Move to Strike (3 page)

‘Jesus, O'Donnell,' said Mannix. ‘What's with the merry maze?'

‘We need to approach from the side. The evidence guys are all over the blood spatter patterns near the back of the kitchen.'

‘Okay,' said Joe, as they rounded the back courtyard which led down
to a terraced entertaining area. Big by anyone's standards, but huge for a home in historic Beacon Hill – $4 mill-plus price tag or not.

‘Where's the family?' asked Frank.

O'Donnell shook his head. ‘That's why I took you round the side way,' he said, lifting his leg over a crouched crime scene worker huddled over a metallic case carrying fingerprint lifting powders and brushes. ‘This one, I swear, it has to be seen to be believed.'

They reached the side bi-fold doors and stepped into the kitchen. The image before Joe and Frank nearly blew them away. The back wall of the room was covered in blood and other bodily chunks. The pool of blood on the floor was massive – Joe guessed over four litres – and was now congealing on the tasteful limestone floor. The kitchen benches were covered in spatter, the shiny stainless steel sink now patterned with deep red tracks of fluid that had hit and slithered down its squeaky clean sides. There was even a hole the size of a melon through the under-sink cupboard where a bullet had obviously passed before smashing through the double-brick wall behind.

‘Jesus,' said Joe.

‘It gets worse,' said O'Donnell, gesturing towards the middle of the room.

Within seconds Joe could see he was right. The victim, Stephanie Tyler, was sitting on a white wicker chair, her entire body arched backwards so that her pale thin arms draped awkwardly over the sides of her chair. From behind, it looked like she had been pulverised, the hole between what would have been her shoulder blades at least the size of a soccer ball. The blast must have hit her in the chest from the front and had enough force to shoot her chair backwards at least four feet into the middle of the room.

‘What the hell kind of calibre are we talking here, O'Donnell?' asked Joe, blinking his eyes at a photographer's flash before refocusing on the police sergeant before him.

‘Not that I'm any expert, but Schiff, who knows a thing or two about this shit, tells me the .460 Weatherby is the most powerful calibre in the world. It, and the fancy customised rifles that fire it, are designed for those rich assholes who take pleasure in jumping a plane to Africa and facing off against charging elephants from less than a hundred feet away. The recoil on the bastard is something fierce.'

Joe nodded, taking the information in.

‘Where's the family?' asked Frank again.

O'Donnell shook his head once more. ‘I told you this one was a doozy,' he replied, before directing them around a cooking island and into the kitchen proper.

‘They haven't moved since we arrived,' he said. ‘Doctor Jeff and his two kids refused to do so until he spoke to a detective of rank. To be honest, it has suited us fine, given their lack of movement is preserving the crime scene. Still, when you check this out you will wonder why the hell a father would . . .'

And then they saw it. Three people sitting at the kitchen table – evening out the fourth who had been shot across the room like a rocket.

Across from the mom, at the far end of the table, in front of the kitchen door, sat a young boy of no more than thirteen. His eyes were closed tight, his baggy white long-sleeved T-shirt singed at the shoulder and patterned with tiny spots of his mother's blood.

Next to him, on his right, sat his father, the famous one – straight-backed, eyes unblinking, staring ahead at nothing in particular. He looked remarkably polished compared to the boy, his shirt crisp, his hair neat, his hands in his lap and his chest withdrawn as if afraid to be tainted by the spatters that had settled on the table before him.

Across from him sat the daughter – a pretty ginger-haired teenager who, Joe guessed, would have been about sixteen. She, like her father, appeared relatively ‘clean', but was set apart from the other two, simply because she was the only one crying.

‘
Jesus
,' said Frank.

‘I know,' said O'Donnell, before approaching the table from the left. ‘Doctor Logan,' he called out in a voice which suggested the doctor was hard of hearing. ‘These are two detectives. Lieutenant Mannix here is the commander of the Homicide Unit at Boston PD. As high as you can go on the ladder of – well, what he does.'

O'Donnell was about to say the ‘ladder of death' which is how they referred to the hierarchy in BP homicide. But under the circumstances he had decided not to state the obvious.

