the condition of the “Rover” body. The corpse's skin was like that of a brisket that had been left sitting on a very hot grill for several hours too long. The face was a hideous mask, and the hardened lips were curled back like the man was snarling at Death. The cadaver's torso stood open and the colorless but moist internal organs, after being weighed and sliced for sampling, were in a garbage bag, which had been reinserted into the cavity to await a suturing. The top of the skull had been set beside the head like a partly shattered bowl; the damaged brain rested in a stainless steel pan on the nearby counter.
Dr. Lawrence Ward, the Orleans Parish Medical Examiner, struck a match to light a cigar the size of a baby's wrist. His massive hands had white hair on the backs of them that showed through the tight latex gloves and matched the mane of hair sprouting on his watermelon-shaped head. Ward's watery eyes focused on his notes, made readable by the glasses perched on the tip of his bulbous nose.
“Your John Doe is approximately seventy inches in height, one hundred and sixty pounds. He's Caucasian. I'll have to do some further tests, but the only dental work, a bridge, is probably European. Age between thirty-five and forty-five. Died within past twenty-four hours. Lack of burning on his backside means he was sitting up during the fire. Safety belt melted to him. He was stripped down to his skin, probably to make our jobs harder. He's got some old injuries that could indicate a life of violence, race car driving, or an athletic background.”
Manseur scribbled the information into his notebook.
“The fire was postmortem. No water in the lungs or fire damage to the throat,” the doctor said through the dense cigar smoke that obscured his features. He turned to the X-rays on the light box. “Homicide.”
“I sort of guessed that. Exact cause?”
“Somebody struck him over the left ear with a blunt object using enough force to fracture his temporal bone and put splinters into his brain. Wound is almost circular. Maybe he caught the end of an aluminum baseball bat. I'm pretty sure he was hit first, because of the bleeding inside the skull and swelling in the brain. Then somebody snapped his neck by twisting his head. That twist stopped his heart, which in turn stopped the inner cranial bleeding.”
“Whoever did that was extremely strong?”
“Wouldn't have to be any Charles Atlas if Mr. Doe was unconscious from the blow, which he most likely was. I'd say the killer knew how to induce the injury. They teach that advanced stuff to Special Forces soldiers-SEALs, Rangers, and the like. I'll do a full body X-ray series and see what else I can pick up.”
“Between the fire and foreign dental work, an identification is going to be a bitch,” Manseur said. Why foreigners?
“You're in luck,” the coroner told him. “The fire didn't completely destroy two of his fingertips, because those fingers weren't totally exposed to the heat.” He made a loose fist that put two fingers against the palm of that hand. “I might have lifted enough detail to get you enough for a partial match. Maybe. Who knows?”
The doctor turned to pick up an index card from the table behind him. When he handed it to Manseur, the detective saw that there were two inked spots with lines, grooves, and clearly visible swirls.
Manseur put the fingerprint card in his pocket, then looked at the gurneys lined up against the far wall. “Dying to get in,” he said.
“We've never needed to advertise.”
“You autopsied the Porter and Lee women?”
“Sure did.”
“Could I see those reports?”
“I gave them to Tinnerino and Doyle. You're not working that case, are you?”
“Just curious. Mind if I peek at the originals?”
“If you want.”
“I want.”
After Manseur had read over the reports and the medical examiner had answered his questions, Manseur left. As he stood in the elevator, he sniffed his coat, wondering if he smelled like he'd been hanging out in the kitchen of a barbecue joint.
42
Faith Ann took a streetcar downtown. From its window she saw cops in three separate cruisers going about their Saturday-morning business. One police car raced up St. Charles Avenue with its siren and lights blazing and frightened her, but it didn't pull over to wait at the next stop, so she relaxed.
When people looked at her, they paid no particular attention. One of them had bumped into her, looked down, and said, “Excuse me, son.” Being mistaken for a boy made her smile to herself. She had hoped that her slim body enveloped in a bulky sweatshirt and jeans would disguise her budding breasts, and the half-inch-long hair gave her an added measure of safety. She had looked in the bathroom mirror after cutting off her hair and decided that she thought she looked like a boy but hadn't been sure others would think so.
Faith Ann walked self-assuredly with her shoulders slightly hunched to imitate the way boys her age carried themselves. She even occasionally cupped her hand to push up on her imaginary male genitals.
On Canal Street she looked into a newspaper dispenser and saw her mother's picture and her own. She crossed Canal and strode into the French Quarter, which was wide awake.
43
Captain Suggs had been busy since Jerry Bennett called him. He had revised the BOLO for Faith Ann Porter, adding that the “unstable” preteen had murdered two people and was probably armed and dangerous. He added that any policemen who spotted her should not approach her but keep her in sight and call it in directly to him. At that point he would call Tinnerino and Doyle, and they would clue the Latinos, who would handle the girl. Any complications-because he had no choice-he would handle. If Bennett went down, so might he and a lot of others up and down the chain.
He glanced down at his desk at the phone sheets listing two weeks' worth of calls for Kimberly Porter's office phone, home phone, and the missing cellular phone, which he assumed the daughter had in her possession. Now when she used it, he would be notified within seconds of her exact location. He was awaiting the list of the owners of the telephones that Kimberly had called and those who had called her in that time period, which the departmental researchers were gathering and had instructions to hand-deliver ASAP.
Suggs had often weighed Bennett's generosity-there was no disputing his largesse-against the damage he could do him if he ever decided to unburden himself. Suggs realized that if Bennett kept proof of his own guilt in murders, who knew what evidence of his payouts, and what he got in return for them, he had in his possession. Now he could turn rat and buy himself a lot of slack-maybe a life sentence instead of the needle. It was a disturbing thought. Suggs looked up to see a policewoman in his doorway holding up an envelope.
“You were waiting for these?” she asked. “Telephone records?”
“What do you think?” Suggs said curtly.
She placed the envelope on his desk. Before she was out of the office, he had it in his hands and had slipped out the pages.
The information for each of the three phone numbers was stapled together. Each list of numbers had, as its cover page, the names and addresses of the people the lawyer had called, followed by the names and addresses of those who had called her.
Suggs stared at one of the names in stunned silence. He rifled through all three covers and the number was included on all three lists. The name was H. Trammel, 1233 Post Road, Charlotte, North Carolina. There was another name in the same area code and this one struck a sour cord in Suggs's memory. It was Winter James Massey, Concord, North Carolina. That was a name he knew. It had been called from Kimberly Porter's cell phone two hours after she was dead. Did Kimberly Porter know Winter Massey?
Manseur's hit-and-run investigation involved Henry “Hank” Trammel. Suggs remembered Massey's partner in
