Jan Burke - Nine

He walked around to the passenger side of the car, bracing himself, as he found he must always do in suicide by gunshot cases. There had been enough of these over his years in homicide investigation to no longer make it as difficult as it had once been, and now only a case involving a man of about his father’s age would disturb him to any great degree.

He knew that he would always think of his father in these cases, would always recall finding him. But he had learned to concentrate on the cases of new victims by telling himself that their families deserved to have him do his job-without allowing his personal emotional reactions to interfere with it.

“A shame, with all they had going for them,” he heard Marquez say.

“A damned shame,” he agreed.

He sat on his haunches to lower himself to eye level with the occupants of the car. This was the less messy side-entrance wound side. Frederick Whitfield IV’s lifeless hand lay in his lap, his pale manicured fingers holding a gun.

“Both right-handed?” Alex asked.

“Apparently.”

Addison was slumped over the steering wheel. Alex noticed something odd. He moved around to the driver’s side and carefully opened the door. He studied Morgan Addison’s face and clothing. “Strange that they’re dressed so differently, isn’t it?”

“So one wants to look corporate, and the other like he’s too cool for words, that’s all.”

“You think they fought beforehand?” Alex asked.

“Why?”

“Addison’s nose is swollen-looks as if he was punched in the face. He’s got blood on the front of his shirt, too.”

“Sure it isn’t from-well, there’s a lot of blood in there.”

“Exit wound spatter, yes, but that’s not from his bullet wound. And not from Whitfield. Look at the driver’s side window and then at the windshield. The blood and tissue on the driver’s side window is more concentrated-I think Addison was looking straight ahead. The blood and tissue on the windshield couldn’t have come from his wound, especially not in the pattern they make. That must be Whitfield’s. Whitfield must not have been facing forward-maybe he was sitting at a slightly different angle. He must have turned away a little bit-maybe trying not to look at his friend’s body.”

“How do you know the driver was first?”

“I don’t know for sure, and won’t until the lab checks the inside of the car and tells us exactly whose blood is where. But there’s a misting of blood on this side and on the back of Addison’s suit, which is probably Whitfield’s blood-spraying out over the car’s interior after Addison was already slumped forward.”

“I’m going to make sure the techs got photos of all of that,” Marquez said.

Alex wrinkled his nose. For a moment, he thought the dog’s smell was embedded in his suit. But this was not quite the same.

Marquez saw the look and said, “The urine is on Addison’s suit.”

Alex looked over at him. “What do you mean, ‘on’ it?”

“Look at the stain. You think a guy can piss himself and miss his own crotch?”

“No.”

“I wonder if these two were lovers. You know, and old Frederick Whitfield IV here gave his beloved Addison a little golden shower as a going-away present.”

“On his clothes?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“My uncle once told me this saying-‘If you hear hoofbeats, don’t first look for a zebra.’”

Marquez laughed. “I get your point. We’ve already got a promise from the lab to try to figure out who peed on whom.”

Alex looked at the positions of the bodies and how their hands held the guns. Something about Whitfield’s arm position didn’t seem quite right, but he couldn’t say why. “Has Whitfield been moved at all?”

“Not that I know of. Crime lab took photos, though, so you can double check that. Something bothering you?”

“I don’t know.” He tried for a few minutes more to figure out what didn’t seem to fit. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the Bora was just an expensive dustbin, into which someone had swept two people who were proving to be problems. But if this was murder and not suicide, was it because the media had learned that they were seeking Whitfield? Had Whitfield been killed because the LASD knew his name? But then why kill Addison, too? And who could get close enough to these two to kill them in the car like this?

Sedgewick. Another school chum?

He shivered. The night air was cold, but he knew the chill he felt had nothing to do with the weather. Admit that these might be suicides and nothing more, he told himself. Maybe you can’t be objective after all.

He stood up and stretched. He looked back through the bloodstained windshield, unable to prevent the memory of his father’s death from intruding on his thoughts. But his father had been wracked by guilt-deeply depressed, penniless, and ashamed. What would have made these young men feel so hopeless?

“Damn, I’m tired,” he said, then saw that Enrique was watching him closely. They had known each other for a long time, and he wondered how much the other man was guessing about his mood.

“You just need some sleep, Alex, that’s all.”

“Yeah. Listen-thanks again for holding things up for me, Enrique. We’ll call a meeting of the task force for late tomorrow morning and see what we have then, all right?”

“Okay. I’m with you. No use trying to think things through on three hours of sleep. These guys aren’t going anywhere.”

Alex got back in his car and rolled down the windows, but the stench of Chase’s new friend was pervasive. He wondered what the hell had possessed him to tell that kid to go ahead and bring that stinking mutt home with him. A drive of ten minutes had been enough to make his car reek like the bottom of a Dumpster. Maybe Chase had a problem with his sense of smell.

Then he thought of Chase borrowing crime scene tape to make a leash and his excitement as they rode back to the house. Kid could have just about any material thing he desired, and he was crazy over a skinny stray.

He laughed out loud when he recalled the look on John’s face.

A little later, two questions began to nag at him.

Why had the guy in the Jeep, the reporter that Chase had waved to, been hanging around in an alley near the crime scene?

And why hadn’t Hamilton shown up on Mulholland?

Blue Jay, California

Thursday, May 22, 3:06 A.M.

Gabriel Taggert stood looking out at the trees beyond the deck outside his bedroom. The moon was in its last quarter. Tonight it brought a translucent silver coating to the dark green of the pines, changing the sloping, shadowy landscape before him, making it the sort of forest that inspired stories of enchantments and haunted places.

He had found a beginner’s astronomy book in Kit’s library and had learned the names of the phases of the moon, and how to tell if it was waxing or waning, and when it was that the sun and moon were closest in the sky, and when farthest apart. He had grown fond of studying the sky, in part because he realized how little attention he had paid to it before he took refuge here. That was, he thought now, an indicator of just how narrow the focus of his life had been.

He had not spent much time outdoors since hearing of the first three murders of the FBI fugitives. The more he had heard about the cases, the more afraid he had become. Thinking about a long prison sentence was one thing. Thinking about being tortured while hanging naked upside down was another.

The names and faces of those on the FBI’s fugitives list had been shown on television again and again. He feared recognition-even with his change in appearance, this much exposure would inevitably lead to someone identifying him as one of the ten. The newscasters repeatedly mentioned that new names were added whenever someone was caught or killed, but the “replacements” were hardly ever mentioned. Gabe couldn’t help but think there was a kind of countdown going on, and a rapid one at that. When he had gone to bed on Tuesday, there had been three names crossed off the list. Now, two more. Half the list in half a week. And one of the bodies had been frozen, they said, so who knew how many more were already dead and just waiting to be displayed?