

“They didn’t tell you who it was?”

“No. Just that there was a shooting in Pharaoh’s Genie and there was a fatality.” She looked at Dorothy. “I saw him play a week ago. I took my younger sister to the game. What a waste!”

She bent down. “Okay.” Talking to herself. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Dorothy kneeled next to the young woman, who cradled Julius’s head, then moved it to the side to scrutinize the gunshots at the temple. “Two graze wounds. They run into one another, but you can see two distinct ellipses. The right one’s a bit deeper than the left, but to my eye, it doesn’t look like either is the cause of death. There is bleeding, but it’s not excessive, not like you’d see in arterial bleeding.”

She lifted Julius’s limp arm.

“No rigor, obviously. No way there’d be, this soon… When did the call come in, Detective?”

“About an hour ago. Maybe a little longer.”

“So time of death isn’t in question.” Artles examined the arm. “There are two bullet wounds in the arm. In and out and not at close range. I’d say judging by the entrance wound, the distance was in the fifty-to-seventy-feet range. To hit him in the head, the shooter must have been good or lucky or both and have had a clear field. No one else was killed, right?”

“No.”

“The size of the holes… I’d say a thirty-two, something like that.” She focused her blue eyes.

“You’d be right. Detective Wilde is taking the ammo down to Ballistics as we speak. We found some shells down below.” Dorothy stood up and pointed. “Right there, at the left-hand corner of the dance floor. So we’re talking maybe a forty-five-degree trajectory.”

“I’ll measure the angle of the pathway between entrance and exit wound, see if you’re on target. This shot”-she showed the wound to Dorothy-“this one tore through the muscle, so I don’t really have a clean tunnel to work with. But the bottom one was in and out.” She lowered his arm. “As far as his shoulder wound, the bullet appears to have entered right under his armpit, went behind the scapula, and…” With effort, she lifted up Van Beest’s body just enough to peek under him. “Oh… it came out here, through the back of the neck. It probably blasted through the carotid. Although there’s not a lot of lividity, pooling of the blood due to gravity-”

Tiffany Artles stopped herself. “You know what lividity is.”

Finally, Dorothy graced her with a smile. “Go on, honey, you’re doing fine.”

Tiffany smiled full force. “This is my second day on the job, Detective Breton. I guarantee you that if the powers-that-be had known it was someone semifamous, they would have called a senior ME.”

“But who cares if it’s just another black boy being shot up?”

“It’s not that, Detective. White or black, this was called in as a case where the cause of death was easily determined. There was no need to wake up the boss. Except when it comes to someone famous… someone who might make the papers.”

She stood up and snapped off her gloves. “I can’t say for sure which shot was the fatal one until he’s opened up.”

“When do you think that’ll be?”

“Probably soon because of who he is… was. I’d say maybe two to three hours. They’ll want to dispose of the autopsy quickly because the papers will want answers.” She gave Dorothy her card. “I don’t know if I’ll be doing the cutting. I suspect not. But you can call me anyway.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Tiffany smiled weakly. “So I’ll tell the guys in the wagon to take him to the morgue-unless you need to examine him for forensics.”

“Techs and I checked out what we needed. Photographer has the postmortem shots.” As Dorothy got to her feet, her kneecaps cracked. “How about we let the poor boy rest in private?”

McCain walked Marcus through the club and out. The air was bitter, burning McCain’s throat and lungs with each inhalation. Flashes of light danced through the inky sky, from the blinking strobe bars atop emergency vehicles, the hazy streetlamps, cops’ flashlights, the intrusive winks of cameras. McCain hadn’t walked more than a few steps before a microphone was shoved in his face.

That Hudson guy-night-shift drone on one of the local stations.

“Derek Hudson, Detective. Can you tell us what’s going on inside?”

McCain regretted keeping his shield pinned to his coat. “Not really.” He pulled the brim of his cap over his ears and kept a firm hand on Marcus’s arm while scanning the area for an empty cruiser.

Just as McCain got past Hudson, a young woman pushed her way to the front, a face McCain didn’t recognize. She was covered head to toe in outerwear and had to lower the scarf around her mouth to talk. “Liz Mantell from CNN. We’ve seen lots of gunshot victims being taken away on stretchers. What led up to the shootings, Detective?”

Her teeth were chattering as she spoke. A minute of exposure and already the bottoms of McCain’s feet felt like ice. And this without winds coming off the Back Bay. Even in the dim light, the reporter’s nose was bright red. McCain felt sorry for her, shivering in single-digit temperatures. But not that sorry.

“No comment.”

She tagged along. “So there definitely was a multiple shooting?”

“Nothing has been confirmed.”

“What about members of the basketball team from Boston Ferris being involved?”

“You tell me.”

She noticed Marcus. Smiled prettily. “Are you from Boston Ferris?”

“You got it half right,” McCain said. “He’s from Boston. Excuse me.”

Finally spotting an empty car, McCain dragged Marcus over, flashed his gold shield, asked the uniform there if he could borrow the backseat. Liz Mantell dogged his ass, a video cameraman picking up her valiant attempt to get the Big Story.

“Are you on the basketball team?”

McCain didn’t let Marcus answer. He opened the back door to the cruiser, lowered the boy’s head, and pushed him inside.

“Is he a suspect, Detective?”

McCain didn’t answer and slid in next to Marcus.

“A morgue van has just pulled up,” Mantell persisted. “How many fatalities were there?”

McCain smiled and shut the door, almost taking off the reporter’s fingers. The interior was as dark and icy as a crypt. He stretched over the seat, managed to switch on the ignition. Cold air spilled out of the vents. Within a minute the air turned tepid.

McCain turned to Marcus, who’d buried his face in his suede gloves. Finally, the boy looked up. “I’ll tell you what I told Mama. Nothing. ”Cause I didn’t see anything.“

“You weren’t with Julius?”

“No, I wasn’t with Julius. He was upstairs being butt-wiped by some shoe company conglomerate.”