Authors: Michael J. McCann
“
121
st
?” Hank repeated. “Near the place where Martin Liu was found?”
“
I don’t know,” she said, glancing over. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Hank watched her thumb tap a rhythm on the bottom of the steering wheel and knew that the adrenaline was stoking her up. They flew over the bridge into South Shore East and worked their way over to 121
st
Street. They saw the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles and police cruisers as soon as they turned onto 121
st
and in a matter of moments they were getting out of the Firebird and tossing away their coffee cups into a trash barrel at the first set of barricades at the end of the block.
They passed through the curious onlookers gathered at the barriers, avoiding reporters who looked as tired and grouchy as Hank felt, and showed their identification to a uniformed officer who moved a wooden barrier aside for them to pass. As they walked up the street toward the inner barrier that enclosed the crime scene, Hank knew it was the same place, the same alley in which Martin Liu had been left for dead four years ago.
They stopped at the secondary barrier of crime scene tape and nodded to the uniformed officer with the clipboard who was controlling access to the primary scene. Karen went through first. When it was Hank’s turn he gave the officer his ID. As his name and badge number were being written down on the clipboard, Hank looked at the officer’s face. He was a muscular young cop who looked fresh out of school. He glanced at the man’s name tag, which said
Shanks
.
Hank signed the clipboard and took back his ID. “Any relation to Detective Shanks, used to work in Auto Theft?”
Officer Shanks looked at Hank without expression. “My uncle, sir.”
Hank smiled. “I spent quite a few long night shifts with your Uncle Jerry. Taught me everything you’d ever want to know about stealing cars. How’s he like retirement?”
“
Hates it,” Officer Shanks said.
Hank nodded and slipped his ID back onto his belt.
“
Please walk to the right of the green markers, Lieutenant,” Officer Shanks said.
Hank saw that a trail of luminous green versa-cones had been laid out to mark a safe route into the crime scene. He followed them toward the entrance of the alley. On his left was a dusty Ford Escort parked at the curb beneath a street lamp about fifteen yards from the alley. Evidence technicians were busy processing the car, around which they had set up a series of 600-watt lamps on tripods. On his right, along the far side of the street, were two long rows of barricades to prevent anyone from coming out of the buildings into the scene. There were only a few stray bystanders there, and Hank suspected that the buildings along that side were all abandoned. Most of this neighborhood, well inside R Boyz territory, was economically depressed.
A small area had been set up near the front of the Biltmore Arms apartment building as a command post. Karen was talking to Byrne, Lieutenant Jarvis and a uniformed officer wearing sergeant’s stripes.
“—
first put the tape across the front of the alleyway,” the sergeant was saying, “then when they realized the car was part of the scene they moved the tape back to where you see it now.” He nodded to Hank and turned his attention back to Karen. “The ME has been here for a while.”
“
Identification was made how?” Karen asked.
“
Vic’s wallet was conveniently left open next to the body so the driver’s license was visible,” replied the sergeant. He was squat and muscular, with a fringe of short grey hair on his head. “You’ll see when you go in. The responding officers left everything just like they found it, touched nothing. The scene’s clean.”
“
Eye witnesses?” Karen asked.
“
Not that we know of so far. We’ve started going floor by floor in the apartment building,” nodding at the Biltmore Arms, “and we’re checking it out across the street in case there’s some squatters who might have seen something. The buildings are mostly empty around here.”
“
Anybody talk to the media yet?” Hank asked.
“
I’ll have a quick word with them before I leave,” Jarvis said, turning to Karen. His hand moved reflexively across his cheeks as though to assure himself that he had in fact shaved before coming down to the crime scene. “If you want to give them anything later I’ll leave that up to you. For now I’ll give them a basic rundown of the situation.”
“
All right,” Karen said.
“
Light on the details, Bill,” Hank cautioned. “No mention of any connection to the cold case.”
“
Thank you,
Lieutenant
,” Jarvis retorted, eyes flashing. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
“
ME says come on in,” a crime scene technician called over to them.
Karen glanced at Hank, caught his nod, and went. They would take turns approaching the scene in order to get their own first impression. Byrne gave her a head start and then followed.
“
I’ve got to get back,” Jarvis said to the sergeant. He looked at Hank. “It’s Stainer’s case, Donaghue. Don’t get in her way.”
“
Okay, I’ll try not to screw it up.”
“
Asshole.” Jarvis strode quickly away down the street toward the media. Hank knew he was looking forward to seeing himself on breakfast television in a few hours.
“
I’m Donaghue,” he said, holding his hand out to the sergeant.
“
Yeah, I know, Lieutenant,” the sergeant replied, shaking hands with a crushing grip. “Daravicius. Honored to meet you.”
Hank frowned and put his right hand behind his back before flexing his fingers to ease the pain.
“
I was a year behind you coming out of the academy,” Daravicius explained. “I was still a newbie in Riverfront District when you cracked the Post kidnapping.”
Hank nodded.
“
Jarvis I never met before. He’s charming.”
Hank chuckled. “How do you like South Shore East?”
“
S-S-D-D.” Same shit, different day.
“
I hear you.”
“
Jarvis said this might connect to something else you’re already working.”
“
Could be,” Hank said. “It was a 911 call?”
“
Yeah. Anonymous. We were on the scene within six minutes.”
Hank turned away, his mind already roving into the alley toward the body that waited for him.
Daravicius lifted his radio and called his officers inside the Biltmore Arms for an update.
