Absolute Power (19 page)

As far as they could ascertain there were no witnesses to the incidents at the Sullivan estate, other than the decedent and whoever had murdered her. Notices had been placed in the papers, at banks and shopping centers. No one had come forward.

They had talked to every homeowner within a three-mile radius. They had all expressed shock, outrage and fear. Frank had seen the latter in the twitch of an eyebrow, hunched shoulders and the nervous rubbing of hands. Security would be even tighter than ever in the little county. All those emotions, however, yielded no usable information. The staffs of each of the neighbors had also been thoroughly questioned. There was nothing there. Telephone interviews had been conducted of Sullivan’s household staff, who had accompanied him to Barbados, with nothing earth-shattering to report back. Besides, they all had ironclad alibis. Not that that was insurmountable. Frank filed that away in the back of his mind.

They also did not have a good snapshot of Christine Sullivan’s last day of life. She was murdered in her house, presumably late at night. But if she had indeed been murdered on Monday night, what had she been doing during the day? Frank believed that information had to lend them something to go on.

At nine-thirty in the morning on that Monday, Christine Sullivan had been seen in downtown Washington at an upscale salon where it would cost Frank two weeks’ pay to send his wife for a pampering. Whether the woman was gearing up for some late-night fun or this was something the rich did on a regular basis was something Frank would have to find out. Their inquiries had turned up nothing on Sullivan’s whereabouts after she had left the salon around noon. She had not returned to her apartment in the city, nor had she taken a taxicab anywhere that they could determine.

If the little woman had stayed behind when everyone else went to the sunny south, she had to have a reason, he figured. If she had been with someone that night, that was someone Frank wanted to talk to, and maybe handcuff.

Ironically, murder in the commission of a burglary did not constitute capital murder in Virginia, although, interestingly enough, murder during the course of an armed robbery did. If you robbed and killed, you could be sentenced to death. If you burgled and killed, the most you’d be looking at was life, which wasn’t that great of a choice given the barbaric conditions of most state prisons. But Christine Sullivan had worn much jewelry. Every report the detective had received indicated she was a great lover of diamonds, emeralds, sapphires; you named it, she wore it. There was no jewelry on the body, although it was easy enough to see the marks on the skin the rings had made. Sullivan had also confirmed that his wife’s diamond necklace was missing. The beauty salon owner also remembered seeing that particular piece on Monday.

A good prosecutor could make out a case of robbery on those facts, Frank was sure of it. The perps were lying in wait, premeditation the whole way. Why should the good people of Virginia have to pay thousands of dollars a year to feed, clothe and house a cold-blooded killer? Burglary? Robbery? Who the fuck really cared? The woman was dead. Blown away by some sick goon. Legal distinctions like that did not sit well with Frank. Like many law enforcement people, he felt the criminal justice system was weighted far too heavily in favor of the defendant. It often seemed to him that lost in the entire convoluted process with its intricate deals, technical traps and ultrasmooth defense attorneys was the fact that someone had actually broken the law. That someone had been hurt, raped or killed. That was just flat-out wrong. Frank had no way to change the system, but he could peck around its edges.

He pulled the report closer, fumbling with his reading glasses. He took another sip of the thick, black coffee. Cause of death: lateral gunshot wounds to the cephalic region caused by high-velocity, large-caliber firearm(s) firing one expanding, softnose bullet causing a perforating wound, and a second slug of unknown composition from an unidentified weapon source causing a penetrating wound. Which, in ordinary English, meant her brain had been blown apart by some heavy-duty hardware. The report also stated that the manner of death was homicide, which was the only clear element Frank could see in the entire case. He noted that he had been correct in his conclusion of the distance from which the shots had come. There were no traces of powder in the wound track. The shots had come from over two feet away; Frank surmised that the distance was probably closer to six feet, but that was only his gut talking. Not that suicide had ever been a consideration. But murders for hire were usually of the barrel-to-flesh variety. That particular method cut down considerably on the margin of error.

