Dr. Frank Patterson. in white shirt and tie, stood now over the bodies at the foot of the basement stairs in the Brody home, his gloved hands going to his aching back. He'd been bending over the dead family for forty minutes now, assessing how each had died, their relative positions, relative ages, and searching for any additional bruises or obvious marks. Hands tied, the three bodies had been dumped here in the basement as if hurled down the stairs, but the gunshots had all occurred at the top of the stairwell. There the blood spatters, along with brain matter, along with gunshot residue, painted the unfinished wall with enough crazy art to call it a Jackson Pollock painting.
His assistant revved up a small rotary saw and went to work removing the section of wall in question. He'd take it back to the lab with him, study it in detail. Under the right light, and with the help of blood-spatter specialists, he would be able to tell in which order each of the Brodys were killed-father-mother-daughter, mother-father- daughter, or some other variation. The crime would be recreated down to its last detail. If it proved interesting enough, he could write it up in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Examiner. They paid well in both cash and cachet.
The sound of the saw ended, and Patterson looked up to the top of the stairs, thinking Jennings an efficient man to finish with the wall so quickly, but Jennings hadn't finished. He'd merely stopped to allow Dr. Chang and Dr. Nielsen the right-of-way. They came down the stairwell now for a look at the cruel massacre here. "Anything I ought to know here, Frank?" asked Chang.
"Dunno… little soon to tell, but it's pretty clear the victims were forced to tie one 'nother up. Probably with assurances nothing would happen if they cooperated. Looks like a page out of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. They cooperate and he-ahhh, she, if it proves to've been Blodgett, she blows their brains out anyway, all in the same manner, right here." He put an index finger behind Lynn Nielsen's ear to demonstrate the location of each entry wound, and said, "Pow! Just like a professional or someone familiar with the Godfather films."
Nielsen pulled away, annoyed he'd chosen her head to demonstrate on, his finger jabbing into her head. "It does appear to be her work," she said.
"And how would you know that from what little we have?" challenged Patterson, as had been his habit with her.
"She wasn't a big woman, only one hundred ten pounds at most. She wisely used her victims' weight against them here, as with getting Kemper off the mower and into the boat."
"What mower?"
"It's why they were shot at the top of the stairs and allowed to tumble down. She didn't have to drag, carry, or push them here."
"Good point," said Chang.
"Of course it is," said Patterson. "It's why I'm having the wall removed. They were shot at the top of the stairs and their bodies came tumbling down."
"What about the upstairs, the girl's room?" asked Chang. "Your guys finished there?"
"Finishing, yes."
"The other half of Mira Lourdes is on ice?" he asked.
"Well, no, not that far along yet, but it'll get done."
Chang gave a little nod to Nielsen. "Get up there and see to it Miss Lourdes's parts are bagged and put in the refrigeration van, Dr. Nielsen."
"I can handle it, Leonard," said Patterson.
"You've got your hands full here, Frank. Trust me, we've got enough autopsies to go around."
With Nielsen gone and the saw renewing its work at the top of the stairs, Chang stepped over the bodies and surveyed the basement-a lovely rec room with a Ping Pong table, a bar with a neon Coor's sign over it, lit and blinking, and on the bar a family photo of the Brodys on holiday in a snowy Christmas scene with skis-Aspen, Colorado, Chang guessed.
He continued examining the basement area. A washer- and-dryer unit at one end, little windows high overhead looking out on the earth. One comer sported a lounging area and a reading nook, with a bookshelf filled with dogeared paperbacks, assorted magazines, and a hardcover crime novel entitled Unnatural Instinct lying on one chair, a marker indicating the reader was halfway through the book. When Chang slipped it open, he saw the expensive bookmark was engraved with the name of Candice, the daughter.
Patterson had shadowed Chang. "Frank, life is too short. I came down here from upstairs, from Candice's room. I saw what's been hanging there all this time."
"What's the big deal, Leonard? I made the call. Priority one, the basement, two, the sweep of the kitchen-lotta things disturbed in the kitchen. Didya see that overturned, broken dining room table? And three, the upstairs rooms- not just Candice's but the master bedroom too. One that looks out on the forest out back."
"You lied to me, Frank, and you didn't follow my orders either. Look, we both know you're unhappy working under someone you feel superior to, Frank-a slant-eyed Chink."
"I never said anything of the kind. Who told you that?"
"You tell me that, Frank, every day."
The silence between them was rocklike. Chang broke it. "Look, I don't want to argue this here, not now. When this case settles, once all the reports are in, all the dots dotted and Ts crossed, you can defend your actions involving this case in a full rebuttal, okay? But Frank, I say it's time you started floating your resume."
"What? Whataya mean, Leonard? Are you firing me? You can't fire me, not without the approval of the board."
"I have their okay, Frank."
"You son of a-"
"My mother is descended from a royal Chinese princess, Frank. You never knew that, did you? So I'll forgive your calling her a bitch."
"You think this is the last word on this, Leonard? You couldn't be more wrong."
"See if ATF or FBI is interested in your talents, Frank."
"I'm a good M.E., Leonard."
"That's the shame of it, Frank. That's the shame of it. You are a kick-ass clinician. No one can touch you in the lab, but there's more to this job than slides, test tubes, and microscopes, and I've got to be a pragmatist. You're never going to be the people person you need to be, to deal with the public, the families, the detectives, your own peers in the lab."
"You want me out so you can put Nielsen in my spot. Whataya doing, Leonard-a good family man like you? You two sleeping together? Have a fucking good time at the Longhorn Inn down the road?"
"I've got a friend at County General lying in a coma, Frank, a man who may or may not live through the day. I've got another friend sitting at his side, holding his hand, talking him through. I'm finished here for the day, and I suggest you quit making graphs and measuring the distance from the top of the stairs to the bottom, and close this scene down."
"Fuck you, Chang. I'll say when it's time to close my crime scene down and not before. How many times've I listened to you, shut down a scene, only to wish I had taken more time at the scene? Too many to count, so it's when I say it's time."
"This place has given up all the clues it has to give, Frank, and as for the table, the legs were ripped off by Lucas and Meredyth to use as weapons. We found one at the stable where Lucas was shot."
"I still have say-so on how long we hold this place for forensic analysis. That much is still my call. That much you can't take away from me."
Chang looked over his notes, trying to collect his thoughts, how best to say what he must to Dr. Patterson to get it through to him that his career in the HPD Crime Lab was over. "Frank, you didn't just go over my head this time around; this time you went behind my back."
"What?" His look of exaggerated shock Chang thought laughable.
"You leaked sensitive information from my crime lab to the press, including Meredyth's and Lucas's names as the ones targeted by the Post-it Ripper, and-"