CHAPTER 2
We approached the Gordon house nestled on a small lane on the west shore of the point. The house was a 1960s ranch type that had been made over into a 1990s contemporary. The Gordons, from somewhere out in the Midwest, and uncertain about their career paths, were leasing the house with an option to buy, as they once mentioned to me. I think if I worked with the stuff they worked with, I, too, wouldn't make any long-range plans. Hell, I wouldn't even buy green bananas.
I turned my attention to the scene outside the windows of the Jeep. On this pleasant, shady lane, little knots of neighbors and kids on bicycles stood around in the long purple shadows, talking, and looking at the Gordon house. Three Southold police cars were parked in front of the house, as were two unmarked cars. A county forensic van blocked the driveway. It's a good policy not to drive onto or park at a crime scene so as not to destroy evidence, and I was encouraged to see that Max's little rural police force was up to snuff so far.
Also on the street were two TV vans, one from a local Long Island news station, the other an NBC News van.
I noticed, too, a bunch of reporter-types chatting up the neighbors, whipping microphones in front of anyone who opened his mouth. It wasn't quite a media circus yet, but it would be when the rest of the news sharks got on to the Plum Island connection.
Yellow crime scene tape was wrapped from tree to tree, cordoning off the house and grounds. Max pulled up behind the forensic van and we got out. A few cameras flashed; then a bunch of big video lights went on, and we were being taped for the eleven o'clock news. I hoped the disability board wasn't watching, not to mention the perps who'd tried to ice
Standing in the driveway was a uniformed officer with a pad-the crime scene recorder-and Max gave him my name, title, and so forth, so I was officially logged in, now subject to subpoenas from the DA and potential defense attorneys. This was exactly what I didn't want, but I had been home when fate called.
We walked up the gravel driveway and passed through a moongate into the backyard, which was mostly cedar deck, multileveled as it cascaded from the house down to the bay and ended at the long dock where the Gordons' boat was tied. It was really a beautiful evening, and I wished Tom and Judy were alive to see it.
I observed the usual contingent of forensic lab people, plus three uniformed Southold town cops and a woman overdressed in a light tan suit jacket and matching skirt, white blouse, and sensible shoes. At first I thought she might be family, called in to ID the bodies and so forth, but then I saw she was holding a notebook and pen and looking official.
Lying on the nice silver-gray cedar deck, side by side on their backs, were Tom and Judy, their feet toward the house and their heads toward the bay, arms and legs askew as though they were making snow angels. A police photographer was taking pictures of the bodies, and the flash lit up the deck and did a weird thing to the corpses, making them look sort of ghoulish for a microsecond, a la
I stared at the bodies. Tom and Judy Gordon were in their mid-thirties, very good shape, and even in death a uniquely handsome couple-so much so that they were sometimes mistaken for celebrities when they dined out in the more fashionable spots.
They both wore blue jeans, running shoes, and polo shirts. Tom's shirt was black with some marine supply logo on the front, and Judy's was a more chic hunter green with a little yellow sailboat on the left breast.
Max, I suspected, didn't see many murdered people in the course of a year, but he probably saw enough natural deaths, suicides, car wrecks, and such so that he wasn't going to go green. He looked grim concerned, pensive, and professional, but kept glancing at the bodies as if he couldn't believe there were murdered people lying right there on the nice deck.
Yours truly, on the other hand, working as I do in a city that counts about 1,500 murders a year, am no stranger to death, as they say. I don't see all 1,500 corpses, but I see enough so that I'm no longer surprised, sickened, shocked, or saddened. Yet, when it's someone you knew and liked, it makes a difference.
I walked across the deck and stopped near Tom Gordon. Tom had a bullet hole at the bridge of his nose. Judy had a hole in the side of her left temple.
Assuming there was only one shooter, then Tom, being a strapping guy, had probably gotten it first, a single shot to the head; then Judy, turning in disbelief toward her husband, had taken the second bullet in the side of her temple. The two bullets had probably gone through their skulls and dropped into the bay. Bad luck for ballistics.
I've never been to a homicide scene that didn't have a smell-unbelievably foul, if the victims had been dead awhile. If there was blood, I could always smell it, and if a body cavity had been penetrated, there was usually a peculiar smell of innards. This is something I'd like not to smell again; the last time I smelled blood, it was my own. Anyway, the fact that this was an outdoor killing helped.
I looked around and couldn't see any place close by where the shooter could hide. The sliding glass door of the house was open and maybe the shooter had been in there, but that was twenty feet from the bodies, and not many people can get a good head shot from that distance with a pistol. I was living proof of that. At twenty feet you go for a body shot first, then get in close and finish up with a head shot. So there were two possibilities: the shooter was using a rifle, not a pistol, or, the shooter was able to walk right up to them without causing them any alarm. Someone normal-looking, nonthreatenmg, maybe even someone they knew. The Gordons had gotten out of their boat, walked up the deck, they saw this person at some point and kept walking toward him or her. The person raised a pistol from no more than five feet away and drilled both of them.
I looked beyond the bodies and saw little colored pin flags stuck in the cedar planking here and there. 'Red is for blood?'
Max nodded. 'White is skull, gray is-'
'Got it.' Glad I wore the flip-flops.
Max informed me, 'The exit wounds are big, like the whole back of their skulls are gone. And, as you can see, the entry wounds are big. I'm guessing a.45 caliber. We haven't found the two bullets yet. They probably went into the bay.'
I didn't reply.
Max motioned toward the sliding glass doors. He informed me, 'The sliding door was forced and the house is ransacked. No big items missing-TV, computer, CD player, and all that stuff is there. But there may be jewelry and small stuff missing.'
I contemplated this a moment. The Gordons, like most egghead types on a government salary, didn't own much jewelry, art, or anything like that. A druggie would grab the pricey electronics and such, and beat feet.
Max said, 'Here's what I think-a burglar or burglars were doing their thing, he, she, or they see the Gordons approaching through the glass door; he, she, or they step out onto the deck, fire, and flee.' He looked at me. 'Right?'
'If you say so.'
'I say so.'
'Got it.' Sounded better than Home of Top Secret Germ Warfare Scientists Ransacked and Scientists Found Murdered.
Max moved closer to me and said softly, 'What do you think, John?'
'Was that a hundred an hour?'
'Come on, guy, don't jerk me around. We got maybe a world-class double murder on our hands.'
I replied, 'But you just said it could be a simple homeowner-comes-on-the-scene-and-gets-iced kind of thing.'
'Yeah, but it turns out that the homeowners are… whatever they are.' He looked at me and said, 'Reconstruct.'
'Okay. You understand that the perp did not fire from that sliding glass door. He was standing right in front of them. The door you found open was closed then so that the Gordons saw nothing unusual as they approached the house. The gunman was possibly sitting here in one of these chairs, and he may have arrived by boat since he wasn't going to park his car out front where the world could see it. Or maybe he was dropped off. In either case, the Gordons either knew him or were not unduly troubled by his presence on their back deck, and maybe it's a
