A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

  Reid nodded.

  ‘Same composition?’

  Again Reid nodded in the affirmative.

  Miller looked around for a chair.

  Reid joined him, the two of them seated beside one another in silence for a good three or four minutes.

  ‘Who knows?’ Miller asked.

  ‘You do.’

  ‘When do you file your report?’

  ‘I have a week’s backlog already.’

  ‘Anything in the car or on the body that indicated who he might have been?’

  ‘Nothing in the car could have survived. Just luck that those fragments of ribbon weren’t ash already.’

  ‘Did you do the Joyce apartment?’

  ‘Another team,’ Reid replied.

  Miller felt the agitation in his lower gut, the blood in his temples.

  ‘How did you know about the car?’ Reid asked.

  ‘I got a call.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘Anonymous.’

  ‘Was it him?’

  Miller shook his head. ‘I don’t know who it was . . . they disguised their voice.’ He did not look at Reid; he was not a good liar, and he knew Reid would see right through him.

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’ Reid asked.

  ‘Do what you ordinarily do . . . though if you can handle your backlogged reports first it would be appreciated.’

  ‘That won’t be a problem,’ Reid said. ‘I’m supposed to handle the backlog in date sequence anyway.’

  ‘Appreciated.’

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Gonna try and get Hemmings to do the autopsy.’

  ‘Keep it in the family, eh?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  Reid shook his head. ‘As few people as possible that are involved in this the better.’

  Miller looked at Reid quizzically. ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘’Cause this is someone else’s Watergate isn’t it?’ he said. ‘This really is someone’s nightmare coming home, don’t you think?’

  ‘I was hoping not,’ Miller said. ‘With everything, I was hoping it wouldn’t be the case.’

  ‘You still working on it?’

  ‘Not officially, no.’

  ‘Unofficially?’

  ‘That’s the second question you’ve asked me that you don’t really want to know the answer to.’

  ‘Sure I do,’ Reid said, and he smiled sarcastically.

  Miller rose to his feet.

  ‘Good luck, eh?’

  ‘Don’t believe in luck,’ Miller said.

  ‘Maybe you should start.’

  Miller called Marilyn Hemmings at ten after eleven.

  ‘I’m at home,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me where you live . . . I’ll come pick you up.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Your office.’

  ‘Is Urquhart there?’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘So get him to do your autopsy . . . I’ve been out. I went for a meal and had some drinks. My hands aren’t as steady as they should be. Besides, what the hell does that even matter, I’m not at work. It’s nearly quarter after eleven. Leave me alone.’

  ‘Marilyn . . . I need you to do this one. I need you to do this for several different reasons, and I wish I could tell you what they were but not over the phone. Let me come and get you and bring you over here, okay? I need to know who this guy is—’

  ‘Tomorrow—’

  ‘I might not have tomorrow—’

  ‘Oh come on, don’t give me that shit. What kind of melodramatic crap is that, huh?’

  Miller was taken aback. ‘I don’t know what I did, Marilyn—’

  ‘You don’t know what you did? You’re not listening to yourself are you? You don’t know what you did? How about theft of evidence or collaboration to withhold evidence . . . how about employing a city official to assist you in the theft of evidence . . . how about that for starters?’

  ‘Look, I know . . . I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I didn’t want to put you in this situation, but right now there are only about three or four people who really have any kind of an idea about what’s going on here and I have to keep it that way. I cannot allow this thing to get out, Marilyn. I’ve had the entire case taken off me by the Feds—’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You didn’t know that the FBI are now running the entire thing?’

  ‘No. God, when the fuck did that happen?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘So . . . what? So, what you’re actually telling me is that you’re off this case but you’d like me to come in and do an autopsy anyway, an autopsy on someone who might very well be directly connected to the case that you’ve just had taken from you by the FBI?’

  ‘As it stands they are not connected, Marilyn—’

  ‘Is that the same way the last favor you asked of me was not connected to this case, or is this some other way it’s not connected?’

