Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

John tilted his head to the left, then to the right, studying the corpses, looking at them like something was going to materialize if he just stared hard enough.

“I’d call it they were standing together, a little bit apart, casual like,” he said, finally. “Tony here gets the first one back behind his ear-the entry is clean, neat.” He kneeled down next to the body now, pulling a pen out of his coat pocket, using it as a pointer. “The other one he got, right in front of his ear? That’s just a kill shot. Look at the stippling.”

“So the shooter was right on him for that.”

“Barrel almost pressed the skin. Now, ask yourself: Is Carlos going to stand three feet away and watch his brother get shot in the head, fall down, and keep watching while the shooter puts the barrel to his head and shoots again?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not. So, the sequence. They came down to the channel, everybody looking at the water. The shooter is standing behind and to the right of Tony. Pops him right behind the ear. Tony drops, dead before he hits the ground. That’s shot one.”

“Okay.”

“Now, shot two,” John said, stepping around the first corpse to get to the second. “Our shooter takes a step over, like I just did. Carlos starts to turn. Shot two knocks Carlos down and takes him out of commission. See the one almost right in his ear? Like maybe he was turning toward Tony? Like he’d heard the first shot, turns and blam? So he goes down awkward. But the kill shot on him? Just like the one to Tony. At the temple. The stippling. Shooter had the barrel almost touching his head.”

Sully, nodding. “So you figuring the cleanest shot was the first one.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“The kill shots, the third and fourth ones fired, those come when they’re on the ground.”

John stood up, flexing his knees. “Like I said.”

“So you’re figuring one shooter.”

John looked at him, then to the lead detective. “Jeff?”

Jeff held up his index finger, looking from Jeff to Sully. “One,” he said.

“Talk to me.”

“The initial shot comes from behind on both. Tony, Carlos, they don’t fuck around. They come down to the water, take the breeze in the middle of the night, blow a joint, take a piss? Yeah, fine, their turf. One guy walking with them, maybe, drifts behind them when they all get down here to the water? Somebody they know? I can see that. But two guys? Right up on them like this? I don’t like it.”

“We’ll know if it was one or two guns used when we get the ballistics,” John said. “But look here. I can go one trigger man-but I don’t know that our shooter was down here alone with them. Look at them both-short sleeves? Tonight? No, they weren’t planning on coming out here. Or, if so, it was just for a second. Could have been a rival crew, the South Caps, somebody like that, got the drop on them up there in their apartment, rousted them down here and bam-so, yeah, you wind up with one shooter, but more than one guy involved.”

Sully shrugged. “But why not just pop them up there in the building?”

“Too much attention. Too much noise. Too much chance of leaving evidence. Out here? Less evidence. Pitch-black dark, no wits.”

“Okay, but yeah, if you go to all that trouble, why not throw them both in the water, like the rest? Dee Dee, Billy, Antoine-all of them got dumped. And these dudes, they not twenty feet from the waterline.”

John shrugged, sniffling, sounding like he had a cold coming on. “Goes back to Jeff’s one-shooter theory. It’d take too long to toss them. These brothers ain’t little. Besides, we find Tony and Carlos Hall in the middle of the Potomac? We already know they got tossed from the Bend. It wouldn’t fool nobody.”

“But, you know, it’d help get rid of evidence, take longer to find the bodies, all that.”

John shrugged. “You get a clean kill, you don’t need it. And this is looking pretty clean.”

“What time did this go down?”

“We got reports of gunshots about twelve thirty, twelve thirty-five, like that,” John said. “We got the call from uniforms at one oh five that it was Tony and Carlos.”

“So one guy gets Tony and Carlos to come out to the waterline after midnight on a spring night, cold and breezy.”

John held up a hand, sneezing again. “I’m not saying that. What we know is that Tony and Carlos come down to the water, either with our shooter or were ambushed by our shooter. No sign of violence, of struggle. That’s all the evidence says.”

Sully, nodding, pointing to the orange cones. “So, the shells. I mean, they tell you anything?”

Jeff cut his eyes to John, just that quick, and Sully caught it. He turned to John.

“We off the record, Carter?”

“Yeah. I mean, same as always-you let me inside the tape, I clear everything with you before publication.”

John let out a deep breath, the creases in his face working themselves out, then knotting up again, a man not at ease with himself.

“Okay. Okay. Look. Not for print or publication, attribution or deep background or whatever. But we got the murder weapon. Up against the wall to the fort there. Down in the rocks by the water. Shooter man threw it for the water but not far enough. Maybe it hit the wall and bounced off.”

“Well, shit, that’s going to narrow it down-you get the prints, the serial-”

“Not in the way you’re thinking. You know anything about guns?”

“They go bang. Some. I grew up with-”

“If I say, ‘M1911A1.45,’ that mean anything to you?”

“Not really.”

“Fucking civilian. It was the standard officer’s sidearm in the U.S. military from the nineteen twenties through the seventies, sometimes used in the early eighties. You got police forces use it today.”

“It was-”

“I made sergeant in Vietnam and I was proud of mine. But this piece? Our murder weapon, bagged and up there in the tech van? This one is your vintage World War Two model, a Singer, brother-a Singer . The people what made sewing machines. Coltwood grips. The whole nine.”

“I don’t get this.”

“Because you’re a civilian. Look, before and during World War Two, they were making guns as fast as they could. You had three or four manufacturers of the forty-five, Remington being the biggest. And I’m talking, like, a million units. But the piece we picked up over there by the water-four rounds gone from the magazine, it’s the murder weapon-was manufactured by the Singer company. Only a few hundred ever made.”

“You’re telling me somebody shot the Halls with a, a, what, sixty-year-old gun?”

John sneezed, bent, put a hand over his nose, coughed. “Gonna get a cold out here. Can feel it coming on, you know? That tickle you get, the back of the throat? No, no, that’s not just what I’m telling you. I’m telling you this pistol is a collector’s item, something you only see in gun shows. It’s worth something like ten grand, no, this one, I’d go fifteen.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Not at all. I myself have never handled one until today. They’re like purple unicorns. Always talked about, never seen.” John coughed again, deeper in the chest now. “I got to get inside now. Jeff, you keeping an eye on this till they bag these guys? The ME’s been waiting on us. Good. I’ll meet you down there at the cut.”

He started walking back up the park, Sully raising a hand in farewell toward Jeff, catching up to walk alongside John, the wind at their backs now. He sneezed again, Sully said, “Bless you,” and John waved it off, walking fast up the incline, the park deserted, the yellow tape across the entrance, the lone cop still standing there, hands in pockets.