‘Doctor Logan,' said Joe, approaching the table without compromising the crime scene now mapped out by laser lights before him, his eyes
flicking back towards the dent in the white kitchen door, his foot stepping over a hat stand that had obviously been knocked over by the blast.

‘I'm Lieutenant Joe Mannix and this is Detective Frank McKay.'

Logan finally looked up from the table and nodded. ‘I want to call a public defender,' he said, his voice low and even.

‘You want to get up from the table and talk, Doctor?' asked Joe, taking another small step forward, wondering how long it would take to get a public defender on the scene at 9.45pm on a Friday night. ‘It might be more appropriate if your children were taken somewhere other than . . .'

‘No, I told them to sit here. I wanted us to stay together, as a family, at least until . . . I want someone to get my business partner,' said Logan, obviously linking two separate thoughts together. ‘Her name is Katherine de Castro. She will be waiting out front. I called her after I dialled 911. She will look after the children.'

‘Get de Castro,' said Joe to O'Donnell, making sure that Logan heard the instruction. Something told him he needed to play this one cool, step by step, inch by inch. The doc looked ready to blow and there were still two extremely traumatised kids in the room.

‘Please, Doctor, you need to get up from the table so our tech guys can finish their job. Your children may need to be treated for shock.'

‘I know,' said the handsome olive-skinned, pepper-haired man, before nodding at his two kids, a strange look of what Joe took to be pride in his large brown eyes. ‘They have been very brave,' he added, using his legs to push the chair backwards and finally getting to his feet – and gesturing with his hands for his two children to do the same.

Joe's eyes shot to the son, the younger sibling with the telltale spatter covering his upper body. His eyes were still shut, a smear of blood he had wiped across his otherwise clean face now gluing his eyelashes together. Joe turned to Frank.

‘Ring Cavanaugh,' he whispered, having made the decision. ‘Get him here now.'

The paramedics moved in, and Joe pulled one of them aside quickly, issuing a short command before turning back to Logan.

‘I'll have a defence attorney here within the half-hour, Doctor Logan,' he said. ‘And while it is within your rights to remain silent until you have representation present, I have to advise you that it is also in your best
interest to provide us with any relevant information regarding the incidents which led to your wife's death as quickly as possible.'

Joe looked up to see Boston Medical Examiner Gus Svenson enter through the now open bi-fold doors. Joe met Gus's eye and caught the brief expression of horror on his face, before the professional Swede nodded his head towards the victim. Joe nodded back, indicating that he was clear to get to work.

‘I know this is difficult,' said Joe, returning his attention to the good looking TV star before him, noticing that his face was still thick with make-up from the afternoon's filming. ‘But any information you can provide us now . . . anything you can . . .'

‘I killed her,' he said, softly at first before repeating it with gusto once again. ‘I killed her. I shot my wife.' It was like a declaration. A statement of fact. ‘It was an accident. My children were not involved,' he added as if needing to make a point.

‘Doctor,' began Joe, shooting a quick glance at McKay. ‘I . . .'

‘I'll make a brief confession giving you the basic details, Lieutenant. But that's all I am willing to share until my attorney arrives,' interrupted Logan who, in that moment, turned to look at his dead wife once again before losing his footing and shuffling backwards to lean on the kitchen counter behind him. ‘Is Ms de Castro here? I . . .'

Joe called for a paramedic who rushed forward.

‘Don't worry, Doctor. We'll find her,' said Joe. ‘In the meantime, why don't you take a load off until your attorney arrives. You talk with him and then he'll talk with us and then, we'll sort this out, all calm and civilised like – one way or another.'

‘I
don't believe this,' smiled Sara Davis, her face glowing in the muted candlelight. She was at the head of the white-clothed table when they brought out the cake – an old-fashioned ice-cream extravaganza in the shape of Cinderella's glass slippers, no less. ‘You didn't!' she said, her aqua eyes looking across at her boyfriend and fellow attorney David Cavanaugh.

‘Well I never,' said their office secretary and surrogate ‘mother', the Irish-born Nora Kelly.

