The Fury (2009)
Page 3
a coffee shop, a bookstore and a multiplex movie
theater. Scary to think that while you were busy
munching on popcorn, evil lingered so close by, cloaked
in formaldehyde.
I approached the entrance tentatively. Who was I
going to ID? I’d never met this man before last night,
and now I was expected to point him out, feel some
deep-down emotion like I’d known him my whole life?
I’d never bonded with this person. Never done things
most brothers did. Never played catch. Snuck a drink
from Dad’s liquor cabinet. Never smuggled dirty maga
zines under our covers, or smoked cigarettes until our
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27
lungs burned. I was identifying a stranger, yet expected
to act like he was my blood. Impossible.
Pushing the door open, I went up to the receptionist.
He was wearing a white lab coat, and didn’t look a day
over twenty-five. I figured he was some sort of medical
intern, manning the phones while studying for his
exams.
“May I help you, sir?” he asked. His name tag read
Nelson, Mark. He chewed on a pen while he waited
for my answer.
“I’m here to see Binky…er Dr. Binks,” I corrected.
No sense ruining the illusion that Binks was a sane and
respected member of the medical profession.
“And you are…”
“Henry Parker,” I said, taking my driver’s license
from my wallet. “I’m here to identify Stephen Gaines.”
The name felt foreign on my tongue, yet Nelson’s eyes
melted with sympathy. He looked down at his desk,
pursed his lips.
“Right,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
I didn’t bother to point out Nelson’s faux pas. That
it was a little premature to console someone for their
loss before they’d actually identified the body. Or that
I felt no loss at all. How could I? Nevertheless, I told
him I appreciated it. He asked me to have a seat while
he paged Dr. Binks.
I took a seat on a light blue couch. It was hard. There
was a small table in front of me. No reading material.
This wasn’t your typical waiting room. If you were
here, I supposed not even Golf Digest could take your
mind off of what lurked below.
After several minutes, I heard the ding of an elevator
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Jason Pinter
and out strode Leon Binks. Binks was in his late thirties,
graying hair matted against his brow. His eyebrows
were as messy as his hair, a collection of short pipe
cleaners bent every which way. The medical examiner
was perpetually disheveled, as though he cared no more
about his appearance than those corpses he worked on
would. His hands always seemed to be moving, offering
gestures that his dialogue (and lack of social skills) pre
sumably could not. I imagined that if, like Leon Binks,
my whole life was spent amongst the dead, I might
have some personality idiosyncrasies as well.
“Mr. Parker,” Binks said, approaching me with his
hand outstretched. I went to meet him, and he shook it
vigorously. An awful smell wafted off of Binks, iodine
perhaps. I didn’t want to ask, but I hoped he showered
before attending any dinner parties. “Thanks so much
for coming. Detective Makhoulian is downstairs
already.” Then Binky’s eyes lowered, and he said, “I’m
sorry for your loss.”
I sighed, thanked him. “Can I see the body?”
“Oh, of course,” Binks said. “Follow me.”
Binks led me into a gray metal elevator. He took a
key chain from his pocket, inserted it into a slit next to
the sole button. Once turned, he pressed the button, and
the doors opened. Once inside, he pressed a button
marked M. For Morgue. The doors closed, and we
traveled in silence, down several flights. Finally the
elevator stopped and the door slid open.
Whatever odor had been stuck to Binks was even
stronger down here.
Outside of the elevator, the hallway divided into two
separate pathways. A plaque mounted on the wall had
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arrows pointing in either direction. To the left, the arrow
read, Morgue. To the right, the arrow read, Viewing
Room.
Binks began walking toward the right.
I followed behind him as he opened a door and led
me into a small room. A man was waiting for us inside.
He was about five-eight and built stocky and muscular,
like one of those NFL linebackers who had trouble
seeing over the center but could deliver a hit like
nobody’s business. His skin was dark, a neat goatee, and
he wore a dark gray suit. He looked at me as we entered.
“Detective?” I said.
“Detective Sevag Makhoulian,” he said. He ap
proached and shook my hand. “For short, people call me
Sevi.”
“Makhoulian…what background does that name
come from?” I asked stalling for time.
“It’s Armenian,” he answered patiently.
“Were you born here?”
“I was born in Yerevan, my parents emigrated here
when I was very young.” His accent was noticeable but
not thick, and his suit was as American as they came.
“Gotcha, don’t mean to pry.”
“I know it’s your job to do just that, Mr. Parker. I do
appreciate your coming down here on such short notice.
