The Dead Man (6 page)

"How long were you gone?"

"Thirty-eight months at the Jessup Correctional Facility for Women. Another six months in a halfway house in Bethesda. Plus, I did another year of supervision, peeing in a cup and looking for someone who'd hire an ex-cop, ex-con thief. Not a lot of demand for that. Got my full release last week and decided to come home, start over."

"Why'd you do it? You don't look the type."

"What's the type supposed to look like? One thing I learned on the job and in the joint is that the only thing you need to screw up is a pulse. I was there. The diamonds were there. I knew it was wrong. I knew what I was risking. And then I picked up the stones and got a rush that shut down every rational cell in my brain. It was easy. Next thing I knew, the scene was swarming with deputies and the rocks were burning a hole in my pocket."

"So now what?"

She shrugged. "They say that America is the land of second chances. All I want is mine."

It was an all too familiar refrain that confused need and hope for commitment and effort.

"What happens when that second chance turns out to be another easy score and you want the rush more than the chance?"

The light drained out of her eyes, her mouth quivering. "That's what scares the hell out of me."

The pictures Lucy took at Walter Enoch's house testified to the limits of surreptitious cell phone photography. They were off-centered, grainy, and focused like the camera's eye was half-opened. Enoch's body was recognizable but the pictures showed little else of interest. I put that case aside for the one I'd been hired for.

The police reports on Delaney's and Blair's deaths would be the best source of information about how they died. Despite my misgivings about Harper, I was glad for the chance to do what I knew how to do and there was no reason to wait until Monday to get started. I found the business card for Detective Paul McNair that Milo Harper had given me. He answered on the third ring.

"Homicide. McNair."

It was Saturday afternoon, not a prize shift. McNair sounded distracted. I heard a basketball broadcast in the background, probably a radio on his desk.

"It's Jack Davis. I don't know if you remember, but we worked a joint task force a few years back. I was with the FBI."

The radio broadcast faded but McNair didn't perk up. "Yeah. Bunch of meth labs out in eastern Jackson County. Couple of crank heads shot each other up."

"Right. Been a while. How you doing?"

"How you think I'm doing? I'm in here jacking my meat on a Saturday afternoon instead of being home watching Kansas kick Missouri's ass up and down the court."

"That's why you get the middle money."

"You got that right. What can I do you for?"

"I'm retired from the Bureau. Doing some private work. I'd like to get a look at the reports on a couple of incidents you investigated."

"Depends. Which incidents?"

"Tom Delaney and Regina Blair."

"Yeah. I remember them. Delaney, he blew his brains out and the Blair chick, she fell off a goddamn parking garage, of all the fucking stupid ways to buy it."

"Those are the ones."

"You working for Milo Harper or Jason Bolt?"

"Milo Harper. That a problem?"

"Nah. That ambulance chaser has taken more money out of here on false arrest and excessive force cases than the taxpayers put in. I'll be here all afternoon unless I get a better offer, like my proctologist had a cancellation."

Kansas City's police headquarters was at Eleventh and Locust on the east side of downtown, a limestone tower built during the Depression. Homicide was on the third floor, the detective's desks arranged back to back in a bullpen, higher ranks in private offices along the wall. McNair was alone, everyone else on duty finding a reason to be out.

He had at least twenty years on the job, his face more jowls than cheeks and chin, his neck and hair faint memories. He was attacking a slab of ribs, ignoring the sauce that speckled his shirt, and listening to the second half of the basketball game between Kansas and Missouri. He was right about one thing. The Jayhawks were putting another beating on the Tigers.

"Hey, Davis," he said, wiping his hands on his pants. "Been a while."

"A few years."

"This is what I got." He pointed to two folders lying on the vacant desk that backed up to his. "Make yourself at home."

I hadn't recovered from the day before. I could feel the shakes getting ready to bust out like runners down in the blocks, waiting for the starter's gun, and I didn't want them to run their relays in front of McNair.

"Okay if I make copies? That way I can get out of your hair."

"Like I got any left," he said, patting his dome. "Knock yourself out. Copy machine is down the hall."

I loaded Regina Blair's file into the copier, skimming the Delaney report while I waited. Delaney lived in an apartment building at Thirty-eighth and Wyandotte. A neighbor reported a bad odor. The manager recognized the smell and called the cops.

Delaney's body was found slumped in a chair. He didn't leave a suicide note.

The gun was on the floor. Most people who shoot themselves hold on to the gun.

The autopsy report noted that the bullet's angle of entry was downward. Most people who shoot themselves in the temple aim level or up.

The entry wound was in Delaney's left temple. Delaney was right handed. A right-handed person was much more likely to shoot himself in the right temple than the left. Delaney would have had to turn his head all the way to the right to expose his left temple to the gun. Killing yourself is hard enough without adding a gymnastic degree of difficulty.

Photographs showed Delaney's body in the chair, the location of the gun on the floor, and close-ups of the wound. There was also a series of photographs of his apartment.

The entry wound was described as a hole with a compact area of stippling, a surrounding area of charring, and a bright red hue to the wounded tissues. Based on that, the coroner concluded that the muzzle was less than six inches from the victim when the gun was fired. Most suicide wounds are contact wounds, muzzle pressed against the temple. The distance wasn't typical of suicide but was more likely if Delaney had turned his head to the right and stretched his right hand around to the left side of his head, which could also explain the downward angle of the entry wound. The question was why he would go to such trouble.

Delaney's fingerprints were found on the gun, a Beretta 92F .9mm pistol registered in his name. It had a ten-shot magazine that had been loaded with jacketed rounds. The gun and the ammunition were nothing fancy; typical of what someone would buy off the shelf for home and personal protection.

