Taboo (3 page)

He called the rookie over, who marched up to the two detectives, snapped to attention and straightened his uniform.

‘Officer Fitzgerald,’ Kennedy began, ‘take your time and tell us what you can remember.’

Somewhat surprisingly, the younger cop was calm and articulate as he outlined what had happened when he first reached the apartment. ‘The 999 was logged at 6.03 a.m. from this building, apparently by another resident who’d heard a gunshot coming from the apartment,’ he informed the detectives.

‘OK.’

‘Our unit responded quickly,’ he continued, ‘and arrived at the scene at precisely 6.18 a.m.’

‘Six-eighteen a.m. precisely?’ Chris echoed, amused by the young man’s certainty.

‘Precisely, sir.
I checked my watch just to be sure.’

The detectives exchanged a surreptitious look.
‘All right. And then?’

‘Well, at first we were ordered not to penetrate the building in case the perpetrator was still at large.’

Despite himself, Chris was tickled by the younger officer’s terminology – it was something the training colleges instilled with vigour into new recruits. Personally, he wasn’t a fan of this ‘Robocop’ talk and whenever he gave a radio or TV statement, he purposely spoke in layman’s terms so the public could be assured that if they did
come forward with information, someone in the force might actually be capable of understanding them.

‘Then, at 6.45, we got word that the building was
secure and they gave us the OK to go in,’ Fitzgerald continued. ‘So in we went.’

‘Please tell me you didn’t use the lift to get up here,’ Kennedy remarked.

Looking faintly hurt, Fitzgerald shook his head. ‘Of course not. The perpetrator may have used the elevators, so we made sure we entered via the stairs in order to avoid contaminating evidence.’ He paused. ‘I might be new, but I’m not stupid, Detective,’ he added, pointedly.

Chris had begun to draw the exact same conclusion. ‘So this is how you found them.’

‘Yes, sir. It was obvious as soon as we arrived that both victims were dead, so we called it in as a homicide and possible suicide and made sure not to touch a thing until the forensic people got here.’ He added the last part with emphasis, looking directly at Kennedy.

The kid could stand up for himself. Chris was impressed.

‘Did you find out who called in the 999?’ Chris asked.

Fitzgerald nodded and flipped open a black notebook.
‘The woman living in the apartment next door, a Mrs Maura McKenna. Now, she doesn’t remember everything exactly as it happened.’ He sounded vaguely disappointed that his only witness wasn’t up to his own high standards. ‘According to her statement, she was fast asleep in bed when she heard a sound that quote – nearly lifted her out of her skin – unquote,’ he said, reading from the notebook. ‘The second shot came soon after, although she’s unable to remember exactly how soon, but she believes it could have been four or five minutes. Then she rang 999.’

‘OK.’

‘She was also able to give us a possible ID on one of the victims. The girl living here is – or rather,
was
– Clare Ryan. She’s a student at UCD. The old lady said that the girl’s parents bought this apartment for her a couple of years back, when she first started at university. She doesn’t know anything about a boyfriend, though.’

‘Anything else?’

‘That’s it, sir,’ the younger man said in conclusion.

‘Thanks, we’ll have a chat with the neighbor later,’ Chris said, dismissing him.

Just a quick scan of the room confirmed that the dead girl was indeed Clare Ryan – there was a long white sideboard in the living room dotted with framed photographs of a smiling brunette. Chris picked up a photo, taken on a beach somewhere – Thailand, maybe? The sand was pure white, the sea azure. The girl’s happy grin and lively eyes were a sad and stark contrast to the pale, lifeless cadaver in the bedroom.

‘Any photos of the guy?’ He looked up from his reverie and saw Kennedy watching him.

His gaze scanned the photographs for any sign of her companion. ‘Who can tell?’

It was difficult to match any of the males in the photos to the dead guy, given that most of his head had been obliterated.

Kennedy studied the photos with him. ‘Once her ID is confirmed, it should make it easier to identify the boyfriend – he was probably a student too.’ He wandered over to the window, gazed out across the bay. ‘Who’d buy a college kid a swanky place like this?’