  ‘Okay,’ Miller said. ‘We haven’t even been out and already we’re fighting . . .’

  ‘This isn’t a joke, Robert.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to be a joke. I’m just a little puzzled why you’re so upset with me.’

  Marilyn Hemmings said nothing for a moment, and then she sighed audibly. ‘How bad is this thing?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t want to speak on the phone, Marilyn, I really don’t. It’s late. I’m sorry for troubling you. I’ll get Urquhart to do it.’

  ‘Are you in trouble . . . I’m asking now, seriously, Robert, are you in some kind of trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know, Marilyn . . . I really don’t know what we’ve got here.’

  ‘Do you know . . .’ She paused. ‘Hell, what am I thinking? It’s after eleven. God almighty, Robert Miller, the shit you have gotten me into . . . I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  She hung up before Miller had a chance to reply.

  Miller waited for Hemmings in the foyer of the building. Without authorization he was not permitted access to the coroner’s laboratory. As she walked down the outer corridor toward him she did not look up. She seemed subdued, and when she took him back of the reception zone there was something amidst the myriad ways she looked at him that told him that she was angry. With the situation yes, but more than that she was angry with him.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ she said coldly. ‘I have done something that I should not have done. Now you’re calling me in out of hours. What do I do, Robert? Do I log my hours and then come up with some sort of explanation as to why I’m here at this time of night, or do I say nothing, file the report, and then wait for someone to put two and two together and come and ask me what I was doing here. I saw Urquhart. I told him I’d left something behind. That sounds good, eh? Oh, yes, I left something in my office, so important I came in after eleven. And while I was here I figured I’d do everyone a favor by doing an autopsy while I had a few moments.’

  Miller didn’t speak.

  ‘Where did you find the car?’

  ‘The projects.’

  ‘Same as the black woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then they’re connected.’

  ‘Assume so.’

  ‘And this anonymous call you got . . . it wasn’t anonymous was it?’

  Miller shook his head.

  ‘Was it him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re telling me that you’ve been taken off of the case, the Feds have assumed complete control over it, and you’re not reporting this to them.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So where the fuck does that put me?’

  ‘You plead ignorance,’ Miller said. ‘You do the thing, you plead ignorance.’

  ‘But I’m not ignorant—’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t say you were.’

  ‘Is that the way it works with you?’ she asked, and there was an edge to the question, a pointed edg
e which arrived exactly as it was intended, right between the ribs. It was a stiletto knife of a question. Did you push Brandon Thomas down the stairs and kill him? Did you murder that man, and then tell the world that you were innocent, that it was an accident?

  ‘No,’ Miller said.

  ‘But that’s what you’re asking me to do?’

  Miller looked down at the floor. He felt the weight of it all. He felt conscience and responsibility, obligation, the promise he’d made to Natasha Joyce. He felt a sense of loss, the beginning and end of so many things. He felt lonely and tired and sick and confused, and none of it made sense, and he was beginning to wonder if he even wanted it to make sense any more. He wanted to know what right John Robey had to break his life apart and kick the pieces all over.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Marilyn Hemmings asked. ‘You want me to break the law? You want me to violate protocol? You want me to do an autopsy on someone and not file a report?’

  ‘I want to know who he is, Marilyn, that’s all. I want to know who the guy is. I know how he died. I know what happened to him. I know someone tied a ribbon around his neck and locked him in the trunk of a car, and then they set the car on fire and he burned to death inside . . .’

  ‘He had a ribbon around his neck?’

  ‘According to CSA Greg Reid, yes . . .’

  ‘Oh God, no.’

  ‘Yes. And in the glove box of his car was a collection of ribbons—’

  ‘So who the fuck is this?’ she asked.

  Miller shook his head. ‘I don’t know who it is. I need to know who it is, I need to know now, and you’re the only person I can trust to do this . . .’

  ‘Trust? Is that what this is about? You think someone’s after you?’

