“Doc,” Marino said, “how well did you know him?”
“Personally, really not at all.”
“Well, I’m going to tell you what was in the bag because Roche didn’t know what he was looking at and I didn’t want to tell him.”
He at last slipped out of his coat and looked for a safe place to hang it, deciding on the back of a chair. He lit another cigarette.
“Damn, these floors kill my feet,” he said as he went to the table where hookah and hose were piled, and leaned against the edge. “It must kill your knee,” he said to Danny.
“Totally kills it.”
“Eddings’ got a Browning nine-millimeter pistol with a Birdsong desert brown finish,”
Marino said.
. “What’s Birdsong?” Danny placed the spleen in a hanging scale.
“The Rembrandt of pistol finishes. Mr. Birdsong’s the guy you send your weapon to if you want it waterproofed and painted to blend with the environment,” Marino answered. “What he does, basically, is strip it, sandblast it and then spray it with Teflon, which is baked on. All of HRT’s pistols have a Birdsong finish.”
HRT was the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. I felt sure that given the number of stories Eddings had done on law enforcement, he would have been exposed to the FBI Academy at Quantico and its finest trained agents.
“Sounds like something Navy SEALs would have, too,” Danny suggested.
“Them, SWAT teams, counterterrorist, guys like me.”
Marino was looking again at the hookah’s fuel line and intake valves. “And most of us have Novak sights like he’s got, too. But what we don’t have is KTW metal-piercing ammo, also known as cop killers.”
“He’s got Teflon-coated ammo?” I glanced up.
“Seventeen rounds, one in the chamber. All with red lacquer around the primer for waterproofing.”
“Well, he didn’t get armor-piercing ammo here. At least not legally, because it’s been outlawed in Virginia for years. And as for the finish on his pistol, are you certain it’s Birdsong, the same company the Bureau uses?”
“Looks like Birdsong’s magic touch to me,” Marino replied. . “Course, there are other outfits that do similar work.”
I opened the stomach as Marino continued to close like a fist. Eddings had seemed such a fan of law enforcement. I had heard he used to ride along with the police, and go to their picnics and their balls. He had never struck me as gung-ho about weapons, and I was stunned that he would have loaded a pistol with illegal ammunition notorious for being used to murder and maim the very people who were his sources and perhaps his friends.
“Gastric contents are just a small amount of brownish fluid,” I continued. “He didn’t eat near the time of death, not that I would have expected him to if he planned to dive.”
“Any chance fuel exhaust could have gotten to him, say if the wind blew just right?”
Marino continued studying the hookah. “Couldn’t that also make him pink?”
“Certainly, we’ll test for carbon monoxide. But that doesn’t explain what I’m smelling.”
“And you’re sure?”
“I know what I’m smelling,” I said.
“You think he’s a homicide, don’t you,” Danny said to me.
“No one should be talking about this.” I pulled a cord down from an overhead reel and plugged in the Stryker saw. “Not to the Chesapeake police. Not to anyone. Not until all tests are concluded and I make an official release.
I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t know what was going on at the scene. So we must exercise even more caution than usual.”
Marino was looking at Danny. “How long you been working in this joint?” he asked.
“Eight months.”
“You heard what the doc just said, right?”
Danny looked up, surprised by Marino’s change in tone.
“You know how to keep your mouth shut, right?” Marino went on. “That means no bragging to the boys, no trying to impress your family or your girlfriend. You got that?”
Danny held in his anger as he made an incision low around the back of the head, ear to ear.
“See, if anything leaks, me and the doc here are going to know where it came from.”