Silence for a few seconds. Then he asked what I considered the second dumb question in a row. “I don't suppose you could have waited for me to tell him first, then, could you?”
It wasn't only a dumb question, there was resentment creeping into his voice. If I hadn't liked him I just would have told him to grow up. Instead, he got a bit more than he bargained for.
I looked at my watch. “Okay. Sit down.” He looked blank. “I said to sit down.”
He did.
“Deadly force is justified only to protect your life or that of another, right?”
“Sure.” He couldn't really say anything else. That was the fact of the matter.
“And only if there's no other way to accomplish that protection. Right again, no?”
“Yeah,” he said, “sure. Of course.”
I looked at Sally. “Since you're carrying a gun as a reserve, you knew that, too, didn't you?” She nodded. She damned well better have.
“This is for you, too. Sort of a refresher. The most dangerous shot you can fire is a warning shot.” I was warming to my task. “Let me tell you why. Number one: You have absolutely no business discharging your weapon if deadly force is not justified. It can't be justified, because you are making a deliberate effort not to hit the individual. You with me?”
He nodded, but was beginning to look bored.
“I'm doing this because I think you have potential, so listen up. Number two: You have no goddamned clue as to where those bullets went, do you?”
“I shot into the air,” he said.
“Exactly. Unless they defied gravity, they came down. Do you know where they came down?”
“No.”
“Damn right, you don't. In some departments, where they have more people and could afford to have you off for a while, you wouldn't get back off suspension until you produced both rounds for the sheriff's inspection. Did you know that?”
No, as a matter of fact, he hadn't.
“Number three: When the bullets stop, if they should because they hit somebody, it damned well isn't anybody who you'd be justified in shooting, is it? We had two reserves in the yard around the other side of the Mansion. What in hell would you have done if one of 'em had come down and hit Old Knockle in the head?” I waited a second. “How about an answer?”
“I don't think they went in that direction.”
“You don't think? Well, that's swell. Do you know?”
“No,” he said, “I don't know, but I know I didn't hit Knockle.”
“That's really lame,” I said. “But don't let's stop there. Number four: The suspect who got you to pop two warning shots may very well have killed Edie in the preceding twenty-four hours.” I saw he was going to say something, and held up my hand. “No, we're not sure. Just a good bet. At the same damn time, the son of a bitch had just slashed you across the chest with a very sharp object, and would have severely injured you if you didn't wear your vest. Right?”
“Yes, but that's why we wear 'em.”
He was starting to piss me off. “Did it ever occur to you,” I said, very slowly and distinctly, “that he was trying to cut your throat, just like he did to Edie? That he just missed because he was in a fucking hurry?”
He got pretty pale, pretty fast. Obviously, it hadn't occurred to him at all.
“So, he was still facing you, he cut at you, and you shot in the air. Assume for a second that you had hit Old Knockle.” I let him think about that for a second. “Can you imagine me telling Lamar that you'd killed Knockle because the man who probably murdered his own niece, and tried to kill you… ” I stopped, and let it sink in. “Now imagine this. Imagine that I'd said to myself, 'Carl, why don't you wait and see if Borman can tell Lamar on his own?' You with me?”
“Yeah.”
“And Lamar hears about this from somebody else. Before you tell him. Now, wouldn't that look like we were both trying to cover it up?”
“It might.” He looked up. “Yeah, it would. I'm sorry. You're right, Carl, you had to do it.”
I turned back to Sally. “You understand this, too?”
“Oh, yeah. You betcha.” She smiled. “Got it.”
“Okay, then.” I looked over at Borman. “Go home. Come in tomorrow fresh and ready to go.”
“You still want me with this investigation?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Of course I do. So does Lamar.” But I made a mental reservation. The sulking, plus the arguing, followed up by the sudden agreement and phony “… you had to do it… ” apology really pissed me off. Insincerity? Maybe. Whatever it was, he'd showed me a side of himself that I hadn't seen before. He'd also had Sally half convinced that he'd been wronged by both me and Lamar. That was a new talent he'd revealed, and one that I didn't want to see again. I still thought he should be on the case, because he knew quite a bit about the thing, and because I still had a good impression of him from before it began. Stress might be a factor, but I was going to be watching him.
My little stint as wise and fearless leader over for the morning, I collected Hester from the main office, where she was typing a report, and we went right to the evidence locker. Ugh. It did smell, but not as much as I'd feared. My nose told me that the residents at the Mansion had recently thrown out onions, garlic, and some meat.
My nose was only two thirds right. They'd thrown out onions and garlic, all right. But the third one wasn't meat. It was a bloody body bag. I stopped as soon as I saw it, and called for a little help.
Chris Barnes and the rest of the lab crew were at breakfast, just about to leave for Des Moines. He got to the office in five minutes.
We all stood looking at the bag. It was a white nylon bag, with black nylon handles, and a black zipper. A small label proclaimed it to be a “500 VSA.” A good bag, it was one of the expensive double-thick ones, with reinforcements at the ends and on the bottom. There was quite a bit of blood in it, and a darkish smear on the outside of the bag. Chris looked very closely at that, and said it looked like a wood stain, possibly from where it had been stored.
“Well,” said Chris, “this goes a long way toward explaining the lack of a blood trail.”
“Except for the spots, next to her tub, on the carpet outside her room, and at the bottom of the back stair,” I said.
“Right. Where somebody rested the body, and it was bent forward or to a side, and put pressure on the bag, and forced a bit of blood out of the zipper.” Chris shook his head. “I'd just guess that she hadn't bled out all the way when they bagged her,” he said. “Don't quote me on that, not yet. We gotta test the blood first. See if it's human, and then see if it's hers.” Using a gloved finger, he stirred a little pool of blood that had accumulated in one of the folds of the bag. “It sure as hell should have clotted by now.”
“Right.” That was from Hester. “How long till we can have the results?”
“For human, maybe today, depending on when I get to DM.” He paused when she cleared her throat. “Okay, today, then, for sure. As for the DNA match… hard to say, but as fast as we can get it done.”
“You know,” I said, “having a killer with his own body bag sure makes a case for premeditation. You just can't plan much farther ahead than that.”
We filled out the evidence sheet for the bag. It consisted of a copy of my logging, where I had entered the time I pulled the bags from the big blue box; the time I placed them in the evidence locker, the time I took them out, and the time I signed the body bag over to Chris. My signature by every entry, and his and mine on the last set. Maintaining the chain of evidence is crucial, but a pain in the butt, regardless. Like they say, the only time it's going to be important is the time you forget to do it.
We all pitched in and did the contents of the rest of the garbage bags. We found one bloody bath towel, a bloody washcloth, a bloody bottle of shampoo and one of conditioner, a bloodstained bar of soap and a hanging soap dish, a bottle of bath oil with a blood-encrusted rim, a brass rack with a curved section to enable it to be hung over the edge of an old-fashioned tub, and a bloodstained pink lady's razor. All in a white plastic sack, in a brass wastebasket. Even the wastebasket had matched, apparently.