Kissing Arizona (15 page)

‘No, we just cut out the section of drywall and there it was, in the fiberglass insulation.'

‘I haven't seen the slugs yet. Do they look right for a . . . what did he have there? A .357 Magnum?'

‘Yeah, a Smith & Wesson Model 66 with a four-inch barrel. Uncle Mike's combat grip. Nice shooting gun. He kept it in a drawer in the den, with a box of shells and the cleaning cloths and oil, all nicely organized . . . looked like he knew what he was doing. And the slugs are both .38 Special plus P. Just right for competition shooting with that weapon.'

‘And for shooting your wife, huh? Does Andy think they're in good enough shape for a match?'

‘Lois's is, for sure. She was shot in the ear and the bullet passed through mostly flesh, just chipped a bone and lodged in that fake molding that isn't even wood. So hers should be a lock. Frank's . . . well, it's pretty flattened from going through his skull and then drywall, but Andy says he sees lands and grooves. He should be able to confirm it was fired by that gun.'

‘Good. How soon?'

‘Uh . . . I didn't think it was right to try to put a rush on it because the lab crew's processing all that ammo from the stash house, and you know how much . . . I mean, there are two casings right there in the chambers, anybody can see this is the right ammo for that gun and two bullets were fired, so . . .' Jason watched Delaney stare at him, blinking. After a few seconds he said, ‘I'll ask him to expedite.'

‘Good. Now . . .' Delaney leaned back, rubbed his face thoughtfully, rocked forward again. ‘I want you all to put yourselves back in the crime scene. You remember that as we arrived – let's see, I think it was Ollie and Oscar first?' They nodded. ‘Ray was right behind them and then Leo and Jason, who were still talking to me when Sarah arrived.' All his detectives nodded, right, right, right, with their faces saying, so what? ‘OK. Now remember how, one after another, you all went to look at the bodies and came back to me and said what?'

‘That it looked like murder/suicide,' Ollie said. ‘The way the bodies lay, not side by side and the wounds not consistent. Looked like he shot her and maybe stood around and thought awhile the way they do, and then stood at the other end of the hall and ate his gun.'

‘Exactly,' Leo said. ‘Two bullets out of the same gun, the wounds look right, the weapon is right there – all the signs were right. For once we all agreed on something.'

‘And when I looked at the photos later,' Ray said, ‘I thought, bingo, we were right the first time.'

‘Me too,' Jason said.

‘And all done with only two shots,' Delaney said. ‘But still, two shots out of the .357 Magnum, that's two big noises.' He looked at Ollie and Ray. ‘How could it be that nobody heard anything?'

‘There were big sports events on all the channels,' Ollie said. ‘Everybody was inside watching games. And those are big lots in Colonia Solana – Cooper's house sits on a full acre, the plants are full-grown, it's like a forest.'

‘Also, the news that night was a big battle in Afghanistan, a couple of suicide bombings in Iraq. It was a noisy night on TV, and every single person I talked to said they watched TV and then went to bed.' Ray turned his liquid brown gaze on Delaney and shrugged. ‘It's not a lively neighborhood.'

‘All the more reason why somebody should have heard a shot.'

‘Well, there was one guy who said come to think of it he might have heard the shots. But then he said, “Three shots, right? Two or three hours apart?” So I guess he heard something else.'

‘Well . . .' Delaney laid the report on the table in front of him and lined it up with the table edge. A waste of time, he'd be grabbing it up and flipping through it again in a minute. He did fussy little things like that when he was trying to line up facts in his head. ‘Let's go on to your interviews, Sarah. When you asked about the couple's relationship, what kind of answers did you get?'

He'd read her report, obviously, but he wanted it plainly restated now so everybody around this table followed the logic of the evidence together. Sarah said, ‘Everybody except Tom mentioned that they argued a lot.'

‘Tom never heard any arguments?'

‘He just wasn't ready that day to admit they had any faults at all. Perfect parents, worked all the time and took care of everybody, we should all be ashamed to speak ill of the dead. But his sister says they disagreed about almost everything, especially lately, and she didn't hesitate to call it
fighting.
According to Nicole they had the loudest fight of all during the last meal she shared with them, lunch on Friday.'

