Chapter Eight
Gilman needed to make arrangements for the press conference. Before he left, he told Morris that Commissioner Hadley was in the back of the house with the other police and crime scene specialists.
“I texted him that you’ve taken the job. You don’t need me to go back there and introduce you, right?”
Gilman was trying to be nonchalant about asking this, but Morris could see his uneasiness. It was obvious Gilman didn’t want to go near the corpse, that seeing the photos and hearing the details of the murder was about all he could handle. Morris told him he’d be fine, and not to worry about anything.
After Gilman left, Morris called Natalie to tell her what was happening, and that he wasn’t going to be able to make their seven-thirty reservation at the Banyan Tree Grill.
“I’d hate for you to miss out also,” Morris said. “I know how much you were looking forward to it. Why don’t you see if Rachel’s available? This reservation was damn hard to get, and it would be a shame to waste it.”
Rachel was their twenty-three-year-old daughter who was currently a second-year law student at UCLA. While Rachel inherited Morris’s stubbornness, fortunately she physically took after Natalie. A slim, petite, dark-haired beautiful girl, although with Morris’s flinty slate-gray eyes.
“You just want me going there so I bring you home an order of their pan-roasted chicken.”
“I certainly wouldn’t complain if you did. Or if you also brought home a slice of their flourless chocolate espresso cake.”
“Ha! I thought you’ve been talking about losing ten pounds.”
“I can start tomorrow.” Morris made a harrumphing noise and added defensively, “You wouldn’t believe the willpower I exhibited today at the studio. Food tables laid out with free donuts and other sweets, and I resisted them all. A lesser man would’ve cracked.”
“A slight exaggeration.”
“Only slight.”
Natalie made a hmm noise at that. “My poor hubby. It must’ve been torture,” she said. “I’ll see what Rachel has to say. But if I pick you up a slice of that cake, it will only be so I can have a taste.” Her tone turned more pensive as she asked, “I remember reading about those murders in New York. How sure are you that it’s the same person?”
“At this point, no idea. I haven’t dipped my toes into the case yet. But be careful out there. And tell Rachel to be careful, and if for some fercockta reason she’s been thinking of dying her hair blonde, tell her not to.”
Morris could just about hear his wife shudder over the phone, or perhaps he only imagined it.
“That’s right,” she said in a softer, more fragile voice. “He always killed in threes. His next victim is going to be a woman my age. And the one after that, a girl Rachel’s age, although with blonde hair.”
“If it’s the same person. I’ll have to ask you not to share this information with anyone. Not even Rachel.”
“Aren’t they going to be warning the public about this?”
“There’ll be a press conference later tonight to announce that MBI has been hired to lead up the investigation, but it’s undecided whether we’ll be tying this murder to the Skull Cracker Killer, or what details we’ll be giving. All that has to be figured out over the next few hours.”
“So you’ll be having a long night?”
“One of many I suppose.”
“Try not to get home too late.” She hesitated before adding, “I don’t want that pan-roasted chicken giving you indigestion. Or the chocolate espresso cake. You know how you get when you eat after midnight.”
Morris promised he’d get home as early as possible, and if he got home after midnight, he’d save the take-out food for breakfast the next morning. After he got off the call, he followed the hubbub to the back of the house where a good deal of activity seemed to be taking place. Morris recognized everyone there except one of the crime-scene guys. He nodded to Hadley who was talking to the medical examiner, Dr. Roger Smichen, a tall, cadaverous-looking man with a head as bald as an egg. For a long moment, Hadley glowered at him, red-faced and jowly, before consenting to nod back.
“Brick, glad to have you and your firm working this,” he said in a gruff, unhappy tone that showed he wasn’t at all glad. He cleared his throat and told Morris he’d let Smichen fill him in on what was done to the victim, then walked away to converse with Detective Walsh. Walsh gave Morris a signal to indicate they’d talk soon.
Morris had known Smichen for over twenty years, and Smichen always possessed a naturally dour disposition, although at times would show a sense of humor as dry as a martini that had only been given a whiff of vermouth. The ME wiggled his fingers at Morris so that Morris would join him by the body, and Morris followed him to where the corpse lay crumpled on the floor. The broken up parts of the skull were also on the floor and had been pieced together like a grotesque jigsaw puzzle. Less than a foot away from the dead man’s left ear were clumps of brain matter.
“I thought you left the force and started your little investigation firm so you wouldn’t have to deal with murders like this,” Smichen said.
“And yet here I am.”
“Yes, here you are,” Smichen agreed, shaking his head dismally.
“Was he alive when this was done to him?”
“Unfortunately, yes. None of this was done postmortem. Obviously, there was a tremendous amount of damage to the skull, but I found a curiously shaped hematoma and several flakes of rust, which makes me think the victim was first hit on the back of the skull with a rusted pipe.”
“He was hit from behind?”
Smichen nodded as he pulled on his lower lip. He did a deep-knee bend and pointed with his index finger into the open cavity where there was no longer any skull, indicating the spot where the victim would’ve been hit. He grimaced and gingerly held his hip as he straightened back up.
“Hmm,” Morris murmured as he tried to picture the blow. “The victim must’ve been bent over at the time.”
“Possibly. I’ll see if I can determine that when I get back to the lab, but possibly.”
“So the killer either held a gun to this poor guy and made him bend over, or he asked him to look at some spot on the floor, and then bam, smacked him with a rusty pipe. Any signs of a struggle?”
“None. No defensive wounds either. I did find adhesive residue on the victim’s wrists. We’ll be figuring out what left it, but a good guess would be after the victim was knocked to the floor, his wrists were taped together behind his back, leaving him helpless.”
“And then what? The killer takes a chisel and hammer and breaks apart the skull? Then uses the claw end of the hammer to dig out pieces of the brain?”
Smichen gave Morris an appreciative look. “Very good. At least that would be my rudimentary guess. But again, I need to get this back to the lab before I can tell you for sure.”
“Assuming that’s what happened, how hard would it be to do something like that?”
“Not that hard, at least not if you’re determined and have a strong stomach.”
Morris briefly closed his eyes and visualized the murder taking place. “At what point would the victim die?” he asked.
“Not while the skull’s being broken apart. He’d probably go into shock once the brain is disturbed, but death wouldn’t occur until a good part of the brain was removed.”
Smichen again pulled on his lower lip, revealing receding gums. At that moment he looked more cadaverous than at any time since Morris had known him.
“I hope we don’t get any more like this one,” the ME said.
Morris agreed, but the odds were likely there were going to be two more very soon. A woman in her forties, followed by a blonde girl in her twenties. Unless this wasn’t the real Skull Cracker Killer. Or unless Morris and MBI got incredibly lucky.