  Miller didn’t reply.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘This is really beginning to scare me now.’

  Miller reached out and took her hand. He held it for a moment, looked right at her. For a moment she did not seem to want to look at him.

  ‘Can you just do this?’ he asked. ‘Can you just see if there is a name to go along with this guy?’

  ‘Where did they put the body?’

  ‘They said Lab Four, is that right?’

  Together they walked through the complex to Lab Four. Hemmings told Miller to stay back against the wall and away from the door. The charred remains of the trunk victim were on an examination table. Hemmings switched on the overhead lights and the brights to the left of the table. She took latex gloves from a box on the side, and then she stood quietly for a moment before the blackened and distorted cadaver.

  ‘Definitely male,’ she said, almost to herself, but loud enough for Miller to hear her. ‘Appears to be late forties, perhaps early fifties. Five-nine or ten. There had been some bruising beneath the skin, the appearance of centimeter-wide lines at the ankles and wrists. Appearance of having been bound tightly by something that has left a plastic-type residue. Nylon rope, perhaps ziplock-ties.’

  Miller stepped closer and watched as Hemmings took a sliver of skin from the man’s arm, a layer of epithelials which she placed inside a glass receptor. She processed it for DNA sampling, and while the machine did its business she prepared a scalpel.

  ‘Just sting for a second,’ she said quietly, and then she inserted the blade of the scalpel into the arch of the foot and scraped away a sample of coagulated blood. She transferred the blood from the blade of the scalpel to a petrie dish and covered it.

  ‘Two alleles,’ she said, once she had typed the blood. She concentrated to such an extent that Miller believed she’d forgotten he was there. ‘One comes from each parent, and in this man’s case one was a dominant A, the other O.’

  Miller looked away for a moment. There was tension in the atmosphere, something palpable, as if a shadow was pressing against him from all sides and there was no way to determine how it was being cast. He backed up and sat down for a moment, afraid he would lose his balance. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands together. ‘I don’t know why I came here,’ he said.

  Marilyn Hemmings turned and looked at him. ‘I have no prints to work with,’ she said. ‘His hands are too burned for me to print. There’s not enough for me to work with, Robert . . .’

  Miller wanted to stand. He wanted to walk towards her. He wanted to leave behind the charred remains of someone found in the trunk of a car and just vanish. Either that or go backward and decline the call to the Sheridan house that night of the 11th. He wished it was someone else’s problem, but it was not, and now he had made it Marilyn Hemmings’ problem, also Greg Reid’s, even Al Roth’s to some extent, because if one member of a partnership was drowning then the other would usually go with him.

  The machine bleeped. CODIS had come back with nothing. That would have been too rich for words.

  ‘So we have no way of knowing who he was?’ Miller asked unnecessarily.

  ‘You knew that before you called me,’ she replied. ‘You knew that it would be a dead end.’

  Miller didn’t speak.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  Miller looked up at her. ‘God, Marilyn, I don’t know . . . because of what happened before. Because you seemed to understand what I was going through when they were trying to crucify me for what happened with Thomas and the hooker.’

  Hemmings didn’t speak for a moment. She peeled off her gloves and dropped them in a waste bucket. She crossed the corner of the lab and sat beside Miller. She reached out and took his hand, held it for a moment. When Miller turned she was looking directly at him. It made him feel tense, awkward. He knew what she was going to ask him.

  ‘Was she just a hooker?’

  Miller lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  ‘Answer the question, Robert . . . was she just a hooker, or was there something else going on?’

  ‘She was just a hooker,’ Miller said.

  ‘Did you ever—’

  ‘Did I what? Did I ever sleep with her? Did I fuck her?’

  ‘Don’t be angry . . . I’m not the one who’s got you into this. Don’t vent your—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Miller replied. ‘I’m sorry. The whole thing makes me angry. You’re right. It’s not you. Jesus, this thing is driving me crazy.’ Miller released Hemmings’ hand and stood up. He took a couple of steps and then turned to face her.

