Chapter 17
Maggie did not make it back to the questioned funds, however, as Denny caught her inside the lab doors. “Grab your go-bag. We’ve got a homicide. Josh is at a traffic death and Amy’s working a missing person, so it’s just you and me.”
“Go-bag? Seriously?”
“I thought it sounded all special-ops-like. Like”—he waved his arms—“ninjas.”
“Someone has a ninja costume left over from Halloween, doesn’t someone?”
“Well, duh.”
Not at all upset at having to put off processing the money, she asked, “What is it, and where are we ninja crime scene techs going?”
“Dead woman, found shot by her car next to the lake. Not far.”
Twenty minutes later, most of which had been used up getting the police department issued vehicle out of the parking garage, she discovered the accuracy of that description. There was a car, a dead woman, a bunch of patchy grass, and the lake. And that was it.
They had arrived by driving down an old road at the end of Burke Lakefront Airport and through a chain-link fence, past a maintenance building of sorts. The gate had been opened for them. A marina sat to their right and empty land to the left, perhaps a natural buffer zone in case a runway proved too short for a particular plane. The road they used could hardly be called a road, more of an access path that hadn’t been paved since the last millennium.
Maggie and her boss joined two patrol officers standing between the body and their own car. A Ford sedan had been parked half on and half off the roadway, its passenger door hanging open. The woman’s body stretched in front of it, body in the grass, head on the asphalt. Her purse and its contents lay scattered across the road next to the driver’s door.
“You beat the detectives,” one of the officers said.
“Do I get a bonus?” she asked. “Who’s coming out?”
“Gardiner and Dembrowski.”
Her ex-husband. The day just kept getting better and better. “Who found her?” Obviously they weren’t in a well-traveled area.
“Some maintenance guy goofing off. He said he was conducting a routine check, but I saw a fishing pole in his cart. Pure chance he found her—she might have stayed there for weeks.”
The lake tried to distract her, the sound of the waves, the smell of the water. The overcast sky turned its surface to silver. The breeze hadn’t warmed up from the night before.
“Does she work here? At the airport?”
“They’re not missing anyone.”
Denny said. “Is that gate we went through normally closed? I would think even a small airport would have pretty good security these days.”
“Dunno, boss,” the officer said. “They had it open to let us in.”
Maggie photographed, and Denny sketched. Rick and his partner, Will, arrived, Will as sunny and friendly as usual, Rick scowling. Usually Maggie and her ex got along fine now that the divorce had faded into the past, but since she had told him she and Jack were sleeping together, all pretense of amiability had been tossed in the circular file.
“Hi, Will,” she greeted them. “Rick.”
“Maggie,” he said, so deadpan she almost smirked, but didn’t dare. Jack had convinced—or apparently convinced—her ex-husband that Jack had been moving around the country investigating the vigilante murders instead of committing them, but it did not feel like a permanent solution. Vengeful ex-husbands could be unpredictable. Best not to poke the bear.
Denny began to gather measurements to go with his sketch, not easy in such an open area. He managed to find a small structure about the size of a bus shelter off the road and used that as a fixed point, getting a distance to the vehicle and the body. This required use of their extra-long three-hundred-foot tape measure, with one of the unlucky patrol officers standing in the weeds to hold the “dumb end.”
Maggie took a picture of the victim’s purse, a large leather tote that lay on its side. Lipstick, pocket calendar, wallet—which had been opened, and a dollar bill left protruding—two pens, and a set of chopsticks from China Jade rested beside it.
She moved on to the body; facedown, the woman’s blond hair obscured her features. She wore those supercomfortable type of Mary Jane shoes with rubber soles, a blouse, and snug jeans so dark and new they appeared to be dress slacks at first glance.
The blouse, a pale pink, had two large blood-encrusted holes, one in the right shoulder and another lower and to the left. For such wounds the staining seemed minimal; either she had died very quickly or the fluid had obeyed gravity and exited out the bottom—probably both. The palm of her left hand, down at her side, was clean, meaning she hadn’t even had a chance to clasp it to her chest before collapsing. A large pool had gathered beneath her, telling Maggie to expect at least one corresponding hole in the woman’s front. She would be a blood-soaked mess when they turned her over.
The detectives had remained back with the purse. Will Dembrowski had donned gloves and now picked up the victim’s wallet. “Cash is gone, but the cards are all here.”
