Kendrik Mays’s case file went to the main bank of monitors, his ugly mug staring down at them.
Rapier took the Colt. 45 cursor and clicked on the link that took them to the crime-scene video. But the pointing device didn’t fire or have any muzzle smoke.
“What happened to that?” Payne asked.
“I disabled it before the mayor came in this morning,” Kerry said. “Decided it was a bit over the top. Anyway, as I told you in that text last night, Matt, forensics matched the prints at the Mays house to our mystery shooter, SNU 2010-56-9280.”
The video showed the Mays basement with inverted-V evidence markers everywhere. Rapier moved the cursor over the marker bearing the numeral “05” in the corner of the basement. It was next to a pistol on a dirt- encrusted, sweat-stained T-shirt. A box with a series of digitized buttons at its bottom then popped up. It held a sharp image of the revolver that they’d seen being photographed on the live feed the day before.
“Matt, you were right about the snub-nosed. It was a Chief ’s Special, not a Bodyguard.”
Manipulating the console joystick, Rapier rotated the image of the pistol, showing all the angles at which it had been photographed. He then moved the cursor to the series of digitized buttons. He clicked the button with a question mark on it, and up popped a translucent text box over the image of the pistol. It read:
Weapon: Smith amp; Wesson Model 637-1. 38 Special revolver.
Serial Number: (Unknown; removed by grinding or filing)
Sold: (Unknown)
Seller: (Unknown)
Buyer: (Unknown)
Notes: Airweight Chief’s Special. 5-shot stainless-steel cylinder and 2-inch barrel, aluminum alloy J-frame. Black rubber Uncle Mike’s grips. Only two (2) rounds of Federal. 38 caliber +p loaded in cylinder; other three (3) were spent shell casings of same round. Barrel riflings show evidence of firing. Fingerprints belonging to Kendrik LeShawn MAYS 2008-18-063914-POP-N-DROP.
“Then the ‘boom’ that killed Mays was the. 38?” Payne said. “Not our mystery man’s. 45 cal.?”
“No, no. It was almost certainly the forty-five,” Rapier said.
“What do you want to bet that when we run the ballistics on those plus-p rounds, the. 38 will be linked to some other murder?” Harris said.
Payne nodded as they watched Rapier move the cursor to the basement floor, to the marker with a black “03” at the foot of the dirty mattress lying on wooden pallets. Next to it was a single spent brass casing.
Rapier put the cursor over the marker, and a box popped up with a digital photo close-up of the brass round. He clicked on the box’s question mark button:
Spent casing,. 45 GAP.
Notes: Possible bullet that killed Kendrik LeShawn MAYS 2008-18- 063914-POP-N-DROP. SNU 201-56- 9280.
Then he went to the opposite end of the bed, to the basement wall that had the blood splatter.
He clicked on the evidence maker, and up popped a box showing a close-up photograph of a Crime Scene Unit tech’s hands in tan-colored synthetic polymer gloves holding a heavy-duty needle-nose pliers device that had just extracted a mushroomed copper-covered lead bullet from a wooden stud.
The question mark button brought up:
Copper-Jacketed Hollow-Point,. 45 caliber.
Notes: Possible/Probable bullet that killed Kendrik LeShawn MAYS 2008- 18-063914-POP-N-DROP. SNU 201- 56-9280.
“Okay,” Payne said, “so we know it’s our mystery shooter.”
“Next,” Rapier then said, working the control panel. Mays’s case file was replaced with LeRoi Cheatham’s on the main bank of monitors.
They read the Notes section and chuckled at Detective Harry Mudd’s thoroughness. He’d written: “Michael FLOYD, age 12, nephew of deceased, when asked about possible involvement of a driver of a FedEx white minivan, responded with, ‘What be a FedEx, motherfucker?’”
“I forget who it was,” Harris said, “but someone once questioned Mudd about leaving something out of a report once, and he’s never not put everything he knew into one. I heard that once, when a guy got shot in the pisser of a bar, he included all those ‘for a good time, call Suzy’ phone numbers he copied off the walls.”
“Only some pompous ass like Howard Walker would question a pro like him,” Payne said, then he immediately realized Rapier probably had heard him speak ill about his boss. When he glanced his way, Rapier was nodding. “That, and I like Mudd’s sense of humor.”
Rapier then went to the Crime Scene Unit’s imagery of the Cheatham scene in Northern Liberties, and then went through the same motions with the spent. 45-caliber casings there.
Payne felt his cell phone vibrate once. Staring at its screen, and seeing that he had no tower signal and that the time stamp of the new text was twenty minutes old, he blurted: “Goddamn cell service! Or I should say: goddamn lack of service!”
He glanced at Rapier. “Kerry, how come text messages are more reliable than voice? Call me skeptical, but it seems like it’s the phone company’s evil plan to screw the consumer. You either pay the outrageous price for an unlimited usage plan, or you pay through the nose for each individual text.”
Rapier swiveled in his chair and replied: “Texts use less data than voice, making them easier to get through the pipes. They actually use the tiniest part of the bandwidth that the cell tower uses to constantly link to your phone. The rest of the bandwidth is for the heavier data users, the actual talking and Internet surfing.” He paused and smiled. “But I’m betting you’re right about it being an evil plan.”
Matt grunted as he read the text from Amanda. All morning he’d figured that he was going to catch hell from her after she woke up and found on the pillow beside her only a note-and not him.
He’d written: You look like such an angel while you sleep. I couldn’t find the halo-I looked!-but there’s definitely a heavenly glow. Sorry I had to leave so early. See you soon.-M
He’d then gone back to his Rittenhouse Square apartment atop the Cancer Society Building that he rented from his father. He’d shaved and showered, and changed into nicer clothes.
He now wore a navy blazer, gray woolen cuffed trousers, a crisply starched light-blue shirt with a red striped tie, and highly polished black lace-up shoes.
But apparently I missed that bullet, he thought, rereading it: AMANDA LAW GOT YOUR NOTE. THANKS. I WAY OVERSLEPT amp; WOKE UP NOT FEELING WELL. GOING DOWN TO DRUGSTORE. THEN IT’S BACK TO BED… XOXO -A
Hmmm… back to bed?
But no fun there if she’s ill.
Guess that glow was a fever.
Hope it’s not me she’s sick of.
Could be from sheer exhaustion.
Then he thumbed the reply:
I’M REALLY SORRY, BABY. CAN I BRING YOU ANYTHING? ASPIRIN? CHICKEN SOUP? HOW ABOUT ETERNAL HAPPINESS? SEE YOU SOON…
He hit SEND. Then he put the phone back in his pants pocket.
[TWO]
A minute later, the main door to the ECC suddenly began to swing open. Payne, Harris, and Rapier could hear the soft humming sound of an electric motor on the other side. Then in the doorway appeared a black male in his late teens. He was in a wheelchair, but it was a highly maneuver-able power chair. He controlled its speed and direction with a joystick on the right armrest.
He fluidly rolled inside the ECC.
“Well, hell,” Matt Payne said, “look who’s still on the right side of the law. How are you, Andy?”
“Great, Marshal,” Andy Radcliffe said with a smile.