  ‘I don’t know why I got you into this,’ he said.

  Hemmings smiled sardonically. ‘I’m all grown-up now,’ she said. ‘I’m perfectly capable of saying no . . .’

  ‘Then why didn’t you? Why didn’t you just say no and stay the fuck out of this? It’s not safe. It’s dangerous. There’s something going on here that has resulted in a whole lot of dead people, and it seems like whoever is behind this has no intention of stopping.’

  Hemmings shrugged. ‘What d’you want me to say? That I did it for you? That I wasn’t interested in the case but I was interested in you? That I thought it might give us a chance to spend some time together . . . because if that’s what you think then that’s not what happened, Robert. This isn’t all about you, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was—’

  ‘Let me finish, okay? That much at least.’

  Miller nodded.

  ‘This isn’t all about you. This is about something that I am having great difficulty understanding. I only know so much about what’s happened. And you think I don’t feel for you? I don’t have any kind of compassion for someone who’s in difficulty? I’m human, just like everyone else. You came to me and asked me to help you, and I saw someone who’d been through the mill with IAD and the newspapers. I saw someone trying to do a good job who got himself kicked all over the place by some bullshit about a pimp and her hooker, and I thought that maybe you needed a hand, okay? I figured that you were someone who was trying to make a difference, trying to make things better, and you needed a bit of moral support. That was all there was to it. Nothing more nor less than that. You want to be a magnet for tro
uble then be a magnet for trouble. Maybe there’s something about people like you that makes people like me want to help you. Maybe I just think you’re so fucked up that if you don’t have someone giving you a hand then you’ll wind up dead.’

  ‘That might be exactly what happens,’ Miller said, and though he did not intend to imply anything humorous, Marilyn Hemmings smiled and said, ‘I’ll do your autopsy, okay? I’m the best they’ve got and I’ll make sure it’s done by the book.’

  ‘Thank you . . . that’s very reassuring to know.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked. ‘You gonna keep pushing at this thing until someone finds out and threatens you with your job?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  Hemmings rose to face him. Though she was a good four or five inches shorter than him, she had sufficient presence to make him feel as if he was being looked down on.

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll do a full autopsy,’ she said. ‘I don’t know that there’s anything I’ll be able to tell you about the guy. His DNA isn’t on our system. We have no prints. Maybe there was something in the car.’

  ‘There was nothing in the car. ‘I don’t know . . . I really don’t know. I’ll give you a ride home. Do you need a ride home?’

  ‘I have my own car here. I don’t think it’s a good idea that we speak to one another on anything but a professional basis until this thing is finished. That’s what I feel right now, and I don’t think I’m going to change my mind.’

  ‘I understand,’ Miller said. ‘It’s not the way I wanted it to be, but I understand.’

  ‘So go,’ she said. ‘Go the way we came in. Don’t speak to anyone. I’ll clean up here, put our guest in storage, and then if anything comes of the autopsy tomorrow I’ll send you the report, okay?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Miller said. He held out his hand. ‘I’d hug you but I don’t think you want me to,’ he said.

  Hemmings shook Miller’s hand. ‘Goodbye, Detective Miller, and good luck.’

  ‘Don’t believe in luck,’ Miller said.

  Hemmings nodded toward the body on the examination table. ‘He probably didn’t either.’

  FIFTY-FOUR

  One a.m., morning of Sunday, November 19th. Robert Miller had not even removed his shoes, such was the inertia he felt. He remembered the night he’d walked along Columbia Street, the questions he’d asked, his first inkling that there was something beyond the death of Catherine Sheridan than just her murder. It was not rage or jealousy, neither was it the work of some uncontrollable sociopath. It was premeditated, calculating, decisive and exact. Eight days had passed. Everything had turned upside down. Catherine Sheridan had merely been the precursor to a far greater horror. Catherine Sheridan had been his introduction to an entirely different world.