Moment of Truth (9 page)

“Fuck you,” Brinkley said, without rancor, and strode into the dining room. He had heard the body was in there but would have known anyway. The room had already started to smell, not from decomposition, way too soon for that, but from blood. The air carried the distinctive scent; fresh blood had a sweet aroma before it coagulated and grew stale. He ignored it, surveyed the dining room, and started to draw.

Another big room, another craggy fireplace, a costly mahogany table, lengthwise, with eight high-backed chairs. Two place settings at the table: husband and wife. Two tall champagne flutes next to pristine white china. Appetizer on a fancy platter. Otherwise nothing. No books, photos, clutter. No bills piled up, no newspapers. Nothing to tell Brinkley anything. Maybe its absence told him something. There was no life in this house. There hadn’t been, even before the dead body.

“Mick, we should move along,” Kovich said, finishing another page of notes. “The M.E. and Davis are with the stiff.”

“Gimme a minute.” Brinkley ignored the term, which everybody in law enforcement used. He’d been saving the body for last. He made careful drawings of everything; the table oriented east–west and the high ceiling, white and clean. The walls covered with a light pink cloth, shiny in wavy lines. It had a name. Sheree would know what it was called. Brinkley made a mental note to ask her, then remembered she didn’t live there anymore.

“Mick? You done yet?” Kovich asked again, and Brinkley nodded. He stepped forward but couldn’t see the body because the D.A. and the M.E. blocked the view. Crime techs buzzed around the chalk silhouette of the body, measuring, photographing, and vacuuming the rug. Brinkley got everybody’s attention by standing there in tall, dark silence. The techs edged away, the D.A. rose to his feet, and the M.E. closed his bag and stood up.

Davis shook Brinkley’s hand over the dead body. “Reg, we having fun yet?” he asked with a grin.

“You tell me, Dwight.”

The D.A.’s rep tie was loosened and a legal pad rested in the crook of his arm like a newborn baby. “Heard you did a first-rate job with the hubby.”

Brinkley couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm. “He didn’t sign.”

“I’m not jerkin’ you, you guys did great work as usual. I don’t need a signature. He confessed and we got the video. I don’t need a picture of him doing it.” Davis nodded at both detectives. “You wanna fill me in on what hubby said?”

Brinkley shut up, and Kovich launched into the blow-by-blow of what happened. Davis took notes and nodded the whole time, getting happier and happier, and Brinkley thought he had never seen anybody so goddamn happy to wear a white hat. Kovich finished the story, and Davis flipped his pad closed. “Sounds good, gentlemen,” he said. “I got plenty to work with. Thanks.”

“Let’s go home then, eh?” It was the M.E., Aaron Hamburg, who turned and squinted through his trifocals. Hamburg was one of the better M.E.s on rotation, a wizened, balding man near retirement. He got along with Brinkley, but right now he looked tired. He wanted to get on with it already. Have Brinkley examine the body so he could tag it, bag it, and slice a bloodless
Y
into its chest.

“Sorry I’m late, Aaron,” Brinkley said, meaning it.

“I understand, I’m just grumpy.” Hamburg was a graying head shorter than Brinkley and wore a rumpled gray suit, dark tie, and a blue yarmulke hanging by a tenacious bobby pin. “I know you had to talk to the husband first. Strike while the iron is hot, eh?”

Kovich nodded in agreement, and Brinkley gestured to the chalk line around the body. He hated it when some knucklehead chalked a body. It could contaminate or move trace evidence. “Who chalked her?”

Hamburg snorted. “It was Dodgett. It’s always Dodgett. Makes him feel like a cop.”

Brinkley couldn’t smile. “When I see that asshole I’ll tell him where to stick his chalk. Now, what’d you find, Aaron?”

“You got lucky this job, it’s cut-and-dried. I’ll tell you what I told Davis. Unofficially, cause of death is multiple stab wounds. I’ll clean her up later but it looks to be about five of ’em. The lethal wound bisected the pulmonary artery. From the temp and lividity, time of death is probably between six-thirty and eight-thirty. Easy case.” Hamburg clapped Brinkley on the arm, but given their height difference it fell at the detective’s elbow. “You live right, my friend.”

