It was all such a pity, Brandman admitted. But he was confident the badgers were the vector for the Mad Cow outbreak.
After all, all the cows involved in the current crisis, he knew, were fed exclusively on a grain and soybean mix made by the BVM Corporation in the United States, under the strictest guidelines and control.
CHAPTER 14 - FACE DOWN
“You ever see that movie, The Thing, by John Carpenter?”
“Yes,” Scarne said. “The first one was much superior.”
Detective Blaise Kanegi looked confused.
“The first what?”
“The first The Thing. Made in the early 50’s. Short on special effects but scary as hell.”
“The 1950’s?”
Kanegi was in his early 30’s, Scarne estimated, and realized he might as well be talking about silent movies.
“Yes. James Arness played the alien, as a kind of super vegetable. Later, of course, he went on to fame in Gunsmoke.”
“Gunsmoke?”
Scarne looked at the homicide detective.
“You have heard of Hawaii Five-O, haven’t you?”
“Sure. Show is bogus. They say they’re Hawaiian State Police. Only we don’t have a state police department in the Islands.”
Scarne wanted to say that he already knew that, but debating this particular homicide cop about Hawaii policing would probably be as productive as talking about old movies. As it was, he could hardly remember why they had even started talking about films. Fortunately, Kanegi got back on track.
“Anyway, that’s what it looked like. One of those yucky half-human, half-alien blobs with two heads and lots of limbs in The Thing. Every bone in their bodies was smashed.”
“You were there?’
“No. I responded to the murders at Campbell’s house. But I saw the photos from the ball field.”
It was Saturday, just before noon, and they were sitting in a small conference room in the Criminal Investigation Division of the Honolulu Police Department’s ultra-modern headquarters building on South Beretania Street. Scarne had flown out of O’Hare the morning after meeting Kate. The 13-hour, two-stop, flight had exhausted him and at 8 P.M. he checked into a Holiday Inn on Waikiki beach, where he grabbed a quick dinner and went straight to bed, fighting jet lag.
Kanegi had provided some much-needed coffee, the best police-station brew Scarne ever tasted, although that wasn’t saying much and the fact it was restoring him to near normality might have had something to do with his high opinion. Scarne had brought two dozen donuts, most of which had been shanghaied by other cops on their way to the conference room. Scarne hadn’t yet assumed his fake-author persona. Kanegi thought he was a private investigator working for one of the insurance companies involved in the case. Noah Sealth had put in a call to his old partner in Seattle Homicide who in turn called in a favor with the Hawaiian C.I.D. The donuts were just a courtesy, but much appreciated by cops working on the weekend.
“Not much doubt as to the cause of death, I suppose,” Scarne said.
“Yeah,” Kanegi said. “You know what they say. It ain’t the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop.”
“And they were conscious when they hit?”
“Spectators heard a scream just before impact. No way to tell who it was, though. My guess it was Vallance. He was the victim. Campbell knew what was coming. Amazingly, Vallance’s watch wasn’t even dented. Still running. Some sort of expensive sports watch. Got the time of impact from Campbell’s watch, which was smashed. Not that we really needed it. A couple of dozen people witnessed it and after a couple of seconds started making calls and clicking away with their cell phone cameras. You should hear the calls and see some of the photos that got on YouTube.”
“I did,” Scarne said. “What can you tell me about the other murders?”
“Brutal. Both mother and daughter had their throats slit, ear to ear. Blood everywhere. Son of a bitch knew what he was doing. Army probably taught him how.”
“No doubt it was Campbell?”
“His knife. One he was known to own. Their blood. His fingerprints. Suicide note.”
Kanegi took another donut. He was a good-looking Japanese-American with slicked-back black hair.
“Very convenient.”
Kanegi shrugged.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” He smiled. “Sigmund Freud. They made us all take some bullshit psychology courses. What’s your interest in all this, again?”
Scarne was ready for that one.
“If Campbell was unstable, maybe the whole thing could have been prevented. Insurance companies will have to pay out, but they might want to sue someone to get their money back. Maybe Campbell shouldn’t have been allowed to jump out of a plane with anyone.”
“Good luck with that, pal.”
“Can I get a look at the official report?”
“Sure. I have a copy back at my desk.”
“And the crime scene photos?”
“Got a couple in my files. The blowups and other stuff are in S.I.S. Probably shouldn’t have eaten so many donuts though. You might lose them looking at the photos.”
***
S.I.S., the Honolulu Police Department’s Scientific Investigation Section, was on the third-floor. Kanegi insisted on taking Scarne there in person and the reason was soon apparent. The forensic technician Kanegi introduced him to was an attractive young woman named Moana Mendoza and Scarne could feel the sexual attraction between the two colleagues. They bantered easily and he wondered if they were lovers. The three of them walked over to her desk. There weren’t that many other people in the laboratory, presumably because it was the weekend. A couple of the technicians who were there called out hellos to Kanegi.
“This is the only full-service forensic laboratory in Hawaii,” Kanegi said proudly. “Moana runs the DNA unit, which was one of the first of its kind in the United States.”
“How can I help you, Mr. Scarne?”
