Damage Control (3 page)

5

J
AMES
H
ILL’S LUCK
ran out. His euphoria over finding a parking space within two blocks of his Green Lake home dissipated with the first drops of water splattering on his windshield and hitting the roof and hood with dull pings. The weatherman had predicted an evening thunderstorm. Normally, you could throw darts and come up with a more accurate five-day forecast. Damned if this wasn’t one of the few times he’d gotten it right. It was Murphy’s Law. If James had remembered his umbrella or found a spot directly in front of his home, it would have no doubt been clear skies. But street parking in his neighborhood was tough to come by. Four miles from downtown Seattle, Green Lake had become a trendy residential district.

No chance to wait it out. The raindrops were starting to fall frequently. He stepped from the car and hurried around behind, popping the hatchback to gather his students’ briefs, balancing them in a stack. His leather briefcase felt like it had an anvil in it. Thunder rumbled across a blue-black sky, and a strong wind ruffled the pages of the top brief and brought the smell of the cherry blossoms. He closed the hatch and started up the sidewalk. Pink petals sprinkled it like a wedding aisle. The windows of his neighbor’s Craftsman cottages reflected blue flashes of light. James envied their time watching mindless television. He wouldn’t have that luxury. He’d had one of those nonstop days—three classes, a faculty meeting, and two hours of office time that his students had used to the last minute.

The thought hit him like a drop of water—Dana. She hadn’t called him back. At one point during the day he’d picked up the telephone but became distracted, then forgot. He hoped her silence didn’t mean bad news. Though she had tried to disguise it, he’d heard the anxiety in her voice. They had been old enough to remember their mother’s mastectomy and subsequent treatment that had left her weak and thin. James regretted mentioning his own problem, but he was at a crossroads. There was no one else he trusted, and he sensed things coming to a head quickly.

The rain peppered him. He quickened his pace past a couple bundled in rain gear, out walking their dog. He turned right down Latona Avenue. The rain, as if sensing that he was nearing shelter, took one last shot at him. His students would wonder if he’d used their briefs to clean up a spill. He climbed the steps to the front porch. His home had a driveway and detached garage, but both were presently clogged with the building materials for his remodeling project and the remnants of his furnishings from the ten-room house on Capitol Hill that he’d sold when he quit the law. On nights like this, he longed for a garage to park in. He rearranged the stack of briefs, retrieved his key, and unlocked the door, stumbling into the entryway. The legal briefs spilled across the hall table, and several slid onto the floor, where he dropped his briefcase. He removed his glasses, spotted with rain, placed them atop the pile on the table, and found his cell phone, punching in Dana’s number. He hung his leather coat on the staircase banister as her phone rang, and started down the hall when she answered. She sounded half asleep.

“Dana, I’m sorry to call so late; I meant to call earlier, but I got tied up. How was your mammogram? Is everything okay?”

“They took tests today.” Her voice faded. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Tomorrow.”

He stepped into the living room at the back of the house. “Are we still having lunch? Your secretary said you were free. Dana?” She didn’t answer. The light from the back porch filtered into the room through the French doors that opened to a patio garden. It shaded everything black and gray, like an old movie. “Dana?”

“I’ll call you.” Her voice was a faint whisper.

“All right. Sorry to call so late. I love you.”

“I love you, too, James.”

Thunder rumbled across the sky, and the rain pecked at the shingled roof like the beaks of dozens of birds. He pulled the chain to the lamp on the end table, bringing forth a tapered beige light. The room looked off-balance and unfamiliar, things out of place, books on the floor, pillows strewn from the couch. The floor creaked behind him. He turned and caught a glimpse of the long hair and thin face. “Who—”

The object swept across his vision, striking with a sudden sharp pain. His body spun as if on a swivel. Blood splattered the African tribal masks on the wall, their hollow eyes bearing witness. He stumbled backward into the couch. His legs buckled. The second blow knocked him forward like a felled tree, his face impacting hard against the wood-planked floor. Then the sky opened—-pellets of water beating on the roof and the glass panes of the French doors. And the blows cascaded down upon him.

