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Halifax, May 9
6:55 a.m.
Allan reflected on Greg’s story.
“Did Brad describe this truck to you? A make? Color?”
“No, just that it was a truck. Really narrows it down, eh?”
“It doesn’t help much. And you don’t recall seeing a truck leaving the scene or passing by when you went searching for Brad?”
Greg looked thoughtful. “No. It would be something I’d notice at that time of night. We catch people loitering down here all the time. Young couples making out. Hookers and their johns. Drunks fresh out of the bars, unable to drive home. Teenagers smoking up.” He paused, a finger to his lips. “Check Brad’s pad. We record everything.” He reached inside his jacket and brought out a notebook with a black cover. “It’s like this one.”
Allan took the notebook. As he examined it, he realized that it was very similar to the one he carried himself. The notebook was spiral bound, with a flip-up cover.
“Your company supplies these?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure Brad had his when he started his shift?”
Greg nodded. “Oh, yes. I saw it.”
“Do you remember having trouble with anyone recently?”
“No. The men we find with the hookers are more embarrassed than anything. Some of the drunks and teenagers mouth off to us from time to time. But they all leave without incident after we threaten to call you guys.”
“Had either of you checked the parking lot earlier in the night?”
“A few times.”
“You, personally?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t remember seeing the truck?”
“No. Earlier the lot was full. But it emptied out right after the bars closed.”
“Thank you.” Allan returned the notebook. “You’re free to go. Once you’ve had time to calm down, you might remember something else. If that happens, please give us a call.”
For a moment, Greg looked over at the body of Brad Hawkins. When he turned back, Allan saw that his eyes had suddenly become wet.
“I hope you catch whoever did this,” Greg said weakly and then walked away.
He didn’t look back.
Allan watched him briefly and then focused on the Ident crew as they walked toward the scene. It consisted of two men—Jim Lucas, an African-Canadian who had a bald head and sported a shadow of a goatee. Topping six-four, he had the muscular contours of a linebacker. Then there was Harvey Doucette, born and raised in Montreal. He was tall and rangy, with a crew cut and a projected air of calm.
Until they forensically cleared the scene, no one else would be allowed inside. The path used by the first officer would serve as their entry point. After reaching the body, the two men set up a privacy screen to hide it from prying eyes. Then, fanning out from the body, they began to search the lot for evidence. They moved with slow deliberation, inches at a time, examining pieces of debris that could serve as useful pieces of evidence.
Each man had a job to do—Harvey placed evidence markers next to objects for retrieval, while Jim took long- and close-range photographs. Neither man spoke much. Their movements were without sound, ghostlike figures in a dreamscape.
Standing several feet away, Allan could see the victim’s eyes were locked open. On the pavement below his mouth was a small puddle of blood he had regurgitated at the moment of death.
Spiral in hand, Allan turned to a fresh page and began a rough sketch of the crime scene, using a stick figure as the victim. At the bottom he included a legend to identify each object of evidence by number. The body. Fragments of glass. A broken flashlight.
Dr. Coulter’s black van arrived at 7:15 a.m. The medical examiner was a short man, clean-shaven, with salt-and-pepper hair and keen blue eyes. There was an air of composure about him; seldom did his deadpan expression ever change.
His assistant was Lawrence Sodero, a trim, bright-eyed man in his midthirties. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had an Ivy League haircut. To Allan, Sodero seemed a bit of a preppy and a little weird.
Like the Ident techs, both men were dressed in protective coveralls. Once Ident gave the okay, Coulter walked into the scene. Sodero followed with the gurney.
As Coulter reached the body, he set down a black bag he’d been carrying. He would touch or move the body as little as possible. He knelt by the head, checking the jaw and eyelids for stiffness.
“Body is still flaccid,” he noted. “Death was recent.”
Allan walked over. “We have a statement that puts the time of death somewhere between four fifty-five and five thirty.”
“I’ll try to narrow it down the best I can.” From the black bag, Coulter removed a digital thermo hygrometer and recorded the environmental temperature and humidity.
Next, he took out a probe thermometer, not unlike one used to check meat in an oven. Straddling the body, he inserted it through the abdomen and into the liver, waited a moment, and then pulled it out. He recorded the temperature in his notes.
Meticulously, he examined the surface of the jacket where the blade had gone through.
“There’s a single stab wound to the victim’s back. There could be more. At this point, I won’t know of additional injuries until the autopsy.” Eyes narrowing, he picked up part of the jacket at the shoulder, looking hard at something in the fabric.
Allan moved closer. “What is it?”
“There’s a blood impression on the back of the left shoulder. Looks like a swipe mark, as if the suspect had wiped off the murder weapon.” Coulter looked up, his lips a straight line. “A final dishonor to a dishonorable crime.”
“Could you check the pockets? We’re looking for a notebook.” Allan held up his own. “Similar to this.”
Coulter and Sodero gingerly rolled the body, turning the dead man onto his back. Cautious of needles, Coulter lightly patted each pocket before dipping his fingers inside. The jacket pockets were empty. From a pants pocket came a set of keys, some loose change. From another, a black wallet. Coulter opened it to reveal cash and credit cards.