She was a petite, dark-skinned woman with a lively smile.
“I was hoping to see the crime scene photos from the Vallance murder case, but I’ll take anything on the DNA side you think is relevant.”
The police report, which included the coroner’s findings, which he’d read at Kanegi’s desk, was straightforward and told Scarne little he didn’t already know. The photos were gruesome but lacked detail. He really didn’t expect to find out anything more in forensics.
“What are you looking for, Mr. Scarne?”
“I’m just covering all the bases.”
“Like Vallance and Campbell did,” Kanegi said, laughing.
“Blaise, that’s terrible,” the woman said, but she smiled at the detective.
They were lovers, Scarne decided.
“Well, there was nothing in the DNA evidence that was out of the ordinary,” Moana said. “I mean, the blood work and tox screens on the bodies at the ball field were negative. Cause of death was obvious and confirmed.”
“What about the wife and daughter?”
“Their screens were also negative for anything illegal. And it was only their blood on the beds and the knife. The knife severed the jugular veins, carotid arteries and tracheas. Cause of death, exsanguination. They bled out. Campbell’s fingerprints were on the knife.”
“That’s what I told him,” Kanegi said.
“How about the time of death?”
“What do you mean,” she said. “Both women died almost simultaneously. I don’t recall exactly what time we determined.”
Scarne took out his iPhone. He’d written some notes to himself while going through the police and coroner’s reports. He scrolled through one of them until he found what he wanted.
“The time of death for the women was approximated at around 11 A.M.,” he said, continuing to scroll. “Basically the same time Vallance and Campbell died. We know that for certain because that’s the time Campbell’s watch was smashed and, of course, there were all those witnesses on the field.”
“You’re wondering how all four of them could have died at virtually the same time,” Moana said. “The answer is simple. The time of death for Vallance and Campbell can be confirmed, even without forensics, because of the watch and witnesses. But the other deaths can only be estimated, basically using a liver probe. Post-mortem lividity would be problematical because they lost so much blood. The probe measures body temperature after death. But there are variables. Ambient temperature in the home, which would change when the police got there and opened doors and the like. It’s pretty accurate, but not foolproof. They could have died an hour or more before the 11 A.M. approximation made by the coroner.”
“Or an hour later.”
“Yes. And if it wasn’t for all the other evidence, that might be a problem.”
“Given the earliest possible time of death,” Scarne said, “could Campbell have killed his wife and daughter and still made it in time for the skydive?”
“No problem,” Kanegi said. “The airport is only 10 miles from his house. He could have killed them at 10:30 and still theoretically made it to the jump in time. As it was, people who saw him just before takeoff said he came into the briefing late and seemed harried. Said he ran into traffic. But we checked. There were no traffic jams. It all fits. He offs his family, rushed to the airport and takes care of Vallance.”
“Still seems like he was cutting it pretty close,” Scarne said.
“Poor choice of words,” Kanegi said. “But, hell, he was crazy. He didn’t bother to cover his tracks or clean up the house. He could have written the note on the computer before he murdered the women. No, he’s our guy.”
Scarne was basically convinced. Only the times of the respective deaths nagged at him, but even that was easily explained. Still …
“I’d like to see those photos now.”
***
They were as bad as advertised. Unlike the smaller versions in Kanegi’s file, these were large and detailed. Moana Mendoza called them up on her computer and showed Scarne how he could enlarge them.
He first viewed the shots at the ball field, where the men’s splattered bodies did resemble some sort of alien life form.
“Jesus,” Scarne said.
“Yeah,” Kanegi said. “Bet you’ve never seen anything like it.”
Scarne, who had done some recovery work at Ground Zero in the months following 9/11, let the remark go.
“That’s Vallance on bottom,” Kanegi continued. “Campbell’s face is buried halfway into his head. See the watch on the arm? That’s Campbell. It’s smashed all to shit. You can’t see Vallance’s watch in these pictures. They found it when they disentangled them. Like I said before, it was still keeping perfect time. I feel like calling the watch company. They could probably use it in their advertising.”
Moana punched him lightly in the arm.
“Takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” Scarne said.
They both looked at him.
“Hey,” Kanegi said. “That’s pretty good. Maybe I will call the watch company. Do you mind?”
It was a line from an old Timex television commercial that probably dated from the Gunsmoke era. But Scarne didn’t want to rekindle a trivia debate so he didn’t say anything. It was one of his grandfather’s favorite jingles.
“Be my guest,” he said.
Next, he brought up the murder scene from Campbell’s house. No one made any jokes about those. There was nothing even remotely funny about a dead child. Even though she had undoubtedly seen the shots before, Moana visibly tensed. The bodies were sprawled across the bed, with the wife half out of it on the floor. Looking at their faces and the gashes across their necks was one of the hardest things Scarne, in a life full of hard things, had ever done.
He had seen enough and was about to turn away from the screen when he noticed something.
“What’s that on the two pillows?”
Scarne used his finger to point to two very dark blotches on both pillows.
“Lots of blood, of course,” Kanegi said. He seemed a bit annoyed. “From their throats.”
