The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel

by David Krugler

  “He was falling, or maybe was on his knees,” I said.

  “Yeah, probably on his knees. Then the fatal wound hits him in the chest, left of the heart. Bled out pretty quick after this shot.”

  “Took a beating before he was shot, right?” Terrance asked.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “You get the bullet outta his chest?” I asked.

  Sperber nodded and pointed to a metal tray on a cart next to the examining table. “It’s beat up bad, though. Careened off his breastbone. The other two went clean through. Find ’em at the scene?”

  We shook our heads.

  “Did you look?” he mocked. Before we could retort, the lab door swung open. “Detective Sergeant Durkin, so good to see you.”

  “What the hell are you two doing here?” Durkin challenged Terrance and me. “I’ve been waiting for you at the Fifth Precinct House.” Trying to sound indignant, as if he had actually been waiting on us.

  “Navy’s awful stingy with gas, thought we’d swing by here first,” Terrance said, shrugging.

  “You said you’d be right by.” Durkin glared at me.

  “I said we’d come by. Didn’t say when.”

  He ticked his chin, his stare contemptuous. All right then, gloves off. I hoped Terrance could keep us one step ahead of him.

  “Why don’t you catch me up, Doc?” Durkin asked.

  “Didn’t miss much. Three bullet wounds: thigh, abdomen, chest. Last one fatal.”

  “Time of death?” Durkin had his notebook out, scribbling.

  “Based on the liver temp, I’d say about ten P.M. Lividity’s consistent with how you found the body.” Sperber looked at me mischievously. “You do know what lividity is, right?”

  “It’s when the blood collects in the lowest part of the body.” I pointed to Skerrill’s lower right side, the color of mottled eggplant. “Looks just like the bruising the coroner might leave behind after he’s had his way.”

  Terrance’s guffaw echoed; even Durkin grinned. Sperber’s expression didn’t change, but he offered a trace of a nod, so I hoped he’d quit with the grammar lessons. He peered into the tray beside the table and picked up a tooth. “Quite a fist fight before the shooting. Knocked one of his molars loose.”

  My partner leaned in for a look at the corpse. “Flattened his nose but good, huh?”

  “Killer had a sap,” Sperber said, nodding. “Some added heft.”

  “How many punches did he get in?” Durkin asked.

  “At least six.” The coroner pantomimed a volley of blows. “First he goes for the solar plexus.” He made a loud gasping noise. “Our body here, he’s doubled over, trying to suck air.” Now Sperber swung an uppercut, followed by a right roundhouse. “There’s the broken nose.” Two jabs, left-right, shot straight toward each cheek. “A ring opened this cut, which means your killer’s right-handed.” He pointed at the gash below Skerrill’s left eye. “Same ring cut the chin—hard left hook.”

  Terrance looked respectfully at the coroner. “Some nice moves there, Doc.”

  “Used to box when I was younger. Golden Gloves.”

  “So was he still standing when he was shot?” Durkin interjected.

  “Yeah, shot in the thigh while upright, shot in the abdomen while on his knees, then shot in the chest.” He lifted the misshapen bullet from the tray. “This came from the third shot but I doubt you’ll be able to match it to a weapon.” He tossed the bullet to Durkin.

  “Mind?” I reached to take the projectile, looked it over, handed it to Terrance.

  “Any other bullets?” asked Durkin.

  The coroner smiled. “Nope, still at the scene.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” said Durkin. “You’ll send the report to me in a few days?”

  “I always do, don’t I?”

  Terrance and I nodded our good-byes to Sperber and followed Durkin to the lab’s anteroom. I spoke first. “Durkin, d’you want to take charge of the search at the scene for those bullets?”

  “You’re not going to come?” Surprise, quickly turning to suspicion.

  Terrance chimed in, “You’ve searched a lot more scenes than us.”

  “What’re you gonna do?” Still slow to take the bait.

  I said, “We got an O.N.I. case to wrap up.”

  “Another murder?” Smirking.

  “Just the usual,” Terrance said. “Spies, broads, state secrets.” Returning the smirk.

