“You did good for your first time,” Bishop said. His eyes continued to scan. “But it was an easy mark. The next one’s going to be more complicated.”
“No problem, man. I can handle it.”
Bishop responded with a look that said he was unimpressed, and Gifford’s Adam’s apple jumped.
“I swear, man. I got it. You can count on me.”
“We’ll see.” Bishop reached into his pocket and withdrew a small slip of paper. He unfolded it and held it low. “This is your next target.”
Gifford studied the sheet. His mouth moved silently as he worked to memorize the name and address. After more than a minute, he said, “Got it.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
He slid the paper back into his pocket. “We don’t have much time. It needs to be tonight.” A few seconds passed in silence as his eyes moved from mirror to mirror, making sure no one was getting close enough to overhear them. He said, “And this one won’t be home alone.”
9
After they finished eating, Braddock took Rachel to meet Sheriff Pritchard. They sat across from him in his office and listened as he recapped a phone conversation he’d had with the district attorney an hour earlier. The call had not gone well.
“I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve ever been called an injudicious moron,” he said.
Braddock laughed.
Pritchard ignored him and said, “But I guess I have myself to blame for that. This morning, I gave an interview to some kid from the Waynesville Ledger, and I just couldn’t resist telling him about the high-dollar, out-of-town expert we hired to help us catch this killer.”
Rachel felt the urge to object to the term “high dollar” but decided it was best to let it go.
Braddock said, “I wish you hadn’t done that, boss.”
“So do I,” he said. “Knew it was a mistake as the words were coming outta my mouth. But, you know, I actually thought I wouldn’t have to worry about it till tomorrow morning. Part of being in the digital age, I guess. Little bastard probably wrote that damned article on his cell phone while he was still sitting in the parking lot. And, of course, the DA is checking the local news sites every hour.”
“You might consider doing the same,” Rachel said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pritchard laughed. “Miss Carver, once you get to know me, you’ll learn that I don’t have the patience to sit in front of a computer all day.”
“I can’t blame you for that, Sheriff. But what I really mean is that you should assign someone to track how the case is being reported in the media and have them save any articles they find.”
“Well, that’s a thought,” he said, leaning back and rocking in his chair. “Any other advice?”
“I think you need to change your overall approach toward the media.”
“How so?”
“There’s a lot of pressure on you right now, and you’re going to be tempted to try to give them something new every time you talk to them. But doing that sets the expectation that something significant will develop every day and that the case will be solved quickly. You need to start thinking long term.”
“How long term are we talking?”
“There’s no way to know for sure.”
“But if you had to guess,” he said, “based on your experience, what kind of time frame are we looking at?”
She thought for a second, trying to decide how to phrase a realistic answer that wouldn’t send him into a state of panic or depression. “We could catch a break at any time. A witness might walk in here tomorrow and solve the whole thing for us, but you can’t run an investigation based on that kind of wishful thinking. You need to be prepared for the possibility that it could drag on for months or even longer.”
“Okay.” Pritchard smiled, but there was tension in his jaw. “So, aside from refining my media relations strategy, what else do I need to do?”
“Have you assigned a case officer?”
Pritchard looked at Braddock, who nodded and said, “Shane.”
“He’s going to be overwhelmed,” she said. “Especially in this early phase. You have another detective, the patrol units, plus Danny and me, and each one of us is working a different angle. We’re all going to have information to contribute. Then there’s the crime scene techs, the crime lab, the medical examiner . . . Detective Fisher is going to have a tough time keeping up with all of it. You should assign someone to help him manage the paperwork and create an indexing system.”
“What do you mean by indexing system?” Pritchard asked.
“It’s a way to track every item of interest that turns up as part of the investigation. Every name, address, vehicle, whatever . . . anything that appears in a report or in someone’s notes, you log it. You create an entry for it and update the log any time that item comes up again. That way, you’ll have an easy way to track it and cross-reference your documentation. You won’t have to rely on an investigator’s memory of what’s in the case file. The old-fashioned way was to use index cards, but I’d recommend a spreadsheet. It’s easier to search.”
“All right,” Pritchard said. “Anything else?”
“Meetings.”
“Like the one we’re going to have tonight,” Braddock added.
Rachel said, “We should have one at the end of each day for now. Everyone who’s involved will be there and get updated on any developments. That’s also a good time—”
Braddock’s phone rang. “Sorry,” he said as he withdrew it from his pocket. He checked the screen before he answered. “Hey, Shane. Everything all right?” The skin around his eyes tensed as he listened. “Okay . . . okay . . . yeah . . . all right, we’re on our way.” He ended the call and said to Pritchard, “We gotta run, boss.” Then to Rachel, “Looks like you get to meet Mister McGrath in person after all.”
* * *
Harris Regional Hospital was a thirty-minute drive from the sheriff’s office. Fisher was waiting in the corridor outside the autopsy room. He led them inside and introduced them to the pathologist, a tall, lean woman in her fifties named Cynthia Breyer.
