Thea pulled her mask down long enough to reply, “Stagnant water, rotting vegetation, maybe a dead animal or two — just your usual swamp stink.”
Tony balanced precariously against the side of the 4 X 4 while donning shoe coverings. “Guess we’re just a couple of city boys, dude.”
“You’re late again,” Neil said. “My SOCOs are almost finished here.”
“The party ain’t over ’til I say it’s over.” Tony pulled his hood up. “I don’t see any other tire tracks along here. Think he offed himself?”
“He’s been despondent since his wife’s death, and drinking heavily. But from here I can see the bullet hole in his forehead and no gun in the vicinity. So, I’d say it’s another homicide.”
“Agreed.” Tony trudged over to the body and squatted to speak to Ed Reiner, who was on his knees in the mud.
Ed had beat Neil to the scene and had scarcely looked up from the body. He turned the head to one side and looked under the sodden clothing. The hands were bagged to preserve any evidence of defensive wounds or material under the nails. Now, Tony helped him roll the body over onto a piece of heavy plastic to avoid contaminating the front of the body by contact with the gravel. The coroner parted the hair and fingered the scalp of the dead man.
The text tone on Neil’s phone sounded. Cornwall.
WH DD? BRN WNT SY
It took him a minute. He hesitated before replying: LATER
Good for Bernie, but it was only a matter of time before somebody called Cornwall or Rae with the news that would be all over town soon.
He called Bernie. “Sorry I can’t send anyone to relieve you for a while yet. Are you okay with some overtime?” Bernie was always okay with overtime, especially if he didn’t have to stand around in the cold. Or heat, or when Detroit was playing Edmonton, or when it was a fine day for golfing.
“No problem.” Bernie’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Although Bliss keeps threatening to leave the house claiming unlawful confinement, individual rights, and we can just kiss her ass, you know…”
“Tell her to stay put, or you will, on my instructions, place her in protective custody — in a cell. She can pick which one. Keep her in your sight at all times, Bernie. Someone tried to kill her once, and we have to assume he’ll try again.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Thea waved a small plastic bag in front of him. “Cartridge casing. Looks like a .32 calibre, same as the one from the church, and the one we found on Bliss’s front lawn earlier.”
“Let’s see if the perp was careless and left us a print this time,” Neil said. The rain stung his face and the temperature was plummeting. In a few hours, this crime scene could be knee deep in snow.
“Any footprints?”
“Nope. The shooter must have stood on the pavement.” Thea stowed the casing in her evidence bag. “All we got is a body and a casing. I printed the inside of the truck and I’ll look for hair and fibres, but unless the perp sat inside with Quantz, I doubt we’ll find anything useful.”
Ed tossed a tarp over the body and plodded over to Neil. “Why can’t we have one of those portable tents to cover the scene like they have on crime shows? So I could examine the body without freezing my balls off.”
“If I’d known we were going to have a crime wave, Ed, I’d have requisitioned one for you. Notice anything odd from your cursory inspection?”
“The bullet went through his forehead an inch above the left eyebrow. Sound familiar? Except Reverend Quantz fell from the choir loft after she was shot, while her husband merely dropped in his tracks.”
Ed stripped off his gear and threw it into a plastic-lined container. “Again, the bullet is still inside the cranium. No stippling around the wound, meaning another distance shot.”
“A good marksman. But that doesn’t point to any suspect in particular. They all belong, or belonged, to gun clubs. Except Fang Davidson. And I’m sure he learned to shoot before he started kindergarten.” He was policing a town of “fuck the gun laws” dissidents. Neil asked the obvious question. “Any ideas about time of death?”
“What? You think this is an episode of CSI?” Ed looked at his watch. “Lividity is well-established. I can tell you he wasn’t moved, or wasn’t moved far, after death. Rigor mortis isn’t complete. Although a liver temperature is unreliable in this cold weather, I’m guessing Mr. Quantz has been dead between eight and ten hours.”
Neil looked at his watch: 9:47 a.m. “So, somewhere between midnight last night and 2:00 a.m.” Rae Zaborski’s 911 call had been logged at 3:02 a.m. It appeared Quantz was killed first, then the perp drove back to town and tried to kill Cornwall. The killer was either getting desperate or cocky.
He said to Ed, “Lester Davidson was the last to return to Dogtown last night. He returned around 11:00 p.m. and closed the compound gate. His route brought him down this side road, but he didn’t see a truck or a body.”
“Death occurred no earlier than midnight.” Ed pulled his black toque over his ears and used the end of his scarf to swipe at the steam on his glasses.
“We’re done here,” Tony called. “Okay for the EMTs to take the body now?”
Neil looked at Ed, who nodded and remarked, “I hope we don’t see any more of these for a while.”
“That makes two of us.” Neil lifted the crime scene tape to allow the EMTs access to the body.
A shout from the ditch turned all heads. Dwayne clambered up the bank, swinging an object from the end of a stick. But his feet failed to find solid ground on the slippery shoulder and he flung his prize at the road before sliding back downhill, disappearing from sight.
The object skipped across the slick surface and stopped within a metre of Neil’s boots.
It was a pistol. An old one.
“It’s the fucking murder weapon!” Tony grabbed Thea and swung her off her feet. He dropped her when she elbowed him in the neck. “Sorry, babe. Forgot myself.”
“We hope it’s the murder weapon,” Neil cautioned.
Thea unpacked the Nikon, and Neil took a few photos with his phone. Even the EMTs abandoned Kelly Quantz’s body to join the cops and coroner regarding the pistol with satisfaction and something like wonder.
“Can this be it?” Ed queried. “With all the muck and sludge, this is a lucky find.”
“Fuck!” Neil rubbed the back of his neck. “Quantz died around midnight, several hours before Ms. Cornwall was attacked. So, unless the perp killed Quantz, drove to town, tried to shoot Cornwall, then drove back here to drop the gun in the ditch, we have a second gun in play.”
“Yeah, but why?” Tony’s initial excitement had waned. “Why not shoot Quantz, then shoot Cornwall — sorry, man,” he looked apologetically at Neil, “— with the same gun, then get rid of it?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Neil agreed. He turned to Thea. “Bag it up, and run prints when you get it out of the rain. And check the gun registry. Chances are slim it’s registered, but worth a look. Good job, Dwayne.”
He looked around. Where was Dwayne?
Two filthy, dripping arms appeared over the crest of the ditch. Dwayne’s mud-covered head followed. “Yeah, thanks for your help, everybody. Appreciate your concern. I’ll need a tetanus shot after that swamp bath.”
Neil said to no one in particular, “Don’t let him get into one of our cars without spreading a tarp first.”
He turned and headed for his Cherokee. “My presence is requested at a Police Services Board meeting this evening.” He smiled at Tony without humour. “And so is yours, pal.”
CHAPTER
thirty-six
The battle of the board game raged on the coffee table. Maybe “raged” was an overstatement. Bernie was the slowest Scrabble player on planet Earth, but if I didn’t get some good tiles soon, he would win his third straight game. To accommodate Scrabble novice Rae, we had agreed to bend the rules and allow proper nouns. But it was Bernie who had just spelled out Zamboni and happily taken the 50-point bonus.