6

I
T WAS GOING
well. Hell, it was going great. She felt the high one feels on a good run, her body moving in effortless rhythm. Her words flowed with confidence. Her hand gestures offered just the right amount of emphasis. The faces around the marble table looked on attentively. Most people took notes. All ignored the pastries and the smell of freshly roasted coffee. Ordinarily, associates despised the mundane drudgery of practice group seminars because they could not bill the time to a client. Seminars represented a lost chunk of their day that the partners didn’t consider toward yearly bonuses and compensation.

Marvin Crocket sat at the head of the table next to Don Burnside, the president of Corrugate Industries. Burnside smiled, giving Dana his undivided attention. A good-looking, distinguished man with flags of gray at the temples, Burnside had made a point to introduce himself to her before the presentation. When she excused herself to pour a glass of water, she knew he would find an excuse to continue their conversation. She saw it in the sparkle of his eyes, the toothy smile, and the extra moment he had clasped her hand. Dana had played her part, smiling warmly while maintaining a professional demeanor. Now she was dazzling him with her mind. Crocket would invite her to lunch and add another client to his considerable stable. It was all he cared about. For a few hours, all would be forgiven.

The door to the conference room crept open. As the person entering came within Dana’s peripheral vision, she recognized Linda. She lost her train of thought. The words stopped flowing, and her voice became indecisive. She had yet to use a notecard, and now she had no idea where she was in her presentation. She paused and looked up at Crocket and Burnside with a pained smile. “Excuse me for a moment.”

Burnside reacted like a man dancing with a beautiful woman when the music abruptly stopped. Crocket looked like he’d bitten into something distasteful but covered it by clearing his throat and trying to sound casual. “We’ve been going about forty-five minutes. Now would be a good time for a short break.”

Dana ushered Linda to the reception area as the attendees reached for the Danishes and filled their mugs with coffee. They stepped around a mahogany table of neatly arranged magazines to a large potted palm in the corner of the room.

“I’m really sorry,” Linda said before Dana had time to chastise her. She clearly looked uncomfortable.

Dana suppressed her anger. Staff was underappreciated when things went well and abused when things went wrong. “What is it?” she asked, exasperated.

“Your husband is on the phone.”

Tension burst across the back of Dana’s neck. She spoke from between clenched teeth. “Tell him I’m in a meeting and will call him later.”

“I did. He insisted that I get you.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Dana saw Crocket lumbering toward them, gaining momentum like a ball pushed downhill. “What the hell is going on? Can we move this forward?”

“I’m afraid I have to take a call, Marvin.”

“Now? You have to take it now? Who the blazes is it?” He looked and sounded apoplectic.

“My husband,” she said reluctantly.

Crocket rolled his eyes and pulled at the taut sleeve of his cuffed shirt to view the face of his Rolex. “Bad timing. This is very bad timing.” He stormed away.

Dana started for the telephone in the small alcove off the conference room. Linda said, “He told me he wanted to speak with you in your office, in private.”

Dana nearly growled. She stormed around the corner. It likely had to do with Molly—the school had called and Molly was sick and had to be picked up. Or Grant needed a clean shirt or an errand or some other goddamn thing he couldn’t or wouldn’t do for himself.

She slammed her office door and snatched the receiver, knocking the telephone off the desk. The cord dangled over the side. “What the hell is it? I am in the middle of a meeting, and Crocket is about to explode.”

“Dana, I’m sorry. I know you’re in your seminar.”

“Was, Grant. I
was
in my seminar. Now I’m standing here talking to you while Crocket makes notes in my file about why the shareholders should fire me. Is that what you want, because—”

“Dana, I have bad news. I think you should sit down.”

“No, I’m not going to—” She caught herself. The tone of his voice was not demanding. It was not confrontational. He sounded passive, almost timid. A tremor had caused his voice to flutter.
I think you should sit down
. Her heart pounded with a jolt of adrenaline. Fear. “What’s wrong? It’s not Molly.”

