The Phantom Photographer: Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 3 (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (23 page)

For a second time, she rang the bell, knocked twice, and then, using her passkey, entered. Immediately, she smelled coffee that had been recently brewed, evidence that Michael had not spent the night out. Then she noticed the door to his outside patio was open. A cold chill suddenly went through her small aging frame. She froze in place for a moment when she saw what she assumed were Michael’s legs splayed across the deck. Oh, my God, she thought. She had feared, given his ever-expanding waist, that one day he would be felled by a heart attack. Might this have been that day?

With just two more hesitant steps forward, she saw the pool of dark red blood that covered a good part of the deck. Her scream was the second unexpected sound to shatter the peace of the canyon that morning.
 

Breathlessly, she ran back to her home, never stopping to close Michael’s front door. Once inside, she collapsed into an aging wingback chair, trying to gather herself before picking up the phone to call the police. She rubbed her hand over the center of her chest, hoping that she was not suffering the heart attack that she just feared had felled her friend.
 

“Oh, my Lord, I don’t know what has happened,” she told the 911 service that routed her call to Mill Valley dispatch. “I think it might be a suicide. I just can’t believe it; I can’t believe it!”

Mrs. Fitzsimmons was still badly shaken when two police cars pulled up in front of her home. She walked out and nearly fell sobbing into the arms of the first officer as he reached out to her.
 

“Why would he do something like this? He seemed so happy,” she asked both of them.
 

The second officer, Lt. Sarah Lauerman, walked into Michael’s home. Stopping at the doorway leading out to the porch, she could see that the victim had suffered a massive and obviously fatal head wound. Not wanting to disturb what was a possible crime scene, she immediately requested that dispatch place two calls, one to the Marin County Sheriff’s department and the other to the medical examiner.
 

Ten minutes later Lauerman, and fellow officer Jimmy Keyes, were still attempting to calm Mrs. Fitzsimmons, when detective Eddie Austin, one of only two experienced homicide investigators in the entire county, arrived.
 

Eddie stepped inside and introduced himself to the grieving landlady and nodded in greeting to the two officers, both of whom he had met previously. Pulling Lauerman aside and stepping out on to the front deck he asked, “Is the victim a relative?”

“Apparently not. But she has known him for over twenty-five years. His name is Michael Marks; everyone in town knew him.”

“I know him too. My buddy over in Sausalito, Rob Timmons, publishes the
Standard
community newspapers; he’s provided photos for the Mill Valley paper for years, but I’m sure you know that. I only met him two or three times. Quirky kind of character.”
 

“He was like the town’s unofficial photographer for as long as I can remember. Jeez I was a student in the fifth grade over at the old Mt. Carmel Church School when Marks came in to take pictures of us for some project we were doing.”

“Well, I better go take a look.”

“Eddie, I just wanted to tell you,” Sarah said, putting her hand around his arm, “it’s a real mess over there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s just say I didn’t want to get close enough to feel for a pulse.”

“That bad?”

“From what I can tell, between what appears to be brain matter and a bucket’s worth of blood, whatever killed Mr. Marks happened in a hurry.”

“You think he put a gun to his head?”

“If he did, it was no small caliber gun. And if it was a shotgun he used on himself, it somehow vanished, because there is no weapon that I saw out there.”
 

“You ask the landlady if she saw or heard anything?”

“Not a thing, she told us. She woke up around eight and went over to Marks’ place shortly before nine. She had plans to head down to Santa Cruz for a couple of nights; she wanted to leave him her key.”

“And she heard nothing?” Well, she would have heard a shotgun go off twenty feet from where she was sleeping. Is she deaf?”
 

“No, I asked her if she had a hearing issue and she said no.”
 

“Eddie, besides not wanting to disturb a crime scene, after what little I did see, I was afraid I might not sleep for a month if I got any closer.”
 

“I understand, Sarah; don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. Other than the rare occasion when a car goes off a cliff, working here doesn’t help to prepare you for anything like this. Mill Valley isn’t exactly a war zone.”

