When the service weapons of Chief of Police Malcolm Crow and Corporal Michael Sweeney were later subpoenaed for testing, the lands and grooves of their gun barrels did not match the retrieved rounds. Shell casings from a Glock similar to Sweeney’s and a Beretta 92F like the one Crow carried did not match the test firings performed by FBI ballistics. Witnesses put Crow and Sweeney elsewhere at the time of the incident.
“I’ve never seen a cover-up this good in a small town,” I said to Church ten days later.
Instead of answering me, he stared at me for a long three?count and ate another vanilla wafer.
Then he opened his briefcase and removed a manila folder marked with an FBI seal. He set it on the table between us, removed a folded sheet, placed it atop the folder, and rested his hand over them both.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Still making no comment, he handed me the folded paper. It was a report from the National Weather Service for August 16. There was no report of a storm, no Doppler record of storm clouds or fog.
“So? Somebody missed it.”
“When the forensics team took possession of the crime scene,” he said, “their reports indicate that the ground was dry and hard. There had been no rainfall in Pine Deep for eleven days.”
“Then we need new forensics guys.”
Church said nothing. He handed me the FBI folder. I took it and opened it. Read it. Read it again. Read it a third time. Threw it down on the table.
“No,” I said.
Mr. Church said nothing.
I picked up the folder and opened it. Inside were several documents. The first was a report from a Forest Ranger who found a body in the woods. The second was a medical examiner’s report. It was very detailed and ran for several pages. The first two pages explained how a positive identification was made on the body. Fingerprints, dental records, retina patterns. A DNA scan was included. A perfect match.
Simon Burke.
He had been severely tortured. His wrists and ankles showed clear ligature marks, indicating that he had been tightly bound. There were also bite marks on his wrists consistent with his having chewed through the cords. His stomach contents revealed traces of fiber.
According to the autopsy, Burke had managed to free himself from bondage and escaped from a cabin where he was being held. He made his way into the forest and apparently became disoriented. He was seriously injured at the time and bleeding internally. Forensic analysis of the spot where he was found corroborated the coroner’s presumption that Burke had collapsed and succumbed to his wounds. He died, alone and lost, deep in the state forest that bordered Pine Deep.
That wasn’t the tough part.
I mean . . . I felt bad for the little guy. He’d become a character in one of his own books.
The intrepid underdog who outwits the bad guys and manages to escape. Except that this wasn’t a book. It was the real world, and the bad guys had already done him so much harm that it’s doubtful he could have been saved even if Echo Team had found him.
But . . . that’s wasn’t the reason Church sat there, staring at me with his dark eyes. It wasn’t the reason that my heartbeat hammered in my ears. It wasn’t the reason I threw the report down again.
The coroner was able to estimate the time of death based on the rate of decomposition. By the time he had been found on August 22, his body had passed through rigor mortis and was in active decay.
The estimated time of death was irrelevant.
It was the estimated date of death that was turning a knife in my head.
When the forest ranger had found him, Simon Burke had been dead for ten days.
Ten.
“No way,” I said.
Church said nothing.
“Burke called the AIC on the thirteenth.”
Church nodded.
“I spoke to him on the sixteenth.”
Church nodded.
“It was him, damn it.”
Church selected a vanilla wafer from the plate, looked at it, and set it down.
The date of death written on the report was August 11.
Mr. Church closed the folder, sighed, stood and left the room.
I sat there.
“God,” I said.
My heartbeat was like summer thunder in my head.
THE END
