Mark of the Devil (24 page)

Finished with his hands, Lundgren directed Terri Good, “Sergeant, if you’d get a wet cloth for Mr. Berkeley to wipe the solution off his hands, and you, Mr. Berkeley, take off your shoes.” As Good walked to the kitchen, Matt held up his handcuffs.

“Hammersmith, take off his shoes,” Lundgren said.

“Huh?” the detective asked, one eyebrow arched in disbelief.

“Are you going to help me, Detective, or am I going to have to get one of my people in here and order you out of the room?”

“Okay, Doc, yeah, yeah, his shoes, for chrissake.” Pulling Matt’s loafers from his feet, he asked, “Now what?”

As Good returned to the room with the wet cloth and wiped the palms and backs of Matt’s hands free of the nitric acid solution, Lundgren answered Hammersmith, “Put them on the floor together, heels and soles up.” Removing a spray bottle from the satchel, she said, “Sergeant, turn off the lights, please. If the luminol glows blue, we’ve got blood. If not, we’ve got another question to answer.”

With the light out, Lundgren sprayed the bottoms of both shoes and waited. “Interesting. No blue, no blood. Lights.”

“What are you saying?” Matt asked Lundgren as the ceiling light went back on.

“I’m saying you’re not the one who walked in the blood at the side of the bed.”

“So somebody helped him,” Hammersmith argued. “Probably that guy Park.”

“Nobody helped me do anything,” Matt argued, “and Steve Park would be the last to get involved in something like this. Go find him. Ask him. Check it out.”

Detective Sergeant Good agreed. “I’ve known Steve Park for years, dived with him I don’t know how many times. He’s solid, but I’ll have one of our people go by the dive shop and talk with him.” Good moved toward the kitchen, took out a cell phone, punched in one of several preset numbers, and turned her back so others in the room couldn’t hear.

“Again, nobody helped me do anything,” Matt repeated. “And I didn’t do anything. I didn’t black out, I didn’t fall on my face, and I didn’t whack the back of my own head. Somebody beat the hell out of me when I entered the room. And no, I didn’t see them.” Matt touched the bluish swelling on the side of his face. Looking at Hammersmith, he asked, “Still think I did this? Feel the knot at the back of my head. Think I did that?”

Matt took a deep breath and continued, “Why they didn’t kill me, I don’t know, but what they did do, they killed my wife, shot the sonofabitch that was in bed with her, and set me up. They stuck something in my arm, I’m sure of that. Could hardly breathe or move a muscle when I came to. I didn’t—”

“In your arm?” Lundgren asked. “Where?”

“I dunno,” Matt said. “Left arm, I think. Whichever arm…you’ll have to take off the cuffs so I can get my shirt off for you to see.”

“Uh-uh, no way, Doc,” Hammersmith shot back. “Not on my watch.”

“Take the cuffs off, Detective,” Lundgren ordered. “You think he’s going to scoot out of here, restraints on his legs and the place surrounded by cops?”

Hammersmith mumbled something under his breath while inserting a key and opening the cuffs.

Matt swung his feet off the sofa and rubbed the feeling back into his wrists before unbuttoning the shirt and working his arms free of the sleeves. He held out both arms for Lundren to inspect. “See anything?”

“A bandage on your left shoulder, for one thing.”

Matt glanced down at the bandage covering the earlier gunshot wound. “Another time and place. Jigged when I should’ve jagged.”

“Uh-huh,” Lundgren grunted as she leaned closer, raising her head so the bottom lens of her trifocals could give better focus. “Hmmmmm. Yes, left arm. There are two areas, almost like a snakebite, and a third slightly higher up. They’re red and puffy.” Putting each area between two fingers, she pressed and pinched at the same time, raising each pucker of skin between two fingers and ending with “Interesting.”

“So?” Hammersmith asked.

“Shirt,” Lundgren said, taking the shirt and placing the left sleeve next to Matt’s arm. “They match.”

“What, damn it?” Hammersmith demanded, throwing his head back and eyeballing the ceiling in frustration.

“The blood spots on Mr. Berkeley’s sleeve and points where needles were inserted in his arm. Someone either shot through the shirt material, or rolled the sleeve up, then back down over the blood leakage.” As Terri Good turned from making her phone call, Lundgren sniffed at the stains on the shirt. “I’ll need a blood sample for analysis to determine what was injected, if anything, but I think I already know one of the injections.”

“What?” Matt asked.

Holding the blood spot on the shirt next to Matt’s nose, Lundgren asked, “Smell anything?”

Matt sniffed several times before answering, “Onions…or garlic. Garlic.”

Good said, “Thiopental sodium, commonly known as Sodium Pentothal.” Looking at Lundgren, she asked, “Right?”

