‘Finished,’ the senior photographer said. He and his partner, on the other side of the bodies, got out of the way.
Ryan was already looking around. There was a good deal of ambient light in the passageway, and the detective augmented that with a large flashlight, playing its beam over the edges of the walkway, his eyes looking for a coppery reflection.
‘See any shell casing, Tom?’ he asked Douglas, who was doing the same thing.
‘Nope. They were shot from this direction, too, don’t you think?’
‘Bodies haven’t been moved,’ the coroner said unnecessarily, adding, ‘Yes, definitely both shot from this side. Both were lying down when they were shot.’
Douglas and Ryan took their time, examining every inch of the passageway three times, for thoroughness was their main professional weapon, and they had all the time in the world – or at least a few hours, which amounted to the same thing. A crime scene like this was one you prayed for. No grass to conceal evidence, no furniture, just a bare brick corridor not five feet wide, everything self-contained. That would be a time-saver.
‘Nothing at all, Em,’ Douglas said, finishing his third sweep.
‘Probably a revolver, then.’ It was a logical observation. Light .22 shell casings, ejected from an automatic, could fly incredible distances, and were so small that finding them could drive one to distraction. Rare was the criminal who recovered his brass, and to have recovered four little .22s in the dark – no, that wasn’t very likely.
‘Some robber with a cheap one, want to bet?’ Douglas asked.
‘Could be.’ Both men approached the bodies and squatted down close to them for the first time.
‘No obvious powder marks,’ the sergeant said in some surprise.
‘Any of these houses occupied?’ Ryan asked Monroe.
‘Not either one of these, sir,’ Monroe said, indicating both of those bordering the passageway. ‘Most of the ones on the other side of the street are, though.’
‘Four shots, early in the morning, you figure somebody might have heard?’ The brick tunnel ought to have focused the sound like the lens of a telescope, Ryan thought, and the .22 had a loud, sharp bark. But how often had there been cases just like this one in which no one had heard a thing? Besides, the way this neighborhood was going, people divided into two classes: those who didn’t look because they didn’t care, and those who knew that looking merely increased the chance of catching a stray round.
‘There’s two officers knocking on doors now, Lieutenant. Nothing yet.’
‘Not bad shooting, Em.’ Douglas had his pencil out, pointing to the holes in the forehead of the unidentified victim. They were scarcely half an inch apart, just above the bridge of the nose. ‘No powder marks. The killer must have been standing … call it three, four feet, max.’ Douglas stood back at the feet of the bodies and extended his arm. It was a natural shot, extending your arm and aiming down.
‘I don’t think so. Maybe there’s powder marks we can’t see, Tom. That’s why we have medical examiners.’ He meant that both men had dark complexions, and the light wasn’t all that good. But if there was powder tattooing around the small entrance wounds, neither detective could see it. Douglas squatted back down to give the entrance wounds another look.
‘Nice to know somebody appreciates us,’ the coroner’s representative said, ten feet away, scribbling his own notes.
‘Either way, Em, our shooter has a real steady hand.’ The pencil moved to the head of Maceo Donald. The two holes in his forehead, maybe a little higher on the forehead then the other man, were even closer together. ‘That’s unusual.’
Ryan shrugged and began his search of the bodies. Though the senior of the two, he preferred to do this himself while Douglas took the notes. He found no weapon on either man, and though both had wallets and ID, from which they identified the unknown as Charles Barker, age twenty, the amount of cash discovered wasn’t nearly what men in their business would customarily have on their persons. Nor were there any drugs –
‘Wait, here’s something – three small glassine bags of white powdery substance,’ Ryan said in the language of his profession. ‘Pocket change, a dollar seventy-five; cigarette lighter, Zippo, brushed steel, the cheap one. Pack of Pall Malls from the shirt pocket – and another small glassine bag of white powdery substance.’
‘A drug ripoff,’ Douglas said, diagnosing the incident. It wasn’t terribly professional but it was pretty obvious. ‘Monroe?’
