Playing God (2 page)

The wind whistled up the hill and tore into them, rattling the ties on his hood and stinging his eyes. "What have we got?" he asked, raising his voice.

Aucoin was hanging onto his uniform cap, trying to keep it from blowing away. "Dead guy in the Mercedes. Looks like someone jammed a rod down his throat." There was a faint whiff of sickness on his breath.

An ugly corpse, maybe the kid's first, or the prospect of getting reamed by Portland's meanest cop? He'd find out soon enough. "Rod. That a euphemism or are we talking about a piece of metal?"

"Metal, sir."

"There's crime scene tape in a bag on the front seat. Mark it off and then I want you to be the recording officer. You got your notebook?" Aucoin nodded. Burgess raised his flashlight and examined the kid's face. His color was bad. Despite the sour breath, Burgess decided it wasn't distress, that would be green. This was the blue of hypothermia. Kid probably wasn't wearing thermals. Didn't want to look fat in his uniform. Young guys were like that, and this was Aucoin's first winter. He'd learn. "There's a watch cap, a heavy sweater and wind pants on the back seat. Put 'em on."

Aucoin hesitated, pride warring with common sense, then nodded. Burgess watched Aucoin grab the gear, then look around for a dressing room, like he wasn't standing in a snowy street. "Out here or in your car, I don't care, but hurry it up. Like to get things under control before I turn into a Popsicle."

While Aucoin opened his cruiser door and sat on the seat to pull on the pants, Burgess got the crime scene tape, a mallet and a handful of wooden stakes and dumped them in Aucoin's lap. "Ground's probably too hard for stakes. Trees. Poles. Use whatever you can," he said. "How'd you happen to find him?"

The young patrolman looked like he wanted to be anywhere else on earth. "I'd noticed the car earlier, sir. It had been there a while. I thought I'd better check."

"How much earlier?"

"Three hours, sir." The words came out a little bit strangled.

"You waited three hours to check on him?"

"Man's a regular, sir."

Burgess shined his light on the MD plates. "So our victim's a doctor. What's this regular do here?"

"Sex, sir."

He didn't like it that the kid had let so much time pass. That this doctor was allowed to park on a residential street and have sex in his car. "You know of any sex act that takes three hours?"

"No, sir." Kid's teeth were chattering.

No sense wasting time out here on things they could do inside later. Like talk. "You run the plates?"

"Pleasant. Dr. Stephen Pleasant. Radiologist over at the hospital. Pine State Radiology. Car's leased by the business."

The shiver he felt wasn't from the cold. He'd run into Pleasant before. "Live around here? This neighborhood?" In this part of town, the West End, there were some lovely houses.

"Cape Elizabeth."

"Surprise, surprise." His cousin Sam, chief down in Cape Elizabeth, wouldn't take kindly to
his
citizens parking on the streets and getting blow jobs. Burgess didn't either. "Speaking of hospitals, our friends from down the street are taking a damned long time, aren't they? You get that tape up while I look at our victim."

"Car's locked, sir," Aucoin said.

"Locked? How'd you get into the car? Break a window?" Aucoin's uncomfortable squirm was all the answer he needed.

"How do you know he's dead?"

"Oh, he's dead all right. Doesn't look like he died happy, either."

"Jesus Christ, Aucoin. You must be damned gifted if you can declare death through a closed car window. How long you been on the force?"

"Seven months, sir."

"A word of advice," Burgess said. "Don't start cutting corners. It's the quickest way to screw up any investigation..." He held up a hand to ward off the young officer's protest. "I know it's a miserable night. No one wants to get out of the car on a night like this. But the scumbags count on that. We don't wanna be playing the game their way."

Wind-whipped tears had turned to ice in the young cop's mustache. "Keep moving," Burgess said. "It helps. For starters, get me a scraper, okay? And don't make any new tracks." He strode over to the car, sliding on black ice under the powdery snow. The night was empty but not quiet. Wind rustled frantically through a nearby oak and shrieked around the buildings. Ice had reformed on the window where Aucoin had cleared it. He grabbed the scraper. "Give me a big perimeter, okay? And watch for footprints." Aucoin, hunched and miserable, crunched away.

He scraped the window, then took his flashlight and peered in, running the beam slowly over the still figure. The sharp light distorted the taut face into planes of yellow-white and dark crevasses. Maine wasn't exactly a hotbed of homicide, but Burgess had been a cop a long time, in Vietnam before that. He'd seen his share of ugly bodies but this was a contender. Dr. Pleasant hadn't gone quietly into that good night. Death had left its mark in the wide, horrified eyes, cocked head with straining neck cords, that metal rod protruding between the teeth like a fire-eater whose act has failed.

Early forensic scientists had believed the dying eye recorded the assailant's picture like a photograph and tried to find a method to recover it. Faces like Pleasant's, with the awful anticipation frozen there, had fueled those theories. The seat was pushed away from the steering wheel and half-reclined, like a dentist's chair. He could hear his dentist's voice. Open wide.

He wondered if the rod had gone through the victim's neck? What the ME would say about the cause of death, assuming the man was dead. Burgess didn't doubt it, but he had to make sure. As a police officer, he had the authority to declare the man dead. He could confirm, for the record, that the victim had no pulse or respiration, so no extraordinary measures would be taken to save his already lost life and screw up the crime scene.

He raised his flashlight, wincing at the desecration of such an expensive car, broke out enough of the window to slip a hand through, and opened the door. He exchanged leather for latex and touched the victim's bare chest. Despite the heater's best efforts, the car wasn't warm. Pleasant was already cooling, his skin gone a waxy yellow. He had no detectable pulse, wasn't breathing. His pupils were fixed and dilated. The blood which had dripped from the corners of his mouth onto his scarf was still wet and red, but coagulating.

