But, for all the in-fighting, nasty gossip, adulterous affairs, viciously thrown insults, and occasionally thrown punches, murder was a rare occurrence in Sausalito.
Most of Eddie’s homicides came from the few pockets of poverty and crime in the county. In the towns The Standard covered—Sausalito, Belvedere, Tiburon, Mill Valley, Larkspur, Corte Madera, Kentfield, and Ross—people might have expressed a desire to kill their neighbors, but acting on that impulse was extremely rare. The last homicide investigation in Sausalito was several years earlier. It ended quickly when a jealous lover confessed to what she described as “a crime of passion.” She ran over her adulterous husband in the family’s steep driveway, which she first claimed to be “a tragic accident.”
Eddie was still chuckling to himself as he entered The Standard’s offices.
Despite the deadline to prep tomorrow’s edition of the Mill Valley paper, which was due at the printers by four that afternoon, Rob and Holly were eager to hear any news Eddie might bring.
“I’ll tell you two, right up front—this case is going to take a while,” Eddie claimed with certainty.
Rob was pleased to hear that, hoping the Bradley case would boost readership for weeks to come. “If you’re right about that,” Rob began with a smile, “then the Ladies of Liberty—also known as the nearly deaf and almost dead—are going to go wild. Warren was their poster boy! They’ll be organizing protests outside of Sausalito police headquarters, demanding answers. More importantly, demanding an arrest.”
“Like I care,” Eddie retorted with a laugh. “The sheriff’s offices are in Marin City, and up in San Rafael. Your fair ladies won’t be showing up in either of those locations anytime soon. Come on, admit it, Rob. A headache for Chief Petersen is usually entertainment for you.”
Holly’s eyes opened wide. “Don’t those clowns have some clues as to who may have killed that nasty old gossipmonger?”
“Hey, watch that, Holly. I’m working the Bradley case too. I'm on loan from the sheriff's office to the Sausalito PD until they can clear this case. Right now, I’m included in that group of 'clowns' without clues.” At the thought of working closely with the Sausalito PD, Eddie shook his head. “To be honest, there’s not a hell of a lot of evidence at the murder scene and it certainly is an oddball case! The twist of Bradley’s missing hands, if nothing else, are going to make this an ongoing story.
“Rob finds old walrus puss on his porch swing, enjoying a bit of fresh air. The only thing wrong is that he’s cold as ice. The guy is seventy-two, perhaps a little on the young side for a fatal stroke or heart attack, but certainly nothing out of the ordinary. Petersen and the EMT boys can’t get the county coroner, so they’re happy to take him up to the morgue and get back to their coffee maker, donuts, and computer games. Then we hit a snag—the nicely dressed gentleman’s two arms end just above his wrists. No hands. So, where are the hands?”
Rob and Holly, transfixed by Eddie's retelling of the facts, merely shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders.
“We can’t find any hands, and we’ve got four of Sausalito’s finest—I use that term loosely—looking for them. As we speak, they’re walking through that thick brush under Bradley’s house.”
“I’d be happy to lend you a hand, but my day job keeps me pretty busy,” Holly said with a smile.
“Somehow, Holly, I knew you couldn’t resist saying that,” Eddie declared.
“Why was there no blood?" Holly asked. "I’ve got to figure that getting your hands whacked off would cause a bloody mess.”
“The theory we’re working on now is that Bradley was suffocated, most likely with a pillow, shortly after midnight,” Eddie explained. “In all likelihood, the killer spent twenty, or thirty minutes, rummaging through his place looking for something, then wiped the whole place clean of any prints. Our working theory is after he did all that, he decided to take Bradley’s hands as a souvenir. Or maybe, he didn’t want us to have his victim’s fingerprints. I already checked and found there are no prints for Bradley on file. Now, remember, Rob, all this happened approximately nineteen hours before you went to check on him. But, as far as blood, Holly, dead people don’t bleed.”
“Of course!” Holly said pushing Rob’s arm with her elbow. “I should have known that from all the murder mysteries I read.”
“When the heart stops pumping, the blood that flows out of us quits soon after. It's not much time before it turns into a thick goop and stays inside the arteries and veins. You can get some leakage, depending on gravity and the position of the body, but that’s about it. In all likelihood, Bradley’s hands were cut off thirty minutes or longer after he died. And in Bradley’s house, the gourmet chef that he was, there were several utensils that could've done the job. Most likely it was…” Eddie paused and flipped open his notepad, “...a Victorinox Forschner Rosewood meat cleaver, which we assume the killer found where he left it, sitting on the kitchen counter. It looked spotless, but it was one of many items we bagged for the lab team to take a closer look at.”
“Eww! Kind of like scalping him, only different!” Holly’s eyes opened wide.
She sat down at her computer. In a moment, her screen filled with the cleaver maker’s product description, which she enthusiastically read aloud: “‘A high carbon stainless steel blade made to the highest standards by expertly trained Swiss craftsmen. This product is ideal for cutting through joints and bones.’ Double eww!”
“You’re enjoying this a little too much,” Rob muttered. But from his grin, he seemed just as amused as
