Absolute Power (14 page)

Barnes’s supervisor arrived first in the stark white station wagon with the company’s logo on the door panel. Thirty seconds later the first of five patrol cars pulled down the asphalt drive until they were stacked like a waiting train in front of the house.

The window was covered by two officers. It was probable that the perps had long since exited the premises, but assumptions were dangerous in the police business.

Four officers went to the front, two more covered the back. Working in pairs, the four policemen proceeded to make their way in. They noted that the front door was unlocked, the alarm off. They satisfied themselves with the downstairs and cautiously moved up the broad staircase, their ears and eyes straining for any trace of sound or movement.

By the time they reached the second-floor landing, the nostrils of the sergeant in charge told him that this would not be a routine burglary.

Four minutes later they stood in a circle around what had recently been a young, beautiful woman. The healthy coloring of each of the men had faded to dull white.

The sergeant, fiftyish and a father of three, looked at the open window. Thank God, he thought to himself; even with the outside air the atmosphere inside the room was stupefying. He looked once more at the corpse, then strode quickly to the window and sucked in deep gulps of the crisp air.

He had a daughter about that age. For a moment he imag ined her on that floor, her face a memory, her life brutally over. The matter was out of his bailiwick now, but he wished for one thing: he wished to be there when whoever had done this atrocious thing was caught.

CHAPTER SEVEN

S
ETH
F
RANK WAS SIMULTANEOUSLY MUNCHING A PIECE OF
toast and attempting to tie his six-year-old daughter’s hair ribbons for school when the phone call came. His wife’s look told him all he needed. She finished the ribbon. Seth cradled the phone while he finished knotting his tie, listening all the while to the calm, efficient tones of the dispatcher. Two minutes later he was in his car; the official bubble light needlessly stuck to the top of his department-issued Ford and aqua blue grille lights flashing ominously as he roared through the nearly deserted back roads of the county.

Frank’s tall, big-boned frame was beginning its inevitable journey to softness, and his curly black hair had seen more affluent days. At forty-one years old, the father of three daughters who grew more complex and bewildering by the day, he had come to realize that not all that much in life made sense. But overall he was a happy man. Life had dealt him no knockout punches. Yet. He had been in law enforcement long enough to know how abruptly that could change.

Frank wadded up a piece of Juicy Fruit and slowly chewed it while compact rows of needle pines flew past his window. He had started his law enforcement career as a cop in some of the worst areas of New York City where the statement “the value of life” was an oxymoron and where he had seen virtually every way one person could kill another. He had eventually made detective, which had thrilled his wife. At least now he would arrive at crime scenes
after
the bad guys had departed. She slept better at night, knowing that the dreaded phone call would probably not come to destroy her life. That was as much as she could hope for being married to a cop.

Frank had finally been assigned to homicide, which was pretty much the ultimate challenge in his line of work. After a few years, he decided he liked the job and the challenge, but not at the rate of seven corpses a day. So he had made the trek south to Virginia.

He was senior homicide detective for the County of Middleton, which sounded better than it actually was, since he also happened to be the only homicide detective the county employed. But the relatively innocuous confines of the rustic Virginia county had not lent itself to much demanding work over that time. The per capita income levels in his jurisdiction were off the scale. People were murdered, but other than wives shooting husbands or vice versa or inheritance-minded kids popping off their parents, there hadn’t been much excitement. The perps in those cases were pretty self-evident, less mental work than legwork. The dispatcher’s phone call promised to change all that.

The road snaked past wooded area and then opened out onto fenced, green fields where leggy thoroughbreds lazily faced the new morning. Behind impressive gates and long, winding driveways were the residences of the fortunate few, who were actually very plentiful in Middleton. Frank concluded that he wasn’t going to get any help from the neighbors on this one. Once inside their fortresses they probably saw or heard nothing on the outside. Which was undoubtedly the way they wanted it and paid dearly for that privilege.

