Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

And me neither, I guess. I cursed the bones of old Kris Kringle and went out to get the car.

Traffic was light, and a good thing, too. because the streets were godawful. We saw just one snow plow on our way across town, slumping through the snow drifts like a whipped dog. The rest of the way, it was find the road and try to stay on it.

After a while, though. I got into the tracks made by the cruisers already on the scene ahead of us. and I figured this might be my chance. Now that I could drive with one hand, I reached out and got the radio mike.

“I’ll just make sure Rosey called the lieutenant—”

That was as far as I got with it before Sughrue’s big left hand jerked out and knocked the mike clean from my fingers.

That was a funny moment, right then. I mean, Sughrue had a temper, all right, and he was fast and mean and looked to be hungover bad, but hitting my hand like that was past the edge, even for him. I looked over—real quick because I had to pay attention to the road—and just for a second he was bent over, his face screwed up like he was mad as hell. Then his eyes opened up and locked on mine.

It couldn’t have been more than a quarter of a second, that glance, because I had to look right back at the road, but it was long enough for something to pass between us. Something really ugly.

“I’ll call him from Smokey’s.” Sughrue slumped back in the seat, his voice softer than I expected. I thought he was going to say more, and I think he thought so. too, but we were both quiet the rest of the way.

And that thing that passed between us. whatever it was. kept biting my butt.

I wasn’t long figuring it out, either. It didn’t take a real educated nose to smell the stink around this business pretty quick, and by the time we got to Smokey’s. I’d pretty much put it together.

I saw it like this: Smollett, who probably has more dirt on the department in general and Sughrue in particular than was safe for anyone, gets shot dead. And it happens on Christmas, when the senior detectives and the brass hats are all at home with the kiddies. And here’s Sughrue, he just comes tripping into work on Christmas morning looking like slime on a shingle and insisting him and me are going to investigate this all by ourselves—him that supposedly Smollett was paying off, and me...

Some folks say I became a cop because I’m too lazy to work and not smart enough to steal, but they’re only half right. I could see this one coming down Main Street. And I was getting scared, because when Sughrue knocked that mike out of my hand and we looked at each other, I could tell he didn’t want anyone at that crime scene who’d act like he gave a damn. And maybe in my eyes he saw I’d figured that out. And if he did see it. my life wasn’t worth dryer lint, because Sughrue was that much faster and stronger and meaner than me that if he got worried about me giving him up. and decided to do something about it, I was damn sure to finish second.

That’s what I was thinking when we walked into Smokey’s that Christmas day, and it was pretty damn grim, if you ask me. Of course, Sughrue’s dead now, and maybe I killed him. and I for sure didn’t have it all figured out like I thought I did. But you can understand, maybe, why I was sweating like a crack-head when Sughrue told the uniforms at the scene to secure the area and take a statement from old Bob Gates, who used to sweep up the place, while he and I went into the office where Smollett was laying around dead.

It looked like the office of every bar everywhere. Maybe bigger than some, but with the same battered desk, cheap paneling, and old steel safe you see in all of them. Only here the safe hung open: a dead man sat behind the desk, white like the snow, leaning way back in his chair, with a raunchy cigar still clenched in his teeth: and there was blood all over.

And I mean. There Was Blood All Over: it was on the wall behind Smollett’s body in big splash patterns, it was soaked into the carpet under his chair, it was spritzed across the top of his desk, and it dribbled from his private toilet—a closet-sized deal off to one side—clear to the front of the desk.

“Let’s check out the bathroom,” Sughrue said, and I followed him quick. It wasn’t quite as gross as the rest of the place, but there was plenty of blood on the floor by the sink, and like I said, the trail of drops to the front of the desk.

“This is where it started,” Sughrue said when we’d looked around a little. “Smollett got shot here, went to his desk, tried to call for help, then fell back in his chair and bled to death. I’ll call the coroner.” He took a couple of slow steps back to the office and dialed the dead man’s phone.

And if I had any doubts about the smell around this thing, I stopped having them right then. Because we never call the coroner till we’re completely through gathering evidence. Last thing we want is those guys coming in with their jumpsuits and body bags, stepping all over everything. But here Sughrue calls them first thing.

I didn’t say a word, though. No sense letting on I knew any more than he already thought I did. Just stay quiet, act dumb, and maybe you’ll get out of this better than Smollett did, I told myself.

So I took pictures, knowing that no better than I am, and in this light, they’d be worthless. I got shots of Smollett in his chair, supposedly showing how he’d sat down, leaned back against the wall where his blood was spattered, and bled to death. I took pictures of the empty safe, thinking whoever shot him also took all the incriminating records (that ‘s how long ago this was: nowadays there’d be computer disks and backup files and all but back then, if it wasn’t on paper, it wasn’t there, period), and just as the guys from the coroner’s came clomping in, I got pictures of the blood on Smollett’s desk and the drips running from his toilet into the office. And like I say, I knew every damn one of them was worthless: The way I handled a camera, no one’d even recognize it was Smollett unless they saw the cigar stuck in his mouth, and the other shots would be too light or too dark, or just not pointed right to show which way the blood was splattered—

So maybe I’m not bright, after all. It took me all the while they were moving Smollett to figure out what that blood was telling me. And to tie it in with how Sughrue was sitting heavy in a spare seat off to one side while the coroner’s boys made their haul. But by the time they left, I was almost curious about all this.

“You collect, Marley,” Sughrue sighed. “I’ll tag. Start in the toilet where it started, and work out to the desk.”

The toilet where it started? Well, that was one theory. Of course, it wouldn’t explain how so much of Smollett got splattered back against the wall behind his chair, or why there wasn’t more of him spilled over the desk he supposedly leaned across. It wouldn’t even account for why the blood drops on the carpet were in front of the desk, and trailed toward the toilet, not away from it. No, the only story that would explain all that was one where Smollett and whoever killed him got up in each other’s face over his desk and one of them pulled a gun but didn’t do it quick enough to keep the other one from shooting him. Or shooting him back.

But I had a feeling that wasn’t how Sughrue wanted things to look, and they damn well weren’t going to look like that when we left. Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick my foot in his story just now. I got down on my knees—not much fun for a guy of my build—and started scraping half-dried blood from the floor onto little sterile pieces of paper that went into little sterile envelopes for Sughrue to put labels on.

Sughrue didn’t get up. Just sat there with his pen out and wrote down what part of the room each envelope came from before putting it carefully in the kit.