  “Well, I don’t know how long it’ll take to find those bullets.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll meet you back at the precinct house.”

  “All right.” Sensing we were lying, not as yet knowing why. But he left, heels clipping on the tiled floor.

  “So we don’t want to know same time as him if we got a traceable bullet?” asked Terrance.

  “What was that bullet we just looked at?” I asked.

  “Thirty-eight, my guess.”

  “So we’re looking for a strong joe, knows how to fight, owns a thirty-eight—how does having a traceable bullet help us find him?”

  Terrance: “It’d prove he actually shot Skerrill.”

  Me: “Only if we can put him at the scene at the time of the shooting. Bullet won’t help us do that.”

  Terrance: “We’d still need that evidence in court—” He broke off, grinned broadly. “But taking the case to trial isn’t our problem.”

  “Bingo. We just gotta identify the shooter and figure out why he wanted Skerrill dead. Like Commander Paslett said, if it has nothing to do with Skerrill’s O.N.I. work, Durkin and the M.P.D. can keep their traceable bullets—if they even find one—and ride this case all the way to California. But if Skerrill did turn, we’re going to be holding his killer for a long time to see how deep the spying goes. Last thing Navy’s gonna do is cut him loose for a trial in D.C. Superior Court.”

  “That’s some devious thinking, partner,” clapping me on the shoulder. “While our friend Durkin crawls around on his hands and knees in that alley, we get a jump on the interviews.”

  Now it was my turn for a big smile.

  CHAPTER 3

  LOGAN SKERRILL’S BOARDING HOUSE WAS A LARGE BRICK COLONIAL located a few blocks from Catholic University. Box elder on the front lawn, wooden deck chairs on the front porch. Close to noon when we rang the bell, everyone at work. The landlady, a Mrs. Sundstrom, answered the door, ushered us in, told us what a shock it was, what had happened to Skerrill. Of course, neither she nor her tenants could think of anyone who would want him dead.

  “Clean, neat, friendly,” she answered our first question.

  “Always said hello,” I said.

  “More than that. He remembered names, what people had told him.”

  “He was talkative.”

  “He listened, and he told good stories. But he was no gabber.”

  “What kind of stories?” asked Terrance.

  “About his travels. About growing up in New York.”

  Terrance and I exchanged looks.

  “Do you remember any of the stories?” I asked.

  Shaking her head, Mrs. Sundstrom said, “Not to tell like Logan did. He could do accents. Sounded just like an Italian waiter when he told us about being in Rome.”

  For sure, a trip to Italy would have been mentioned in Skerrill’s jacket.

  “Happen to say when he was in Rome?” Terrance asked as he studied a framed photograph on an end table.

  She smiled as she looked at the photograph. “My eldest son, Richard. Army Signal Corps—he’s in France now. No, he didn’t say—Logan, I mean. Of course it had to be before the war.”

  “Signal Corps—important work.” Terrance set the picture down and carefully realigned it. My cue.

  “I’ve always envied those grand trips Logan took,” I tried.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Sundstrom said, now looking at me. “But if I might paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the rich are different from you and me.”

  “Yes, they send their children to Europe. If I mi
ght adapt Hemingway’s answer.”

  “Very nice, lieutenant. My reference often goes unnoticed.”

  “Would you say Lieutenant Skerrill liked to boast about his family’s wealth?” I asked.

  “Oh no, quite the contrary. He was very discreet, I’m sure because he didn’t want to make the other tenants feel uncomfortable.”

  Or get caught in a lie, I thought, looking at Terrance. He nodded knowingly.

  “Could we see his room, ma’am?” my partner asked.

  “Of course.” She stood up briskly from her parlor chair and led us upstairs. A slim, tall woman, looked to be seventy or so, surprisingly spry. Gray hair fashionably set, looking smart in slacks and a checkered blouse. She told us her husband had been a professor at Catholic University until his death ten years before.

  “I let the rooms to make my children anxious,” she said, turning on the landing to face us. “That way they call more often.”

  We laughed obligingly. The hallway was narrow, the walls undecorated. She unlocked Skerrill’s door and stepped aside so we could enter.