As Frank approached the Sullivan estate he straightened his tie in the rearview mirror and pushed back some stray wisps of hair. He had no particular affinity for the wealthy, nor did he dislike them. They were parts of the puzzle. A conundrum that was as far from a game as you could get. Which led to the most satisfying part of his job. For amidst all the twists, turns, red herrings and plain mistakes, there lurked an undeniable truism: if you killed another human being, you came within his domain and you would be ultimately punished. What that punishment was, Frank usually did not care. What he did care about was that someone stand trial and, if convicted, that someone receive the meted penalty. Rich, poor or in-between. His skills may be somewhat dulled, but the instincts were still there. In the long run, he’d always go with the latter.

As he pulled in the drive he noticed a small combine chewing under the adjacent cornfield, its driver watching the police activity with a keen eye. That information would soon be passing through the area in rapid movements. The man had no way to know he was destroying evidence, evidence of a flight. Neither did Seth Frank as he climbed out of his car, threw on his jacket and hustled through the front door.

*   *   *

H
ANDS DEEP IN HIS POCKETS, HIS EYES MOVED SLOWLY AROUND
the room, taking in each detail of the floor, walls, and venturing to the ceiling before coming back to the mirrored door and then to the spot where the deceased had lain for the last several days.

Seth Frank said, “Take a lot of pics, Stu, looks like we’ll need it.”

The crime unit photographer paced through the room in discrete grids outward from the corpse in his effort to reproduce on film every aspect of the room including its lone oc cupant. This would be followed by a videotaping of the entire crime scene complete with a narrative. Not necessarily admissible in court, but it was invaluable to the investigation. As football players watched game films, detectives were more and more scrutinizing the videos for additional clues that might only be seized upon on the eighth, tenth or hundredth examination.

The rope was still tied to the bureau and still disappeared out the window. Only now it was covered with black fingerprint powder, but there wouldn’t be much there. One usually wore gloves to climb down a rope, even a knotted one.

Sam Magruder, the officer in charge, approached, having just spent two minutes leaning out the window sucking in air. Fiftyish with a shock of red hair that topped a plump, hairless face, he was having a hard time keeping his breakfast down. A large portable fan had been brought in and the windows were fully open. All the CU personnel wore floater masks, but the stench was still oppressive. Nature’s parting laugh to the living. Beautiful one minute, rotting the next.

Frank checked Magruder’s notes, noted the greenish tint to the OIC’s face.

“Sam, if you’d stay away from the window, your sense of smell would go dead in about four minutes. You’re just making it worse.”

“I know that, Seth. My brain tells me that, but my nose won’t listen.”

“When did the husband phone in?”

“This morning, seven-forty-five local time.”

Frank tried to make out the cop’s scribbles. “And he’s where?”

“Barbados.”

Frank’s head inclined. “How long?”

“We’re confirming it.”

“Do that.”

“How many calling cards they leave, Laura?” Frank looked over at his ident technician, Laura Simon.

She glanced up. “I’m not finding much, Seth.”

Frank walked over to her. “Come on, Laura, she’s gotta be all over the place. How about her husband? The maid? There’s gotta be usables everywhere.”

“Not that I’m finding.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Simon, who took her work very seriously and was the best print lifter Frank had ever worked with, including at NYPD, looked almost apologetic. Carbon dusting powder was everywhere, and there was nothing? Contrary to popular belief, a lot of criminals left their prints at the scene of the crime. You just had to know where to look. Laura Simon knew where to look and she was getting zip. Hopefully they would get something after analysis back at the lab. Many latents just weren’t visible no matter how many angles you hit them with the light. That’s why they called them latents. You just powdered and taped everything you thought the perps might have touched. And you might get lucky.

“I’ve got a few things packaged to take back to the lab. After I use the ninhydrin and hit the rest with the Super Glue I might have something for you.” Simon dutifully returned to her work.

Frank shook his head. Super Glue, a cyanoacrylate, was probably the best method of fuming and could pull prints off things you couldn’t believe. The problem was the damn process took time to work its magic. Time they didn’t have.

“Come on, Laura, from the looks of the body the bad guys have had enough of a head start.”

She looked at him. “I’ve got another cyanoacrylate ester I’ve been wanting to use. That’s faster. Or I can always speed-burn the Super Glue.” She smiled.

