Avenging Angels (20 page)

Hunter stepped aside. Bree saw two uniformed cops in the small foyer and an ominous shape prone on the hall floor.

“Eddie’s not waiting for anyone. Eddie’s right here. Somebody shot him in the head. Probably a .22.” Hunter’s face was bleak. “He’s dead.”

Murder will out.

—Chaucer, “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”

 

 

 

“There’s no way Bree and I can stay in the house tonight.” Antonia stood in the kitchen, shivering. Bree had draped a raincoat over her, but it didn’t seem to help. “This is the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to my sister and me, Lieutenant.”

Bree thought about this for a moment. It was certainly the worst thing that had happened to the two of them together.

“. . . And I know I should be braver about it, but I just . . .” She bit her lip. “I just can’t seem to stop shivering.”

Hunter was unexpectedly gentle. “A little brandy might help.”

Bree had been leaning against the kitchen cabinet, her arms folded across her chest. “There’s some in the front in the bookshelf. I’ll get it.”

The kitchen had two doors. The back door led directly to the outside and a little stone porch with steps that went down to River Street below. The other led straight into the living room. The bookshelves were built into the wall directly across from the fireplace. Bree knelt down and got the brandy bottle from the lower shelf and looked to her left, through the small archway to the front door. Eddie lay facedown on the black and white tile. The back of his head didn’t bear looking at, although the damage wasn’t as horrific as Bree had expected. Two white-suited forensics guys were crowded into the small space. One had a video camera on her shoulder; the other bagged Eddie’s left hand, and then his right. The front door was open, and the whap-whap-whap of the ambulance lights lit up the crowd gathered in the street.

Bree carried the bottle back into the kitchen and poured a small measure into a glass she took from the dish drainer by the sink. Tonia took a shaky sip, and then another. A little color came back into her cheeks. “I’ve never seen a dead body before,” she said.

“Well, you shouldn’t have looked at this one,” Bree said in a practical way. Antonia had bolted to the front door, looked, screamed, and promptly been sick all over the brick stoop.

“And you don’t need to spend the night here, or tomorrow night, for that matter. I called Aunt Cissy. She offered to come and get you, but Sam’s going to have a patrol car take you over to her place.”

“After we get your statement,” Hunter said.

“Not you, Bree? You’re going to stay
here
? Are you crazy?”

“This has to be part of the O’Rourke case. My case. I need to know what happened.” Hunter made a noise. She shook her head apologetically. “It’s true, Sam. Unless you think this was just a random shooting.”

“I know damn well it wasn’t a random shooting.”

The back door opened a crack, and Hunter’s red-haired sergeant stuck her head into the kitchen. Her name was Markham and she liked Bree about as well as a hound liked chiggers. She ignored Bree completely, cast a contemptuous glance at Antonia, and said, “Ready when you are, Lieutenant.”

“Go put a few things into an overnight case, Tonia,” Bree said. “We’ll talk in the morning, okay?”

“Maybe I’ll go home to Plessey,” Tonia said. “Just for a little while.”

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” Bree repeated. “Sergeant Markham is going to take your statement and then you go straight to Cissy’s.”

“Can I take Sasha with me?”

Sasha butted his head against Bree’s knees and the message came through clearly.

“How do you think Sweet Pea’s going to feel about that?”

Antonia’s woebegone face brightened. “I forgot about her. Sasha’d turn his nose up at all those pink ribbons Cissy uses, wouldn’t you, Sash?”

“A poodle,” Bree said to Hunter. “A very spoiled poodle.”

“Okay,” Antonia said. She blew her nose one more time into Hunter’s handkerchief, then returned the waddedup ball to him. “I’m off, then. And I’m sorry about your friend.”

“So am I,” Hunter said. His voice was grim.

Bree waited until Antonia had packed her overnight case and disappeared out the back door. The noises from the front told her Eddie’s body was being wheeled out to the ambulance. A voice drifted back to them: “It’s all over, folks. Time to go home.”

“I’m surprised the media’s not here yet,” Bree said.