Frank leaned closer to his desk. Why more than one shot? The woman most certainly was killed with the first round. Was the assailant a sadist, pumping round after round into a dead body? And yet they could account for only two entries into the body, hardly the lead barrage of some madman. Then there was the issue of the slugs. A dumdum and a mystery bullet.

He held up a bag with his mark on it. Only one round had been recovered from the body. It had entered below the right temple, flattened and expanded on impact, penetrated the skull and brain, causing a shock wave of the soft brain tissue, like rolling up a carpet.

He carefully nudged the caged creature or what was left of it. A gruesome projectile that was designed to flatten upon impact and then proceed to rip apart everything in its path, it had worked as designed on Christine Sullivan. Problem was dumdums were everywhere now. And the projectile deformity had been immense. Ballistics had been next to useless.

The second round had entered a half-inch above the other, traversed the entire brain, and exited the other side, leaving a gaping hole much larger than the entrance wound. The bone and tissue damage had been considerable.

This bullet’s resting place had given them all a surprise. A half-inch hole in the wall against the bed. Ordinarily after having cut out the piece of plaster, the lab personnel, using special tools, would have extracted the slug, being careful to preserve the grooving of the bullet, which would enable them to narrow down the make of gun from which it was fired and hopefully to eventually match it to a particular piece of ordnance. Fingerprints and ballistics identification were as close to certain as you got in this business.

Except in this case, while the hole was there, there was no slug in the hole, and no other slug in the room. When the lab had called him to report that finding, Seth Frank had gone down to see for himself. That was as angry as he had gotten in a long time.

Why go to the trouble of digging out a slug when you still had one in the corpse? What would the second slug show that the first wouldn’t? There were possibilities.

Frank made some notes. The missing bullet could be a different caliber or type, which probably would show there were at least two assailants. Strong as his imagination was, Frank could not realistically envision one person wielding a gun in each hand and popping off at the woman. So now he had a probable two suspects. That would also explain the different entry, exit and internal wound patterns. The tumbling dumdum’s entry hole was larger than the other slug’s. So the second slug wasn’t a hollow or softnose. It had blown right through her head, leaving a tunnel half the width of a pinkie in its wake. Projectile deformity had probably been minimal, which was meaningless since he didn’t have the damn slug.

He looked over his initial scene notes. He was in the collection-of-information stage. He hoped he would not be stuck there forever. At least he didn’t have to worry about the statute of limitations expiring on this one.

He looked at the report one more time, and his frown returned.

He picked up his phone and dialed. Ten minutes later he was sitting across from the Medical Examiner in the latter’s office.

The big man pried at his cuticles with an old scalpel and finally glanced up at Frank.

“Strangulation marks. Or at least
attempted
strangulation. Understand, the trachea wasn’t crushed, although there was some swelling and hemorrhaging in the tissue, and I found evidence of a slight fracture of the hyoid bone. Got traces of petechia in the conjunctiva of the eyelids too. Nonligature. It’s all in the protocol.”

Frank turned that over in his mind. Petechia, or tiny hemorrhages in the conjunctiva, or mucous membrane, of the eyes and eyelids, could be caused by strangulation and the resulting pressure on the brain.

Frank leaned forward in his chair, looked at the degrees lining the wall proclaiming the man opposite from him to be a long-dedicated student of forensic pathology.

“Man or woman?”

The Medical Examiner shrugged at the inquiry.

“Hard to tell. Human skin isn’t a stellar surface for prints, as you know. In fact it’s pretty impossible except in a few discrete areas, and after about half a day, if there was anything there, it won’t be anymore. Hard to imagine, though, a woman trying to strangle another woman with her bare hands, but it’s happened. Doesn’t take much pressure to crush a trachea, but bare-handed strangling’s usually a macho method of inflicting death. In a hundred strangling cases, I’ve never seen one where it was proved that a woman committed it. This was from the front too,” he added. “
Mano a mano.
You’d have to be pretty damn confident of your strength advantage. My educated guess? It was a man, for what a guess is worth.”

