Cooked Goose (17 page)

Maybe even worse.

“Hey, Dirk,” she said, interrupting his call.

“Hold on,” he told his party on the other end. “What is it, Van?”

“There’s a bullet hole here in the wall behind the front door, and blood spray on the paneling.”

He hurried over to examine the neat round hole and the not-so-neat pattern of spattered blood, signifying that a human body had sprung a major leak in that immediate vicinity.

“Damn,” he said. Then, into the phone, “You’d better send Dr. Liu and a couple of techs. I’m afraid we’ve got a homicide scene here.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

2:35 p.m.

Savannah had left the scene to collect Margie’s “stuff” from her house—using the girl’s key rather than pick a police captain’s lock—and deliver it to the perturbed and bored teenager. By the time she returned to Titus Dunn’s cottage in Two Trees, the property had been converted into a miniature city, inhabited by Dr. Jennifer Liu, the county coroner, and her crew of crime technicians.

Savannah stepped over the yellow tape that cordoned off the area, and walked up to the first technician she recognized, Eileen Brady. Eileen was on her hands and knees, collecting one of the blood drops from the driveway with a cotton swab. “Hi, Eileen,” she said, trying to blend in and not make it too obvious that she was an average citizen, not an authorized person, blithely invading a crime scene. “Is Dirk still around?”

“He left a few minutes ago to get a bite to eat.” Eileen laughed and shook her head. “Seems nothing ruins that guy’s appetite.”

“How true. I’ve seen him fish a two-week-old decomposing corpse out of a lake and, half an hour later, eat a quarter-pounder with cheese. Go figure. I see the meat wagon. Where’s Dr. Liu?”

Eileen pointed with her bloody swab. “Inside the house.”

“Thanks.”

Savannah strolled on into the house, keeping an eye peeled for Bloss or any other members of the S.C.P.D. brass who hated her.

There were several.

She hated them right back.

Not seeing anyone on her mental hit list, she ventured inside the house, where she saw a beautiful and ultra-feminine Asian woman, who looked the exact opposite of the funereal coroner stereotype.

Dr. Liu brushed her long, glossy, black hair away from her face with one gloved hand as she rose from where she had been kneeling on the floor. “Hey, Savannah! How nice to see you. Did you bring me some Godiva chocolates?”

“Sorry, doc. But if I had any chocolate on me, it would have been eaten hours ago. It’s been so long since I’ve eaten that my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”

Long ago, Savannah and Dr. Liu had discovered they were soul sisters, and the common bond between them was a love of chocolate. Usually, when Savannah visited the doctor’s autopsy suite, she was looking for answers, and from the beginning, Dr. Liu had established the price of her bribe—a Snickers bar if it was a mundane inquiry, Godiva if it was something heavy.

“So,” Savannah said, watching Dr. Liu move from one ruined object in the room to the next, making notes and sketches on a yellow legal pad, “how’s it going?”

“Slow. Methodical. Careful.” The doctor looked sad. “Especially when it’s one of our own.”

On the other side of the room, Savannah could see Cindy Oleksiak, who was also collecting blood samples. Savannah recognized the process as a quick and effective method of typing the specimens.

“Is all of this Titus’s blood?” she asked Dr. Liu.

“We’ve tested samples from in here, the bedroom, and the bathroom,” she said. “They’re all the same type: A Negative.”

“His type?”

Dr. Liu nodded. “Afraid so. It’s fairly uncommon. Of course, we won’t know for sure until we do the DNA tests. That’s going to take a while.”

“Do you think he was murdered?”

The doctor glanced around and lowered her voice. “Honestly? Yes. I think so. There’s a lot of blood here. And that was a .357 slug that we took out of the paneling. Judging from the blood spray on the wall, it went through a body first ... about chest level. It would have done a lot of damage.”

Savannah digested that information a moment or two before she could speak. “Why do you suppose they removed his body?”

“Who knows? But there are blood drops leading through the kitchen, out the back door, to the driveway. Like Hansel and Gretel, they left a pretty clear trail.”