The detective grimaced. “Right. The last time you tried that we had to evacuate the building.”

“I didn’t say it was a perfect world, Seth.”

Magruder cleared his throat. “Looks like we’re dealing with some real professionals.”

Seth looked at the OIC sternly. “They’re not professionals, Sam, they’re criminals, they’re killers. It’s not like they went to goddamned college to learn how to do this.”

“No, sir.”

“We sure it’s the lady of the house?” Frank inquired.

Magruder pointed to the photo on the nightstand. “Christine Sullivan. Of course, we’ll get a positive ID.”

“Any witnesses?”

“No obvious ones. Haven’t canvassed the neighbors yet. Gonna do that this morning.”

Frank proceeded to make copious notes of the room and its occupant’s condition and then made a detailed sketch of the room and its contents. A good defense attorney could make any unprepared prosecution witness look like a candidate for the Silly Putty factory. Being unprepared meant guilty people went free.

Frank had learned the only lesson he would ever need on the subject as a rookie cop and the first on the scene of a breaking and entering. He had never been more embarrassed or depressed in his life as he had when he had gotten off the witness stand, his testimony torn to shreds and actually used as the basis to get the defendant off. If he had been able to wear his .38 in court, the world would have had one fewer lawyer that day.

Frank crossed the room to where the Deputy Medical Examiner, a beefy, white-haired man who was perspiring heavily despite the morning chill outside, was lowering the skirt on the corpse. Frank knelt down and examined one of the small Baggie-clad hands, then glanced at the woman’s face. It looked like it had been beaten black and blue. The clothing was soaked through with her body fluids. With death comes an almost immediate relaxing of the sphincters. The resulting smell combination was not pleasant. Luckily the insect infestation was minimal, despite the open window. Even though a forensic entomologist could usually ascertain time of death more accurately than could a pathologist, no detective, despite the increased accuracy, ever relished the thought of examining a human body that had become an insect buffet.

“Got an approximate yet?” Frank asked the Medical Examiner.

“My rectal thermometer isn’t going to be much use to me, not when body temperature drops one and a half degrees an hour. Seventy-two to eighty-four hours. I’ll have a better number for you after I open her up.” The ME straightened up. “Gunshot wounds to the head,” he added, although there was no doubt about the woman’s cause of death to anyone in the room.

“I noticed the marks on her neck.”

The Medical Examiner looked at Frank keenly for a moment and then shrugged. “They’re there. I don’t know what they mean yet.”

“I’d appreciate a quick turnaround on this one.”

“You’ll get it. Not many murders out this way. They usually get a priority, y’know.”

The detective winced slightly at the remark.

The Medical Examiner looked at him. “Hope you enjoy dealing with the press. They’ll be on this like a swarm of honeybees.”

“More like yellowjackets.”

The Medical Examiner shrugged. “Better you than me. I’m way too old for that crap. She’s ready to go whenever.”

The Medical Examiner finished packing up and left.

Frank held the small hand up to his face, looked at the professionally manicured nails. He noted several tears in two of the cuticles, which seemed likely enough if there was a struggle before she’d gotten popped. The body was grossly distended; bacteria raged everywhere as the putrefaction process raced on. Rigor had passed long ago, which meant she had been dead well over forty-eight hours. The limbs were supple as the body’s soft tissue dissolved. Frank sighed. She had indeed been here awhile. That was good for the killer, bad for the cops.

It still amazed him how death changed a person. A bloated wreck barely recognizable as a human, when just days before . . . Had his sense of smell not already gone dead, he would have been unable to do what he was doing. But that came with being a homicide detective. All your clients were dead.

He carefully held the deceased’s head up, turning each side to the light. Two small entry wounds on the right side, one large, ragged exit hole on the left. They were looking at heavy-caliber stuff. Stu had already gotten pictures of the wounds from several different angles, including from directly overhead. The circular abrasion collars and the absence of burns or tattooing on the skin’s surface led Frank to conclude that the shots had been fired from over two feet away.