the dead man. The top of the skull was missing. Contents of the brain pan were splattered on the dash and windshield.
Death smell, metallic like that of damp copper, radiated from inside the car. Frank exhaled through his nostrils. When he had to, he inhaled through his mouth, keeping it shallow. It didn’t do any good. He’d known it wouldn’t, but he did it anyway.
“Head shot at close range.”
Frank felt in his chest the vibrations of Notorious B.I.G. going on about big booty bitches, and he reached in and jabbed at buttons until the CD player turned off and B.I.G. vanished in the middle of a “ ’ho.”
“Who was the nine-one-one?” Jose asked.
Hawkins checked his notebook. “Teasdale.” He spelled the name. “Lives over there.” He pointed to a small brick bungalow halfway down the block.
Frank felt somewhat better walking away, putting the crime scene behind him.
“Skeeter finally got a dose of what he’s been giving out,” Jose said.
“Surprised somebody didn’t do it sooner.”
Closing the case might not be too hard, Frank half reasoned, half hoped.
Somebody out there somewhere. Still on an adrenaline rush, pupils dilated with excitement. King of the world. Immortal. Invincible. Absolutely bulletproof. And they’d talk. Absolutely had to talk. Because they wouldn’t get credit for the score, for taking down Skeeter Hodges, unless people knew they’d done it.
A porch crossed the front of the Teasdale house. From the porch, four rocking chairs surveyed a tiny but well-kept yard guarded by a chain-link fence.
Frank rang the doorbell. From where he stood, he could see Skeeter Hodges’s car. The ambulance and the patrol cars were still there, and the flares still guttering, and still no rubbernecking crowd. The door opened a crack.
“Police,” Frank said, flashing his badge. The door closed. He heard the rattle of one chain lock being undone, then a second. The door opened.
Large man. Mahogany skin. Thick black mustache. Prominent, suspicious eyes. Orange and black Orioles cap, bill to the front. A sweater buttoned snugly across a heavy gut.
“In here.”
Teasdale led Frank and Jose through the living room to a dining alcove. No woman around, Frank decided. No plants, pleats, or patterned fabrics. All straight lines, solid colors, and sturdy furniture. It was barracks neat, the way a meat-and-potatoes man would keep things. In the alcove, Teasdale took a chair on one side of the small table and motioned the detectives to chairs on the other side.
Frank and Jose sat down.
Jose started the questions, Frank took notes.
Teasdale was Edward Everett Teasdale. Sixty-one. District native. Four-year enlistment in the Air Force, service in Germany. Retired Metrobus driver. Spouse deceased. Lived on Bayless Place for the last thirty-six years.
“Tell us what happened this evening,” Jose said.
Teasdale told his story in short, unadorned sentences. He told it methodically. A bus driver making all the stops. He finished and sat, hands folded on the table, looking at Jose and Frank.
Frank went first. “So you heard the shots at seven thirty-two.”
“Jason was warming up.”
“You heard shots, but you didn’t go outside for five minutes.”
“Six.”
“What?”
“Six minutes. Didn’t go out for six minutes. Waited till Jason put down the second batter.”
“Okay, six minutes. Why’d you wait?… Besides wanting to see Jason, of course.”
Teasdale gave Frank, then Jose, a long, disbelieving look. He frowned, a man who knew that there were such things as stupid questions.
“You live ’round here, and the shooting starts,” he said patiently, as though explaining to a child, “you don’t go sticking your damn-fool head out your door.”
“You knew it was James Hodges?” Jose asked. “When you looked in the car? How’s that?”
Teasdale’s eyes rolled at another stupid question. “It was his car,” he said, again slowly, patiently. “It was where he always parked. Him and his buddy, that skinny bastard Pencil. Drive up every evening. Sit there for an hour, maybe two. That’s how I know.”
“They doing any business?”
“Not here. They just sit there.” Teasdale’s eyes narrowed. “Letting us know.”
“Know?… Know what?”
Teasdale took a deep breath. “That Bayless Place was his.”
“Why’d he have to prove that?” Jose asked.
“He just comes around. Sits there, just letting us know.”
“When’d he move in?”
“February… no, March.”
“You see anybody in the street before the shooting?” Frank asked.
“Like I told you,” Teasdale said evenly, “before, I was watching the Birds. And after, I was watching the Birds. When Jason put down the second man up, that’s when I went out. The street was empty. Nobody there. Nobody.”
“You know anybody who’d want Skeeter dead?” Frank asked.
Teasdale half laughed. “Pick a page in the phone book.”
It got quiet in the house as he looked steadily at Frank.
“Somebody’s goin’ to take his place, you know.” Reproach was a knife in Teasdale’s voice. “It’s the way it’s gotten to be around here.” He swung his head back and forth. “Isn’t one bunch of gang-bangers, it’s gonna be another.”
Back on the street, Frank saw a dark gray Jaguar parked beside the ambulance at the crime scene. As they got closer, he spotted Anthony Upton, the medical examiner. A tall, angular man, Upton was directing technicians to position a folding gurney by the Taurus’s open driver’s-side door.
“Nice night, Tony,” Frank said.
Upton looked around and smiled.
Frank avoided looking into the car. Even so, the blood-copper smell reached out for him.
“Messy,” he said. As if it’s ever neat. He said it to have something to say, because if he didn’t, he’d have to take another look inside.
“Shooter shot through the closed window,” Upton said. “Slugs carried a lot of glass in with them.”
“You see his buddy?”
Upton dismissed the question with a shrug. “He was alive.”
“Restricted clientele?”
Upton nodded. “I got enough business with the dead ones, Frank.”
Two techs had the white plastic body bag open on the gurney beside the car. The bigger tech reached in and easily lifted Hodges by the shoulders. He had the corpse halfway out of the car when his smooth motion jerked to a stop.
“Foot’s caught,” Upton said.
The tech heaved.
Frank heard a splintering snap. The tech stumbled back, the corpse in his arms trailing blood and brains.
“Muthafucka,” the tech muttered. He recovered his footing. In a graceful ballroom maneuver, he swung and dipped, dropping his partner onto the gurney, faceup. Everything above the eyebrows was missing. Beneath the dark cavity, the eyes and mouth were wide open.
“Surprised, Skeeter?” Jose asked.
“Slugs exited the front,” Upton said. “Probably somewhere inside the car.”
Jose sat in the driver’s seat, slapping the wheel in a slow funereal beat.
Upton had left in his Jag, following the meat wagon. He and Frank had inventoried, photographed, measured