“Most likely. An ultra quick-acting barbiturate. Unconscious within thirty to sixty seconds after being administered. The duration of unconsciousness also relatively short. In minutes, dependent on the dilution and amount injected. In this case, whoever did the injecting apparently squirted some on the shirt upon entry or when exiting the skin, or we probably wouldn’t be able to smell it.

“As for the other injections and what they might have contained,” Lundgren went on as Matt shouldered his way back into his shirt, “you vomited when you regained consciousness, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else? Irregular heartbeat, difficulty breathing, intraocular pressure as though your eyes were swollen and about to explode, muscle weakness and/or pain, excessive salivation?”

Matt nodded. “All the above, except I don’t know whether or not it was additional saliva or vomit, but yeah. Worst part, I couldn’t breathe. What do you think?”

“A skeletal muscle relaxant. Anectine, for example, otherwise known as succinylcholine chloride, used in surgery in combination with certain anesthetics. Several cases on record where people have been immobilized with succinylcholine, then murdered. Or simply overdosed. Paralyzes all muscles, including the diaphragm. If you were overdosed with succinylcholine, you’re lucky to be alive. We’ll leave it up to the lab people to make the determination, but at least that gives us a starting point.”

Slapping the top of his forehead with the flat of his palm, Hammersmith spit out, “I’m not believing this shit. If anybody stuck a needle in Berkeley’s arm, it was him or somebody working with him.”

Matt shook his head in disgust. “That makes absolutely no sense, Hammersmith. If I dosed myself, where’s the hypodermic? Or two or three of them. And if it was somebody working with me, he’s not much of a buddy, leaving me here with a gun in my hand.”

Fay Lundgren looked hard at Matt, her eyes searching for answers that neither could give. “Maybe you’re telling the truth, but I’ve got the same question you had, Mr. Berkeley.”

“What’s that?”

“Rather than go to the trouble to make it look like you murdered your wife, why didn’t they simply kill the two of you?”

The sound of his name being shouted and the glare of portable Klieg lights for television cameras forced Matt to hold an arm over his face. A barrage of questions were thrown by hungry media reps as two uniformed policemen, none too gently, ushered him out through the front door of the house on Fourth Avenue North. They stopped when Matt heard Fay Lundgren call, “Hold it, officers. Yes, you two. Where are you taking him? Detention center downtown Jacksonville or the Jax Beach facility?”

Before either of the two officers could answer, Detective Sergeant Terri Good’s voice called, “Jax Beach. Penman Road for interview, then the detention center, but I can’t give you a particular time frame. Depends on length of the interview and Mr. Berkeley’s cooperation. Why?”

“Understood, but the bodies are going downtown with me for autopsy. If Mr. Berkeley’s to be kept in Jacksonville Beach for any length of time, I want him to officially identify his wife before he leaves the house.”

Oh, God!
Seeing Ashley in that place, that bedroom, was the last thing Matt wanted to do. Not now. Not yet. “Do I have to? Now?” he asked, his voice cracking with emotion.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Berkeley. I realize how difficult it may be, but I need a formal identification, and I think you’d rather do it before we perform the autopsy.”

“I’ve got calls to make,” Good said. “Hammersmith, you go with them.”

Sucking in a loud intake of breath, and letting it out slowly in an effort to steel himself, Matt shuffled back inside the living room despite the two policemen’s sudden hold on his arms. “Where the hell you think I’m going?” he asked belligerently. “Handcuffed and with these plastic straps around my ankles? I can hardly walk, let alone run away.”

“Shut up, Berkeley,” Hammersmith ordered from the doorway leading to the hall and bedrooms. “Why do you need him, Doc? I already told you who she was.”

“Mr. Berkeley’s next of kin. You’re not. Don’t argue.” To the policemen, she ordered, “Put these booties over his shoes.”

With the front door closed behind them and the crowd noise only a muffled roar, the officer on his right bent over to lift Matt’s feet one at a time. While Matt braced against that officer’s back, the second policeman took the blue paper booties from Fay Lundgren and worked them over Matt’s shoes. Finished, both men stood, took Matt by the arms, and started toward the back of the house.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Matt said, “but I believe one of you lost something.”

The two officers stopped at once, hands flapping against shirt pockets, then, starting at the buckles of their leather equipment belts, each rapidly searched backwards along the various pieces of mounted equipment. When the officer Matt had leaned on for support touched his empty holster, he yelped, “Oh, shit!” and jumped away from Matt.

Holding the weapon by the barrel, Matt handed the Glock 9-millimeter semiautomatic with the near-black finish to the officer, saying, “You need to be more careful. If I was the murderer you think I am, I could’ve and would’ve shot both of you.”

“And I would have put one between your eyes,” Hammersmith said from the doorway, his body in a firing stance, weapon aimed directly at Matt.

“Between the eyes? Come on, Detective, that’s not where they taught you to shoot the bad guys, is it?”