“Only a matter of time.” Hunter drew a chair away from the kitchen table, sat down, and rubbed his hands over his face.

“Shall I make some coffee?”

“Good idea.”

Bree liked good coffee, and she liked the whole process of making it. She ground the beans, boiled the water, and put both into the French press. She set cups out for both of them and then sat across the table from Hunter.

“You know this is related to the case.”

Hunter nodded. “He thought he’d found something in the autopsy tapes.”

“Really.” Bree brought the coffee cup to her lips and then took it away again. She’d never be able to sleep if she had caffeine this late at night. It didn’t seem to bother Hunter. “Did he tell you what?”

Hunter shook his head. “Just left me a message. Wanted me to join you at B. Matthew’s tonight.” He’d been staring into his hands. He lifted his head now and looked directly at her. His gray eyes were cold. “Then he left me another message. Said you wanted to change the meeting time.”

“Nope,” Bree said. “I didn’t change a thing about the arrangements for tonight. And before you have to ask—I was with at least forty people from about six o’clock until eight thirty. Continuously.”

Bree looked at Sasha and wondered if her suspect list had just gotten shorter.

“Did anyone hear a shot?” Bree blinked. “Wait a minute. There wasn’t any blood on the tile on the front hall. He was
dumped
here?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Do we have an approximate time of death?”

“Not yet.” He hesitated. “There were some obvious indicators. The body was fairly warm, and the clotting not too far advanced.” His face darkened. “He was killed a couple of hours before we found him.”

“Any sense of when someone dropped the poor soul in my front hall?”

“There’s lot of traffic on Bay, especially during rush hour.”

“And who did find him?”

“Your next-door neighbor. The antiques guy. He was locking up for the night about seven thirty and noticed your front door was slightly ajar.”

“And he . . . ?”

Hunter spread both his hands wide. “We’re getting a statement.” He patted his pocket and took out his cell phone and spoke into it—“Right”—then got to his feet.

“You’re leaving?”

“You know the drill, Bree. Eddie was on suspension, but he was still one of us. We’ll put everything we have into nailing whoever did this.”

“Of course,” she murmured. “Whatever you have to do.” Then, as he was halfway out the back door: “The autopsy tapes. Do you have them?”

“Nope.”

“But there are copies, surely?”

“Stay out of this, Bree.”

“In New York, there must be copies. He wouldn’t have been walking around with the originals.”

“You heard what I said.”

“I heard what you said.”

“And that was?”

“Butt out, butt out, butt out.” Bree sighed. “I’m so sorry, Hunter. You two must have gone back a long way.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “I’ll tell you about it sometime. After it’s over.”

“Maybe after another basketball game,” she said. “You’ll need a rain check on this one.”

He nodded, sharply, and left.

The house was very quiet. Bree looked down at Sasha, who looked back at her and wagged his tail. “He didn’t actually die here,” she whispered. “But I suppose we can try.” She put the coffee cups in the sink, smoothed her hair back, and went through the living room to the front door. There was crime scene tape in place, which wouldn’t be removed until forensics had done a second sweep. The place where Eddie’s body had lain was marked off with fluorescent tape. Bree waited. A siren sounded, a long way off. The grandfather clock in the corner of the living room ticked on. Sasha sighed, scratched at his side, and sighed again.

Nothing. No pale wraith rose from the black and white tiles to tell her a thing.

Suddenly she was exhausted.

She took a long shower, turned out the lights, and fell into bed, Sasha curled up next to her on the floor. “You know what, Sasha?” she said into the darkness. “We’ve got autopsy photos. Not the tape, but pictures. Petru collected a terrific file. And I know who can take a look at them for me, too.”

O! That a man might know the end of this day’s business, ere it come.

—Shakespeare,
Julius Caesar

 

 

 

“Very interesting,” Dr. Lowry said, “very, very interesting.” She held a magnifying glass in her hand and bent over the photographs like an egret, slim neck extended, arms tucked into her sides like folded wings. “I don’t suppose the actual body’s available.”

Bree knew her Company’s limitations. “No, I’m afraid not.”