‘Good investment for the parents and they know their kid is living somewhere safe – or at least that’s what they would have hoped.’

He and Kennedy would need to talk to Clare Ryan’s college friends and fellow students. Hopefully they’d be able to shed some light on who the guy was and maybe why he had done what he did. The obvious theory was that he was the jealous type. Clare had been a good-looking
girl, that much was evident from the photographs. Slim, with big brown eyes and an engaging smile, chances were the pretty brunette had turned more than a few heads on campus and that might have pissed off Prince Charming.

Or perhaps he’d been a previous Prince Charming and the guy had taken the break-up very badly. There were a few scenarios but no point in surmising at this stage, Chris thought, at least not until they found out more about Clare Ryan and her dead companion.

The detectives headed back toward the bedroom, but found their passage blocked by one of the uniforms.

‘Sorry, I can’t let you in,’ the officer said, his tone apologetic. ‘No one’s allowed in for the moment.’

‘What?’ Kennedy frowned. ‘What are you talking about? Of course we’re going in.’

The officer looked uncomfortable. ‘There’s nothing I can do for the minute,’ he said, giving a quick glance over his shoulder. ‘She’ll murder me.’

‘Who will?’ Chris asked. ‘Dr Thompson? She should be finished by now – she was almost done when I saw her a few minutes ago.’

‘No, not her,’ the uniform answered, ‘that new one from the crime lab – the American. She ordered everyone out and warned me not to let anyone into the room until she’s finished.’

‘Finished doing what?’ Kennedy asked, straining to see past him. Then his eyes widened as he caught sight of something through the doorway. ‘What the hell?’ he spat, turning to Chris in astonishment.

They peered inside. Reilly Steel was standing in the middle of the bedroom with her eyes closed and her arms wide open.

‘Looks like she’s doing some kind of yoga chant or something,’ Kennedy snorted in derision.

‘That’s not it,’ said a young female crime tech standing nearby. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘She does this all the time, draws on her instincts,
uses her senses to see if she can recreate the scene in her mind.’ As she spoke, there was admiration in her voice.

‘Touchy-feely crap,’ Kennedy rolled his eyes.

‘I don’t think it
is
actually, Detective,’ the woman replied. ‘In the States her solve-assist rate was over 80 per cent.’

Chris had read this somewhere too. While Reilly Steel evidently had some unorthodox methods, her investigative record spoke for itself. Still, he thought with a grin, there was no getting away from the fact that this ‘touchy-feely crap’ would raise a few eyebrows in this neck in the woods, and it clearly wasn’t going down too well with Kennedy.

‘Yeah, well,’ his partner muttered, ‘if she thinks the rest of us are going to
sniff
our way through this investigation, she’s got another bloody think coming.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ a female voice replied from behind him. ‘Besides, I doubt that whiskey nose of yours can detect much these days.’

Realizing that Steel had left the bedroom and overheard him, Kennedy’s neck reddened and his face instantly turned a brighter shade of puce.

‘Yeah, well … we couldn’t get in …’ he babbled.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said, extending a hand. ‘Reilly Steel, GFU. I take it you’re the assigned detective?’

‘We both are,’ Chris replied. ‘This is Pete Kennedy and I’m Chris Delaney.
Pleased to meet you.’

‘Pleasure,’ she said with a bright smile.

OK, Chris thought, so he’d seen the press release photos and heard all the blond jokes but bloody hell … Considering her unglamorous occupation, Reilly Steel was a stunner. Her huge sea-blue eyes shone with a bright intensity and her lightly bronzed skin stood out in marked contrast to the white clinical cap she was wearing. Beneath it, he knew there was a mane of honey-blond hair, but despite her obvious beauty, or perhaps because of it, he could tell instantly that she was sharp and uncompromising.

‘Well, I’ve pretty much finished my
erm … touchy-feely stuff,’ she said, a glint of amusement in her eye, ‘and the ME’s done her thing, but we’ve still got a bit of work to do in there.’ She moved back to the bedroom. ‘You guys can come in – as long as you don’t get in my way,’ she added, looking sideways at Kennedy.

