Time of Death (39 page)

Wailing sirens announced the arrival of the ambulances he’d called for.

Recognition lit her eyes. “Leo?”

“Yes,” he said. He clasped one of her hands in both of his, protecting it, wanting to hold her but fearing that would make her injuries worse.

“Children upstairs to the right. Don’t know where May is,” she said. Every word seemed to take a focused effort. When she’d said them, she closed her eyes and collapsed. Schultz caught her before she hit her head on the cold marble, and he was immensely grateful that it wasn’t a cold slab in the morgue she was heading for.

“GUESS WHO GOT A
speeding ticket today?” Dave said.

The team was in PJ’s office. Wrappers littered her desk from the deli lunch they’d had. Her crutches stood in the corner. She had a stool next to her desk with a pillow on it, and her knee-to-toe cast was propped up. The compound fracture had needed surgery, so she had screws and plates in her ankle. Schultz had said they were two of a kind, since one of his feet was bolted together too.

“I’m no good at guessing games,” PJ said. “Just tell me. Anita, please turn on that fan behind you.”

I’m never going to air out the onions and jalapeños. Why didn’t we eat out instead of carry in?

“The driver of a black Blazer,” Dave said.

“
The
black Blazer?”

“Speeding on Market Street. Said she was in a hurry to get to Union Station.”

“A hot sale going on?” Anita said. “Wait,
she
?”

PJ could see that Dave was clearly relishing the information no one else had gotten hold of yet.
How could we? It feels like we’ve been eating sandwiches in here since breakfast.

“
She.
June Marie Merrett. Apparently she confessed to the traffic cop right there on Market. The woman’s on the edge.”

“We knew that already,” PJ said, thinking back over her conversations with June. “Why was she after me? I was trying to solve her husband’s murder. You’d think she would want me on the job.”

“It was because you had uncovered evidence of her husband’s affair with tantalizing Fredericka. She really didn’t know. Then when she found that gift that she thought was for her, and it turned out to be sexy lingerie in Fredericka’s size, it all crashed in on her. She thought you’d be blabbing about it everywhere and besmirch the memory of her beloved.”

“You’re kidding, right?” PJ said. She was waiting for everyone in the room to burst out laughing, having a joke at her expense.

“It’s true,” Dave said.

“So she couldn’t stand to have her true love bubble burst,” PJ said.

Poor guy probably didn’t stand a chance against Fredericka. All those hours working late in her loft.

“I can’t believe she was still driving that Blazer,” Anita said. “Didn’t she know it could be linked to the attempts on PJ’s life?”

“You’d be amazed what people keep after committing crimes,” Schultz said. “People are damn cheap.”

When the group broke up, PJ had them take the food wrappers and other assorted trash out with them. It probably ended up in the trashcan in the men’s room across the hall, where the smell would be a big improvement.

Schultz stayed behind, and closed the door. PJ’s eyebrows went up when he locked it.

“Leo, I admire your enthusiasm, but I’m not up to lap dancing,” PJ said. She rapped her knuckles on her cast.

“It’s not what you think,” he said. “I just didn’t want an audience.”

He came over to her, leaned heavily on the desk, and dropped to one knee. Pulling a box out of his pocket, he opened it and held it out to her. It was a diamond ring, an incredibly beautiful one.

“I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

Damn you, Leo, we never worked it all out, we never had the Talk.

She looked at the ring and tears welled up in her eyes.
Can I say no to a man who left a rose on my pillow?

“Those had better be tears of joy, and I hate to rush you, but my knee isn’t gonna take much more of this,” he said.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

“Yes.”

He slipped the diamond ring on her finger and kissed her hand.

“What are we going to do, Leo? I’ll ask for reassignment,” she said, answering her own question.

“I have an idea about that,” he said. He pulled something else out of his pocket and handed it to her.

It was a business card, and on it, in confident raised black ink, it said:

Leo Schultz, Private Investigator

Criminal Investigations

Cold Cases are my Specialty

No Damn Divorces

F
ORENSIC ANIMATION HAS BECOME
a popular tool in courtroom presentations. An animation is a rendering of an expert’s testimony on a monitor, set in motion and utilizing lighting and shading to make the elements appear three-dimensional. Since the early 1990s, dozens of companies have sprung into existence offering animations of everything from car accidents to airplane crashes to homicides. Instead of having a medical expert drone on about the angle of firing and position of the victim, a savvy prosecutor can create a computerized animation sequence that is accompanied by the expert’s explanation. Complex testimony becomes straightforward when reduced to visual terms.

Additionally, there is far more emotional impact in showing a bullet traveling in
Matrix
fashion toward a victim, the victim falling to his knees and being shot again, point-blank, than there is in having an expert recite the same events. Jurors are being converted into witnesses to the crime rather than passive listeners as attorneys tap into familiarity—conditioning might not be too strong a word—with television.