There were also two unidentified partial prints, one on the handle and one on the barrel. They were smudged enough that there were no clear ridges or whorls, raising the possibility that they had been made by someone wearing a latex glove. The only thing for certain was that these prints didn't rule out anyone or anything.

Powder burns were found on Delaney's right hand, confirming that he was holding the gun when it was fired. Two rounds were missing from the magazine. Only one bullet was recovered from Delaney's body. The missing round was not recovered or accounted for, and Claire Wilson, the investigating officer, concluded that the gun's magazine must not have been full when Delaney fired the gun.

The neighbor who reported the smell coming from Delaney's apartment and the building manager were the only people interviewed and their statements did not expand on the basic facts. Neither knew Delaney and had not seen him in the days prior to his death.

McNair's supplemental report described his meeting with Milo Harper and his review of Delaney's dream video. McNair wrote that the video in which Delaney talked of killing himself confirmed the coroner's determination of suicide and that there was no evidence to justify further investigation.

Milo Harper was worried about being liable for Delaney's suicide but another possibility jumped off these pages even though it wasn't there in writing. Delaney may not have committed suicide. He may have been murdered.

Someone wearing latex gloves could have shot Delaney, then put the gun in his hand and pulled the trigger a second time, firing the gun into something to muffle the sound and then recovering the second bullet to make it appear that Delaney killed himself. The Beretta and the jacketed ammunition would do the job. That would account for the gun being on the floor, the absence of a suicide note, the downward angle of the entry wound, the wound being on Delaney's left temple rather than the right, the distance of the muzzle from Delaney's temple, the questionable partial fingerprints, and the missing round from the magazine. The combination was enough to raise questions.

The file on Regina Blair was thin, devoid of anything that raised a homicide red flag. A homeless man found her body early on a Sunday morning in an alley between an unfinished parking garage and adjoining office building under construction on the northeast corner of downtown. Cause of death was massive head wounds from the fall. She was wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a down parka. A leather folio embossed with her name and containing architectural drawings was found on the partially enclosed top level of the garage three stories above where her body was discovered.

The coroner ruled that her death was an accident caused when she came too close to the edge of the uncovered portion of the garage's third level that was not protected by a guardrail and somehow lost her balance. He noted that it had sleeted during the night and that the exposed concrete surface was wet and slick with traces of ice.

No other witnesses were identified in the report signed by Detective Matt Culpepper. McNair's supplemental report after his meeting with Harper was also brief, noting that Blair admitted in her dream video that she was afraid of heights and that she feared she would one day fall to her death, adding that nothing in the video suggested her death was not an accident.

The photographs showed her body where it was found, views from the ground to the upper deck and from the upper deck to the ground and the area from which Blair fell.

I finished copying both files and made my way back to McNair's desk.

"I don't see any witness statements in Delaney's file besides the neighbor's and the building manager's," I said to McNair.

McNair wiped sauce off his chin. "That's cause there weren't any other witnesses."

"No one heard a gunshot?"

"Uniforms knocked on some doors. Nobody heard nothing."

"What about Delaney's family? Had he threatened suicide before? Was he depressed?"

"His parents said he'd been treated for depression since he got back from his tours of duty in Iraq. I watched that goofy video he made for Harper's people. All the guy talked about was killing himself. Finally got around to doing it."

"Any chance it wasn't suicide?"

"What you mean? You think someone killed him?"

I gave him my take. "Any reason someone would have wanted to kill him?"

McNair shrugged. "Delaney was a newspaper distributor for the
Kansas City Star
which meant he worked middle of the night until mid-morning. Only people mad at him are the ones who didn't get their paper on time. Who's gonna want to kill him? Look," he said, hunching over his desk, "the guy offed himself. That's what the coroner's report says. That's what he dreamed of doing. End of story."

"What about Regina Blair?"

"Dizzy bitch. She's the goddamn architect on this building, which includes the parking garage, and she's scared of heights. So what's she doing standing on the edge three stories up, especially when the concrete was slippery as goose shit. You tell me that? OSHA fined her firm a thousand bucks for not putting up barriers, like it was their fault she was an idiot. Load of crap, you ask me."

"Any chance hers wasn't an accident?"

"Not unless she jumped and she didn't leave a note."

"Neither did Delaney. There are no witness statements in her file either. Did your uniforms bother to knock on any doors on this one?"

McNair swept the remains of the ribs into his wastebasket and turned the volume down on his radio. He stood, planted his palms on his desk, and hung his head, smiling the thin, tight-lipped smile of the trod upon, then turned on me.

"Listen, hotshot, these weren't my cases. I got them when Jason Bolt called the chief and told him to reopen the cases or get sued. The chief promised he'd have someone take another look so I took another look and I didn't see anything new because there wasn't anything new to see."

"You didn't think it unusual that Delaney and Blair both died the exact same way they dreamed they would within a month of one another and that both were participants in this dream project?"

"What? Bolt wants to collect from your boss on these cases and you want to turn them into murder so he don't have to pay? The hell with both of you! Those two had death wishes and they made their wishes come true. You tell me what you would do if you were in my shoes, someone tells you a cockamamie story like that."

"I think I'd ask some more questions, knock on some more doors, and do the job right."

McNair straightened, yanking his pants over his belly.

"I showed you these files as a professional courtesy and all you can do is bust my chops. Delaney was depressed and shot himself. Blair was stupid and fell off the edge of a concrete slab three stories up where she had no business being on account of there was no safety barrier and she was afraid of heights. That's not just me talking. That's what the prosecuting attorney and the coroner said. You want to turn that into murder, be my guest but do it on your time. Now get the fuck out of here!"