Designed to Kill (13 page)

I nodded. “I think it’s time we started looking for SH.”

16

Pensacola
and
Escambia
County
may be worse than
Nashville
for long streets that change names as often as crabs on the beach change their shells. The route into town was almost a straight shot once you started across the bridge to the mainland. But what began as Perdido Key Drive became Sorrento Road at the first traffic light, changed to Gulf Beach Highway a few miles later, and then to Barrancas Avenue. We crossed the high bridge over Bayou Chico and veered off to the east through the downtown business area and the historic section, where the city was settled back in the late 1600’s.

Circling up the elevated ramp to I-110, we drove north past commercial and industrial areas to the
Brent Lane
exit, which took us to
Pensacola
’s largest shopping center, Cordova Mall. Jill and I had found the mall handy for use as a walking track once during a period of bad weather, but today we were hoping for something a bit grander, like a small miracle, or at least a lucky break.

As it was still a good half-hour before
noon
and the lunchtime rush, the place was only modestly busy, though the corridors hummed with both stylishly dressed shoppers and others who appeared in various stages of undress. It’s a
Florida
thing.

I had no idea where The Bodde Shoppe was located, but Jill possessed an unerring instinct for fashionable dress shops. She homed in on it like a bloodhound sniffing out a fleeing felon.

Jill carried the red velvet jacket in a white plastic bag. I had offered her a blue one from Wal-Mart, but she let me know she wouldn’t dare come in here with something like that. Looking around at the price tags, I could understand why. A young woman in a short green dress stood near the cash register talking with an older colleague in a conservative gray suit.

“Can I help you?” the younger one asked.

Jill smiled and pulled the jacket from the bag. “I hope so. We had a party for a niece who went to school in
Pensacola
. We invited friends, and friends of friends. A lot of people came we didn’t know. Somebody left this jacket, and we have no idea who.” She opened the jacket to show the tag. “It has ‘SH’ written inside. I hoped you might know of a customer with those initials.”

The older woman shook her head with a look of exasperation. “Sherry Hoffman. Count on her to do something like that.”

“Sherry Hoffman?” Jill repeated.

“I sold her the jacket. That girl is bright as a new penny. And ambitious, you wouldn’t believe. But she can be a trifle flighty at times, and...well, unorthodox. I’ll bet she wore something outrageous with that jacket.”

“There were some outrageous outfits there,” Jill said with a laugh. She was playing the part to the hilt. “The name doesn’t ring a bell with me, though.”

“She runs Coastal Realty. Has an office on
Gulf Beach Highway
. You may have seen where she wants to run for the State Senate. I’ll bet she doesn’t remember where she left that jacket. I’ll get on her case the next time she’s in here.”

“Don’t be too hard on her,” Jill said. She stuffed the jacket back into the bag and we turned toward the door. “Thanks for the help.”

I looked around at Jill as we headed up the corridor toward the entrance at the center of the mall. “You wouldn’t think a sales person would be so ready to gossip about a customer,” I said.

“She’s probably the owner. And they sound like very good friends.”

“Maybe so. Anyway, congratulations. You did a great job in there, babe. I may nominate you for an Oscar in best supporting role.”

She feigned a pout. “I should get best actress at the very least.”

“Sorry. You weren’t on stage long enough to qualify.” I gave her a consoling pat on the shoulder. The good shoulder. “So what do you think of Sherry Hoffman?”

“She sounds like a gutsy lady, wants to be a state senator. Maybe a little flaky, though.”

“I found her occupation interesting. Real estate. I wonder if she deals in beachfront condos?”

“Do you suppose—?”

“I don’t suppose anything at the moment,” I said. “I just know we need to learn a bit more about Miss Hoffman, then pay her a visit.”

Out in the parking lot, Jill glanced at her watch. “My tummy as well as my timepiece is signaling we should pause for lunch.”

I looked around and spotted a Red Lobster next to the
Ninth Avenue
exit. “This is our first shot at fresh seafood. How about it?”

“You’re the driver,” she said.

A short drive, to be sure. We went inside and were ushered to a booth near the back beneath a wooden sign painted with a shrimp boat. After a brief look at the menu, we both ordered stuffed flounder. It seems we invariably eat the same thing when we go out, but since that’s also what we do at home, I guess it figures. Anyway, we have similar tastes in most things.

“I’m sure you noticed what’s across the street,” Jill said as we waited for our food.

“The Sacred
Heart
Hospital
.”

“Right. I suppose I should go over and see if they have a rehab center.”

“Good idea,” I said. “I need to go, too.”

“To a rehab center?”

I grinned. “Yeah. My libido needs rehabilitation.”

