Think of a Number

“As you wish, Sheridan. Hardwick, you seem to have everyone’s attention. You might as well give us the rest of the facts-as briefly as possible. The district attorney is being generous with his time, but he has a lot on his plate. Bear that in mind.”

“Okay, kids, you heard the man. Here’s the compressed-file version, one time only. No daydreaming, no stupid questions. Listen up.”

“Whoa!” Rodriguez raised both hands. “I don’t want anyone to feel they can’t ask questions.”

“Figure of speech, sir. Just don’t want to tie up the district attorney any longer than necessary.” The level of respect with which he articulated Kline’s title was just exaggerated enough to suggest an insult while remaining safely ambiguous.

“Fine, fine,” said Rodriguez with an impatient wave. “Go ahead.”

Hardwick began a flat recitation of the available data. “Over a three- to four-week period prior to the murder, the victim received several written communications of a disturbing or threatening nature, as well as two phone calls, one taken and transcribed by Mellery’s assistant, the other taken and recorded by the victim. Copies of these communications will be distributed. Victim’s wife, Cassandra (aka Caddy), reports that on the night of the murder she and her husband were awakened at one A.M. by a phone call from a caller who hung up.”

As Rodriguez was opening his mouth, Hardwick answered the anticipated question. “We are in touch with the phone company to access landline and cell records for the night of the murder and for the times of the two previous calls. However, given the level of planning involved in the execution of this crime, I would be surprised if the perp left a followable phone trail.”

“We’ll see,” said Rodriguez.

Gurney decided that the captain was a man whose greatest imperative was to appear to be in control of any situation or conversation he might find himself in.

“Yes, sir,” said Hardwick with that touch of exaggerated deference, too subtle to be pounced on, that he was adept at. “In any event, a couple of minutes later they were disturbed by sounds close to the house-sounds she describes as animals screeching. When I went back and asked her about it again, she said she thought it might be raccoons fighting. Her husband went to investigate. A minute later she heard what she describes as a muffled slap, shortly after which she went to investigate. She found her husband lying on the patio just outside the back door. Blood was spreading into the snow from wounds to his throat. She screamed-at least she thinks she screamed-tried to stop the bleeding, wasn’t able to, ran back into the house, called 911.”

“Do you know whether she changed the position of the body when she tried to stop the bleeding?” Rodriguez made it sound like a trick question.

“She says she can’t remember.”

Rodriguez looked skeptical.

“I believe her,” said Hardwick.

Rodriguez shrugged in a way that assigned a low value to other men’s beliefs. Glancing at his notes, Hardwick continued his emotionless narrative.

“Peony police were first on the scene, followed by a sheriff’s department car, followed by Trooper Calvin Maxon from the local barracks. BCI was contacted at one fifty-six A.M. I arrived on the scene at two-twenty A.M., and the ME arrived at three twenty-five A.M.”

“Speaking of Thrasher,” said Rodriguez angrily, “did he call anyone to say he’d be late?”

Gurney glanced along the row of faces at the table. They seemed so inured to the medical examiner’s odd name that no one reacted to it. Nor did anyone show any interest in the question-suggesting that the doctor was one of those people who was perennially late. Rodriguez stared at the conference-room door, through which Thrasher should have entered ten minutes earlier, doing a slow burn at the violation of his schedule.

As if he’d been lurking behind it, waiting for the captain’s temper to boil, the door popped open and a gangly man lurched into the room with a briefcase pinned under his arm, a container of coffee in his hand, and seemingly in the middle of a sentence.

“… construction delays, men working. Hah! So say the signs.” He smiled brightly at several people in succession. “Apparently the word working means standing around scratching your crotch. Lots of that. Not much digging or paving going on. None that I could see. Pack of incompetent louts blocking the road.” He peered at Rodriguez over the top of a pair of reading glasses that were askew. “Don’t suppose the state police could do anything about that, eh, Captain?”

Rodriguez reacted with the weary smile of a serious man forced to deal with fools. “Good afternoon, Dr. Thrasher.”

Thrasher put his briefcase and coffee on the table in front of the one unoccupied chair. His gaze darted around the room, coming to rest on the district attorney.

“Hello, Sheridan,” he said with some surprise. “Getting in early on this one, are you?”

“You have some interesting information for us, Walter?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. At least one small surprise.”

Patently eager to keep his grip on the helm of the meeting, Rodriguez made a show of steering it where it was already going.

“Look, people, I see an opportunity here to turn the doctor’s lateness to our advantage. We’ve been listening to a rundown of the events surrounding the discovery of the body. The last fact I heard concerned the arrival of the medical examiner at the scene. Well, the medical examiner has just arrived here-so why don’t we incorporate his report right now into the narrative?”

“Great idea,” said Kline without taking his eyes off Thrasher.

The ME began speaking as if it had been his intention all along to make his presentation the moment he arrived.

“You get the full written report in one week, gentlemen. Today you get the bare bones.”

If that was a witticism, mused Gurney, it went by unappreciated. Perhaps it was so often repeated that the audience had grown deaf to it.

“Interesting homicide,” Thrasher went on, reaching for his coffee container. He took a long, thoughtful swig and replaced the container on the table. Gurney smiled. This rumpled, sandy-haired stork had a taste for timing and drama. “Things are not exactly as they first appeared.”

He paused until the room was on the verge of exploding with impatience.

“Initial examination of the body in situ led to the hypothesis that cause of death had been the severing of the carotid artery by multiple slash and puncture wounds, inflicted by a broken bottle later discovered at the scene. Initial autopsy results indicate, however, that cause of death was the severing of the carotid artery by a single bullet fired at close range into the victim’s neck. The wounds from the broken bottle were subsequent to the gunshot and were inflicted after the victim had fallen to the ground. There were a minimum of fourteen puncture wounds, perhaps as many as twenty, several of which left shards of glass in the neck tissue and four of which passed completely through the neck muscles and trachea, emerging at the back of the neck.”

There was silence at the table, accompanied by a variety of puzzled and intrigued looks. Rodriguez placed his fingertips together to create a steeple. He was the first to speak.

“Shot, eh?”

“Shot,” said Thrasher, with the relish of a man who loved discovering the unforeseen.

Rodriguez looked accusingly at Hardwick. “How come none of your witnesses heard this gunshot? You told me there were at least twenty guests on the property, and for that matter, how come his wife didn’t hear it?”

“She did.”

“What? How long have you known this? Why wasn’t I told?”

“She heard it, but she didn’t know she heard it,” said Hardwick. “She said she heard something like a muffled slap. The significance of that didn’t occur to her at the time, and it didn’t occur to me until this minute.”

“Muffled?” said Rodriguez incredulously. “Are you telling me the victim was shot with a silencer?”

Sheridan Kline’s attention level shot up a notch.

“That explains it!” cried Thrasher.

“Explains what?” Rodriguez and Hardwick asked in unison.

Thrasher’s eyes glinted triumphantly. “The traces of goose down in the wound.”

“And in the blood samples from the area around the body.” The redhead’s voice was as gender-unspecific as her suit.