EIGHTY-THREE
The yellow crime scene tape was still around the front porch of the old general store. O’Brien looked at the porch from a half dozen angles. He watched the windmill turn. He listened to the cluck of nearby chickens and tried to picture the scene the night Lyle Johnson died on the front porch.
Dan said, “They found his body sitting right there in that chair.” He pointed to a rocking chair on the porch.
O’Brien said nothing. He knelt down in the Bahia grass next to the porch and looked at the surface of the old cypress slats. He stood and slowly walked up the three timeworn steps leading to the porch. He looked at the bloodstain beneath the chair and then at the wooden barrel behind the chair.
“Place has been gone over by a team, Sean. Except for the blood, Johnson’s pistol lying next to the chair, they got nothing. I know you wanted to come here, but we might be wasting time we don’t have.”
O’Brien said nothing.
Dan said, “What do you do, man? Go into some kinda zone? Do you put yourself in the vic’s place or the perp’s. Because the expression on your face looks damn funky right now.”
O’Brien studied at the pitchfork and looked across the porch, staring at a spot in the knotty wood. He pulled a paper napkin out of his pocket and used it to move the pitchfork from the back of the barrel to the front. He stepped across the porch, knelt and looked at a small hole in the wood. “Look at the angle of this hole.”
“Lots of old wormholes in these planks. Some ought to be replaced.”
“This is new, Dan. Rain and mildew haven’t had time to set in, but there is rust in there. Wood doesn’t rust. And look at the angle. That could only have been made from something coming from a trajectory near the rocking chair.”
“What are you saying?”
O’Brien pointed to the far right prong on the pitchfork. “The rust on this point has been knocked off. The other three prongs all have a covering of rust on the tips. This one doesn’t, and like the hole in the porch, the elements haven’t discolored it.”
“You think Lyle Johnson picked up this pitchfork and threw it like some kind of javelin at the perp, right?”
“That’s exactly what I think. Maybe he made contact. Maybe not. But get a forensic team to check for any DNA that might be in the hole and on the pitchfork. Get this stuff to the lab quick as you can.”
Dan looked out toward the windmill. “O’Brien, you’re like a bird dog. Wish I could have worked with you in Miami. Where to…Sherlock?”
“To where Sam Spelling was shot.”
EIGHTY-FOUR
Grant led O’Brien up the side entrance steps of the U.S. district courthouse in Orlando, a forty-year-old building. Dan pointed to the top step. “Spelling had reached this point. The federal marshals escorting him said Spelling had turned around and asked if it would be okay to smoke a cigarette over there on the side before he went in to testify. He was nervous. The sniper’s bullet caught Spelling about here,” he pointed to a spot between his heart and top of his shoulder. Bullet was a. 303 British.”
Dan took half dozen steps and pointed to the far left door. “That spot on the door, the one that’s been sanded, filled and painted over, is where we dug out the round after it passed through Spelling. Clean shot. Didn’t even hit a bone.”
O’Brien looked in the direction of a parking garage across the street. Then he backed up and stood next to the door. He marked his height at six two with his right hand, made a small line on the door with his pen, and used his driver’s license to mark off three-inch increments down to the spot that was sanded and painted. He looked at the place where Spelling was standing when he was shot.
Dan said, “I see where you’re looking. I almost hate to say it, but they combed the garage. It’s only nineteen floors. Spent two days up there. Metal detectors. Dogs. Nothing. Not even a sweat stain or boot mark left anywhere that we could see.”
“How well do you think they checked the roof?”
“That’s the first place they started.”
“Should have been the last. How about the third floor?”
“Out of nineteen floors, the largest parking garage in the city, why the third?”
“The building is about one hundred yards from this spot. Spelling was five-eight. If he stood right there, and the round hit here, the bullet dropped about a half inch. The shot came from between the second and fourth floors. Let’s go in the middle, to the third.
O’Brien parked his jeep close to the opening of the third floor that provided a view of the courthouse. He got a pair of binoculars out of the glove box and said, “Let’s try to see it from the shooter’s perspective.”
“I guess that would be the closest thing we got to a scope right now,” said Dan.
O’Brien walked to the farthest right-hand corner. “I don’t see any surveillance cameras in this vicinity.”
“Most are in the high traffic areas. We checked the hard-drives to see what came and went an hour before and a half hour after-on either side of the time Spelling was hit. Everything checked clean except the second vehicle to leave. Two minutes after the shooting. A blue van. Tag stolen.”
“Who was it registered to?”
“Guy’s name is Vincent Hall. Says it was stolen off his Mercedes.”
“Where was his Mercedes parked?”
“Third floor.”
“Where on the third floor?”
“Over there,” Dan pointed to a far corner.
“I bet the blue van was right beside the Mercedes. Perp may have arrived early-first thing-got here early to find the best spot. Check that on the tapes. He laid low here. Waited for Spelling to be paraded up the courthouse steps, and fired one shot. Guy’s damn good, an expert.”
O’Brien walked to the corner. A red Cadillac was in the spot closest to the corner and the large concrete pillars. He stared out the open breezeway across to the courthouse steps. He looked through the binoculars.
O’Brien surveyed the area. He found a crumpled cigarette pack. No sign anyone had been smoking. There was an empty five-gallon bucket of roofing tar. It sat adjacent to an opening between one of the concrete pillars and the steel girder. O’Brien squatted down behind the bucket. “Let me see the glasses from here.” Dan handed him the binoculars. “I believe the shooter used this bucket to steady the rifle. The bucket’s been left behind from some construction work. Have your department set up a laser right here. It should match the trajectory to the hole in the door.”
O’Brien looked down at a gutter with half-inch grates spaced to allow the water in but to keep most of the leaves and debris out. The gutter ran the entire length of the floor. He looked in one of the slots and said, “Too dark to see anything.”
“I’d doubt if you’d find a casing in there. Perp probably picked it up. Bouncing in one of these holes would be like hitting one of the ring tosses at the county fair.”
O’Brien heard a car door close. He looked over in the garage and saw a woman locking her door. “Dan, give me your badge for a second.”
“Sean, it’s one thing to be out here with me impersonating a cop. But if you take my ID, you’re busted. In case you haven’t looked…our skin color is a little different.”
O’Brien grinned. “They always look at the shiny badge first.”
Dan sighed, handing O’Brien his detective’s shield.
“Ma’am!” shouted O’Brien.
The woman, dressed in a business suit, turned to look. O’Brien approached her with the ID and said, “Police ma’am. We’re investigating a shooting. And we’ve run into a little challenge. Maybe you can help.”