“We saw some of those drops earlier. Dirk said Titus keeps a classic Charger in the garage.”

“It’s gone. They’ve put out an APB on him and the car.”

Savannah’s brain searched for a happier, less tragic explanation. “Maybe he was wounded and left on his own, tried to get to a hospital and passed out along the way.”

“Anything’s possible.” She gave Savannah a cheerless but understanding smile. “To be honest, I’m afraid that’s wishful thinking,” she said. “I doubt someone who had been that badly wounded and had lost that much blood, would still be able to get around on their own, let alone drive an automobile.”

So much for happily-ever-after endings
, Savannah thought. “I suppose you’re right. It’s just that, well, Titus is a sweetheart and—”

“I know. We’re all pretty fond of him. This is going to be terrible for Christy. She’s so in love with him. I hear they just got engaged last month.”

“And her mom’s terminally ill. Poor girl. Like they say, ‘When it rains—you might as well start building that ark.’ Has anyone told her yet?”

“Dirk made the call just before he took off for lunch. She can’t leave her mom. Asked him to keep her informed.” Savannah glanced around the shattered remains of the room that said so much about what had happened inside those walls, and yet revealed so little. “Did you find anything else that might point a finger at who did this?” she asked.

Dr. Liu smiled. It was her cocky, almost arrogant, grin that she got when she had something good. She reached into her lab coat pocket and withdrew a small plastic bag that was sealed and labeled. She stuck it under Savannah’s nose. “I thought you’d never ask. Take a look.”

At first, Savannah thought the doctor had handed her an empty bag. Then she caught her breath. “Wow! Is this what I think it is?”

Inside the bag were three hairs. Coarse, silver, curly hairs. “I won’t know for sure until I get them back to the lab and under a microscope, where I can compare them with the ones taken from the rape victims. But I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’ll be a match.”

Savannah felt the adrenaline flood her bloodstream. “Where were they?”

“On the carpet right there, about three and a half feet from where the victim would have been standing when he was shot.”

Savannah fingered the bag thoughtfully. “Does Dirk know about this?”

“Nope. I found them after he’d left,” she said proudly. Looking over Savannah’s shoulder, she peered out the window. “But I’m pretty sure that’s your old partner, pulling in the driveway right now. You can tell him if you want. I’m sure it’ll make his day. Or ruin it.”

Savannah hurried out the door and met Dirk on the lawn. He had a McDonalds’ large Coke in his hand, and a sated look on his face. “Hi,” he greeted her. “Did you get the teeny- bopper’s junk to her?”

“I left her happy and sassy, lying on the bed, watching soaps. Oh, and she’s discovered the wonders of room service. That kid’s appetite is almost as monstrous as yours and mine. Bloss is going to have to take out a second mortgage just to pay her tab.”

Dirk snorted. “Good. Serves him right.” He nodded toward the house. “How’s Dr. Liu doin’ in there?”

“Bad news and good. Well, at least interesting.”

He frowned. “What’s the bad?” Good ol' Dirk. He knew how to embrace the dark side of the moon.

“The blood is most likely Titus’s,” Savannah said, hating how the words tasted in her mouth. “And there’s so much of it that he’s probably dead.”

Dirk’s face dropped. “That’s about as bad as bad news gets. All right, what’s the good?”

“Good or bad, depends on how you look at it. But she also found what she thinks are some hairs like the ones from Santa’s beard.”

“No way! Why would that sonuvabitch go after Titus? He likes to rape women, not kill cops.”

Savannah shrugged. “Maybe Titus saw something at the scene, and the rapist was afraid he’d say something to someone about it.”

“But Titus already said he didn’t find anything that night, or the next morning either.”

“Perhaps he saw something but didn’t realize it was significant until later. I don’t know; it’s just a thought.”

Dirk shook his head and took a long swig of Coke. “Oh, man, this is too bizarre. A serial rapist who goes from mall abductions and rapes to kidnapping a police captain’s daughter, to shooting a cop. What kind of weird is this?”

