“Nothing else to do while the science majors do their thing.”
I pointed to a camel-colored splotch a few feet from the limo’s right passenger door. “That Walters’s breakfast?”
“Breakfast burrito.” He grimaced. “I think I’ll be off Mexican for a while. Maybe food, period—hey, here’s the miracle diet I’ve been hoping for.”
Patting the convexity of his gut.
I thought: I’m sure you’ll recover.
I said: “When can I take a look?”
“Right now if you’re up for it.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t,” he said, “make me answer that.”
He pulled out a set of rubber gloves and handed it over like a sacramental wafer.
CHAPTER
3
The tech working the front of the limo was broad and male, the one at the rear smaller, probably female. Milo tapped the man’s shoulder softly.
The big tech looked over his shoulder and exhaled. A mask-muffled voice said, “Lieutenant.”
Milo said, “Sorry for sneaking up on you, George. This is Dr. Delaware. Can he take a brief look?”
George’s mask tented. Lips forming something that might’ve been a smile or a frown. “What you’d like is what we do, Lieutenant.” Sharp tugs at the edges of the mask. Definitely a smile. “Unless one of the pathologists comes by and contradicts you.”
“You expecting a doc?”
George stood and pulled his mask down on a face suited for a sitcom dad role: a bit soft at the corners, crinkly world-weary eyes. “I requested one but probably not. It’s psychotic at the crypt, big de-comp, stinks like you know what. Truth is, I was happy to get out of there.”
He frowned. “Even with this.”
The smaller tech stood and faced me. Female, young, bespectacled. “Knees hurt, I’m ready for a break.”
They both left the tent.
I inhaled through my nose, exhaled through my mouth, and stepped forward. Gloved but still careful not to touch anything, I began taking fast-action mental snapshots.
My brain works like that, registering images and saving them. Forever.
Snap one: in the driver’s seat an elderly black man.
Leaning slightly to the right.
Both hands resting in his lap.
Black chauffeur’s suit. White shirt. Black tie. White hair. Bushy white mustache.
Black hole in the left temple to his left cheek. Brown crust rimming the wound but no other blood until you got to the knees. Then, lots of it, slick as an oil slick as it glazed the lower part of both legs and descended to dove-gray leather seating and plush black carpeting.
No blood on the impeccable gray mohair roof of the limo. A partition sectioning driver from passengers was black glass but for a gold-plated audio speaker in the center.
No spatter there. Not a speckle anywhere.
The chauffeur’s chocolate skin had turned chalky in splotches. Slightly parted lips revealed perfectly aligned white teeth.
Dental perfection courtesy a skilled dentist. A bridge had come loose and dangled awkwardly.
I peered closer. No stippling around the wound that I could see but dusky skin tone made it hard to be sure.
Rigor hadn’t set in. Or it had come and gone. The dried blood said probably the latter.
Eight to twelve hours with no obvious decomposition. Cool May weather? But it’s rarely that simple.
I stepped back and walked to the rear of the car.
Three dead people occupied the rear seat, pressed close to one another, knees touching.
Closest to the door was a white male in his thirties wearing a black sport coat, a black T-shirt and slacks, black loafers, no socks. Thick, dark hair. Lean, good-looking.
Like the chauffeur, coated with blood from the knees down, a similar pool sludging the carpet.
Unlike the chauffer, no bullet wound that I could see.
I said so to Milo.
He said, “There is none, don’t know what got him, yet.”
I turned back to the car. The good-looking man’s fly was unzipped. His limp penis rested in the upturned left palm of his nearest seat-mate.
Older woman. Sixties, maybe even seventies, full-faced with a squashed, veiny nose. Eyes shut behind steel-framed glasses. Puffy cheeks had been rouged clumsily, creating clown-like cerise circles. Heavy arms swelled the long sleeves of a black wool dress, and stout legs encased in fishnet stockings were stuffed into square-toed black pumps, instep flesh humping above the strap. Gray hair curled from beneath a black felt tam. No jewelry, no adornment.
Like the chauffeur and the man whose member she fondled, bloodied from the knees down.
Again, no bullet wounds I could see.
I circled to the opposite side of the limo. The young D’s were still there. They greeted me but didn’t move.
The final victim was a brown-skinned man, Hispanic or Middle Eastern. Thin, bony-faced, with meager, elfin features. Sparse dark hair cropped short was flecked with silver. A filmy thatch of chin hairs struggled to be a beard.
Tough to estimate his age. My mental Nikon settled on thirty-five to forty-five.
Like the three other victims, dressed in black. Baggy suit, blousy white shirt, clip-on black tie, black canvas slip-ons.
I thought of a funeral procession waylaid and slaughtered.
Male Number Two’s cause of death, obvious: bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
Washed in blood from the knees down. Nothing to do with a small-caliber wound.
I returned my attention to the woman in the center. Stern, matronly. An appearance bizarrely at odds with the organ in her hand.
I said, “Nothing makes sense.”
Milo said, “And here I was hoping for immediate wisdom.” But he didn’t sound surprised.
“Any I.D.s?”
“Let’s catch some fresh air, I’ll fill you in.”
CHAPTER
4
I followed him out of the tent, across a strip of cement and a wider belt of dirt, up the steps to the domed pavilion. The structure was impressive at a distance but tatty up close, brick floor cracked and buckling, cement columns crudely molded. The roof was rusting iron covered with dead vines that fought one another for space.
Vipers in a feeding frenzy.
Milo said, “Okay to sit, this area’s been gone over.” He plopped down on a flimsy-looking plastic chair and made it groan. “Lotta crap cleared away, most probably garbage from the party. Lovely stuff—condoms, cups, little baggies with remnants of granular stuff.”