This was when training and experience came together; when keeping an open mind and open eyes were essential. Burgess surveyed the rest of the body and the car's spotless, characterless interior—black leather, gray carpet. No change, phone, CDs, glasses, cups, papers or briefcase. Only a dark overcoat, folded carefully on the rear seat, which the drape suggested was cashmere. The car smelled faintly of pizza.

He noted things for the report, things to be collected, the strange choice of weapon, already framing the pictures, though he no longer took them. Who was this man? Why had he been here? Who had been with him? What had happened in this car? And why?

What would he say to the widow? It was a difficult conversation at the best of times. Getting caught—or killed—with your pants down was hardly that. Mrs. Pleasant—and a wedding ring suggested there was one—wouldn't want to know how her husband's body was found. His shirt unbuttoned and his pants unzipped. He wore no undershirt and there were garish lipstick stains around his nipples. His penis, upright and hard with post-mortem tumescence, still awaited its anticipated release. A party atmosphere despite the lack of decorations. On the passenger's seat were two crumpled twenties and a ten. Party favors? One clenched hand held many strands of long blonde hair. Otherwise there were no marks on the hands. No signs of a struggle.

He was supposed to wait for the ME, the photographer, and the rest of the crime scene team before he touched anything, but any second now, the wind might whip in and snatch those hairs away, hairs that, for all he knew, might be a vital clue. Making a mental note to bag the hands, he pulled out an evidence envelope, untangled some hairs from the clutching fingers, and dropped them in, carefully recording the necessary information.

He backed out of the car, slamming the door, just as the crime scene van, an unobtrusive Taurus full of detectives, and an ambulance pulled up. He hoped they wouldn't have to wait long for someone from the ME's office to arrive and release the scene so they could work it. He wondered whether, having met Pleasant briefly in the past, he ought to let someone else work the case. That was something he and the lieutenant could work out later. He was here, the body was waiting, and it would be a pity to drag anyone else out into this icebox of a night.

He shoved the envelope into his pocket and went to meet them.

Chapter 2

They finished the scene at six. A miserable, frost-bitten, chilled to the bone bunch of street cops, detectives and crime scene techs headed back to Middle Street and the promise of warm showers, hot coffee and breakfast. Even though his bones ached, Burgess skipped the shower. No time to waste. He went straight to Lt. Vince Melia's office to brief him on the case. Clutching a cup of coffee between his hands like a hot water bottle, he hunched in his chair and delivered the essentials.

Before he left, he brought up the thing that was bothering him. "Let me run something by you, Vince, see if you think I ought to hand this off to someone else. The victim, Dr. Stephen Pleasant, was my mother's doctor... the asshole who misdiagnosed her."

Melia looked pained. The city'd just had a high profile murder and his most experienced detective looked like he was trying to weasel out of the case. "You sue the man?" Burgess shook his head. "Threaten to sue him?"

"No."

"Think you'll have any problem working the case?"

"No."

"Then I've got no problem with it, either. Go find me a killer."

By seven, Burgess had changed into jacket and tie and done his initial reports. He was pulling on his coat, heading off to give Mrs. Pleasant the bad news, when Remy Aucoin's uncle Guy walked in.

"Look, Joe," he began.

"Not now, Guy. Gotta go see the widow." Burgess picked up his notebook, checked his pocket for gloves, and moved toward the door.

Guy Aucoin's nod was spare. "Look, about the kid..."

"Not now," Burgess repeated. Guy was getting old. The skin on his face sagged like a bloodhound's jowls above the tight uniform collar, and his neck looked like a plucked chicken. Did he look like that to others? Did looking at him make other people feel tired, their fingers unconsciously poking at their sagging chins?

Guy didn't move. The Aucoin way—stand your ground and stick together. He had a beaky face, forehead and chin receding from the prominent nose, as though it had taken more than its share of bone and cartilage to build that edifice. Chronic circles made his eyes look sad. "I only need a minute, Joe. About the kid..."

"About the kid, Guy? What have you been teaching him, that he's letting hookers use his patrol area like that? Not the first time, he says. Pleasant's a regular. And that's not all..." Shit. He didn't have time for this.

"He's worried about his record."

"Oughta worry about survival. Kid wants to live through the winter, he better wear thermals. Tell him, next time, break the window, it's the person that matters. Tell him to be more curious. More careful. He's smart. He'll learn. Excuse me." Sighing, the man stepped aside to let him pass. The uncles were taking too much interest in their nephew's career. Ultimately, it fell on Remy. He needed to stand on his own feet, develop judgment, something he'd learn more slowly if his uncles interfered.

Dawn hadn't diminished the cold at all. Crossing the parking lot, the air was needle-sharp, bending Burgess over with a cough like a life-long smoker. He waited for the engine to warm up, watching his breath hang in the air. Too tired to get out and scrape. He used to get a second wind around now, the excitement of the chase buoying him up. Not any more. He carried his weariness like a chronic disease. His doctor offered anti-depressants, but a lifetime among criminals, crazies and society's human junk heaps had made him wary of drugs, legal or illegal. He didn't believe in chemicals, he believed in endurance.

He leaned back, staring at the windshield. At the top, the sun peeping over the Old Port's brick buildings illuminated icy etchings, elaborately and intricately beautiful. At the bottom, heat turned the beautiful detailing to opaque mush. Soon the slap of wiper blades would flick it all away, giving him back a clear view of the lot full of salt-rimed cars and dirty snow.
Sic transit gloria mundi.