“Hm.” Dr. Lowry put the magnifying glass down and shuffled the photos into a neat stack. Then she perched on the round stool next to her examining table. “There should be a videotape of the autopsy itself. I’d like to see that before I commit myself.”

“I don’t know if I can obtain a copy for you or not,” Bree said. The Company rules for collecting evidence were fairly clear to her by now. Any forensic evidence, files, interviews, or documents that would eventually be made available to the public were fair game for Petru and Ron. “But I’m not asking you to prepare testimony. We just need a shove in the right direction. So commit away.”

“Well.” Dr. Lowry put her fingertips together and tapped her lips. “The twelve-gauge is a horrible weapon at . . . what was the distance again?” She flipped through the pages of the written autopsy report.

“Three feet, seven inches,” Bree said, from memory.

“Yes. As is screamingly obvious to all, the damage to the cerebellum, the corpus callosum, and the parietal lobes is considerable.”

“These are all parts of the brain,” Bree said, who was struggling for accuracy.

“Correct. But the blast missed the medulla oblongata, or most of it. And that’s what is so interesting.” Dr. Lowry settled back onto the stool with a pleased air.

Bree made an encouraging face.

“Oh! Of course. You see this channel here? Right above C1. The C1 is the first vertebra in the spinal column. The medulla is at the base of the brain, just above it. It controls the autonomic nervous system. Breathing, heart rhythm, et cetera, et cetera.”

The only time Bree had ever heard anyone actually pronounce “et cetera” was in a hugely old version of the musical
The King and I
.

“It looks like something was inserted between the medulla and C1.”

“Something?”

“A different bullet, is my guess. A .22, maybe, from the size of the channel.”

“You mean Russell O’Rourke was shot twice?”

“Maybe.”

Bree’s heart began to pound.

“Quadriplegics suffer damage to the spinal column right about here,” Dr. Lowry said.

“You mean that bullet . . .”

“If it was a bullet. I’m going way out on a limb, here.”

“That bullet would have paralyzed him.”

“Oh, yes. Now, there’s no damage up here. See? Lot of nice unaffected brain tissue between the mess up above and this channel down here.”

“Paralyzed him. But not killed him.”

“Nope. It was the massive trauma to the rest of the brain that did that.”

Two separate shots.

Maybe hours apart.

And a killer that liked to move the bodies around.

“Good grief,” Bree said. Then, “Lord.”

“You did say you weren’t preparing testimony. Because this is my best guess. Couldn’t swear to it.”

“Dr. Lowry . . .”

“Call me Megan.”

“Megan. I may owe you the best dinner in town. I may owe you an entire European vacation.”

“Well,” Megan said, who was clearly pleased, “anytime, Bree. Anytime. I like Switzerland, by the way. And now . . .” She gave a regretful sigh and looked at her watch. “I’ve got a live patient waiting outside for me.”

Bree gathered her file together and slipped it back into her briefcase. She resisted the urge to give Megan Lowry a big kiss on the cheek. But when she was outside the clinic, she did a victory dance, to the bemusement of two art students doing charcoal sketches on the sidewalk. Sasha walked around in delighted circles, tail wagging furiously.

Bree hopped into her car and drove to Angelus Street. She wanted to bounce ideas for the next steps in the investigation off Ron and Petru. But when she let herself in the front door, the downstairs office was empty. No one was in the kitchen, where Petru’s workstation sprawled messily next to the stove. No one was in the conference room, either.

Bree ran lightly up the stairs, with Sasha ticking along behind her. Lavinia’s rooms occupied all of the second floor. Bree had only been in there once; she had a fuzzy recollection of her experience, of soft rain and large-eyed lemurs. She tapped softly on Lavinia’s door. There were mutterings, whisperings, and the soft sounds of breezes. But no answer to her knock.

Bree looked down at her dog. “All of them? All at the same time? Who’s answering the phones?” Rather crossly, Bree dialed her office number into her cell. She heard the phone downstairs shrilling away, and then her cell phone went dead and the ringer downstairs was cut off abruptly. “That bloody battery, Sasha.” It was way past time for a new cell phone.