And I must say I enjoy your work. Insightful, not to
mention how nice it is to see a young man achieving
success based on something other than setting fire to
hotel rooms. It’s a shame we had to meet under these
circumstances. Curtis Sheffield speaks very highly of
you.”
“How’s Curt doing?” I asked.
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Jason Pinter
“Aside from the bullet in his leg? He’s just peachy.”
Makhoulian said this with a slight smile. Last year Curt
had taken a shot that nicked his femoral artery while
looking for a family that we believed had abducted a
child. He’d been assigned to desk duty since then, and
I was lucky to have remained on his good side. Though
he hated being off the streets, I think he secretly liked
the attention from the opposite sex. Nothing sexier than
a guy who took a bullet for a good cause. “Anyway, I’m
sorry for your loss, Henry.”
“It’s not really my loss,” I said. “The first and only
time I met Stephen Gaines was a few hours ago.”
“Well then,” Makhoulian said, “if his death isn’t your
loss, whose is it?”
“Someone else’s,” I replied. “Just not mine.”
“Somebody cared for this guy,” Binks interjected. We
both stared at him. The M.E. was right. Yet as much I
tried to, I still didn’t know what to think about every
thing.
The viewing room resembled a typical examining
room, if all the machines and instruments had been
removed. The only thing remainin
g was a long metal
table. The table was covered by a sheet. Underneath the
sheet was a body, about six feet long. Most likely be
longing to a man named Stephen Gaines. A man who
was presumably my brother.
“Before we begin,” Binks said, “be warned that
there’s been extensive damage to the cranium.”
“Extensive?” I said, looking at Makhoulian.
“That’s right,” he said. “From the damage, we can
gather that the muzzle of the murder weapon was held
less than a foot from the back of his head, a 9 mm fired
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31
at near point-blank range. The apartment we found him
in wasn’t a pretty sight.”
“From the wounds,” I said.
“Not just that,” Makhoulian said. “We found…how
can I put this simply… paraphernalia. Pipes, needles.
You name the drug, it looked like Gaines was on it.”
I took a deep breath, said, “How old is…was he?”
“Turned thirty a month ago,” Makhoulian said. Four
years older than me, I thought. Still a young man.
“He’s cleaned up the best we could, but…” Binks
said, his voice trailing off. He knew from the look on
my face that this was best done quickly, with minimal
cushioning. “Anyway, here he is.”
Binks leaned over the body, took two folds of cloth
between his hands and gently pulled the cover back until
it stopped just below the corpse’s neck. From there I
could see the victim’s head. Or at least what was left of
it.
Stephen Gaines was lying on the table faceup. A half
dollar-size hole was blown out of his forehead. I could
see the man’s skull and brain, both shredded from the
bullet’s impact. His eyes were closed, thankfully.
When that cover came down, I felt like everything
in my body dried up. My insides felt like a black hole,
my heart, lungs, my blood, all of it drained away.
“That’s him,” I said. “The man I saw on the street.”
“This is your brother?” Binks said, eyes raised,
curious more than sympathetic.
“According to the detective here,” I said.
Binks nodded, his mouth still open, as though ex
pecting me to relate just how this felt. The truth was I
wasn’t sure yet. I’d seen enough corpses, visited enough
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Jason Pinter
morgues to have been able to distance myself for the
most part from the realities of death. A reporter could
go crazy letting each individual horror pile up upon
their psyche. Like a doctor, you couldn’t think of blood
as blood, but more a by-product of your work.
“Where’d you say he was found?” I asked.
“Apartment near Tompkins Square Park,” the detec
tive said. “Odd place for someone with your brother’s
seemingly…limited means to be these days. Twenty
years ago, maybe. But now? That’s the heart of Stuy
Town. All young families and old folks.”
I nodded, trying unsuccessfully to process this while
staring at the body.
“That’s the exit wound we’re looking at,” Binks said.
“The bullet entered just below the back of the right
parietal bone and exited through the forehead with a
slightly upward trajectory.”
Makhoulian took over. “The first entrance wound,
combined with what we know about Mr. Gaines,
suggests that his killer was right-handed and slightly
shorter than him.”
I listened to this. “Wait,” I said, looking at Makhou
lian. “You said ‘first’ entrance wound.”
Makhoulian eyed Binks. Then he turned back to me.
Binks said, “There was a second entrance wound. It
went right through the occipital bone in the back of
Gaines’s skull. That bullet was still lodged in his head
when Gaines was brought here.”