“Robbery?” Rick said aloud.
“Out here? A parking garage downtown, I’d say yeah, but what would this chick even be doing out here? She sure doesn’t do airport maintenance dressed like that.”
“Meeting a pilot? Maybe she’s a stewardess. Is there any airport ID in there?”
Maggie took some close-ups of the bullet holes. They appeared to be exit wounds, with the threads forced away from the torn flesh, but she couldn’t be positive.
Will dug into the small leather wallet. “No . . . bunch of pictures of kids and some guy who looks like an Italian model . . . her DL . . .”
“What’s the name?”
Will peered at the plastic card and read, “Laurine Russo.”
“Holy shit!” Rick exploded, so loudly that both Maggie and his partner started and stared. “I know her! She’s a reporter.”
Maggie looked down at the woman as if she might confirm this, which of course she did not.
Rick approached and examined the body. “Let’s turn her over.”
“Not until the ME gets here. You know that.”
“She’s been dogging me for months.”
“Who was she a reporter for?” Maggie asked him.
“The Herald.”
Will had joined them. “Oh, that one. Holy crap, was this an assassination? She getting too close to a story or something?”
“That only happens in the movies,” Rick said. “And real hit men don’t take the few bucks out of your wallet when they whack you. I bet she was meeting somebody here, either for a story or for a quickie before work, and ran into some homeless dude instead. Lone woman, middle of nowhere, no witnesses, easy cash. Yeah—she was into me, calling, showing up at the unit. Really persistent.”
Preening over the woman’s corpse . . . but class had never been Rick’s strong point. Maggie ignored him and took a picture of the back of the woman’s head, the clean, blond hair shifting slightly in the lake breeze.
Rick straightened, put his hands in his pockets, and circled her and the body in slow steps.
“What story did she call you about?” Maggie asked, to make conversation. It might behoove her, and especially Jack, to stay on his good side.
“The vigilante murders.”
“What?”
She didn’t hide her shock, couldn’t, and stared up at him, mouth open, fear that she didn’t even understand yet coursing through her. Then she dropped her face to her camera, made herself fiddle with the buttons on the back, changing settings that didn’t need to be changed, anything to avoid eye contact and buy herself time to recover. She let curtains of hair fall forward to cover her flaming cheeks. “Really?”
Rick, of course, hadn’t missed her reaction and swaggered a little more. “Oh yeah, she was all hot and heavy for that story. Thought it might be related to murders in other cities.”
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. But she couldn’t fiddle with camera buttons forever.
She should say something noncommittal like “Oh,” but didn’t trust herself to speak. Did Rick have something on Jack? Had he found out more about Jack’s trail, things he hadn’t yet told the higher-ups?
Her ex-husband said, “I’m surprised she didn’t call you about it, try to get a quote or something. Since you got up close and personal with the killer.”
She managed a “Huh.”
“She was probably going to, but I wanted to keep you out of it.”
“Thanks.” Letting him take credit for something he didn’t do regarding something that didn’t happen . . . if it made him happy.
Maggie forced herself to take a breath, then got busy taking a photo of Lori Russo’s face without dipping her camera or her own hair in the large pool of blood, which had spread about a foot past the borders of the body. She set the camera on the asphalt, aimed, and clicked, then examined the result via the screen on the back. Then she set it back down with a slight change to the orientation and tried again, as if this were a monumentally important part of crime scene processing instead of a way to avoid eye contact with Rick, or Will, or even Denny, still out of earshot.
Rick had nothing on Jack he hadn’t had before, she told herself. If he did, he would have acted on it already. Rick had all the patience and self-discipline of the average toddler.
“Of course, your boyfriend has that case now. So maybe she’s been dogging him about it . . . calling, stopping in . . .” Rick went on, coming to a stop in front of the car. Then, as if that stroll had been taxing, plopped his bottom down on the hood of Lori Russo’s Ford.
“Get off that!” Maggie cried instantly, startling both cops. “Fingerprints!”
So much for staying on his good side. “The car? Why on earth—”
She girded her emotional loins. “I’m sorry for shouting. But—the passenger door is open. The killer might have walked around the car to get the purse, or been in the car with her and had someone else pick him up.”
“And then put his hands all over the hood?”
