Liberty or Death (48 page)

"You waited three hours to check on him?"

"Man's a regular, sir."

Burgess shined his light on the MD plates. "So our victim's a doctor. What's this regular do here?"

"Sex, sir."

He didn't like it that the kid had let so much time pass. That this doctor was allowed to park on a residential street and have sex in his car. "You know of any sex act that takes three hours?"

"No, sir." Kid's teeth were chattering.

No sense wasting time out here on things they could do inside later. Like talk. "You run the plates?"

"Pleasant. Dr. Stephen Pleasant. Radiologist over at the hospital. Pine State Radiology. Car's leased by the business."

The shiver he felt wasn't from the cold. He'd run into Pleasant before. "Live around here? This neighborhood?" In this part of town, the West End, there were some lovely houses.

"Cape Elizabeth."

"Surprise, surprise." His cousin Sam, chief down in Cape Elizabeth, wouldn't take kindly to
his
citizens parking on the streets and getting blow jobs. Burgess didn't either. "Speaking of hospitals, our
friends from down the street are taking a damned long time, aren't they? You get that tape up while I look
at our victim."

"Car's locked, sir," Aucoin said.

"Locked? How'd you get into the car? Break a window?" Aucoin's uncomfortable squirm was all the answer he needed.

"How do you know he's dead?"

"Oh, he's dead all right. Doesn't look like he died happy, either."

"Jesus Christ, Aucoin. You must be damned gifted if you can declare death through a closed car window. How long you been on the force?"

"Seven months, sir."

"A word of advice," Burgess said. "Don't start cutting corners. It's the quickest way to screw up any investigation..." He held up a hand to ward off the young officer's protest. "I know it's a miserable night. No one wants to get out of the car on a night like this. But the scumbags count on that. We don't wanna be playing the game their way."

Wind-whipped tears had turned to ice in the young cop's mustache. "Keep moving," Burgess said. "It helps. For starters, get me a scraper, okay? And don't make any new tracks." He strode over to the car, sliding on black ice under the powdery snow. The night was empty but not quiet. Wind rustled frantically through a nearby oak and shrieked around the buildings. Ice had re-formed on the window where Aucoin had cleared it. He grabbed the scraper. "Give me a big perimeter, okay? And watch for footprints." Aucoin, hunched and miserable, crunched away.

He scraped the window, then took his flashlight and peered in, running the beam slowly over the still figure. The sharp light distorted the taut face into planes of yellow-white and dark crevasses. Maine wasn't exactly a hotbed of homicide, but Burgess had been a cop a long time, in Vietnam before that. He'd seen his share of ugly bodies but this was a contender. Dr. Pleasant hadn't gone quietly into that good night. Death had left its mark in the wide, horrified eyes, cocked head with straining neck cords, that metal rod protruding between the teeth like a fire-eater whose act has failed.

Early forensic scientists had believed the dying eye recorded the assailant's picture like a photograph and tried to find a method to recover it. Faces like Pleasant's, with the awful anticipation frozen there, had fueled those theories. The seat was pushed away from the steering wheel and half reclined, like a dentist's chair. He could hear his dentist's voice. Open wide.

He wondered if the rod had gone through the victim's neck. What the ME would say about the cause of death, assuming the man was dead. Burgess didn't doubt it, but he had to make sure. As a police officer, he had the authority to declare the man dead. He could confirm, for the record, that the victim had no pulse or respiration, so no extraordinary measures would be taken to save his already lost life and screw up the crime scene.

He raised his flashlight, wincing at the desecration of such an expensive car, broke out enough of the window to slip a hand through, and opened the door. He exchanged leather for latex and touched the victim's bare chest. Despite the heater's best efforts, the car wasn't warm. Pleasant was already cooling, his skin gone a waxy yellow. He had no detectable pulse, wasn't breathing. His pupils were fixed and dilated. The blood which had dripped from the corners of his mouth onto his scarf was still wet and red, but coagulating.

This was when training and experience came together, when keeping an open mind and open eyes were essential. Burgess surveyed the rest of the body and the car's spotless, characterless interior—black leather, gray carpet. No change, phone, CDs, glasses, cups, papers or briefcase. Only a dark overcoat, folded carefully on the rear seat, which the drape suggested was cashmere. The car smelled faintly of pizza.

He noted things for the report, things to be collected, the strange choice of weapon, already framing the pictures, though he no longer took them. Who was this man? Why had he been here? Who had been with him? What had happened in this car? And why?

What would he say to the widow? It was a difficult conversation at the best of times. Getting caught—or killed—with your pants down was hardly that. Mrs. Pleasant—and a wedding ring suggested there was one—wouldn't want to know how her husband's body was found. His shirt unbuttoned and his pants unzipped. He wore no undershirt and there were garish lipstick stains around his nipples. His penis, upright and hard with post-mortem tumescence, still awaited its anticipated release. A party atmosphere despite the lack of decorations. On the passenger's seat were two crumpled twenties and a ten. Party favors? One clenched hand held many strands of long blonde hair. Otherwise there were no marks on the hands. No signs of a struggle.

He was supposed to wait for the ME, the photographer, and the rest of the crime scene team before he touched anything, but any second now, the wind might whip in and snatch those hairs away, hairs that, for all he knew, might be a vital clue. Making a mental note to bag the hands, he pulled out an evidence envelope, untangled some hairs from the clutching fingers, and dropped them in, carefully recording the necessary information.

He backed out of the car, slamming the door, just as the crime scene van, an unobtrusive Taurus full of detectives, and an ambulance pulled up. He hoped they wouldn't have to wait long for someone from the ME's office to arrive and release the scene so they could work it. He wondered whether, having met Pleasant briefly in the past, he ought to let someone else work the case. That was something he and the lieutenant could work out later. He was here, the body was waiting, and it would be a pity to drag anyone else out into this icebox of a night.

He shoved the envelope into his pocket and went to meet them.

 

 

 

Kate Flora, who also writes as Katherine Clark, was an assistant attorney general in Augusta, Maine, before moving to Massachusetts to marry, later working in public interest law and general private practice. She retired to raise her children and to write. Flora is the author of seven Thea Kozak mysteries and two Joe Burgess police procedurals, as well as co-author of the true crime work,
Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine
. As Katharine Clark, she is the author of
Steal Away,
a suspense/thriller. She is a former editor and publisher of Level Best Books, and former international president of Sisters in Crime. She divides her time between Maine and Massachusetts. Flora teaches writing for Grub Street in Boston.