“The report also says there were contusions and bruises on the left side of her jaw, loosened teeth and cuts on the inside of her mouth?”

“Looks like somebody belted her a good one. One of the molars almost penetrated her cheek.”

Frank glanced at his case file. “The second bullet?”

“The damage inflicted leads me to believe it’s a large caliber, just like the first.”

“Any guesses on the first?”

“That’s all it would be. Maybe .357, .41. Could’ve been a 9mm too. Jesus, you saw the slug. Damn thing was flat as a pancake with half of it dispersed through her brain tissue and fluid. No lands, grooves, twists. Even if you find a probable firearm you’re not going to get a match there.”

“If we can find the other one, we might be in business.”

“Maybe not. Whoever dug it out of that wall probably messed up the markings. Ballistics won’t be happy with that.”

“Yeah, but it might just have some of the deceased’s hair, blood and skin imbedded in the nose. That’s some trace I’d love to get my hands on.”

The ME rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’s true. But you’ve got to find it first.”

“Which we probably won’t.” Frank smiled.

“You never know.”

The two men looked at each other, knowing full well that there was no way in hell they were going to find the other slug. Even if they did, they couldn’t place it at the murder scene unless it had trace evidence of the deceased on it, or they could find the gun that had fired it and placed the weapon at the murder scene. A potential double whammy.

“Find any brass?”

Frank shook his head.

“Then you got no pinprick either, Seth.” The Medical Examiner was referring to the unique imprint left by the firing pin of a gun on the base of the shell casing.

“Never said it would be easy. By the way, state guys giving you room to breathe on this one?”

The Medical Examiner smiled. “Remarkably silent. Now if it had been Walter Sullivan getting whacked, who knows? I already filed my report in Richmond.”

Then Frank said the question he had really come to ask.

“Why two shots?”

The Medical Examiner stopped picking his cuticle, put down his scalpel and looked at Frank.

“Why not?” His eyes crinkled. He was in the unenviable position of being more than competent for the opportunities presented him in the quiet county. One of approximately five hundred Deputy Medical Examiners in the commonwealth, he enjoyed a thriving general practice but had a personal fascination with both police investigations and forensic pathology. Before settling into a quiet life in Virginia he had served as a deputy coroner for Los Angeles County for almost twenty years. It didn’t get much worse than L.A. for homicides. But this was one he could get his teeth into.

Frank looked at him intently and said, “Either shot would have obviously been fatal. No question. So why fire a second? You wouldn’t for a lot of reasons. Number one being the noise. Number two, if you want to get the hell out of there, why take the time to pump another round into her? On top of that, why leave behind another slug that could ID you later on? Did Sullivan startle them? If so, why did the shot come from the doorway into the room, and not the other way around? Why was the firing line descending? Was she on her knees? She probably was or else the shooter was off the scale height-wise. If she was on her knees, why? Execution-style? But there were no contact wounds. And then you have the marks on the neck. Why try to strangle her first, then stop, pick up a gun and blow her head off? And then blow it off again. One slug’s taken. Why? A second gun? Why try to hide that? What’s significant about that?”

Frank stood up and moved around the room, his hands stuck deep into his pockets, a habit of his when thinking intently. “And the crime scene was so fucking clean I couldn’t believe it. There was nothing left. And I mean nothing. I’m surprised they didn’t operate on her and pull out the other slug.

“I mean, come on, this guy was a burglar or maybe that’s what he wants us to believe. But the vault
was
cleaned out. About four and a half million taken. And what was Mrs. Sullivan doing there? She was supposed to be sunning in the Caribbean. Did she know the guy? Was she screwing around on the side? If she was, are the two incidents related in any way? And why the hell would you waltz in the front door, knock out the security system, and then use a rope to climb out the window? Every time I ask myself one question another one pops up.” Frank sat back down, looking slightly bewildered at his outpouring.

The Medical Examiner leaned back in his chair, twirled the case file around and took a minute to read over it. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve, tugged at a corner of his lip with his thumb and index finger.