“No, Molly’s fine.” He paused.

“What is it?”

“It’s your brother.”

“James?”

“I’m afraid it’s bad, Dana. It’s very bad. The police caught me in the driveway. I’m still at home.”

“Home? What are the police doing at our house?” She felt like she’d walked into the middle of a conversation. “Grant?”

“Your brother is dead. He was murdered last night.”

7

D
ETECTIVE
M
ICHAEL
L
OGAN
sipped a cherry-flavored Slurpee and carried a half-eaten foot-long hot dog topped with onions and relish. The top step sagged. Logan stepped off it, then reapplied his weight. The ends of the board lifted to catch the heads of the raised nails. Dry rot was prevalent in the older Northwest homes. The constant damp never gave things a chance to dry out. Wood wasn’t intended to last forever. The whole staircase would have to be ripped out and replaced, which was likely the reason for the lumber and construction materials in the driveway.

Neighbors had gathered along the sidewalk, standing alongside television crews behind the police barricade. The reporters held microphones, rehearsing their stories for when the morning news anchor went live to the scene of what appeared to be a homicide in Green Lake. Murders in suburbia were always big news.

A uniformed officer stood just inside the doorway of the home, holding a clipboard. Logan exchanged his Slurpee for a pen and signed his name to the log. It recorded the crime scene detail—who came in and out of the home. The list included the uniformed officers first on the scene; Henry Rodriguez, the evidence technician; Carole Nuchitelli, from the medical examiner’s office; the crime scene technicians who would remove the body; the crime scene photographer; and the forensics team. Logan took back his Slurpee and bit into the hot dog, working the flow of relish into his mouth as he stepped into the entry. Papers lay scattered on the floor next to a well-worn briefcase, the large kind that lawyers favored. The papers had apparently toppled from a stack on the table. A black leather jacket hung on a banister. Logan walked down the hall to a room at the back of the house, where the crime scene detail moved in a rehearsed dance around the victim—a man, judging from the khaki pants and brown loafers sticking out from behind the couch.

“Oh, God,” Logan said, stepping farther into the room.

Carole Nuchitelli looked up at him. “Welcome to the party.” She fitted the right hand of the victim with a plastic bag. She’d already tagged the ankle and placed the contents of the man’s pockets in Zip-loc bags next to her on the floor. Blood had puddled and rolled with the sag in the dark wood and matted the man’s hair a deep burgundy. His head was fractured and swollen. Nuchitelli pointed with a latex-gloved finger. “Nice breakfast. Don’t get any of that crap on my victim.”

“Lunch. I’ve been up since five; it’s noon for me,” Logan said, studying the scene.

“And you chose that?”

He crumpled what was left of his hot dog in the plastic wrap and shoved it in his coat pocket, no longer hungry. “You know me, Nooch. I have to eat six times a day just to keep the weight on.”

“Poor baby. Why couldn’t I get a metabolism like that?”

Nuchitelli stood, and they stepped back to give the crime scene photographer room. Logan noted nothing wrong with her metabolism. At nearly six feet, with strawberry-blond hair that reached the middle of her back, and the legs of a college volleyball player, the King County medical examiner was a sharp contrast to the brutally ugly crime scenes where she and Logan met.

“Bad one,” he said.

“Aren’t they all?”

“Scale of one to ten.”

Nuchitelli considered the body and sighed. “Beatings are always the worst. With gunshots and knife wounds, it can be pretty clean. But beatings…” She paused. “It’s the savagery. It’s the thought that someone stood here and administered each blow. It’s sick. I’d give it an eight.”

“How many blows you estimate?”

“More than ten. Twelve to thirteen.”

“Fear or rage,” he said.

Nuchitelli nodded. “We haven’t been out here much.” She was referring to Green Lake. “Can’t remember the last time. But it didn’t take you long to find the fast food.”

Logan had been reassigned to the North Precinct six months earlier. Normally, he worked with a partner, but his was in New Jersey for a son’s wedding. The North Precinct wasn’t as busy as the South Precinct. Logan had been transferred when he was promoted to homicide, after working eight years with the robbery and sexual assault units.