She kept her voice level and returned to photographing Lori Russo’s face. “I don’t know, but we have to try.”
Will had been making notes and interrupted, perhaps to keep the investigation on track or to give Maggie some breathing room. He’d always been diplomatic that way. “We’ll have to talk to her editor, see if anyone at the paper knows what she’s been working on. Her husband, too. Maybe it was something risky.”
The Medical Examiner’s investigator arrived, one of the newer girls—young, trim, bounding with life. Her chest and legs would go a long way toward distracting Rick. He pointedly engaged her in extra conversation as if this would annoy Maggie. Instead it gave her time to examine her own roiling thoughts.
No way would Jack kill Lori Russo. He would not kill an innocent woman just doing her job. He would not.
Her hands shook.
“Maggie?” Denny appeared at her shoulder, having finished his measurements. “You okay?”
“Getting cold. I should have brought my jacket.”
He nodded; somehow she had pulled that off. “Yeah, that wind off the water feels good at first, but then it gets through the layers.” He helped the investigator spread a clean sheet alongside the body so they had a place to flip her onto.
The victim had been a reporter, and the vigilante murders were months old. Surely more recent stories could have put her in danger, especially if she’d been as persistent as Rick said.
“How long do you think she’s been dead?” she asked.
The investigator examined the woman’s back, poked her skin for signs of lividity, and felt for any warmth. “Not sure. I need the arms.” They turned the body over, revealing the full horror of a bloody death.
Blood soaked the clothing, the entire blouse, and the pants down to the knees. At first Maggie couldn’t see any bullet holes, but then the investigator pointed them out—two small tears near the center, entrances smaller than the exit holes in her back. They were nearly invisible in the now dark red cloth and without any tearing or fouling. Not close shots, then.
Lori Russo’s eyes were open. Still-gummy blood coated her entire face, masking what must have been an attractive one, and thick clots stuck here and there. Her right arm had been twisted beneath her.
“She’s holding a notepad,” Maggie said—a small spiral-bound pad, clutched between fingers and thumb. Maybe the reporter had written a clue for them, but it might take some work to be able to read the blood-soaked pages. She worked it out of the hand.
What if it mentioned Jack? What if she had been meeting Jack?
Maggie held it out for the investigator to see, her heart pounding so hard the blood crashed in her ears. Nothing she could do about it. There was nothing she could do.
But the girl merely glanced at the sodden, illegible pages and snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“She was working,” Will said, “not meeting somebody for fun and recreation. She was chasing a story.”
Rick said, “The guy called her up and said he had a hot tip.”
“But they had to meet in secret. No witnesses.”
“Made her easier to kill than a Craigslist hooker.”
Maggie noticed a pen had also fallen beneath the body and that the notebook rested in the right hand. Perhaps the reporter was left-handed, or had not begun to take notes. Still greeting her interviewee, perhaps, putting them at ease, warming up to asking questions. So even if it had been Jack—
Stop.
The ME investigator, meanwhile, examined the face, the teeth, pulled up the eyelids to check the whites and insides of the lids for petechiae. “Doesn’t seem to be any damage, even landing face-first on the street. I figure she didn’t get in a fist fight before getting shot, but we’d already guessed that.” She moved down to the chest, lifting the blouse to expose a sturdy black bra and two bullet holes, one above, one below its left cup.
I’m sorry, Maggie silently communicated to the dead woman, that we’re pulling your shirt up in view of the whole world. I’m sure that’s something you didn’t do while alive, save for a Mardi Gras kind of situation, when it was your choice. I’m sorry for the tiny road stones now embedded in your cheek. I’m sorry that everyone around you is behaving as if this is completely routine, because for us it is. I’m sorry that your feelings and modesty are not a consideration for us. But we really are trying to find out who killed you.
The investigator wiped some of the blood away and poked the skin, checking the lividity. When her fingerprint turned white and stayed white, they knew it had become fixed, that the blood inside the veins had clotted and would not flow back in once pushed out. Then she pulled on the arm, trying to unbend the crooked elbow.
“I’d say about six hours.” She meant time of death. “She’s pretty stiff in the joints but not the abdomen. It would set in a little more slowly because it’s cool out here, unless she’s got some medical condition that affects rigor.”
Maggie said, “So early this morning. Before any of us were at work.”
Any of us, she thought.