‘Is someone going to fill me in on the joke here?' smiled their boss, mentor and friend Arthur Wright who rounded out their group of four. ‘Or are we about to be joined by a five-year-old with a Disney fetish?'

‘No,' laughed Sara, who had opted for the cosy North End Italian eatery Il Ristorante for her thirty-second birthday dinner. This was the first place David had taken her four years ago – a working dinner following his taking on the case to defend Sara's then boss, African–American civil rights attorney Rayna Martin, in a controversial murder trial. And it had been a special place for them ever since.

‘It's just that . . .' she began, shaking her head at David.

‘No,' interrupted David. ‘We have to sing first, and then you have to blow out the candles, and then you have to make a wish, and then I will
attempt to explain to Arthur and Nora why the thirty-two-year-old love of my life, an educated attorney no less, has a serious shoe fetish and once admitted to me that she had coveted Cinderella's glass slippers since she was two.'

‘Not two,' she protested. ‘I was three, maybe even four.'

‘Well that explains it then,' grinned Arthur, lifting his wine in salute.

David looked across at her, as the restaurant owner, a cheerful elderly Italian named Milo, pulled out his violin so that he might play ‘Happy Birthday' as Sara blew out the candles.

She was so strong, so beautiful, David thought as she threw her hands up in victory at having managed to blow out all thirty-two candles with one breath, a stray chestnut curl landing over her pale blue eyes, her complexion shining with happiness and health.

He did not know how she had managed it – how she had become the person that she was, so willing to accept life's shortcomings for what they were, and take on the causes she believed in – no matter what the cost. True, she was the product of a loving home, having been adopted as a baby by a white couple from Cambridge who later gave her a younger brother by the name of Jake – but she had always bore the slight insecurity that came from knowing her African–American birth mother was only seventeen when she slept with her nameless white biological father, one of many men her mother had ‘been with' in order to survive.

‘Strawberry,' she said, beaming up at Milo. ‘My favourite.'

‘Lucia lived on it during her five pregnancies,' smiled Milo, his Mediterranean accent still strong despite having lived in Boston for half of his sixty-two years.

‘Does that mean I have no excuse after the baby is born?' she said, resting her hands on her belly.

‘No, Signorina,' said Milo. ‘It just means you and young David here get busy with the next one as soon as young Milo here is born.' He smiled, gesturing at Sara's swollen middle.

‘Milo?' said Arthur. ‘I thought you were naming the boy after me.'

‘Boy?' said Nora in protest. ‘No, Arthur. The little one is a girl who looks just like her mother. And we can all thank the Lord for that.'

‘True,' said David with a grin; he and his beloved sixty-something PA shared a history of friendly sparring. ‘Because if it was a boy, like me, his
extremely high intelligence would have been repeatedly overshadowed by his incredible good looks. I hear Brad Pitt has to battle with that particular stumbling block 24/7.'

‘God save us,' said Nora.

Sara smiled and pointed to David's cell phone which was muted but now vibrating on the table. ‘It's okay,' she said, taking a big scoop of ice cream from her pale pink dessert. ‘Pick it up. It might be Jake or my parents.'

‘Or Angelina Jolie wanting to know where the hell I am.'

I
t was cold, the spring chill crisp in the late night air. David took off his scarf and wrapped it around Sara's neck as they jumped out of his LandCruiser, his silence a result of the shock at Joe's news and his frustration at not being able to persuade Sara to get a lift home with Arthur and Nora, his suggestion met by outright refusal from his stubborn partner who was clearly tiring of his growing tendency to treat her with kid gloves.

‘I'm pregnant, David, not terminally ill,' she said as they made their way in and out of the haphazardly parked traffic towards the house. ‘And besides, if you knew this woman I . . . I just want to be there in case you . . .'

‘I'm fine, Sara,' he said, reaching for her hand and squeezing it. ‘I hadn't seen her for years until we ran into each other a few months ago. But you are nearly six months pregnant, and from what Frank says,' he hesitated, his breath billowing fluorescent clouds of condensation into the over-lit yard. ‘Stephanie was – I mean the crime scene is . . .'