He shrugged. “All I had time for.”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

“Breaking it? Hell, I’ve been trying for three years to capture it.”

Nuchitelli smiled and shook her head. “Right. Talk about taking work home with you.”

Their flirtation was innocent. Logan wasn’t looking to complicate his life by dating a professional acquaintance. He just liked to make Nooch smile. Smiles were rare for the men and women working homicides.

“Besides, you’re too old for me,” she said.

“Easy. I hit forty last week, and I’m sensitive about it.”

“You’re not sensitive about anything.”

“Ouch again.”

She considered him. “Forty? You don’t look that old.”

“Are you trying to be nice or mean?”

“I meant it as a compliment. I would have guessed thirty-five. You’d probably look even younger if you didn’t put that crap in your system. You must have the metabolism of a jackrabbit.” She picked up a plastic bag and handed the object to Logan.

He weighed it in his hand. “Marble. Solid. Probably six pounds.”

“Definitely the murder weapon.”

The statue was carved with the face of an African tribal warrior. It had no flat surfaces. Pulling a print would be impossible. Logan considered the rest of the room. Blood-splattered wooden masks and tapestries hung on the walls. On a table below them, stone carvings of elephants, lions, zebras, and giraffes had toppled over. They, too, were spotted with blood. Logan took out a handkerchief and picked up a marble statue similar to the one in his hand. It had the carved face of a female. A matched set.

“Get pictures of this wall, Jerry,” he instructed the photographer before turning back to Nuchitelli. “So what do we know?”

She took another breath and let out a burst of air like a broken steam pipe. “The initial blow appears to be across the face, but the majority were administered to the back of the head. Given the savagery of the beating, I’d say someone came here with the intent to kill and surprised him in the dark.”

“Good guess,” he said. “But I don’t think so.”

She shrugged. “Okay, Sherlock, go ahead, give me your best shot.”

Logan always professed to be able to figure out a crime scene in five minutes. “The perp didn’t come here intending to kill him. The victim surprised him, and he panicked. That’s why the perp hit him so many times. It was fear.” He walked back into the hallway, toward the front door. Nuchitelli followed. He pointed at the stack of papers. “He comes home, drops that stack of papers on the table, and puts down his briefcase. That tells me he didn’t hear anything until he got back there, and since the killer didn’t just run out the back door, either he didn’t hear the victim come home or he wasn’t in that back room.” He pointed to a room next to the back room, then stuck his head in. The dresser drawers were open, clothes strewn from them and from the closet. Books had been toppled from a bookcase. “He was likely in here.”

“Maybe he was lying in wait,” Nuchitelli suggested.

“Maybe, except then he would have likely brought his own weapon.” Logan walked back to the body. “He came up from behind. The victim turned and got hit while standing, which explains the blood on those masks six feet up the wall.” Logan pointed. “Was that light on?”

“Far as I know,” she said.

Another voice shouted from the back of the room, one of the technicians. “The lamp was on. Only light on in the house.”

“Why wouldn’t the victim pick up the papers from the floor?” Nuchitelli pointed back down the hallway.

Logan turned. “What’s the estimated time of death?”

“Based on the body temperature, between ten-thirty and midnight to one in the morning. Give or take.”

Logan thought for a moment. “Okay. He gets home late, tired after a long day. He’s hungry, so he heads for the kitchen. Or maybe he had to pee, but I don’t think so if the perp was in the bedroom, because that would have given him time to get out.”

“Maybe the perp was upstairs,” Nuchitelli said.

“Then the victim likely would have heard him. No. I think the perp was definitely in the bedroom.” Logan turned in the doorway, facing the room with all the activity. He rocked as if walking down the hallway. “So he drops the papers on the table, and some fall. He puts his glasses on top, hangs his coat on the banister, and walks down the hall to get something to eat.”

“Why would he take off his glasses?”