‘Yes, sir?’ The young officer would never stop being a Marine. Nearly everything he said, Douglas noted, had ‘sir’ attached to it.
‘Our friends Barker and Donald – experienced pushers?’
‘Ju-Ju’s been around since I’ve been in the district, sir. I never heard of anybody messin’ with him.’
‘No signs of a fight on the hands,’ Ryan said after turning them over. ‘Hands are tied up with … electrical wire, copper wire, white insulation, trademark on it, can’t read it yet. No obvious signs of a struggle.’
‘Somebody got Ju-Ju!’ It was Mark Charon, who had just arrived. ‘I had a case running on that fuck, too.’
‘Two exit wounds, back of Mr Donald’s head,’ Ryan went on, annoyed at the interruption. ‘I expect we’ll find the bullets somewhere at the bottom of this lake,’ he added sourly.
‘Forget ballistics,’ Douglas grunted. That wasn’t unusual with the .22. First of all, the bullet was made of soft lead, and was so easily deformed that the striations imparted by the rifling of the gun barrel were most often impossible to identify. Second, the little ,22 had a lot of penetrating power, more even than a .45, and often ended up splattering itself on some object beyond the victim. In this case the cement of the walkway.
‘Well, tell me about him,’ Ryan ordered.
‘Major street pusher, big clientele. Drives a nice red Caddy,’ Charon added. ‘Pretty smart one, too.’
‘Not anymore. His brain got homogenized about six hours ago.’
‘Rip?’ Charon asked.
Douglas answered. ‘Looks that way. No gun, no drugs or money to speak of. Whoever did it knew their business. Looks real professional, Em. This wasn’t some junkie who got lucky.’
‘I’d have to say that’s the morning line, Tom,’ Ryan replied, standing up. ‘Probably a revolver, but those groups are awfully tight for a Saturday-night special. Mark, any word on an experienced robber working the street?’
‘The Duo,’ Charon said. ‘But they use a shotgun.’
‘This is almost like a mob hit. Look ’em straight in the eye – whack.’ Douglas thought about his words. No, that wasn’t quite right either, was it? Mob hits were almost never this elegant. Criminals were not proficient marksmen, and they used cheap weapons for the most part. He and Ryan had investigated a handful of gang-related murders, and typically the victim had either been shot in the back of the head at contact range, with all the obvious forensic signs that attended such an event, or the damage was done so haphazardly that the victim was more likely to have a dozen widely scattered holes in his anatomy. These two had been taken out by someone who knew his business, and the collection of highly skilled Mafia soldiers was very slim indeed. But who had ever said that homicide investigation was an exact science? This crime scene was a mix of the routine and the unusual. A simple robbery in that the drugs and money of the victims were missing, but an unusually skillful killing in the fact that the shooter had been either very lucky – twice – or an expert shot. And a mob hit was usually not disguised as a robbery or anything else. A mob murder was most often a public statement.
‘Mark, any noise on the street about a turf war?’ Douglas asked.
‘No, not really, nothing organized. A lot of stuff between pushers over street corners, but that isn’t news.’
‘You might want to ask around,’ Lieutenant Ryan suggested.
‘No problem, Em. I’ll have my people check that out.’
We’re not going to solve this one fast – maybe never, Ryan thought. Well, he thought.
‘Can I have ’em now?’
‘All yours,’ Ryan told the man from the medical examiner’s office. His black station wagon was ready, and the day was warming up. Already flies were buzzing around, drawn to the smell of blood. He headed off to his own car, accompanied by Tom Douglas. Junior detectives would have the rest of the routine work.
‘Somebody that knows how to shoot – better than me even,’ Douglas said as they drove back downtown. He’d tried out for the department’s pistol team once.
‘Well, lots of people with that skill are around now, Tom. Maybe some have found employment with our organized friends.’
‘Professional hit, then?’
‘We’ll call it skillful for now,’ Ryan suggested as an alternative. ‘We’ll let Mark do some of the scutwork on the intelligence side.’