“Did you see anything unusual?” Brinkley asked, and Davis looked at him with a frown.

“Why you ask, Brinkley? You got a question?” Davis looked concerned. “Lemme know.”

Brinkley sighed inwardly. He didn’t like talking about his doubts. Actually, he didn’t like talking to anyone but Kovich and sometimes he didn’t even like talking to Kovich. “I don’t know about Newlin, is all.”

“Why not?” Davis cocked his head. Behind him, crime techs completed their tasks. The party was winding down. “He confessed, right? On the scene, and to you?”

“Confession ain’t a home run.”

“Since when? I mean, like they say in the essay tests, ‘Explain your answer.’” Davis grinned, and Kovich laughed.

“I always hated that,” Kovich joined in. “‘Explain your answer.’ ‘Compare and contrast.’ I hated that shit.”

Davis was still grinning. “‘Show your work.’ ‘
Elaborate
.’”

Brinkley ignored the byplay. He could never forget the body on the floor. Even at wakes, he never joked around or made small talk. Respect for life; respect for death. “It’s too soon to tell. His story didn’t sit right.”

“How so?”

“I don’t believe him, maybe that.” Brinkley hated being on the spot. “I think Newlin might be lying.”

“For real?” Davis folded his arms, hugging the pad to his chest. “Why would hubby lie?”

“I don’t know, it’s just a feeling. He seemed like he was lying. Could be he’s protecting someone, I don’t know who.”

“You got any evidence of that? Anything to support it?”

“None, but it’s early.” Brinkley could feel Kovich looking down at his feet. He was too loyal a partner to laugh.

Hamburg was squinting skeptically. “I’m only the M.E., but I don’t see anything out of line here, boys. She’s got stab wounds, most of the bleeding internal. Some defensive wounds on the fingers. I’d say she grabbed the knife at some point, but she wouldn’t put up much of a fight. She was drunk as a skunk. It’s coming through the skin.” Hamburg winced. A religious man, he disapproved. “I’ll know for sure at the post, but I think we lucked out, boys. Sometimes you get the bear.”

“Sometimes the bear gets you,” Brinkley said, but Davis clapped him on the arm with the pad.

“Cheer up, man. You got it covered. I say it’s a duck, but I hear you. If you get anything concrete, lemme know. I’ll study the videotape to make sure. I’ll have somebody pick up a copy tonight.”

Brinkley thought Davis made the videotape sound like film from the big game. Lawyers. “I’ll work on it.”

“Don’t take too long, my friend. Hubby’s going down for capital murder in the morning.”

“A capital case? Why?” It bugged Brinkley that the D.A. asked for death in almost every case. It was over-charging, but in this political climate, the public ate it up. It was the cops who didn’t like it; there were degrees of guilt in the Crimes Code for a reason. “From Newlin’s story, there’s not even premeditation.”

“Savage murder. Lotsa stab wounds. Evidence of torture.”

“He didn’t
torture
her,” Brinkley said.

“The number of stab wounds counts, you know that. Newlin shouldn’t get a lighter charge than the average joe.”

Brinkley didn’t say anything. Everybody knew who the average joe was.

“Why you stickin’ up for this scum, Brinkley? He’s a cold-blooded wife-killer. Took a butcher knife to a defenseless woman, a drunk who couldn’t even fight back.”

“I’m not stickin’ up for him,” Brinkley said. “I think he’s a liar.”

Hamburg yawned. “I’ll let you experts fight this out. I’m going home to bed. I’ll open her up tomorrow at noon.” He picked up his bag and trundled off, trailing an assistant. Davis said his good-byes and left with him, and Brinkley wasn’t unhappy to see him go.

“Move, people,” he said brusquely, and the remaining techs scattered. One tech looked back resentfully, and Kovich caught her cold eye.

“What my partner means is, ‘Thanks, everybody, you did a great job. Now good night, happy trails, and y’all come back now, ya hear?’”

