Ten-thirteen’s still clear. ” Brewster looked around.
“But not for long. What’s your ten-twenty?”
“Dilworth. Heading your way on forty-nine. EOT ten- fifteen.”
Vft Brazil had learned how to talk on the radio in the academy and understood codes and why Brewster and West were talking in them.
Something very bad had gone down, and they didn’t want anyone else, a reporter for example, monitoring what they were saying. Basically, Brewster had let West know that the scene was still clear of people who shouldn’t be there, but not for long. West was en route and would arrive in less than fifteen minutes.
West reached for the portable phone she had plugged into the cigarette lighter. She was on red alert, driving fast as she dialed a number.
Her conversation with Chief Hammer was brief.
West shot Brazil a severe look.
“Do everything you’re told,” she said.
“This is serious.”
By the time they reached the crime scene, reporters had gathered in the night, all poised as Brazil’s peers tried to get close to a terrible tragedy. Webb held a microphone, talking into a camera, his pretty face sincere and full of sorrow.
“No identification of the victim, who like the first three shot to death very close to here was driving a rental car,” Webb taped for the eleven o’clock news.
West and Brazil were quiet and-determined as they made their way through. They avoided microphones jabbed their way, cameras rolling in their faces as they ducked and dodged and hurried. Questions flew all around them as if some fast-breaking news bomb had gone off, and Brazil was terrified. He was acutely self-conscious and embarrassed in a way he did not understand.
“Now you know what it’s like,” West said to him under her breath.
Bright yellow crime-scene tape stretched from woods to a streetlight.
Big black block letters flowed across it, repeating the warning
CAUTION CRIME SCENE DONOT ENTER. It barred reporters and the curious from the Lincoln and the senseless death beyond it. Just inside it was an ambulance with engine rumbling, cops and detectives everywhere with flashlights.
Video tape was running, flashguns going off, and crime-scene technicians were preparing the car to be hauled into headquarters for processing.
Brazil was so busy taking everything in and worrying about how close he was going to be allowed to get that he did not notice Chief Hammer until he walked into her.
“Sorry,” Brazil muttered to the older woman in a suit.
Hammer was distressed and immediately began confer ring with West.
Brazil took in the short graying hair softly framing the pretty, sharp face, and the short stature and trim figure. He had never met the chief, but he suddenly recognized her from television and photographs he had seen. Brazil was awed, openly staring. He could get a terrible crush on this woman. West turned and pointed at him as if he were a dog.
“Stay,” she commanded.
Brazil had expected as much but wasn’t happy about it. He started to protest, but no one was interested. Hammer and West ducked under the tape, and a cop gave Brazil a warning look should he think about following. Brazil watched West and Hammer stop to investigate something on the old, cracked pavement. Bloody drag marks glistened in the beam of West’s flashlight, and based on the small, smeared puddle just inches from the open car door, she thought she knew what had happened.
“He was shot right here,” she told Hammer.
“And he fell.” She pointed to the puddle.
“That’s where his head hit. He was dragged by his feet.”
Blood was beginning to coagulate, and Hammer could feel the heat of the throbbing lights and the night and the horror.
She could smell death. Her nose had learned to pick it up the first year she was a cop. Blood broke down fast, got runny around the edges and thick inside, and the odor was weirdly sweet and putrid at the same time. The trail led to a Gothic tangle of overgrown vines and pines, with a lot of weeds.
The victim looked middle-aged and had been dressed in a khaki suit wrinkled from travel when someone had ruined his head with gunshots.