Computer simulations are different from the animations now in widespread use in that simulations allow the introduction of extrapolative evidence that is not a strict rendering of expert testimony. Simulations project logical outcomes, called scenarios, based on input provided to the computer. Alternative theories about how the crash occurred or the victim was killed can be played out in real time. Trial judges now rule on the acceptability of computerized presentations on a case-by-case basis. Judges seem more and more accepting of straightforward animations to help an expert witness make a point. Scenarios, because of their speculative nature and ability to captivate and convince a jury, can be excluded as prejudicial.

Developing scenarios about homicides sounds a lot like the investigative process already done by law enforcement personnel. Detectives have been doing this with their minds, chalkboards, and stray bits of paper for a long time. Recording the crime scene has gone from drawings to photographs to videos to panoramic three-dimensional images that allow an investigator to return to the scene of the crime on his office computer. There’s still one problem, though. The actual crime is in the past. The investigator is looking at the results and making inferences, some based on fact, some on experience, and some on a cop’s instincts.

It’s a small leap of the imagination—but a large leap of technology—from there to fully immersive virtual reality (VR) crime scenes that not only allow the investigator to watch a crime unfold but to participate in it as the criminal, victim, or witness. Immersive means that the investigator wears gear that isolates him from the real world as the computer creates a life-sized world he can experience by exploring. The investigator actually remains in one place while the virtual world moves around him. A close representation of what the killer saw and heard can be achieved, and the investigator can try out new theories on the fly. Senses beyond sight and hearing are in the works to enhance the experience. Interaction with the virtual world is vital to the experience. If a knife is on the kitchen counter, an investigator can grab it and stab the victim.

The virtual reality techniques in this book are almost all possible today, even though they may seem futuristic. One twist I have added is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) coupled with the virtual reality, so that the computer can creatively suggest ways that the crime might have been committed. The computer has become an investigator on the case—a partner with an off switch.

Forensic virtual reality is on the way to becoming an accepted law enforcement tool, just as psychological profiling was in the 1970s and DNA fingerprinting was in the 1980s. There are hurdles to overcome in terms of cost, acceptance by law enforcement personnel, and admissibility as courtroom evidence. If a police department has to organize a community fund-raiser to buy bulletproof vests or a trained police dog, it isn’t likely that the department will be pushing for the equipment and staff needed for a state-of-the-art forensic VR program. As costs come down and acceptance rises, forensic VR will be added to the detective’s tool bag just as onboard computers are showing up in police cruisers. PJ Gray and Leo Schultz might be fictional pioneers, but within a decade or two, they will have plenty of real-life counterparts.

It isn’t difficult to see immersive VR in use as detectives formulate theories. It’s much harder to imagine the progression from the investigative side to the prosecutorial. Picture this: jurors fully immersed in a crime scene, standing right there in the living room with the defendant watching every blow and blood spatter as he beats his wife. Will judges ever allow it, and what defendant would stand a chance if so?

While virtual reality is an interesting aspect of this book, it is really about the people on both sides of the homicides: the human dynamics of crime-solvers and the killers they hunt.

S.K.

T
HIS BOOK IS THE
product of more than one mind.

When I wrote it, I relied on the invaluable assistance of Lee Lofland, a recipient of the Association of Chiefs of Police Medal of Valor. Lee is a former police detective with a vast background in crime scene investigations, in areas such as murder, rape, robbery, arson, narcotics, murder for hire, and ritualistic and occult crimes. All of those qualifications don’t begin to describe the solid feeling of having Lee at my back with answers that keep my characters true to law enforcement principles and investigational techniques. Any errors in authenticity in this book are solely mine. Thanks, Lee, and if there’s anything I can do for you, you know where I live—or can easily find out.

The author is one link in the chain between story idea and bookstore shelf. Some of the others are my agent, Eleanor Wood of the Spectrum Literary Agency; John Heifers of Tekno Books; Mary P. Smith of Five Star Publishing; and my editor, Hugh Abramson. Thanks to all of you for making me look good. I give credit to the International Thriller Writers, American Crime Writers League, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime for providing in-depth knowledge and camaraderie. The Greater St. Louis Chapter of Sisters in Crime has been a wellspring of information and support. My special thanks to Laura Bradford, Vicki Berger Erwin, and Michelle Thouviner for those Saturday mornings in the bookstore café. To my sister Maxine Olmstadt, thanks for the time you spent reading my story and dispensing well-reasoned advice, and remember—you’re only young once. My special thanks to Ed Gorman, a brave, daring, handsome, and all-around swell guy, for his encouragement over the years.

My husband Dennis and sons Tom and Tim were terrific sources of strength and encouragement while the pages of the manuscript mounted up. I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. That’s one for each of you.

Lastly, I wish to thank Babykitty for keeping me company in the middle of the night as I wrote this book, and for the occasional letters and symbols he inserted by walking on the keyboard to get to the cat treats. On some days, his contribution seemed the better part of my writing.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 2005 by Shirley Kennett

cover design by Kathleen Lynch

978-1-4532-8686-9

This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

180 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA