“Groove like what?”

“Like a gunshot, actually, if I had to guess.”

“This groove, where was it located?”

“Not on the rib itself, but along the top of the costal cartilage where it connects the third rib to the sternum.”

“And a bullet goes through there, it hits what?”

“The heart.”

Lynch looked at Anthony for a moment, waiting for a sign.

“You telling me Stefanski got shot?”

“No. I’m telling you that a single anomaly in the evidence could support that conclusion. Arguing against it, I have no soft tissue damage consistent with a bullet wound. Although, if Stefanski were shot prior to the ax wounds, such evidence would have been obliterated. And we recovered no slugs – not from the body, not from the scene.”

“Anything else?”

“We’re missing a piece of Hurley’s skull and scalp from the right temple. It could have stuck to one of the assailants. It could have been tracked out. It could have been taken as a souvenir.”

“That a big deal?”

“It happens. I won’t say it’s common.”

“Sounds like there’s something else you won’t say.”

Anthony nodded. “There’s this. Most of Hurley’s clothing, and Stefanski’s for that matter, is soaked with blood. The clothing is lying in the blood, got walked on – it’s just a mess. Except Hurley’s shorts, which aren’t much of a mess because he was wearing them. Which is why I noted a small amount of blood and other fluids in his underwear. Semen. Further examination revealed additional blood and semen in his rectum. I have no way of telling whose, but based on the serology, it could be Stefanski's.”

Lynch’s turn to be quiet. Anthony just sat, looking at him, waiting.

“You telling me Hurley’s kid was queer?”

“I’m telling you he had anal intercourse shortly before his death, possibly with Stefanski.”

“Willingly?”

Anthony shrugged. “No bruising not associated with the head wound, no defensive marks. No significant tearing in the anus. Anuses are not designed for sex, so in cases of anal rape, tearing is usually evident.”

“So you got a few things making you think,” said Lynch.

“It’s the combination of them. By itself, the missing piece of Hurley’s head? Like I said, it happens. But I’ve got this weird groove on Stefanski. So, suppose somebody shot him but didn’t want it to look like they shot him. So they take the ax, chop him up, dig the slug out of him or maybe out of the floor. Now, you have this transverse ax wound on Hurley. That’s a little strange. Usually when bodies come in with head trauma, the blow is descending or at a bit of an angle. That’s the natural swing at somebody’s head. This is pretty much straight across. Makes sense if you were a baseball. Might even make sense if the wound were to the thorax.”

Lynch pictured what the doc was saying. Awkward to swing sideways at a guy’s head. “OK, doc, go on.”

“OK, so if you are standing up, the only way somebody takes you through the head from side to side with an ax is if they are a couple of feet taller than you. Hurley was over six feet. In this case, it looks as though Hurley was lying on the floor. We’ve got an ax mark in the floor under his head and wood splinters in his scalp on that side. So the transverse wound makes sense because it was a descending blow to the side of his head while he was lying down. But what’s he doing on the floor?”

“Maybe he got knocked down first.”

“I don’t have any other sign of trauma, and, if our guy had used the ax to knock him down, I would. So there’s that. Now, suppose our fictional somebody, he doesn’t want Stefanski to look shot, so he does his Jack the Ripper routine on him. Suppose he also doesn’t want Hurley to look shot, but Hurley’s shot through the head. So he lays Hurley on the floor and cuts his head in half, and picks up the chunk that shows an entrance wound.”

“OK, say I play along here. Before the ax work, what I got is one guy shot through the chest and another guy shot through the head, temple to temple. Missing chunk’s from the right temple, Hurley’s right-handed. Which probably makes it a murder-suicide. Hurley pops Stefanski, then pops himself. You got any powder burn on Hurley? Stippling?”

Anthony shook his head. “No. But if it was a contact wound, then it would have been very localized, localized enough to be on the missing chunk of Hurley’s head.”

“And with the semen stuff, maybe you have some kind of lover’s quarrel. But what’s with the ax shit? I mean, Hurley and Stefanski didn’t chop themselves up.”

“Doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“So maybe this. Hurley and Stefanski do the nasty. Maybe Hurley wants to, maybe he doesn’t. Either way, it sets him off. He plugs Stefanski, he plugs himself. Somebody walks in, puts it together. Somebody who doesn’t want a homo murder-suicide to be the story. So we get the ax and the footprints and the blood graffiti and all of that.”

“Makes you sound like a fruitcake when you say it out loud, doesn’t it, detective?”

“Little bit, yeah.”

“Another problem with that. Time of death. Based on body temperatures, we’ve got a time of death right around midnight. You guys got there by 12.30, right?”

“Yeah. We got an anonymous disturbance call. Somebody said he’d heard some shouting, saw three black guys jump in a red Dodge, tear ass off. Call came in at 12.17.”

“Thirty minutes, forty five minutes tops, between time of death and you guys coming through the door. Hard to see a murder-suicide, then somebody finding the bodies, and then somebody staging this whole mess in a half hour.”

“So your call is what?”

“I go to court, all I can say is that the evidence points to both of them being hacked to death with an ax, time of death around midnight.”

“And that’s what’s in the report?”

The ME smiled. “We’ve got the report. Of course, sometimes I get a report done, and then I get some other results in, so I file an addendum. It just so happens that I didn’t get the results on the semen, blood typing, and what have you in on time for the main report, so that’s in this addendum.” He pushed a manila envelope across the table to Lynch. “There should be a copy of that with the official report, too, of course. It would be unlike me to forget to file one. But it has been a long night.”

“Leaving the ball in my court?”

“You decide it’s gotta come out, I’ll back you up. You decide one thing’s got nothing to do with the other, I see no reason to have young Hurley’s reputation destroyed.”

Lynch thought about it. “Fucking Stefanski. What I’ve heard, he always did have trouble keeping it zipped.”

“De mortuis nihil nisi bonum,” said Anthony.

“Been a long time since my altar boy days, doc.”

“Say nothing but good of the dead.”

CHAPTER 10 – RIVER FOREST, ILLINOIS

Present Day

Rusty Lynch lived in one of the big old stone houses set back off Oak Park Avenue just as you drove north into River Forest, place probably going for seven or eight hundred grand. Uncle Rusty paid cash for the joint the month after he got back into town from doing his eleven-month hitch at the Club Fed up in Wisconsin, same Club Fed where Dan Rostenkowski worked on his short game after getting caught with his pinkies in the House Post Office cookie jar. In fact, Uncle Rusty and Rostenkowski had been in together for the bulk of Rusty’s jolt. Rusty’d been in on some kickback beef the Feds cooked up when he wouldn’t play ball on one of their stings. He’d fallen on his sword for the Hurleys in the sure and certain faith that they’d have his back when he got out. Lynch wasn’t even sure Rusty liked the River Forest house. Rusty’d always been a city guy, the type that started breaking out in hives he didn’t smell some diesel fumes every ten minutes. Now he’s living on a half-acre of oaks pretending to be a feudal lord? Lynch figured the house was more like a fuck you at the Feds who sent Rusty up. The top Fed prosecutor who tried to flip Rusty was one of his neighbors now.