“Come on, you two,” Lundgren said. “Quit playing games and grow up.” Tilting her head toward the two uniformed policemen, she added, “Wait out here. Don’t need any more busy little hands and feet disturbing the crime scene more than it’s already been.”

With Fay Lundgren leading the way, Matt entered the bedroom and shuffled to the foot of the bed. What had been a dimly lit bedroom the night before was now a room drenched in the incandescent glow of three massive, tripod-mounted floodlights. Their brightness only added to the grotesque surrealism of the scene. Before him on the bed lay the two bodies. A heavily blood-blotched sheet had been thrown over all but the shoulders and faces of both bodies—for his benefit, he assumed. On the headboard and wall just behind and to the right of the bed, blood formed curious stain patterns as though some neurotic artist had sprayed red paint with a splatter gun. Beside the bed was an overturned night table and lamp, its light still burning. Two blue coverall-clad crime scene technicians on hands and knees worked in different parts of the room with small, high-powered penlights, searching meticulously for whatever minute evidence might be present.

“Jesus!” he muttered, squinching his eyes shut. He dug at them with the knuckles of his fingers as though what he had seen could be hidden behind the curtain of multicolored stars created by the rubbing. Once he opened his eyes, however, the reality was still there.

He stared at what had once been his wife, the woman he had loved so deeply, the woman whose body and soul had been one with his.

Fay Lundgren’s voice was soft at his side, yet her words demanded an answer. “Mr. Berkeley, is that your wife?”

For a moment, it was as if he had lost his voice. Finally, he heard himself say, “Yes…that’s Ashley, my wife.”

“Her full name?”

With eyes closed, he answered, “Ashley Anne Berkeley, maiden name, Peake.”

Hammersmith elbowed his way past the two crime scene technicians and asked, “The man? You know him?”

Matt studied the man for a moment as Fay Lundgren pulled the sheet up and over Ashley’s face. “There’s something familiar. A man I saw in Germany, but with his face half mush, who knows?”

“Name’s Striker,” Hammersmith said. “Like yours, a South Carolina driver’s license in his wallet.” The detective pointed to the trousers folded on the chair. “We also found this.” He reached toward a line of small, clear plastic packages lying on top of the dresser, picked up one, and held it for Matt to see. “Telephone index card with the name of Roger Fitzwellen, Vienna, Virginia, phone number and address. Sound familiar?”

Matt bit his lower lip, thinking about Sam Gravely and Sam’s friend Fitzwellen. “The man who murdered Fitzwellen and Sam Gravely? If so, the gun you found in my hand is, or was, probably his if it matches the weapon that killed Sam and Fitzwellen. I’d also bet he’s one of Henry Shoemaker’s people.”

“C’mon—not that Shoemaker thing again,” Hammersmith ridiculed. “Gimme a break!”

“Shoemaker?” Fay Lundgren asked, surprise written on her face.
“The
Henry Shoemaker?”

“A long story,” Matt answered before asking, “The other package on the dresser? That one.”

“Cigarette butts. What of it?”

“Ashley doesn’t…didn’t smoke, and neither do I. As I told you, there was somebody else in this room, and they did the killing, damn it.”

“Rest assured, Mr. Berkeley,” Lundgren said, “we’ll make every effort to extract saliva and skin cell samples from the ends of the cigarettes for DNA to check against both your wife’s and your DNA as well as that of the deceased male on the bed.”

“You won’t get a match, not from Ashley or me.”

“I can’t believe we’re wasting this much time,” Hammersmith said, then barked, “C’mon, Berkeley, let’s go.”

“Wait a minute,” Matt said, resisting Hammersmith’s grip on his arm. He closed his eyes and again saw the room as it had been when he’d first entered—the bedside lamp, the man and woman on the bed, both on their backs, the sudden recognition…but there was something else. Ashley’s arms and legs were spread V-shaped toward the head and foot of the bed, respectively. “Tape,” he said.

“What about it?” Fay Lundgren asked.

“Duct tape. Ashley’s wrists were taped to the posts, trundles, or whatever they’re called at the top of the bed. Her feet, the ankles, were taped to the posts here on the footboard.”

“In your dreams,” Hammersmith chided.

“Goddamn it, I’m telling you—she was lying on the bed, wrists and ankles tied to the top and bottom of the bed. He was on his back, moaning. He was still alive, I’m sure of it.”

Fay Lundgren walked to the side of the bed, lifted Ashley’s right arm from beneath the sheet, and studied the wrist. “Hummm.” Matt flinched, his knuckles white from squeezing the top rail of the footboard. He looked away as Fay Lundgren pulled Ashley’s left arm free, closely examining the wrist. She then systematically folded the sheet up from the bottom past Ashley’s feet and examined the ankles, both visually and by touch. “I agree,” she said.