“I guess we can rule out robbery,” he said. “There’s no notebook on the body, Detective. Only a pen in the breast pocket.”
Allan scratched his chin. Unless the search of the scene produced the notebook, he’d assume the killer made off with it.
He stood off to the side as Coulter tied paper bags over the dead man’s hands to protect any surface trace evidence, such as locks of hair or skin tags, in the event he had struggled with his attacker. Before putting the body into a black bag, he and Sodero wrapped it in a clean sheet of polythene and secured it with tape.
Allan watched them heft the body onto the gurney. They wheeled it to the back of Coulter’s van and slid it inside. In quick succession, they slammed the doors shut.
Allan called over to them, “What time’s the autopsy?”
“Soon as we get back, Detective.”
“I’ll stop by later. See what info you have for me.”
Coulter lifted his hand in a wave. “See you then.”
Someone else called out, “Detective.”
Allan turned to his right and saw Jim kneeling over something at the edge of the parking lot.
Jim waved him over.
Approaching, Allan asked, “What’d you find?”
“Blood.” Jim pointed down to a series of red drops. “A fresh trail of it.”
Together, the two men followed them. Spaced roughly two feet apart, the blood moved across the remainder of the parking lot toward the tugboat wharf then past the ECTUG building, where it came to a halt at the end of the wharf. The bleeder had obviously stopped there for some time. The last drop was much larger than the rest, over an inch in diameter. That suggested blood dripping into blood.
“The trail ends here,” remarked Allan, peering out at the Halifax harbor.
The smell of sea salt was strong. Under the climbing sun, the water sparkled. Gulls circled the public boardwalk nearby. Beneath the sound of lapping water came their faint cries.
Jim kneeled down and began measuring the drops. His camera dangled from a strap around his neck.
“The coarse texture of the concrete destroyed the shapes of these stains.” He shook his head, frustrated. “They’re too distorted to accurately determine the angle of impact. Measurements mean nothing. These are passive drops, however, acting on gravity alone. But they didn’t come from someone who was bleeding profusely.” He paused a moment, looking at the sky. “I’m going to have to collect samples. This blood isn’t going to last too long once that sun starts beating down on it.”
Carefully, he placed a scale and a numbered marker beside the last drop. Focusing his camera, he snapped off several pictures. Then he took out an IntegriSwab from his field kit. Uncapping the top of the tube, he pushed the swab forward and dipped it into the blood, moistening the tip. He then pulled the swab down inside the tube and capped the top. Next, he slid the IntegriSwab into its own box and labeled the side of it. One by one, he repeated the procedure with the other drops, methodically working his way back.
Allan remained where he was, taking in the scene. As he looked over the ECTUG building, he realized that it afforded him a sense of privacy. From the street, no one would be able to see him.
He tried the door of the building. Locked. All the windows on both floors were intact. Hands in his pockets, he walked toward Jim. The tech had worked his way back to the start of the trail.
“This is the parent drop.” Jim pointed it out. “The drip pattern is different from the others. On this type of surface, drops will be more prone to have irregular edges and satellite spatter, as you can see. But the first drop is rounder, typical of a person standing still. The others suggest movement. The directionality is toward the end of the wharf.”
Allan’s gaze moved from the start of the blood trail to where the body of Brad Hawkins had been. In his mind, he measured out the rough distance.
“These bloodstains are out of place,” he said. “There must be a twenty-foot gap between this trail and the victim.”
Jim nodded. “I don’t think they came from the victim. Maybe the suspect cut himself during the attack.”
Allan considered this. “But why the void?”
Eyes narrow, Jim rubbed his jaw. “You think we have a mystery bleeder?”
Allan raised his eyebrows. “Not sure. We might just be standing in a second crime scene.”
He and Jim shared a cautious look.
“Shit,” Jim said. “That very well could be the case.”
They expanded the perimeter of the scene. Much ground could be covered with additional manpower, so uniformed officers were brought in to assist with the neighborhood canvass. Up and down stairs they went, banging on doors, hoping someone out there had heard or witnessed something.
Other officers were assigned the undesirable task of searching the recesses of alleyways and picking through commercial and residential Dumpsters around the waterfront. They were armed with a description of two viable pieces of evidence—a knife and the black notebook.
In case the suspect had discarded the murder weapon on one of the tugs moored at the wharf, the Regional Director for ECTUG gave permission to board and search them.
Nothing was found.
Allan called in the Underwater Recovery Team. Within thirty minutes, their Boston Whaler came jouncing down the harbor, its outboard motor whipping the water into foam. The team anchored near the tugboat wharf then set to work sectioning off the water into grids using a floating marker system. Each section would be thoroughly searched, one at a time.
Wearing Farmer John wetsuits and full scuba gear, two divers entered the water and disappeared beneath the waves. One backup diver remained on board as part of the surface team in case of an emergency.
Watching them, Allan knew the odds of finding any evidence would be slim. If someone had tossed a murder weapon off the wharf, the currents could have carried the item off a great distance before it reached bottom. To make matters worse, the harbor floor was already littered with shipwrecks and other debris. It would be like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
His watch read 10:10 a.m. Four hours into the investigation already, and there was so much legwork ahead of him.
He winced at what he had to do next.