“Glad you could join us, detectives,” she said, holding the front section of Dean McGrath’s ribcage in her left hand. The rest of the body lay on a stainless steel table in front of her. A second table to her left held her instruments, tools, a scale, a section of McGrath’s skull, and a bowl containing his brain. “Give me just a second, and I’ll show you what I’ve found so far.”
Carly Brewer approached, thumbing through images on her camera screen. “Hey, boss,” she said without looking up.
“How’s it going?” Braddock asked.
“Better now. I’m a little embarrassed, though. Had to run out when she started working on the head.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I did the same thing the first time I saw an autopsy.”
Rachel knew he was lying. She had been with him at the time. Even though he had stayed quiet for more than an hour afterward, he had made it through the procedure with no problem.
“You hangin’ in there, Shane?” he asked.
“Yep,” Fisher said. A trace of pride in his voice. “I’m good.”
“Okay,” Breyer said, “let me get all of you over here on the opposite side of this table, if I could.”
Rachel stepped up first. The others moved in behind her. The body lay face up, its internal organs exposed by the Y incision and removal of the breastplate. Breyer’s gloved hands gripped the edge of the table as she tilted her head forward to look over the top of her glasses. She said, “Obviously, the ME will have the final say about what ends up on the certificate, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that the victim died from massive hemorrhaging that resulted from a single stab wound to his chest.”
“Just one?” Rachel asked.
“One’s not enough?” Fisher said.
Breyer smiled. “It’s unusual, I agree. Especiall
y given the fact that he didn’t seem to put up much of a fight. But take a look at this.” She grabbed the flap of skin, muscle, and fat that rested on the victim’s chin and pulled it down to cover the top of his chest. Rachel saw the wound immediately. It was held closed by a piece of clear tape. Breyer pointed to it and said, “The wound is significantly longer than the width of the blade. By nearly an inch. Also, if you look closely, you can see a couple of smaller lacerations branching off where the edge of the blade was.”
Rachel leaned in. She could see the extra lines. They left tiny slivers of skin at slight angles from the main cut.
Breyer lifted the flap and set it back on the chin. She reached over to the side table and returned with the breastplate. The sternum and ribs—the web of bone, muscle, and cartilage—looked too much like something that might be packaged in the meat department of a grocery store. Rachel forced the thought out of her mind as Breyer set it in place.
“You can see the same thing here as well,” Breyer said, pointing to the slit where the knife had penetrated. After everyone got a look, she put the breastplate back on the side table, then used her index fingers to probe the organs. “And in here, we can start to make sense of that. Look at the damage the killer caused in here.” She lifted a lung with one hand and shifted the heart around with the other. “There’s a puncture to the ventricle wall, the aortic valve is shredded, the pulmonary artery is almost completely severed. And this lung . . . just look at it.”
“What a mess,” Braddock said.
Rachel asked, “Do you think that means the killer was moving the knife around while it was still in his chest, trying to cause more damage?”
“That’s exactly what I think,” Breyer said.
“The wound is pretty high,” Rachel said. She raised her hand as if she were holding an imaginary knife. “But the angle of the blade doesn’t look right for an icepick grip.” She turned to face Braddock. Pretended to stab him, then moved her hand around to simulate what the killer might have done.
Braddock cringed. “I can almost feel you doing that.”
“I don’t think it happened that way,” Breyer said. “When I removed his sweater, I noticed that all the blood that seeped from the wound seemed to run toward the shoulder and neck. There was none running down the abdomen.”
“But that would mean that he was already on his back when he was stabbed,” Rachel said.
“Exactly. There’s something else I need to show you.” Breyer stepped around the corner of the table and stood next to the head. “When I did the external exam of the scalp, I didn’t see anything unusual. There’s a lot of purple discoloration on the back of his head that’s consistent with livor mortis—just the blood settling at the lowest point. So I didn’t bother to look too close. When I examined the skull, I found a small fracture right here . . .” She bent forward and pointed at a shaved spot on the scalp just beneath the incision she had made to expose the skull. “At first, I thought it might be from his head hitting the floor during the attack, but I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. So I shaved this area, and lo and behold . . .”
Rachel crouched and turned her head to get a good look. Braddock peered over her shoulder and asked, “What are we looking at?”
“See those two blotches?”
They were small, each the size of a fingertip. They would have been longer had they not merged with the purple mass of pooled blood. Rachel said, “Tramline bruising.”
“I’ll be damned,” Braddock said.
Breyer looked over her glasses at Rachel. “Something tells me you’ve seen your share of the dead.”
Rachel smiled, and Fisher said, “Well, I haven’t. Would someone mind telling me what the heck you all are talking about?”
“It’s a bruising pattern that forms as a result of blunt-force trauma from a cylindrical object like a pipe or a baseball bat,” Breyer said.
Rachel turned to Braddock. “How much time do we have before the meeting?”