“I thought you said he was shot point-blank,” I said.
“How can you shoot someone in the head twice from
point-blank range?”
“Only the first wound was delivered from close
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33
range,” Binks said, his voice growing softer. His fingers
traced the path of a bullet as he showed where the first
bullet entered Gaines’s skull. “The second was delivered
from about four feet away. From a downward trajec
tory.”
Binks raised his arm with his forefinger and thumb
cocked like a gun. He pointed it at the floor to demon
strate the likely scenario. He continued, “There were no
muzzle burn or gases expelled from the second shot.
Despite the brain matter, the wound itself is oddly
clean.”
“What does that mean?” I said.
“Well,” Binks said, scratching his nose with a gloved
hand. “The impact and the trauma suggest the initial
shot was fired from very close range. The brain matter
and impact site…”
“Impact what?” I said.
“It’s where the bullet impacts after exiting the body,”
Makhoulian said. “In this case, ballistics found the first
bullet in the wall about six feet off the ground. But they
didn’t find the bullet itself.”
“So the killer took it,” I said.
Makhoulian nodded.
Binks continued. “The entry wound is nearly devoid
of gases or burn marks. Considering the devastation
and the impact site, it has all the marks of a point-blank
shooting. See, normally when a bullet is fired, espe
cially from close range, the wound will leave burn
marks on the flesh, which is literally seared from the
heat. In this case, the burn marks were nearly unde
tectable.”
“Why?” I asked.
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“My guess?” Binks said. “The killer was using a
silenced weapon. Now, very few guns have those kind
of professional silencers you see in movies, that screw
on like a lightbulb. Usually they’re homemade, a length
of aluminum tubing filled with steel wool or fiberglass.”
“Forensics is checking for both,” Makhoulian added.
“It’s not just professionals who use them. Some
hunters use silencers out of season. Even guys in their
backyards shooting beer bottles who don’t want their
neighbors to hear. Of course, there’s a chance the killer
simply did it the old-fashioned way,” Binks said, “and
covered the muzzle with a pillow. The killer didn’t need
to be an expert in weaponry. In fact, there’s a reason you
see that in the movies. It’s not going to dampen the noise
completely, but as a quick fix—”
“Please,” I interrupted, pleading to either man.
“Explain to me what the hell all this means.”
Makhoulian said, “It means whoever killed your
brother shot him once in the back of the head with a
silenced weapon. Then while he was lying on the
ground, dying, the killer shot him one more time to
finish the job. Your brother wasn’t just killed, Henry. H
e
was executed.”
4
I followed Detective Sevi Makhoulian out of the
examiner’s office. An unmarked Crown Victoria sat
outside, and Makhoulian approached it. He leaned up
against the door. He took a white handkerchief from his
jacket pocket and wiped his forehead. I stood there
watching him, unsure of what to do. What the next step
was.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re so convinced
Stephen Gaines is my brother. And even if he is, why
did you call me? ” I asked. “I barely spoke two words
to Gaines in the entire thirty seconds I knew him. So
again, why me?”
“You weren’t our first choice, Henry,” Makhoulian
said, pocketing the cloth. “The first person we called
was James Parker, your father. And Stephen’s father.”
“Wait,” I said. “We had the same father?”
The detective nodded with no emotion. “You thought
you were related through osmosis?”
I hadn’t had much time to really think about every
thing, to consider what all this meant, but if Makhou
lian was right and Gaines was my brother, we had to
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share a parent. And I could never picture my mother
holding on to that kind of secret. There was no way she
could keep that from me.
My father was another story.
From the first time I could think clearly, I recognized
my father was the kind of man, who, if not your blood,
you would go out of your way not to know.
Even as a younger man, he was mean, belittling,
nasty, vicious. Violent.
That man was fifty-five now. In the last twenty years
he’d never held a steady job. Never made enough money
to move out of the house I grew up in, never desired to
give my mother anything more than he had when they
married. If anything, he took much of it away.
He preferred swinging from branch to branch on the
employment tree, always looking for a vocation where
the bosses didn’t mind if you showed up late, left early
to drink, and showed no ambition to rise above foot
soldier. Comfort was given highest priority. When I
began to write first for my school paper, then took
various internships before taking a paid job with the
Bend Bulletin, James Parker approached it like I was up
setting the gods of apathy. And hence upsetting his life.
The harder I worked, the more work came home with
me. My editors and sources would call at all hours of