“Like Elizabeth Taylor needs another husband.”

“Just kidding. That’s where the Medical Examiner’s office is located. Remember? I asked the ranger.”

———

A short time later, feeling as stuffed as the flounder, we got back in the Jeep and crossed over to the hospital parking area. Inside, the lobby had a high ceiling and a fancy chandelier. It looked almost a mini-version of one of those marble-floored political mausoleums in
Washington
. We stopped at the information booth and asked how to find the rehab center and the ME’s office. I suggested we save time by going our separate ways and meeting back in the lobby in thirty minutes.

My trek took me to the depths of the building, where I followed a lengthy passageway that looked like a storage area for beds, gurneys and wheel chairs. The corridor ended at ground level in the rear of the building. Following the directions I’d been given, I stepped out the exit and found an adjacent door with a sign that said
FIRST DISTRICT MEDICAL EXAMINER
.

The door was locked, so I pressed the button, heard a click and opened the door. Inside was a small waiting room with a couple of chairs on each side, a potted green plant and the inevitable flamingo paintings. Not a soul in sight. On the left, a counter with a window opened onto a small office, unoccupied. An open doorway led into a room that appeared jammed with files. After I had stood there for a moment, a thin young man about my height, wearing squarish glasses like Ben Franklin, walked out of an office off the file room.

“Anybody helping you?” he asked as he strolled out to the waiting area. He appeared to be around thirty, dressed in dark pants and a blue dress shirt, hair brown and shaggy.

“No,” I said. “You’re the first live body I’ve seen around here.”

He grinned. “A little morgue humor there? What can I do for you?”

I explained who I was and what I was doing here.

“I haven’t run into anything like this before.” He studied me for a moment as though I were some sort of oddity. “Please have a seat, Mr. McKenzie. I’m Dexter Longley, forensics technician. And I just happen to be your man. I was on call Saturday
 
morning. I’m the one who went to the scene, and I also helped the pathologist with the autopsy.”

I took one of the chairs and smiled up at him. “I appreciate your willingness to help. Tell me about the condition of the body when you got there.”

Longley sat in the chair across from me and tugged an ear thoughtfully. “He was lying on his left side, across the console, with his head against the driver’s seat. There was a near contact entry wound on the right temple, with searing around it. I knew it was almost certainly fatal.”

“Near contact meaning the barrel was not pressed against his head?”

He nodded. “But it would have been held less than ten millimeters away. The bullet left a small hole with a wide band of blackened tissue around the edges. It’s caused by a combination of flame from the muzzle and soot from burnt powder.”

“Did you find any blood or powder burns on his hand or sleeve?”

“No. You don’t always get high velocity back spatter from a wound like this.” He smiled, then leaned forward. “Dr. Crandall has a thing about the term ‘powder burn.’ Powder does not burn the skin per se. He says we should refer to it as powder tattooing, stippling or blackening caused by flame and soot.”

“Okay, no powder burns. Did you do anything like a paraffin test on Tim’s hand?”

“We did a Gunshot Residue Kit using SEM—scanning electron microscopy.”

“What did you find?”

“Traces of elements you would expect after someone fired a gun. Barium, antimony and lead.”

I frowned. “Traces. Doesn’t that test sometimes produce false positives?”

“It can, if the person has been handling certain chemicals. But it was just one more indication that we were looking at a suicide.”

“What about the bullet’s trajectory?”

“Angled slightly downward.”

“And that’s consistent with suicide?”

“It varies. He had long arms. With shorter arms, it might have been slightly upward. But the temple is the favorite site.”

“I understand the gun was found on the floor.”

“Right. Statistically, I think only in about a quarter of the cases is the gun found still in the victim’s hand. The bullet was recovered also. It was a .38 caliber semi-jacketed hollow point.”

“All right,” I said, “it sounds pretty cut and dried. All very scientific. But tell me this—would anything you found rule out the possibility of someone else firing the gun?”

He crossed his arms and thought a minute. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders. “I guess not. But consider the circumstances. The victim was obviously under a lot of stress, anguished over the accident that had killed two people at The Sand Castle. It appeared to have been his fault. Sergeant Payne of the sheriff’s office was a witness to his appearance and behavior. Videotapes from the ranger station showed only Mr. Gannon’s car going into the Seashore. All the findings were consistent with suicide. And absent any evidence that someone else had been on the scene at the time of the shooting, Dr. Crandall could reach no other conclusion than a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

Thanks to Sergeant Payne, I thought, no real search had been made for evidence of anyone else at the scene. “You do a pretty good job with the doctor talk yourself,” I said.