He looked at his watch. “Two hours.”
“Good. I want to go back to the house.”
* * *
They pulled into the dirt driveway forty-five minutes later. The deputy met them as they were getting out of the Tahoe. They signed in and went inside through the carport. The rotten-food smell hit them as they entered the kitchen. Rachel wrinkled her nose and said, “The killer was already in the house, waiting for McGrath to come home.”
“Had to be,” Braddock agreed.
She looked around the kitchen. “But he wasn’t just hanging around in here waiting for him to walk through the door. McGrath had time to get leftovers out of the fridge and heat them up in the microwave before he was attacked.” She moved from the kitchen into the living room, then down a narrow hall. There were five doorways to choose from: three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a linen closet. She looked inside each one, found McGrath’s bedroom at the end of the hall. Then she backed up and went into the bedroom nearest the living room. There was a queen-size bed in the center, stacks of cardboard boxes lining the far wall. A guest room doubling as a storage space. “Was this door open when you guys got here?”
“I don’t know,” Braddock said. “I’d have to ask Shane.”
“This is where I would have hidden.” She held her hands together by her right shoulder, as if she were holding a bat. She stared through the doorway and tried to put herself in the killer’s mind. “I’d stand here in the dark and wait for him to come down the hall. He’d have to walk by this door to get to his bedroom. I’d come out behind him and . . .” She stepped into the hallway and took an imaginary swing. “It would have been easy.”
“Except it didn’t happen that way.”
“No,” she said and moved back into the bedroom. “Because I hear my victim come home, but he doesn’t go to his room. He’s moving around in the kitchen. I hear the fridge open and close. I hear a drawer and cabinet doors. It’s taking longer than I thought it would. He might be in there for a while, cooking and eating. I’m nervous. Impatient. I want this to be over with so I can get out of here. I start to have doubts about my plan of attack.”
She slid through the doorway and eased down the hall into the living room with Braddock in tow. They turned the corner to the kitchen. She could see McGrath standing in front of the microwave, his back to her. She raised the imaginary bat, stepped forward, but a noisy floorboard stopped her.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Braddock said. “He was hit on the back of the head. Like he didn’t know it was coming.”
She took another step into the kitchen, caught the odor of putrid meatballs in tomato sauce. Saw the bloodstain on the floor and fought the urge to gag. Then she looked at the microwave. It was small and white and old. A cheap model even when it was new. She walked back into the hall toward the bedroom and said, “Go turn on the microwave. Stand in front of it, and let’s see if you can hear me coming.”
He nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. She heard him touch a couple of buttons, and it started humming. As she tiptoed around the corner, she was amazed at how noisy the little appliance was. Almost as loud as a hair dryer. She was able to approach Braddock and stand just behind him, yet he didn’t react. She reached out and grabbed his shoulder.
He flinched and said, “Jesus, Rachel,” then turned and fixed his eyes on the bloodstain.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, but this little exercise of yours is starting to freak me out.”
The time on the microwave ended. Beep, beep, beep, and there was silence.
* * *
On the drive back to the office, Braddock got a call from Fisher. After listening for a couple of minutes, he said, “All right. We’ll see you in a few.” He dropped his phone in the cup holder. “That was Shane giving me an update.”
“Anything good?” Rachel asked.
“Not really. Tina—our other detective—just got back from notifying the family. McGrath’s mother and sister over in Franklin, about thirty-fi
ve miles from here. Said it was tough, but they didn’t have much to say. She also did a record search this morning. Found out our victim was arrested once for public indecency about four years ago. Drunk, pissing in a bush on the side of the street.”
“Sounds like we might have a short meeting.”
Braddock smiled. “Somehow I doubt that.”
10
Rachel was seated between Braddock and Pritchard on one side of an oval conference table as the others began to file in. Braddock introduced her to Tina Pratt—the other detective—when she entered the room. Fisher arrived a minute later and took a seat next to Pratt, directly across from Rachel. A tall man in uniform, who looked to be in his sixties, sat down at one end of the table.
“Rachel,” Braddock said, “this is Melvin Curtis. He’s our patrol captain.”
Curtis smiled broadly, tilting an uneven mustache. His thin, deep-set eyes nearly disappeared.
Another uniformed deputy, a petite woman with blonde hair who looked a little overburdened by her utility belt and sidearm, sneaked in and found a chair at the other end next to Carly Brewer, apparently trying not to be noticed. Braddock leaned toward Rachel and said, “Her name’s Melissa Howard. She’ll be helping Shane out with the paperwork.”
Once everyone was situated, Pritchard cleared his throat and said, “All right. I think everyone here has met by now, but just in case”—he pointed a thumb at Rachel—“this is Rachel Carver. She has a lot of experience in tough homicide cases, so we’re lucky to have her. You may or may not have heard that the SBI is taking their time sending us an investigator, so Danny went and found us one.”
A few chuckles around the table.
Among the Dead Page 4