‘No problem.’ The older detective remained uncharacteristically muted as they followed her back inside.

‘Have you found anything out of the ordinary?’ Chris asked.

She moved to the foot of the bed. ‘We won’t know for sure until autopsy, but judging by the entry wound …’ she indicated Clare Ryan, whose body was now being carefully zipped into a black polythene body bag, ‘… the girl was shot in the chest from less than two feet.
Point-blank range.’

She moved around, re-enacting the crime as she did. ‘It looks like he was standing at the foot of the bed when he fired the first shot
, then lay down beside her before finishing himself off. Chances are she was still breathing at the time.’

Chris agreed. The amount of blood that had pooled beneath the girl suggested that she hadn’t died instantly. ‘He seemed to do a much better job on himself, though,’ he added, his tone grim as he glanced at what was left of the young man’s head. ‘Not exactly Romeo and Juliet.’

‘No.’ Reilly bent down and picked up her forensic toolbox. ‘We’ll do a tox screen on the blood – see if it’s a case of a trip gone bad or something.’

‘Thanks, we’d be grateful for anything you could give us,’ he said, ignoring Kennedy’s disapproving gaze. His partner – like much of the force – was still largely sceptical about forensics, preferring instead to rely on good old-fashioned detective work and let the lab people back up
their
findings instead of the other way round.

‘Chances are
it’s drug related, though. What isn’t these days?’ Kennedy grumbled.

‘Well, I’d rather reserve judgement until we know more,’ Reilly replied. ‘I’ll take a closer look at what we’ve got when we get back to the lab, though I’ll be honest, it doesn’t seem to be all that much. Of course, we’ve got a couple of cartridges to process, along with the weapon. Speaking of which …’
She snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and moved toward the gun, which could be safely retrieved now that the victims’ bodies had been removed.

A gaggle of police officers had gathered in the room, grateful for the chance to be around something more interesting. Bit by bit, the majority had drifted back in once the pathologist had left and the victims’ bodies were removed.

‘Hey, can you guys stand back and give me some room?’ Reilly asked, impatiently.

Realizing what she was about to do, Fitzgerald, the younger officer with whom the detectives had spoken earlier, quickly reached inside his pocket. ‘Here,’ he said, proudly presenting a pencil to her, ‘you’ll need this.’

Kennedy chuckled. ‘What? Is she supposed to draw a picture of it or something?’

The younger man looked at him blankly. ‘But don’t you have to pick up the gun without handling it?’ he asked, no longer quite so confident. ‘In order to … you know … protect fingerprints and that?’

‘You’ve been watching way too much TV,’ Reilly said indulgently, taking the pencil and putting it aside. ‘If I used your pencil to pick it up, I might disturb any gunpowder deposits or dirt lodged in the barrel. Dislodged dirt could alter striation markings on test-fired bullets and we don’t want to do that, do we?’ she added, in the manner of someone speaking to a 5-year-old.

‘Um, no, I suppose not.’ Fitzgerald looked almost sorry he’d asked.

‘But you’re right, of course, we
are
worried about protecting prints,’ she went on, beckoning him forward to observe what she was doing, while the others kept out of her way. She knelt down by the bed and indicated for the officer to kneel beside her. ‘But if I hold the weapon there,’ she pointed to the butt of the gun, ‘see the chequered part of the grip?’ The rookie nodded, his attention firmly fixed on the weapon. ‘Now, this part has such an uneven striation that it won’t retain any identifiable prints, so it’s fine to handle it here. Not to mention that it’s the safest way to do it – I don’t want the damn thing to accidentally discharge on me, either.’ She slowly and cautiously lifted the gun up off the bed. Lesson over, she beckoned one of the others to help her safely prepare the gun for processing.

Fitzgerald looked at Reilly Steel with something approaching pure adoration. Chris smiled. Whatever the older guys in the force might think, the latest member of the GFU clearly had a set of fans amongst the younger generation.