“I don’t know.” Logan thought but didn’t come up with a plausible explanation. “Anyway, when he does get here, it’s dark, so he reaches and turns on the light. He hears something behind him, turns partway, and bam! He’s hit. The force of the blow pushes him against the table, knocking those pieces over, and he pinballs against the couch.” Logan mimicked the motion of the initial blow and fell to his knees, careful to avoid the marked evidence. “The second blow catches him in the back of the head.”

From his knees, Logan noticed the object sticking out from beneath the black leather couch. He called over one of the technicians and asked for a plastic bag. The man pulled one from a bunch clipped at his belt and handed it to Logan. Logan reached beneath the couch and pulled out a cell phone. It was on. He stood and slipped the phone into the bag. Through the plastic, he pressed a button that pulled up the last phone numbers dialed and received. “Huh. Guess I’m wrong. He might have been going to the kitchen, but the reason he didn’t pick up those papers or clean off his glasses was because he was on the phone.”

“How do you know it’s his phone?”

“Because I’m a pessimist, and I just can’t believe the killer would be so kind as to leave behind his phone for us to use to convict him. Time of death was eleven-ten,” he said, turning the phone so Nuchitelli could see it. “Give or take.” He wrote the number in a notebook and handed the telephone to the technician. “We’ll want a log of every number he called. Start with the past twenty-four hours.” He turned back to Nuchitelli. “What do we know about the victim?”

Nuchitelli shook her head. “You know me, Logan; this job is hard enough without making it more personal.”

“How’d we hear about it?”

“Neighbor phoned it in. Someone is next door calming her. She’s pretty upset.” Nuchitelli pointed to a doorway with no door. “Rodriguez is in the kitchen.”

Logan walked into the kitchen. A short Hispanic man stood observing an evidence technician attempting to lift fingerprints off the inside and exterior knobs of a back door. Head of the forensics laboratory for Seattle’s police districts, and fastidious to the point of neurosis, Rodriguez stressed over the slightest detail. In a career that often involved micromillimeters and particulates of evidence, he was well suited for his job.

Rodriguez pointed at Logan’s shoes, aghast. “Slipcovers. Why won’t you ever put them on?”

“Sorry, Henry, I don’t carry them around with me in the car. Anything useful?”

Rodriguez shook his head, annoyed. “Always something useful. Just have to find it. This place is loaded with fingerprints. Whether they belong to any of the killers, I don’t know.”

“Killers? As in more than one?”

“I’d say two. Outside the door you’ll find two different shoe prints in the garden soil. From the depth of the prints, I’d say they took off running down the back steps and jumped. Two distinct imprints; one looks to be a tennis shoe, I’d guess a size eight. The other is a boot. Bigger. Size twelve. Given the imprint, that person was heavier. ”

“Could one of them be the victim’s?”

“I doubt it. They’re fresh.” Rodriguez pointed in the direction of the victim. “He has no mud on his shoes, and he’s wearing loafers, a ten and a half. But we’ll cast the impressions and compare them with other shoes we find in the house.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“Not my area, Logan.”

“Humor me. Nooch says you told her a neighbor called it in.”

“Apparently, the guy was a law professor at Seattle U. The neighbor knocked on his door this morning to get coffee. When he didn’t answer, she figured he’d forgotten. She got down the block and saw his car and thought that maybe he was in the shower or something. So she came back and knocked louder. When he still didn’t answer, she thought it odd and went to get a key he gave her.”

“Key? She a girlfriend?”

“Not unless it’s a
Harold and Maude
type thing,” Rodriguez said.

“A what?”

“
Harold and Maude—
you know, the movie. It’s a cult classic. A twenty-year-old kid falls for an eighty-year-old woman.”

“I think I’ll pass. I just ate.”

“Whatever. Apparently, the victim and the neighbor exchanged keys in case one got locked out—a neighbor thing. She said she opened the door, stepped inside calling his name, and saw his legs on the floor. She thought maybe he’d fainted until she got close enough to see the blood.” Rodriguez paused, considering the body. “Heard they’ve reached the guy’s sister.”

Logan sighed. “I don’t envy her.”