R. Stine - Red Rain

Pinto raised one eyebrow. “Fingerprints?”

“I grabbed the side of the car. You know. The window. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know. I. . got blood on my hands. Blood from the side of the car. I was still washing it off when you drove up.”

Pinto gave Pavano a quick glance. Pinto was suspicious of this guy. “Thanks for telling us,” Pavano said, typing on his phone.

The doorbell rang. Pavano and Pinto followed Sutter into the hall. A woman carrying a little boy on her shoulder opened the front door. Pavano remembered her from the first time he was here.

A tall African-American man stepped into the entryway. He had a noticeably big, melon-shaped head, shaved bald, and a silver ring in one ear. He wore a baggy brown suit, wrinkled and frayed at the cuffs. He had a dark brown dress shirt underneath and a blue bow tie tilted under his chin.

“Can I help you?” Sutter motioned the woman away. “I’ll take care of this, Roz.”

The man ignored Sutter and approached Pavano and Pinto. “Are you the officers who discovered this?”

Both cops nodded.

“I’m Harrison. The ME.”

Pinto squinted at him. “You’re new?”

“I haven’t been new for thirty years. I’m from Riverhead. You’ve heard of it?”

“You’re an ME or a comedian?”

“I’m not as funny as your face. Let’s start again. There are CS guys dusting the car right now. Then they’ll sweep for fibers. You know. Stuff for the DNA lab guys. You’re familiar with that, right? Or are you new?”

“Pavano’s new,” Pinto said, motioning with his eyes. “He’s out here from the city.”

Harrison had one brown eye and one blue eye. He focused the blue eye on Pinto. “Am I going to get his thrilling life story now, or are we investigating a goddamn homicide?”

“Sorry, Dr. Harrison,” Pinto said. “We’ve been questioning Mr. Sutter here. He-”

“We’ll get to you, Mr. Sutter,” Harrison gave him a nod, then turned back to the officers. “Did you touch anything? Open the door? Roll down the window? Shake hands with the victim? Muss up his hair?”

Pinto squinted at Harrison. “Are you for real?”

“We didn’t touch a thing,” Pavano stepped in. “But Sutter did. He had his hands on the bottom of the window. Smeared the blood.”

Harrison squinted at Sutter and tsk-tsked.

“Pinto and I looked into the car, but we stayed back. Then we called in right away,” Pavano explained.

“Do you expect a Nobel Prize for that?”

Pinto exploded. “What the fuck, Harrison? What’s your problem?”

Pavano just wanted to get out of the house. There were kids upstairs. They were probably listening to all this.

What happened to those two little blond boys?

“Have you examined the body at all, Doctor?” Pavano asked.

Harrison pulled a soiled handkerchief from his jacket and mopped his bald head. “Yeah. I did a cursory exam before the CS guys arrived.” He tucked the handkerchief away and fiddled with his bow tie.

“And could you determine the cause of death?”

Sutter uttered a groan. Pavano turned and saw him gripping the bottom of the banister, his face pale. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Not really,” Sutter uttered. “I mean, a murder in my driveway? I feel kinda sick.”

“Why don’t you go sit down. Get a glass of water,” Pavano instructed. “We’ll come back to you, okay?”

Sutter nodded but didn’t reply. He made his way back toward his office.

“Cause of death?” Pavano repeated to Harrison when Sutter was out of hearing.

“Officer, you know I can’t say till I do the whole goddamn exam.” He motioned them outside. The cool evening air felt soothing on Pavano’s hot face.

Harrison led the way to the Audi, where two uniformed officers were combing every inch of it. “You want to know a cause of death from my first cursory exam? Okay, I’d say it was asphyxiation.”

Pinto and Pavano both uttered sounds of surprise. Pinto removed his cap and scratched his head. “Asphyxiation? What makes you say that?”

A grim smile formed on Harrison’s face. “Here. I’ll show you. You didn’t eat dinner yet, right?”

“We didn’t eat dinner. Why?”

“Because you probably wouldn’t be able to keep it down.”

“Another one of your jokes?”

The smile faded from the big man’s face. “No joke.”

He pulled open the back door. He pointed to something stretched across the backseat.

It looked like a wet pink snake to Pavano. No, wait. Some kind of long pasta noodle. Jagged on both ends. Dark streaks along the sides.

“What are you showing us?” Pinto demanded. “What is that?”

“The man’s windpipe,” Harrison said. “Whoever killed him ripped out his windpipe while he was still alive.”

Pavano again let Pinto do the questioning while he studied Sutter’s sister. Sitting across from them in Sutter’s office, Roz kept her hands clasped tightly in her lap, squeezing her fingers. But it was the only sign of nervousness. She seemed like a straightforward woman, and Pavano believed what she told them.

Which was nothing useful.

She had come home from grocery shopping and was in the kitchen the whole time Hulenberger and Sutter were meeting in the office. She had heard voices, but she hadn’t seen Hulenberger and definitely hadn’t seen him leave the house. She hadn’t heard anything unusual. Now she was worried about upsetting the kids.

“You certainly don’t think the kids saw what happened?” she asked.

“We have to talk to them. You know. Be as thorough as possible,” Pinto said, glancing at the notes on Pavano’s phone. “It’s possible they saw or heard something helpful.”

“Elena and Ira were upstairs in their rooms,” Roz told them. “I’m sure they didn’t see a thing. And the twins. . I’m not sure where they were. Probably in the guesthouse out back.”

“Ma’am, could you bring them in one by one?” Pinto asked, speaking softly.

“A horrible murder like this could upset them terribly, Sergeant. Ira is very delicate. You might say he’s troubled. And the twins just arrived here.”

Pavano raised his eyes. “Arrived here?”

“Mark and Lea adopted them. She brought them home less than two weeks ago. It’s hard enough for them to adjust. If you-”

“We’ll do our best not to upset them, ma’am,” Pinto said. “You and Mr. Sutter are welcome to stay in the room when we talk to them.”

“Where is Mr. Sutter?” Pavano asked. Sutter had slipped away while they were questioning his sister.

Roz sighed. “I think he’s trying to phone Lea. His wife. She’s in the city.”

Pinto shifted his weight on the desk chair. He suddenly looked old and weary. Pavano knew he was ten years older than he, but he looked even older than that. Frayed . That’s the strange word that popped into Pavano’s mind. The frayed life of a cop.

With another warning to be careful, the sister went to round up the four kids. Pavano picked up a pink paperweight from the desk and tossed it from hand to hand. It took him awhile to recognize it as a porcelain model of a human brain.

The color reminded him of the slender windpipe tossed on the backseat of the victim’s car. He set the brain back down on the desk.

Elena, the fourteen-year-old, came downstairs first. She was a pretty girl with shiny black hair and lively dark eyes. She seemed confident and mature for her age. She spoke in full sentences, not in teenage grunts and fits and starts. She didn’t seem at all hesitant to answer Pinto’s questions, but she had nothing to tell them.

She had been in her room since getting home late from school, texting her friends and listening to music. She had glimpsed her father talking to a man in a suit but didn’t hear what they were talking about and didn’t see or hear the man leave.