“Isn’t that pattern strange?”
“What do you mean?” Moana said, leaning in.
She wasn’t annoyed. She was interested.
“Were they face up when their throats were slit?”
“That’s how the bodies were found,” Kanegi said. “Nobody moved them before these shots were taken.”
“But it’s obvious they were face down on those pillows when they were killed. Otherwise there wouldn’t be that much blood pooled like that.”
Scarne looked at the forensic scientist for confirmation.
“You’re right,” she said. “It looks like they were face down and bled directly into the pillows. If they were face up the pattern would be different. Off to the sides a bit more.”
“Why would they lie face down and let their throats be cut?” Scarne asked.
“Maybe they were asleep,” Kanegi said, a little uncertainly.
“That late in the morning, with a baby down the hall?” Scarne said. He looked at the woman next to him. “This is more consistent with them being tied up and then killed.”
“That makes no sense,” Kanegi said. “Their hands weren’t bound when we got to the house. And there was nothing in the coroner’s report about any ligature marks on their wrists.”
“Blaise,” the woman said, “something’s not right. I agree with Mr. Scarne. They were face down.”
“I have another question,” Scarne said. “Given the severity of their wounds, if they were face down, would they have been able to move into the positions their bodies were found?”
Moana Mendoza thought that one over.
“It’s possible, but unlikely. In addition to the shock, the loss of blood flow to the brain would have been almost instantaneous. Loss of consciousness would have been very rapid.”
“But it’s possible,” Kanegi said, trying to regain the high ground. “Dying people do some amazing things. Especially a mother worried about her kids, right?”
“It’s possible,” Mendoza said. “Barely.”
“But it’s also possible someone moved the bodies,” Scarne said. “Staged the scene.”
Kanegi had enough. He slapped his hand on the desk.
“You’re talking zebras, Scarne. When you hear hoof beats, it’s probably horses. Who staged the scene? The only one who would do that is Campbell. His knife. His fingerprints. His suicide note.” He paused. “Hell, maybe he did stage it. Who knows? Who cares?” He looked at the woman. “Moana, did your people turn up anyone else’s DNA in that house that was suspicious or belonged to someone who wasn’t supposed to be there?”
“No.”
“That’s it then, Scarne. Are we done here?”
The homicide cop was getting tired of all Scarne’s questions. The Vallance murders were so obvious they could go in the Open-and-Shut Hall of Fame. He rudely looked at his watch. It was lunchtime. He wanted to take Moana to Char Hung Sut’s for some manapua and pork hash.
Scarne wasn’t satisfied. There was something else. He knew it. It was just out of his mental grasp. Then he got it.
“Moana. The wounds on the throats. They were left to right. I think I remember that from the coroner’s autopsy report.”
“Yes. You’re correct.”
She actually drew her finger across her throat, left to right.
“So, if they were face down, the killer was almost certainly right-handed.”
Scarne started scrolling back through the photos until he got back to those taken at the ball field. When he got to the one he wanted, he enlarged one portion.
“That’s Campbell’s arm, right? The one with the watch on the wrist?”
“Yeah,” Kanegi said.
“That’s his right wrist. A left-handed man would wear his watch on his right wrist.”
“I know some right-handed guys who do that,” Kanegi said.
“Do they ride zebras?” Scarne said.
“Listen, pal …”
“Blaise, why don’t you just make a phone call to the skydiving office,” Moana said. “They should know if Campbell was left-handed.”
“Moana.”
“Please.”
Kanegi sighed, took out his cell phone and walked a few steps away.
“You used to be a cop, Mr. Scarne,” Moana said.
It wasn’t a question.
“N.Y.P.D.”
“That figures. You know all the angles, don’t you?”
“What do you think about this, Moana?”
“Something stinks.”
Kanegi was back, looking unhappy.
“Campbell was left-handed.”
He didn’t like being shown up in front of his girlfriend and had one more arrow left in his quiver.
“So what? He faced them when he slit their throats.” He moved his arm left to right. “That would account for the wounds.”
“They were face down, honey,” Moana said, gently. “The killer was probably right-handed.”
Kanegi looked at them.
“Oh, fuck,” he said.
CHAPTER 15 - BLACK BOX
By the time he left the police station, Scarne knew he’d opened up a can of worms. Kanegi would have to do something about the Vallance case, especially since Moana Mendoza flatly stated that she would push for her department to go over the Campbell house again with a forensic fine-toothed comb.
Scarne doubted she and her colleagues would find anything useful. He’d obtained Cambell’s address from Internet stories about the murders and then learned that the wife’s parents had, understandably, put it on the market. Just as understandably, given what had occurred there, potential buyers were few. He’d tracked down the real estate agent handling the sale. The man didn’t mention what had happened in the house until Scarne brought it up. Then he quickly pointed out that the entire house had been “professionally cleaned” and was now “spotless.” Except for what the police had removed, most of the furniture was still in the house and could be purchased separately, the agent said. Although, he hinted, any buyer who made a “reasonable” offer probably could have the furniture thrown in.
THE VIRON CONSPIRACY (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS #4) Page 9