Savannah sighed, feeling old. “The kind of weird,” she said, “that keeps you awake at night.”

* * *

As Savannah stood beside her sofa, looking down at Dirk, sprawled across it, his mouth hanging open and drool oozing down his chin onto one of her best throw pillows, she wondered if the fried liver and onions had been such a good idea, after all.

He had seemed so discouraged when he’d dropped by this evening. Sitting at her kitchen table, a beer in one hand and the other hand buried in a plate of chocolate chip cookies, he had dumped his whole rotten day on her.

After he had left Titus’s house, he’d spent the rest of the afternoon interviewing the previous rape victims, asking them about the star-studded ring. No one remembered it specifically, although two said their attacker might have been wearing something like that.

Nothing like concrete evidence to make a detective feel warm and fuzzy.

Dirk had been anything but fuzzy, sitting there at the table, shoving his face full of cookies. Taking pity on him, she had offered to make one of his favorite dinners—liver, fried with bacon and onions, mashed potatoes and gravy. The guy had real down-in-Dixie taste buds.

Unfortunately, he had the cholesterol level to match. And seeing his inert form stretched across her sofa, she was afraid that meal might have put him right over the edge.

But she wasn’t terribly concerned—as long as he was drooling. To the best of her knowledge, corpses didn’t drool. But she’d have to ask Dr. Liu sometime, just to make sure.

When her house phone rang, she hurried to answer it, before the racket woke him. He hadn’t had a real night’s sleep since the case had begun, and she hoped the snooze would improve his mental focus. Maybe even his grouchy disposition.

“Hello,” she said softly as she took the phone into the kitchen.

“Is Coulter there?” the nasal voice on the other end barked at her. This hatred she harbored for Bloss was quickly turning to full-fledged loathing. She could almost feel her hackles rise.

“Why?” she replied just as curtly.

“Because I have to talk to him, and he’s not answering his cell.”

“Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t.”

“Put him on the phone.”

She stuck her tongue out at the receiver. “Say, ‘Pretty please, with sugar on it.’ ”

“Screw you, Reid. Get Coulter. It’s important.”

She grinned. His goat had definitely been gotten. She was finished with the game. “Al-l-l right. But only because you asked so nicely.”

She walked back into the living room, phone in hand, then thought of something else she wanted to say. “Oh, by the way, I think the way you’re neglecting your daughter is shameful,” she told him, “although it’s perfectly in keeping with your usual lack of sensitivity and complete absence of character.”

“Shut up about my kid, you dumb bitch.”

Ah-ha! She had struck a nerve. Might as well irritate him just a little more while the gettin’ was good.

“A bitch, maybe,” she said, “but dumb? How would you know, you stupid-as-a-stump peckerhead.”

“Get Coulter! Now, damn it!”

 
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m racin’ over to him right now.”

She sauntered to the couch and nudged Dirk in the ribs. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty. Ol’ man Bloss is on the phone,” she told him, loud enough that the captain would be sure to hear. “And he’s got his lacy red panties up his crack about something.”

A few more obscenities drifted from the receiver in her hand.

Dirk’s eyes narrowed. “Did you say something to piss him off?” he whispered.

She batted her eyelashes. “Me? Why, of course not. You know I plum adore that man.”

“Right.” Dirk sat up, ran his fingers through his hair and took the phone. “Coulter here.” He listened. Savannah pretended not to as she rearranged the books and magazines on her coffee table. “Really? When? Where?”

Whatever it was, he was wide awake now. He made a scribbling gesture in the air and Savannah quickly supplied him with a tablet and pen. He began to write. She looked over his shoulder and read something about rocks and the beach. She had never been able to decipher his chicken scratches.

“Did they say who they were? What else?” He threw down the pen and reached for his sneakers, which he had kicked off and thrown beneath the sofa. “Okay,” he said, pulling them on. “I’m on my way out there right now.” He gave Savannah a funny look. “No, of course not, Captain. I wouldn’t think of taking Reid with me.”