‘Did she say what about?'

‘Yeah, a new store he wanted to build in Phoenix.'

‘And Mrs Cooper was against it?'

‘For now. She said until the building trade recovered they should put it off.'

‘OK. And that manager, Phyllis, agrees there were arguments?'

‘Yes. And that they were worse lately on account of the new store.'

‘Well, so everything lines up, doesn't it?' Ray said. ‘The couple's been fighting. Sunday night they had it out. She wouldn't give in, he went berserk and shot her.'

‘And the rest is boilerplate,' Ollie said. ‘When he realized what he'd done he knew he couldn't get away with it, so he offed himself. Motive, weapons, opportunity – it's the same old same old, isn't it?'

‘Except the housekeeper says they've been arguing about the same things for over twenty years,' Sarah said, ‘so why would it turn violent now?'

‘A lot of money at stake, though,' Ray said, ‘sometimes that's a game changer.'

Around the table, heads were nodding.

‘Maybe,' Delaney said. ‘But the housekeeper's a long-time employee. And she claimed, didn't she, Sarah, that Mr and Mrs Cooper argued to sort out what they thought about the stores?'

‘Yes. She says the one thing they got really mad about was Tom. He wanted him out of the company and she wanted to keep him at the store with her. But the son doesn't seem at all threatened, and he defends both his parents, so . . . it's a little confusing.'

Delaney's face went through several shades of dissatisfaction. ‘Well, families are. Now, Leo, any doubts?'

‘Maybe an issue about time of death,' Leo said. ‘You remember, at the scene we all remarked that the missus – what was her name? – Lois. We all thought Lois hadn't been dead as long as Frank had.'

‘When did we all think that?' Ray Menendez asked, looking around. ‘I don't remember that.'

‘You were outside, Raimundo,' Sarah said. When she got promoted to Homicide she had said his name phonetically, Rye Moon Dough, several times a day in order to remember it, and sometimes she still called him that. It was ironically retro on a guy as hip as Ray Menendez, but it suited his classically Latin-lover looks. ‘You and Ollie were already canvassing the neighbors by the time Leo and I viewed the bodies.'

‘And me,' Jason Peete said.

‘That's right, you were with us,' Leo said. ‘And didn't you agree she looked a little . . . fresher?'

‘No, I said leave it to the docs.'

‘Ah, and here he comes now,' Delaney said, and jumped up to greet Greenberg as he walked off the elevator. ‘This is very kind of you,' he said as he led him back to the table, showed him to the extra chair. All the detectives nodded pleasantly or smiled, which Sarah thought must be quite a shock to the doctor. His tongue had lashed them all at one time or another, so they usually tried not to talk to him at all. But Delaney had said to play nice and this was plainly no day to cross Delaney.

‘The thing we're hoping you'll explain,' Delaney told the doctor, ‘is that our theory of the crime – that Frank killed his wife and then shot himself – matches the weapon that's there and the fact we know he was experienced with guns. But it doesn't seem to agree with everything in your autopsy report.'

‘I kind of thought that's what Leo had in mind when he called me.' Greenberg's sneer added contempt one twitch at a time. ‘Trying to get kindly old Doc Greenberg to admit to a typo or two and make the report fit the theory, hmmm?'

Leo flushed red and said, ‘I don't believe I've ever described you as kindly.' So much for Delaney's admonitions, lost already in the fog of battle. But Leo had misjudged his target. Greenberg smiled, looking genuinely pleased for once.

‘Good!' he said. ‘Now that we understand each other, let's talk about the numbers, shall we? Which body do you want to start with?'

‘Lois,' all the detectives said in unison. They looked at each other, surprised.

‘Jesus, it's a chorus,' Greenberg said. ‘OK then, Lois.' He scrabbled through his notes. ‘Body temp, first. A fraction under ninety degrees when I took it at a few minutes after six. Do we have to go back to Forensics for Dummies, now? Bodies lose between one and two degrees an hour after death, depending on so many variables we hardly ever mention body temp as evidence. Still, we all faithfully take it, first thing, so here we go: average one and a half degrees an hour, you get six to eight hours since Lois expired.

