“What we looking for?” Poteat asked me.
He slipped his hands in the pockets of his jacket and hunched his shoulders against the cold.
Snowflakes as big as quarters were beginning to spiral down.
“More than one weapon,” I replied. “The injuries to his head and face are blunt-force trauma.” I pointed a bloody gloved finger. “Obviously, the injury to his neck was inflicted by a sharp instrument. As for the bird shot, the pellets aren’t deformed, and it doesn’t appear that any of them penetrated his body.”
Marino looked positively baffled as he stared at the pellets scattered everywhere.
“That was my impression,” Poteat said, nodding. “Don’t appear the shot was fired, but I couldn’t be sure. Then we’re prob’ly not looking for a shotgun. A knife and maybe something like a tire tool?”
“Possibly but not necessarily,” I answered. “All I can tell you with certainty right now is his neck was cut with something sharp, and he was beaten with something blunt and linear.”
“That could be a lot of things, Doc,” Poteat remarked, frowning.
“Yes, it could be a lot of things,” I agreed.
Though I had my suspicions about the bird shot, I refrained from speculating, having learned the hard way from past experiences. Generalities often got interpreted literally, and at one crime scene the cops walked right past a bloody upholstery needle in the victim’s living room because I had said that the weapon was “consistent with” an ice pick.
“The squad can move him,” I announced, peeling off my gloves.
Harper was wrapped in a clean white sheet and zipped inside a body pouch. I stood next to Marino and watched the ambulance slowly head back down the dark, deserted drive. There were no lights or sirens–no need to rush when transporting the dead. The snow was coming down harder and it was sticking.
“You leaving?” Marino asked me.
“What are you going to do, follow me again?” I wasn’t smiling.
He stared off at the old Rolls-Royce in the circle of milky light at the edge of the drive. Snowflakes melted as they hit the area of gravel stained with Harper’s blood.
“I wasn’t following you,” Marino said seriously. “Got the radio message when I was almost back to Richmond–”
“Almost back to Richmond?” I interrupted. “Almost back from where*.”
“From here,” he said, fishing in a pocket for his keys. “Found out Harper was a regular at Culpeper’s Tavern. I decide to buttonhole him. Was with him maybe a half hour before he basically tells me to screw myself. Then he splits. So I head out, am maybe fifteen miles from Richmond when Poteat gets a dispatcher to raise me and tell me what’s gone down. I’m hauling ass back in this direction when I recognize your ride, stay with you to make sure you don’t get lost.”
“You’re telling me you actually talked to Harper at the tavern tonight?”
I asked in amazement.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Then he leaves me and gets whacked about five minutes later.”
Agitated and restless, he started moving toward his car. “Gonna meet with Poteat, see what all I can find out. And I’ll be by in the morning to look in on the post if you’ve got no objections.”
I watched him walk off, shaking snow out of his hair. He was gone by the time I turned the key in the Plymouth’s ignition. The wipers pushed back a thin layer of snow, then stopped cold in the middle of the windshield. The engine of my state car made one last sick attempt before it became the second DOA of the night.
The Harper library was a warm, vibrant room of red Persian rugs and antiques crafted from the finest woods. I was fairly certain the sofa was a Chippendale, and I had never touched, much less sat on, a genuine Chippendale anything before. The high ceiling was ornamented in rococo molding, the walls lined with books, most of them leatherbound. Directly across from me was a marble fireplace recently stoked with split logs.
Leaning forward, I stretched my hands toward the flames and resumed studying the oil portrait over the mantel. The subject was a lovely young girl in white seated on a small bench, her hair long and very blond, her hands loosely curled around a silver hairbrush in her lap. She shimmered darkly in the rising heat, her eyes heavy lidded, her moist lips parted, the deeply scooped neckline of her dress exposing a porcelain-white, undeveloped bosom. I was wondering why this peculiar portrait was so prominently displayed when Gary Harper’s sister came in and shut the door as quietly as she had opened it.