“Agree with what?” Hammersmith demanded.

“We need photographs—wrists and ankles. There’s scouring of the skin on both wrists and ankles; in other words, raw. Also, signs of some kind of adhesive.” Re-covering the arms and feet with the sheet, Lundgren moved back to Ashley’s head. “Her lips are raw. Some of the skin tissue missing. I’d say her mouth was also taped.” She asked the technicians, “Tape? Masking? Duct? Packaging?”

Both technicians answered simultaneously, “No.”

Matt suggested, “Under the bed?”

A moment of silence before one of the technicians dropped to his knees, pulled back the dust ruffle on Ashley’s side of the bed, and focused the beam of his small penlight into the darkness beneath the frame. Flattening his body to the floor, he stretched one arm beneath the bed, pulled it back, switched off the light, then stood. “Sorry, Dr. Lundgren,” he said, quickly shoving a crushed ball of gray duct tape into a plastic evidence bag. “Behind some cartons up near the wall. Guess we missed it.”

Hammersmith exhaled a lung full of air, venting his frustration over the finding.

Ignoring Hammersmith, Matt shuffled slowly around the foot of the bed, stopping after only a few steps, not wanting to get any closer to the pool of drying blood on the floor next to Striker’s side of the bed. “I know you want to believe I did this, Detective, but you’re wrong. And there’s one more thing.”

“What now, Berkeley?”

“The man—he was alive when I came in. I heard him moaning even before I opened the door. Almost a gurgle, like his throat was full of water. That table and lamp were upright. The lamp was the only light in the room.”

“So?” Hammersmith asked.

Pointing toward Striker’s head, Matt answered, “Now he’s got what looks like an exit wound through the upper mouth and nose, and in that case, there should be an entrance wound through the back of the neck. Right?”

“Correct,” Lundgren said.

Matt then pointed to the wall. “There’s blood on the wall by the bed. The bedside table and lamp are turned over, but the lamp is still burning. I’d say the man was alive, tried to get off the bed, and the shooter got him in the back of the head.”

“You’re crazier than hell, Berkeley,” Hammersmith blurted. “I’ve had enough. We’re wasting time.”

“Go on, Mr. Berkeley,” Fay Lundgren said, ignoring Hammersmith. “Since there were tooth and bone fragments in the wall, I like your theory.”

“If you’d move the man’s head on the pillow, Doctor,” Matt said.

Stretching across Ashley’s body, Lundgren tilted Striker’s head back until the vacant eyes seemed to stare toward the ceiling. “Now what?”

Matt moved as close as he dared without stepping into the rapidly coagulating wash of blood on the floor.

“He tried to get out of the way, but he wasn’t fast enough. He’s on the floor, bleeding and dying or already dead. There…” Matt pointed to the large crust of blood next to the bed and the overturned bedside table. “The shooter stands over him—his shoes, or at least one of them, in the spreading blood. To finish the man off before lifting him back on the bed, or just for good measure, the shooter pops him one more time through the forehead. The seventh bullet Detective Sergeant Good said you haven’t found? It’s either somewhere in the guy’s brain or in the floor, hidden by that pool of blood.”

“Goddamn fairy tales,” Hammersmith snorted, grabbing Matt by the shoulder and pulling him toward the door. “C’mon, Doc, let’s get outta here and go home.”

“Are you finished, Mr. Berkeley?” Lundgren asked.

“Look at the gunshot hole in the forehead. Straight on. If I did all my shooting from the foot of the bed as Hammersmith says I did, the entry of the bullet would have been at an angle, possibly ricocheting off the skull and into the wall behind the headboard. Also, I’ll bet there’s unburned propellant particles around the hole, embedded in the skin. Tattooing as you people call it. That means he was shot through the forehead, dead-on at close range, possibly from no more than a foot or two away, while he was on the floor.”

Nodding to the shoeprints moving away from the blood, Matt finished, “The prints show a sole with tight ridges and some kind of design on the bottom of the heel. My shoes have plain soles and heels and, as Dr. Lundgren has shown, no blood. To make a long story short, I was set up and the man or woman wearing those shoes is your killer.”

Hammersmith scoffed, “I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, there were two of you, and I’ll bet my next paycheck the other one was your buddy Steve Park.”

“You lose,” Terry Good said as she stepped into the room.

“What the hell do you mean?” Hammersmith blasted back.

“Just that. Park left with a van full of scuba equipment, taking six divers on a dive trip to the Keys yesterday afternoon sometime after Berkeley called him from Newark International. Pending good weather, the trip’s been planned for the past month. I just spoke with him at the Best Western in Key Largo. This morning and afternoon, he and his people were on a boat belonging to Silent World Divers, diving a couple of sunken Coast Guard cutters. He’s gonna cut the trip short and be back here tomorrow afternoon.”