‘Take lividity next: the book says it becomes fixed at six to eight hours. Lois was nice and purple underneath – indicating she hadn't been moved, by the way – and when I pressed a finger I got slight blanching, which returned to dark red almost immediately. Nothing there to disagree with the other estimate.

‘Rigor was just getting started in the jaw and advanced considerably before we got the body moved. It's different for everybody but I can fit that into the initial estimate of six to eight hours.

‘Now let's do Frank. He was cold to the touch and getting stiff all over, not completely rigid yet but well along. Measured temp was just under eighty-two degrees. Lividity was fully fixed – although I hope you all noted that it was somewhat blotchy in his arms and shoulders. If I didn't know any better, and I don't, I'd say his arms might have been rearranged at some point.

‘Autopsy results, now: the stomach contents. Her dinner was better digested than his. Of course they didn't eat together, did they? So he might have eaten later than she did. So many variables in this area it would hardly be worth discussing except that this finding agrees with all the others.

‘So I guess it's time you asked yourselves: why are you so married to this theory that the husband was the shooter?'

‘There was no evidence of forced entry,' Jason said. ‘No tracks outside, no theft or vandalism we could see. Two people alone inside a locked house.'

‘And his wound is consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot,' Sarah said, ‘whereas hers would be difficult to do. And obviously she didn't shoot herself in the head and then trot the gun down the hall to incriminate Frank.'

‘That
would
be kind of tricky.' Something seemed to galvanize Greenberg, and he turned the full bright beam of his attention on Sarah. ‘Even for a female in a rage, you're right, by God, that might be tough to pull off.' The remark was so gratuitously sexist that all her fellow detectives held their breath for a second, half expecting Sarah to heave her water bottle at his head.

But Sarah's admiration of Delaney's non-response to Tom Cooper was still fresh in her memory. ‘And even tougher,' she gave the doctor her blandest stare, ‘to walk down the hall and back without dripping, and then lie down and bleed out.'

The doctor's mocking eyes betrayed a touch of approval. ‘Right again.'

‘OK, so there we are,' Delaney plowed on, ‘two people alone in a locked house.'

The doctor shrugged, looking bored. ‘So somebody else had a key.'

‘Their children, who both can prove they were out of town.'

‘Convenient,' Greenberg said. ‘Isn't it bothering any of you how convenient the evidence is?'

‘Yes, it will comfort you to know that we're all getting twitches and tics over the convenience,' Delaney said, ‘plus my blood pressure has spiked. But the evidence is still what it is.'

‘Yeah, well . . .' Greenberg stretched and yawned, reminding them that life wasn't easy for him, either. ‘My evidence all suggests that she died a little later than he did, but hey – comes to an inquest, if this is all you got, I can argue that all these measurements are known to be highly variable.' He stuffed his file into a bursting briefcase and stood. ‘Any other little bits of graft and collusion I can do for you?'

‘No,' Delaney said. ‘This'll do nicely. Thanks.' He walked the doctor to the elevator like an honored guest, while his detectives studied their hands.

As soon as the elevator door closed Ollie Greenaway said, ‘I could run down the stairs right now and kneecap Dr Greenberg in the parking lot, Sarah, you want me to do that?'

Sarah lined up her pages just so inside the folder, closed the file quietly and said, ‘Doctor who?'

Delaney came back, perched on the edge of his chair like a nervous raptor and said, ‘Well, that went well, didn't it? Everybody ready to make a list?'

‘
Sin duda
,' Ray Menendez said. Being a little clownish to wipe away the shame of not having punched out The Animal, Sarah thought.

‘Here we go then: Leo, thanks to our enlightened Arizona legislature, we won't find any state records on Frank Cooper's guns, but see if you can find purchase records, will you? Or maybe if we're lucky they might be registered federally, if he bought them new at a licensed dealer. Anyway check on membership in gun clubs, talk to friends he hunted or competed with.'