The tech laughed, which satisfied Kovich, but Brinkley didn’t bother to make nice. He lowered himself to one knee beside what used to be Honor Newlin. She lay on her back with her head tilted into the stupid chalk, her refined features lovely even in death. Her dark blond hair made a silky pillow for her head, and her arms had flopped palms up, slashed with defensive wounds. Blood from the gashes had dripped into the lines of her hand, dribbled between the crevices of her fingers, and pooled in her palms, so that in death she cupped her own blood.

He examined the wounds, a cluster of soggy gashes that rent her white silk blouse. Hamburg had said that most of the bleeding was internal, and Brinkley could see that. He slid his pen from his pocket, leaned over, and pressed open the side of a wound, ignoring the smells of blood, cigarettes, and alcohol that wreathed the corpse. He estimated that the cuts looked of average depth, about four to six inches. It told him the doer was strong, but not too strong, and the angle of attack looked slanted, so the doer was taller than Mrs. Newlin. Around six feet tall, maybe? He thought of the silt on the coffee table. Would Newlin put his feet up on a coffee table? Maybe after a few drinks? Surely not during the fight scene he’d described, though.

“Jeez, can you believe this guy?” Kovich said, from the other side of the body. “Nice house, pretty lady, lots of bucks. So he goes and whacks the wife.”

Brinkley ignored him and scanned the body, which showed no other injuries. He judged it to weigh about 125 pounds, at five-six or so. With the blouse she wore black pants of some stretchy material and they outlined the slim shape of her legs, ending above the ankle. Her shins narrowed to a small anklebone, and she had on pink shoes. He looked twice at her shoes. They had no backs, a low heel, and a tiny strap in the front, but the strap of the right shoe was torn and the shoe lay just off the foot. “Shoe’s broke,” he said, making a sketch, and Kovich nodded.

“Probably ripped it when she fell backwards, like when she was being stabbed.”

“You’d think it would just fall off. The shoe has no back. Stupid shoes.”

“Sexy, though. They do it for me. You know what else I like? I go for those big shoes. What do they call them? Platforms. The ones they wear in porno. I like the white ones with the high heel. Or the red. I love the red.”

“You’re a highbrow guy, Kovich.”

“Damn straight.” Kovich knelt closer to the floor and braced himself on his hand. With his butt in the air and his broad nose grazing the rug, he looked like a big dog at play. “You’re about to thank me, Mick.”

“Why?”

“Look.” Kovich pointed beyond the body, on Brinkley’s side. In the path of the tech’s vacuum cleaner glinted something tiny and gold. It was wedged in the thick wool of the patterned rug, which was why Brinkley hadn’t seen it from his angle. Kovich waved off the tech with the vacuum and both detectives leaned closer.

“Wacky-lookin’ thing,” Brinkley said. A gold twinkle sat embedded in the swirling Persian paisley. It looked like a tiny piece of jewelry. He looked closer but wouldn’t move it until it was photographed. “What is it?”

“An earring back. My kid, Kelley, loses them all the time.”

“What’s an earring back?”

“It’s for pierced ears. It holds the earring on. Don’t Sheree have pierced ears?”

“No.” Brinkley didn’t say more. Someday he’d tell Kovich that he and Sheree had separated. Meantime, he looked at Honor Newlin’s head at the same time as Kovich. She still had her earrings on; a single, large pearl on each lobe. He leaned over on his hand, peered behind her ear, and squinted. The left earring back was still on. “This one’s fine. You check the other.”

On his side, Kovich tilted his head like a mechanic under a chassis. “Okay here, too.”

“So they’re not hers.”

“Wrong, skinny.” Kovich righted himself. The body lay between them like a broken line. “They could be hers, just not to these earrings.”

“Fair enough.”

“See? You’re not the only dick in the room.”

“Just the biggest.”

Kovich laughed and stood up, as did Brinkley, hoisting his slacks up with a thumb and giving the body one last going-over. It stuck in his craw that the techs had grabbed the knife. Couldn’t leave the murder weapon in place. Had to get it tested stat. That was the problem with a goddamn box job. Everybody rushed around like a chicken and things got messed up. In the most important cases, they should be going the slowest, not the fastest. He looked away in frustration.