Oh, shit, Eddie thought; Sarah had not exaggerated. Probably, however, not that much for her to disturb; unless the bullet had exited the front of the victim’s skull and was laying somewhere near the scattered spray of bone and brain matter.

“What the fuck is this? Baghdad by the bay?” someone said from behind.

Eddie turned to see Max Brownstein, Marin County’s medical examiner, standing behind him.

“Max, what are you doing here? You don’t normally leave the office.”

“I was on my way back to San Rafael after an early breakfast conference in San Francisco, when the call came in. It sounded intriguing, so I thought I would take a look. My God, clean up on aisle five.”

Always astounded by Max’s macabre sense of humor, Eddie added, “Well, it certainly isn’t your usual run of the mill murder scene.”

“You’re right about that,” Max said, as he walked slowly around the body and then carefully along the perimeter of the deck.
 

“I’d guess he had no idea what happened.”
 

“Good guess, Eddie. I just read this story about a group of construction workers on the ground at a building site for a new high-rise in Manhattan. One of the crane’s balance weights broke free and came falling out of the sky. Some hapless bastard took a direct hit. BOOM! Like a fly walking across a kitchen table; no idea what hit him.”

Max paused and bent over Michael’s body, examining what he could of the massive head wound. A ceramic coffee mug was near his body, broken into a half dozen pieces.

“Whack,” Max said, looking up at Eddie as he smacked one hand onto the other. “Yep, never saw it coming. Probably just out here enjoying a morning cup of coffee and some fresh air.”

“Except rather than having a concrete block fall out of the sky, I’m thinking our friend here took a direct hit from a rifle shot to the back of the head. Probably from a shooter up about there,” Max said, pointing up the hill to a wooded area that sat behind a home at the end of Rose Avenue.
 

“Agreed. We’ve got signs of an exit would from the forehead, but given the thin spindles on the deck’s railing, my guess is that whatever was left of the bullet is out in this wooded area below us.”

“Good luck finding any of that down there.”

“We probably have a better chance of finding a shell casing up on the hillside.”

“You’re right, Eddie; well, we both have our work cut out for us. We’ve got some people coming down to bag and tag the poor bastard. Jeez, what an awful way to start your day.”

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

Approximately two hours after the police were first called, Michael’s body was removed from where it had fallen, and a search began of the most likely spot from which the shot had been fired.
 

Mrs. Fitzsimmons called to cancel her two-night getaway to Santa Cruz. So thoroughly overwrought was she by the whole situation that a neighbor invited her to spend the night just two doors down from her home. Most of the evening was taken up with her exhausted sobs and her endlessly repeated question, “How could this happen to such a nice man?”
 

Max instructed his staff to photograph every possible angle and then clear all relevant evidence, and finally wash down the deck. “No one should have to see something like this,” he told his staff.
 

Eddie spent most of his day at the murder scene. Why this had happened was a mystery; how it happened was not. Eddie had four Mill Valley officers going door to door to inquire about hearing a gunshot, sometime between six and eight that morning.
 

By the time three area residents had given similar stories, Eddie was able to confirm that the fatal shot was fired at approximately seven twenty-five.
 

Eddie went with two deputies to the door of the home he thought was the most likely in the area from where the shot was fired. Its owners, listed in the county’s records as a couple in their late sixties, were reportedly out of town on a wine tour of Bordeaux, France.
 

Two more deputies joined Eddie for a search of the backyard. It was the usual thicket of vines, with a few scattered pine trees, dead leaves, pine needles, wildflowers, and dry soil. It wasn’t long before one of his deputies, Bettie Levy, stepped onto the Mauser rifle.

“Over here,” she cried out.
 

Ten minutes later, the rifle was placed in an evidence bag and on its way to the crime lab in San Rafael.
 

In Mill Valley, like any of the small towns of Marin County, people who thrive on local gossip can spread news faster than the Internet.