“It’s certainly a valid concern to bring up,” she said. “I’m sure the police considered it.”
“But it didn’t change their minds. They still say he killed those four people, even though they can’t explain why.”
“How could they? So few people really knew the cook.”
“Like no one really knew me,” he said quietly.
Now she understood what was really troubling the boy. He, too, had been called a murderer; he, too, had been judged by people who scarcely knew him. When Rat looked at Wu Weimin, what he saw was himself.
“All right,” she conceded. “Let’s assume for the moment that he didn’t kill himself. Let’s say it was staged to look like a suicide. Which means someone else must have shot those other four people, and then killed the cook.”
Rat nodded.
“Think about it. Imagine you’re the cook. You’re standing in the kitchen and someone starts shooting in the other room. The gun had no silencer, so you’d hear those gunshots.”
“Then how come no one else did? The report says there were people in the three apartments upstairs, but they heard only one bang. That’s why no one called the police right away. Then the cook’s wife went downstairs and found her husband’s body.”
“How much of this did you read?”
“Most of it.”
“That’s more than I have,” she confessed. She opened the folder to the report filed by Staines and Ingersoll. When Detective Tam had dropped off the material, she had not welcomed the extra work, and had put it off until last night, when she’d given the photos only a cursory glance. Now she read the police report from beginning to end, and confirmed what Rat had just told her. Seven different witnesses stated that they’d heard only one bang, yet a total of nine bullet casings were found in the Red Phoenix restaurant.
Her sixth sense was starting to tingle. That uneasy feeling that something was not right, just as the boy had said.
She opened Wu Weimin’s autopsy report. According to the pathologist, the cook was found lying on his side, his back wedged up against the closed cellar door. His right hand-the one still clutching the gun-was later swabbed and found positive for gunshot residue. Oblivious to the fact that Rat was watching, she clicked through the cook’s autopsy photos. The fatal bullet had been fired into the right temple, and a close-up showed it to be a hard contact wound, the edges seared and blackened in a pressure abrasion ring caused by gases rushing out of the barrel. There was no exit wound. She clicked on the skull X-ray and saw metallic fragments scattered throughout the cranium. A hollow-point bullet, she thought, designed to mushroom and disintegrate, transferring its kinetic energy directly to tissues. Maximum damage with minimum penetration.
She moved on to the other files.
The second autopsy report was for James Fang, age thirty-seven, found slumped behind the cash register counter. He had been shot once in the head. The bullet had entered above his left eyebrow.
The third report was for Joey Gilmore, age twenty-five. His body fell in front of the cash register counter, take- out cartons scattered on the floor around him. He had been shot once, in the back of the head.
The last two victims were Arthur and Dina Mallory, both found near a corner table where they had been sitting. Arthur was shot twice, once in the back of the head, once in the spine. His wife was hit three times, the bullets punching into her cheek, her mid-back, and her skull. Scanning down to the pathologist’s summary, she saw that he’d concluded the same thing she did: that Dina Mallory had been moving when she was shot the first two times, probably trying to flee her attacker. Maura was about to set the report aside when she noticed a sentence describing the dissection of the stomach and duodenum.
Maura opened Arthur Mallory’s autopsy report and scanned down to the examination of his stomach, which, as was routine in an autopsy, had been slit open and the contents collected.
This did not make sense. Why would the Mallorys, their bellies full of what appeared to be an Italian meal, be sitting in a Chinese restaurant?
The description of gastric contents, of macerated lettuce and tomato sauce, had ruined her appetite. “This is not the way to start off breakfast,” she said, closing the folder. “It’s a beautiful day and I’m going to make pancakes, how about that? Let’s not think about this anymore.”
“What about the missing bullet?” said Rat.
“Even if we could find it now, it wouldn’t change the conclusions. The bodies have been long buried or cremated, and the crime scene’s been cleaned up. To reopen a case, you need new forensic evidence. After this many years, there’d be nothing left.”
“But there’s something wrong about all this, isn’t there? You think so, too.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “Let’s assume the cook didn’t kill himself. Let’s assume someone else, a person unknown, walked in and started shooting. Why didn’t the cook just run?”
“Maybe he couldn’t get out.”
“There’s another exit from the kitchen. The report said it opens into an alley.”
“Maybe the door was locked from the outside.”
She pulled up the crime scene images on her laptop. This was completely inappropriate viewing for the boy, but he had raised good questions, and nothing he’d seen or heard so far appeared to have rattled him. “Here,” she said, pointing to the kitchen exit. “It looks like it’s ajar. So there’s no reason he couldn’t have fled. If he heard gunshots in the dining room, anyone with common sense would have run out that kitchen door.”
“What about that door?” He pointed to the cellar door, blocked by the cook’s body. “Maybe he was going to hide down there.”
“The cellar’s a dead end. It makes no sense to head that way. Look at all the evidence, Rat. He’s found holding the gun. There’s gunshot residue on his hand, which means he was in contact with the weapon when it was fired.” She paused, suddenly thinking about the extra bullet casing. The gun was fired twice in the kitchen, but only one blast was heard. And the Glock had a threaded barrel, so it could be fitted with a silencer. She tried to imagine an alternate sequence of events. An unknown killer executes Wu Weimin. Removes the silencer and places the weapon in the dead man’s hand. Fires one last time to plant gunshot residue on the victim’s skin. It would explain why only one blast was heard and why there were two bullet casings in the kitchen. But there was one detail she couldn’t explain with that scenario: why Wu Weimin, given the chance to flee out the back exit, had chosen to remain in the kitchen.
She focused on the cellar door. On the cook’s body, lying in front of it. Blocking it. Suddenly she thought: Maybe he couldn’t flee.
TWENTY-THREE
LUMINOUS PROBABLY GOING TO MAKE THIS WHOLE PLACE LIGHT up,” said Jane. “According to the realtor, all they did after the event was wash down the walls and mop the floors. The linoleum was never replaced. So I’m not sure what this exercise is going to prove.”
“We won’t know until we look, will we?” said Maura.
They stood outside the old Red Phoenix restaurant, waiting for the crime scene unit to arrive. Total darkness was needed to properly examine the interior, and dusk was just now deepening toward night, bringing with it a damp chill that made Maura wish she had brought more than just her raincoat. At the far end of Knapp a lamp