  “You’ll be quiet.” A statement, not a question. “Mister Lombard below works nights.”

  “Quiet as mice, ma’am,” said Terrance.

  “Never say ‘mice’ to a landlady, young man. Bad luck.” Pursing her lips in a smile, she pulled the door shut with the softest of clicks.

  “Nice old bird, don’t you think?” Terrance chuckled.

  “Near-sighted, I’d say, calling you a young man.”

  “You’re just jealous. So why’d Skerrill lie about his family?”

  “From his jacket, looks like he never visited his parents. Maybe he hated ’em. Or was ashamed of his upbringing. More fun to be a rich man’s son than a poor man’s.”

  Terrance shook his head. “I’m thinking it’s one’a two other reasons.”

  “All right.”

  “Maybe he loved field work so much, he practiced cover stories on strangers.”

  “Or?”

  “He was a compulsive liar.”

  “No reason it couldn’t be both,” I said.

  “Let’s see what his quarters tell us.” We turned our attention to the room. Mrs. Sundstrom was right—Skerrill was neat. Blanket on the single bed pulled straight and tucked, two pillows plumped against the headboard. On the nightstand, an alarm clock ticked.

  “Mrs. Sundstrom seem the sort to come in and wind your alarm?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I picked up the clock and turned the key, felt the slack. “It was last wound probably the night before.” I showed Terrance the back. “Not set, either.”

  “Our boy planned to stay elsewhere.”

  “Guy like that, had to have a girl or two.” I put the clock back. Books filled a small case within arm’s reach of the bed. Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington. W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge. Lots of novels, some history. Four titles from the library, a well-thumbed copy of the Federal Writers’ Project guide to Washington, D.C. I leafed through it to see if Skerrill had marked any pages. He hadn’t, but in the index there was an inked X next to the entry for Lafayette Square.

  “Why would Skerrill be interested in Lafayette Square?” I held up the guide.

  “Easy to enter and leave. Lots of foot traffic. Very public. Tourists always around.”

  People who sell their nation’s secrets, they like to meet their contacts in public places, parks especially, where two people taking a stroll or sitting on a bench, chatting, don’t look out of place. Lafayette Square was an ideal rendezvous, except—

  “It’s right across from the White House. Anyone who’s lived in D.C. for more than a week knows where it is. Why would he have to mark a guidebook?”

  “Maybe he did it when he first moved here.”

  “Maybe,” I said doubtfully. The Skerrill I’d known at the Funhouse had often bragged about how well he knew Washington, though he was a recent arrival like the rest of us. Perhaps he’d used the guidebook to learn the city, but why just one mark in the index? Why was it so conspicuous? I couldn’t help but think of the swashbuckler magazine stories I’d read as a kid. X marks the spot. I put the book back.

  Terrance opened Skerrill’s dresser and carefully examined the contents. Precisely folded T-shirts, square stacks of drawers, bundled socks. Slacks and sport shirts, arrayed as individual outfits, with one shirt atop each pair of pants.

  “Jesus H. Christ, what kind of man lays his clothes out like this?”

  “This place is like a model apartment,” I said. “You show it, but no one lives in it.” The dresser and bookcase were just the first signs that Skerrill prized order, structure, neatness. The small writing desk was devoid of papers, pens, torn envelopes, unfolded letters, magazines, scribbled notes—anything that might show it was regularly used. In the closet, a rack of shoes (polished), dress uniform, suit, and several blazers hanging side by side. No trunk, no footlocker, no boxes.

  “No pictures,” Terrance observed. “Not even of good old Mom and Dad.”

  I checked the pockets of the clothes on hangers, came up with a book of matches. The Sand Bar. “Heard of it?”

  Terrance looked up with alarm from an inspection beneath the mattress. “Yeah—it’s a swish joint. Local vice nets an officer there now and then.”

  “The commander said Cross-check saw Skerrill leaving girls’ places early in the morning. So I doubt he was a fairy.”

  “Maybe he was throwing them off the scent.”