Hank took out his penlight and slowly walked into the entrance of the alley. Along the wall of the building on the left was a collection of overflowing garbage cans and a pile of garbage bags being examined by one of Byrne’s technicians under the light of several 600-watt lamps. On the right was a dumpster that emitted a bad smell. Hank slowly walked down the middle of the alley, shining his penlight from side to side. He glanced at a yellow versa-cone with the numeral 8 and saw next to it a packet of white powder. He took two more paces and knelt down beside cone 9, which marked a syringe that looked new and unused. He straightened and walked to the dumpster, shining his light inside. The smell drove him back.
“
Bad, huh?” The technician grinned at him. “Four plastic grocery bags filled with rotting fish heads.”
“
Lovely.”
Hank moved on, past the other dumpster along the wall on the left, past the pile of garbage bags, to where the body waited for him. The medical examiner and a crime scene technician were crouched by the body and Karen stood nearby, talking to Byrne, so Hank hung back for a moment. He took out his notebook and started writing.
When Karen caught his eye he made his approach, pausing to look at the footprints marked with versa-cones 10 through 14. Two types of shoe, one that looked like a smooth-soled dress shoe and the other like a crepe sole with a stucco-like pattern. He reached the body and bent down.
“
Jim,” he said, nodding to Dr. Jim Easton, who was crouched on the other side of the body. Easton still wore the large gold wire-frame glasses and the trademark blond caterpillar moustache across his upper lip, and he still looked as though he were fresh out of college, but he had moved up the ladder in the four years since they had last met in this particular alley over the body of Martin Liu.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner employed death investigators at several levels within its hierarchy. At the lowest level were Forensic Investigators, who were contract workers paid on a per diem basis. They were often recruited from hospitals where they had gained experience in death investigation or trauma care. At the next level were Assistant Medical Examiners, employees of the city who had probably started out as Forensic Investigators. Above the AMEs were Medical Examiners, who were experienced forensic pathologists, and finally the Chief Medical Examiner, who had migrated from the realm of forensic pathology to the far different world of administration and politics. Four years ago Easton had been a newly-minted Assistant Medical Examiner, on the city payroll for only a short time after six months as a Forensic Investigator, and now he was a Medical Examiner who, rumor had it, was thinking seriously about the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in the not-too-distant future. Hank figured he was still a little too young to understand the consequences of coveting the CME’s job. Or maybe he did understand and was anxious to escape the exhausting, stressful responsibilities of a forensic pathologist for the brave new world of administrative power and political influence.
“
Good morning, Hank,” Easton said. “Ringing any bells for you?”
“
Yeah.” Hank noted the rumpled clothing with indentations where someone had obviously gripped hard while carrying the body. He saw the large bloodstain on the left leg just above the knee and two neatly drilled holes above the bridge of the nose, but there was virtually no blood at all on the ground beneath the body. ShonDale was lying on his back, legs slightly bent, hands bound together by a plastic locking strap, eyes open. Paper bags had been placed on his hands and feet in order to preserve trace evidence.
He stared at ShonDale’s bald head and at the tattoo on the side of his neck. It was a stylized letter R designed to resemble the graffiti markings of the R Boyz that everyone had seen on walls, mailboxes and overpasses in this part of the city. He caught Karen’s eye and pointed. She nodded grimly.
Just as Taylor Chan had described it.
He had a bald head and a picture on the side of his neck. It looked like writing on a wall. I think it was an R.
Crime scene technician Butternut Allenson worked silently next to Easton, using tweezers to remove hairs from the shoulder of ShonDale’s pineapple-print shirt. She dropped them into paper trace evidence folds, sealed the folds and labeled them. She worked methodically, with a patience Hank admired. Thirty-four years old, she was married to a carpenter and had twin ten-year-old daughters. She was fairly tall, at five feet eight inches, wide-hipped, and her mouth and eyes were large. Her thick shoulder-length hair was the color of butternut wood, between blond and brown, hence the nickname her husband had given her. Hank had worked with her before and had never heard anyone call her by her given name, June.
“
You remember the Martin Liu case, do you?” Hank asked Easton, bending forward to look closely at ShonDale’s hands.
“
Not until your colleague reminded me,” Easton said, glancing at Karen. “Once she mentioned it, it came back. Same alley, same gunshot wound in the left leg, obvious dump job, drugs left at the scene.”
“
But this is different,” Hank said, pointing to the plastic locking strap that bound ShonDale’s wrists together, “and so is this,” indicating the two bullet holes in ShonDale’s forehead.
Easton nodded. “Double tap to the head, execution style.”
“
Would I be right in guessing that he was shot in the leg first, then in the head?”
“
Could be. A lot of blood soaked into his pant leg, so that probably came first.” Easton shifted position, still on his haunches. “The face was pounded up something like this in the other case, too, wasn’t it?” It was a statement, rather than a question, as the details of the Martin Liu homicide were coming back to him.
“
Yeah.”
“
I’ll pull the file when I get back and look it over,” Easton said. “Time of death was approximately four to five hours ago, so we’re looking at…” he glanced at his watch, “Christ, it’s after four in the morning. So, eleven p.m. to midnight, give or take.”
“
Can we turn him over?”
Butternut nodded, making a note on a sealed packet. “I’m done with this side, actually. Give me a second to put this away, because I’ll want to photograph him as he’s turned.”
Byrne stepped forward and bent down next to Hank. “Excuse me, Lieutenant, and I’ll help Dr. Easton turn the body.”
Hank straightened and moved out of the way to give them room. When Butternut was ready with her camera, they rolled ShonDale over onto his stomach. Butternut worked quickly, documenting the change in position.
“
What’s on his ass?” Karen asked, pointing to stains on the seat of ShonDale’s pants.
Butternut took out a swab from her kit and wiped at the stain. “There’s more on his leg,” she noted. She held the swab to her nose and sniffed. “There was power steering fluid spilled in the trunk of the car, so I expect that’s what it is.”