  Good point. OP-12-D, the tiny unit responsible for the O.N.I.’s internal security, was a dumping ground for retirement-ready officers and those who couldn’t hack field work. Say Skerrill knows he’s going to be followed on a certain night. He gets some gal he knows to pretend to be a date. But if he was smart enough to shake 12-D, how was he so careless as to keep the swish matchbook?

  “Look at this.” Terrance rose heavily from the floor, where he had been looking beneath the bed, and handed me a scrap of paper. Chet, L.S., 10 P.M., it read in pencil.

  “So he wrote a reminder about an appointment. Chet could be anyone.”

  “And L.S.?”

  “Someone else.”

  “Or the place.”

  “Like Lafayette Square,” I said, nodding slowly.

  “Right. Local vice makes a lotta raids there, too. In the men’s rooms.”

  Late at night, Lafayette Square was a notorious trysting spot for men, and men only.

  “Might explain the lying about his background,” I said. “Trying to be someone he’s not.”

  “Would also explain why this room is so goddamned neat,” Terrance said, laughing.

  “Funny.” I gave back the scrap, he slipped it into his notebook. “So whattya wanna do? See if they recognize his photo at the Sand Bar?”

  “Sure.” He brightened. “We’ll bring Durkin along. We find out this is one homo killing another, I can’t wait to see his face when we dump the case back on him.”

  WE DIDN’T WANT DURKIN TO KNOW ABOUT OUR SEARCH OF SKERRILL’S room, so we decided to tell him there were rumors about Skerrill being queer. After a quick lunch, we drove to the Fifth Precinct House, where we found Durkin at his desk, logging additional items collected in the alley: a shred of brown cloth that appeared blood-stained, two casings, and a bullet.

  “Traceable?” Terrance asked.

  “Our ballistics guy says I bring him the gun, yeah.” Durkin carefully wound the string of the identifying tag round the clasp of a manila evidence envelope. His desk was a wreck: stacked wooden trays overflowing with papers, a black Underwood blanketed by a badly folded Times-Herald, an ashtray brimming with butts. Durkin lit up and blew smoke toward a giant wall map of D.C. He hadn’t invited us to sit—no chairs in front of his desk anyway—so we stood. The detectives’ squad room was on the second floor, its windows looking out over tiny Marion Park. I glimpsed an elderly man on a bench, feeding nuts or bread crumbs to a dervish of a squirrel, its tail bobbing as it chased the tossed
morsels.

  “Take care of your case?” Durkin asked.

  “We did,” I said. “And found out something interesting about Skerrill.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Office scuttle has it he liked to hang his hat at the Sand Bar.”

  “The Sand Bar? Probably hung more than his hat there.”

  “What we’re thinking.” Terrance pulled out the glossy 3" by 5" head shot of a uniformed Skerrill and waggled it at Durkin. “Want to see if this pretty mug gets any double-takes over there?”

  “Little early in the day, even for fairies.”

  “Bartender’s probably setting up,” I said.

  Durkin stubbed his cigarette and tugged his jacket from the back of his chair. He started for the door, but we didn’t follow.

  “Durkin,” I called after him.

  “What?” Turning, annoyed.

  “Can we have our scene prints?” I gestured at his desk.

  “Oh, right.” He returned, rummaged through the mess, and wordlessly handed me a thick envelope.

  THE SAND BAR WAS ON FOURTEENTH STREET, JUST SOUTH OF THOMAS Circle. Easy to miss, on the ground floor of a red brick apartment building, no neon, just a small painted sign swinging from a bracket. Inside, black vinyl booths, black glossy tables, mirrors, and French café posters on the walls, bar veneered in framed maple panels. The bartender was uncorking a bottle of wine when we entered. He wore a pressed white shirt, black vest, and black tie. Brown hair combed back. Short but solidly built, with deepset eyes and a squared-off nose—even if he was a swish, he probably didn’t have trouble handling drunks and troublemakers. Plofft—he finished pulling the cork and set the bottle down.

  “You’re supposed to raid right before we close, not right after we open.”

  The bar’s only two customers, two men in suits at a table, bristled.

  “Don’t get wise,” Durkin said menacingly to the bartender.

  We pulled stools out of our way and leaned in.

  “Drinks, boys? On the house.”